Category: business ethics

I am Flooded!

On By southwerkIn business ethics4 Comments

The flood has damaged my internet cable. Currently I have no service. I am blogging from the college where I teach but I can only be there so many hours a day. So, I will not be blogging as much or at length. I am very sorry.

I don’t know when my internet service will arrive back at full capacity but I will hope. I thank my kind readers for their forbearance and I hope many of you can maintain an interest even if my blogging become sporadic and brief.

Thank You!!

James Pilant

MANI SHANKAR AIYER’S BASELESS IRE AGAINST TEAM ANNA HAZARE (via Cosmos In My Eyes)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I thank God for angry, indignant bloggers. We have to have strong emotion. We have to be vital, intent, focused and unrelenting if there is to be change.

I like what I read here. There is anger in India against corruption. In American the more subtle corruption of campaign contributions and lobbyists have no real opposition, just the occasional gripe. I wish we had someone like Anna Hazare.

I am watching. The world is trying to look away from the controversy in India. Don’t let them. Don’t let your anger cool. Keep it hot and keep it on target. Don’t be diverted by side issues. Never let the pressure off and never be deterred by frivolous charges and threats. The way to moral success is not always straight and beset with difficulties.

Win this one. Change history.

James Pilant

Mani Shankar Aiyer, Congress MP to Rajya Sabha, yesterday in his characteristic outspoken way took on Team Anna Hazare for leading a movement against corruption which has reached gargantuan proportions in India. Mr.Aiyer’s anger, please note, is not against rampant corruption in India due to the rotten political system being followed by political parties since decades. Though Indian citizens were/are angered over the way, the politicians drag the … Read More

via Cosmos In My Eyes

A Quarter of a Century Since Chernobyl (via The Truth Journal)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Twenty-five years. Twenty five years to absorb the lessons of the last nuclear disaster and it just didn’t work out. The ad nauseum repeating of the mantra, “It’s different here.” Whether they meant more modern equipment, better management, more incentives, better regulation, it turned out to be nonsense.

Going back to Chernobyl after all these years is not a comforting journey. It is a trip into a ghostly irradiated land measuring 10,800 square miles, a facet of the aftermath of a nuclear disaster carefully unmentioned by the proponents of nuclear power. That’s about a third the size of Panama or five times the size of Rhode Island. Does that make you comfortable?

How much agricultural land can we afford to lose permanently? We need a thorough intelligent discussion of nuclear power in the United States, not back rooms and lobbyists, a public discussion.

This is a good article and has an attached video.

James Pilant

A Quarter of a Century Since Chernobyl A quarter of a century has passed since the worst nuclear accident in history. On April 26, 1986, the Nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, Ukraine, in the then USSR, exploded leaking nuclear radiation about a hundred times the Nuclear explosion at Hiroshima. I cannot think of anything more but to say that the day reminds us why we should be so proud of Nuclear technology. After all, it allows us to make great changes to the way things work naturally … Read More

via The Truth Journal

The Modern Face of Evil (via The Compulsive Explainer)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I’m a big fan of Iniside Job and apparently so is this gentleman. I agree with his remarks. I too believe that the instigators of this calamity were evil, not misguided, not just skirting the edge of legality, but evil.

I hope people like this embrace the concept of evil as a explanation for actions taken for unimaginable greed. This is a difficult time to live in. But one of the reasons we live in difficult times is because it was arranged that way. People were not held accountable for their own actions. Banking institutions did not suffer the results of their mistakes. Thus we have the a country where the free market is cited for every problem and in spite of that a tax supported, profit guaranteed, financial industry with the morals of a rabid dog was protected from it. If you use the mantra of the free market to discourage regulation, you shouldn’t be able to turn around and get taxpayer money.

This is a good post. My thanks to The Compulsive Explainer.

James Pilant

I am watching the movie Inside Job, and I am learning from it. I am watching the handful of guys who wrecked the world’s economy profess to be innocent as lambs. What I couldn’t see was the millions of people who let them get away with it. The modern face of evil is helplessness in the face of power – and people who are only interested in themselves. People who have lost the ability to be good – or to care for others. People who have ceased to ex … Read More

via The Compulsive Explainer

Nuclear lessons for Malaysia (Part 2) (via For A Better Malaysia)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

To use or not to use nuclear power? This article focuses on Malaysia but the issues are the same everywhere on our planet.

Costs, safety, and most important, trust, are the primary elements. That trust is on the list might surprise you. But I can’t help but feel the soothing hand of corporate PR every time I read some right-wing blog’s assurances that the amount of radiation is inconsequential and the constant, continuous claims that the technology is better now. Didn’t they say that after Chernobyl? Didn’t they say that after Three Mile Island, etc? It’s one of the classics, reassuringly pointless.

I am tired of PR. If the nuclear industry had ever been in anyway honest over the last fifty years I would feel differently but there is no trust here and without trust there can be no agreement.

This posting is an intelligent analysis and I enjoyed it.

James Pilant

Radiation is invisible and cannot be recalled. In a nuclear crisis, there will be many questions about radiation. As the Japanese people are now discovering, it is a nightmare trying to make sense of the uncertainties. How do you know when you are in danger?How long will this danger persist?How can you reduce the danger to yourself and your family?What level of exposure is safe?How do you get access to vital information in time to prevent or mini … Read More

via For A Better Malaysia

New Paradigms Needed (via Zielona Grzybnia)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

Thinking allowed! Wow, I’d like to see more of this.

This essay is entirely correct. We are in the middle of a new age and those that wave the flag while endlessly repeating the failed answers of a disastrous last fifty years are simply out of touch. We are going to have to change and pretense doesn’t cut it.

It’s time to go to the next step. What are the paradigms? Let’s state what the basic principles are going to look like from the worm’s eye view.

As a member of the intelligentsia, I get the new paradigm thing. Around here, paradigms come and go like falling leaves.

Whether I understand them or not is not that important. How can they be stated in a way that is persuasive to a new generation? How can they be stated in such a way that those clinging to the nonsense of the past will realize they have to move on?

Read the essay. I’m sure we will see more from this blog.

James Pilant

Through all its history humanity has been facing challanges which often seemed unsolvable. Nevertheless, we have been able to achieve a solution every time so far – sometimes better, sometimes worse, but we’ve done it. Today again we face a whole spectrum of huge challanges: the climate change with all its facettes. Biodiversity reduction due to general damages to ecosystems all over the world. Poverty and undernourishment. There are many proposa … Read More

via Zielona Grzybnia

Clash of Civilizations (via This African Life)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I am fascinated by the world, by all the people and different ways of thinking and doing. But I’ve never gone anywhere. I’d like to go to South Korea. Bizarrely enough, although I have known Koreans (and liked them) the main reason I want to go is because I have fallen in love with the Korean cinema, Sassy Girl, Windstruck, and Cyborg She among others.

Well, here is someone who is traveling and talking about it.

Ethiopia is exotic to me and I’m sure to most Americans. It sounds fascinating.

This is a good essay and I hope you enjoy it.

James Pilant

It has now been more than seven months since I arrived in Africa and I have to say that living here is starting to have a noticeable impression on me.  I have adopted various Ethiopian mannerisms and quirks to the point that a few people in my town now call me Nach Habesha—white Ethiopian.  For instance, I now clap loudly at restaurants to get a waiter’s attention. This is something that, having worked in the service industry for a decade and a h … Read More

via This African Life

Chernobyl Stalkers (via L’appel de Fukushima)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

I had heard that the Titanic disaster and the First World War were both predicted by novels, but this is the first that I’ve heard that Chernobyl was predicted by a film.

I pity the poor souls who feel obligated to make a living by stealing high radiation scrap from a nuclear dead zone.

On the other hand, the future may hold that kind of existence for many millions.

James Pilant

Chernobyl Stalkers The people most affected by the explosion of Reactor Number Four on the morning of April 26,1986, soon learned that the event known as Chernobyl was predicted by a feature film made seven years earlier. Stalker, by Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky, explored the limits of our technical explanatory power against the backdrop of a mysterious force that can only be approached on foot, by forest “stalkers” who have learned to accept its risky gifts. … Read More

via L’appel de Fukushima

Media has moved on, but not Japanese (via News and Brews)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

This is the only beer related post having to do with the disasters in Japan that I have found. It’s not bad.

I do agree the Japanese have not moved on. The disaster continues there as recovery is handicapped by the ongoing nuclear problems. American media has a tawdry interest in current events however inconsequential. So, in America, it may well appear that the crisis is over.

No, not for quite some time.

James Pilant

Media has moved on, but not Japanese The 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan on Mar. 11 has mostly disappeared from the collective conscious of American mainstream media. Many news outlets have shifted focus to Syria or Yemen–both very important stories in their own right. However, Japan is still recovering from the natural disasters that struck their shores over a month and a half ago. It severely damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Power P … Read More

via News and Brews

TVA plant’s old design brings fresh worries | The Tennessean | tennessean.com (via In Frog Pond Holler)

On By southwerkIn business ethics

It’s definitely true that the old designs need a new look in the aftermath of Fukushima. I’m curious to see how the utility is going to handle this.

James Pilant

Critics argue that safety and reliability issues are raised by the old design, the deterioration of work already done, the cannibalizing of plant parts and a failure to keep tight controls over the site. Some also question the need for another TVA nuclear plant. In the wake of Japan’s nuclear crisis, TVA staff delayed asking for a board vote for funding to complete Bellefonte. Still, more than 500 workers are busy on the site with engineering, as … Read More

via In Frog Pond Holler