Tag Archives: morality

Asset Seizures and Doing Business in Russia

Posted on by
Reply

And the disingenuosity of corporate heads who are continuing to do business inside Russia.

Nestlé is still doing business there.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal tweeted that he had talked with Nestlé Chief Executive Mark Schneider, who he said showed no understanding of the side effect of continuing to sell in Russia.

Shmyhal is being generous. Schneider, having risen to the top of a large international corporation, knows full well the fungibility of money; he knows full well that money his company spends in Russia, even if it’s solely to support his employees there and the employees of Russian suppliers of his businesses there, allows other moneys to be reallocated to Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine. Schneider knows full well that the taxes his Russian-domiciled companies pay go to supporting the Russian war machine.

Other businesses have said they are staying because their hands are tied by joint-venture or franchise agreements.

This is…mistaken. The disruptions caused by war are a perfectly legitimate business—and legal—reason to walk away from “joint ventures,” especially when one of the partners is domiciled in the war-starting nation and thereby (however unavoidably) supporting that war of aggression. These business’ managers know this full well; they’re simply hiding behind a transparent fig leaf in order to put their incomes ahead of what’s right.

Russian prosecutors have warned some companies of asset seizures if they withdraw from the country and threatened to arrest employees.

This is simply idiotic. By surrendering their companies to such threats, the business managers who so succumb already have surrendered their company assets to Russian authorities. Koch Industries COO, Dave Robertson, for instance:

We will not walk away from our employees there or hand over these manufacturing facilities to the Russian government so it can operate and benefit from them[.]

He already has, and they already are—whatever Koch’s facilities produce in Russia, those facilities now are producing only that which the Russian government permits.

PepsiCo, Unilever, Proctor & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, these are another small part of the extensive list of Western companies finding excuses to continue doing business inside Russia and thereby, however indirectly, supporting that nation’s barbaric war.

Maybe Western consumers should begin looking to other companies from which to buy things.

Update: Since I wrote this, Nestlé has agreed to limit its production in Russia to truly necessary items: baby food and other infant nutrition products, specialist veterinary meals and medical-nutrition products. Nestlé also has committed to donating such profits as it gets in Russia would be donated to humanitarian relief organizations.

Cheering

Posted on by
Reply

Russia has invaded Ukraine and is deliberately butchering women and children, bombing hospitals, schools, residential neighborhoods, even shooting at nuclear reactors in civilian power plants, and a Progressive-Democrat pollster for President Joe Biden (D) is cheering them on. Lake Research Partners’ Celinda Lake:

The good news is we now have a very specific reason for rising gas prices and a specific villain[.]

This Progressive-Democrat is happy to sit in the coliseum cheering for the mayhem below—because that’s good for the Progressive-Democratic Party. She’s not the least bit interested in the butchery beyond the fact of its existence and its perceived Party benefits.

The Value of Talks

Posted on by
Reply

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s army [sic] and air force [also sic] are repeatedly and routinely bombarding civilian urban areas, hospitals, and schools, and the barbarians he employs as “soldiers” routinely rape and murder captured women and children and torture and murder captured men.

Putin does this especially hard right before his teams engage in “talks” with Ukrainian peace negotiators. Putin also flatly denies his barbarians do this at all.

Mr. Putin spoke Monday with the president of the European Council, Charles Michel, asserting—contrary to evidence of deadly Russian attacks on civilians in Ukraine—that the Russian military was taking steps to save civilian lives, and accusing Kyiv of obstructing those efforts, according to the Kremlin’s account of the phone call.
As Russia continued to erase the line between military and civilian targets, Russian forces shot and killed Yuri Prylypko, the head of the village council in Hostomel, outside Kyiv, and two people who were helping him distribute food and medicine, according to the council’s Facebook page. Hostomel was the site of fierce fighting in the war’s early days.
In Kharkiv, near the Russian border, Russia intensified attacks on civilian targets, pressing to subdue a city, Ukraine’s second largest, that remains in Ukrainian control after days of fierce bombardment.

And so on.

Which raises the question: what is the value of engaging in talks of any sort with anyone in the Russian government, much less peace talks for Ukraine?

One is as critical as it might seem to be trivial: to get Putin’s lies, and those of his teams he sends out to pretend to negotiate, about his crimes on the record alongside his crimes.

A Progressive-Democrat’s Morality

Posted on by
Reply

The Arizona House of Representatives has passed and sent along to the Senate a bill that would require the State’s Board of Investment to divest from all companies that

[d]onate to or invest in organizations that facilitate, promote or advocate for the inclusion of, or the referral of students to, sexually explicit material in kindergarten programs or any of the 1st – 12th grades.

The measure was passed on party lines alone.

Here’s the Progressive-Democrat State Representative Morgan Abraham on why he voted against the measure:

This is about finance, and this is a terrible, terrible idea for our retirement system. Some people I’ve talked to think this bill would allow our retirement system to divest from 75% of the S&P 500.
… We should not be forcing our retired teachers, our retired police officers, whoever is involved with this public retirement system to not have the ability to have a diversified portfolio, regardless of the values you have on the underlying issue.

Diversified portfolio. Regardless of the values [we] might have…. Think about that. This Progressive-Democrat thinks it entirely morally acceptable to have a diversified portfolio of investments that includes child pornography.

This Progressive-Democrat thinks it entirely morally acceptable to build retirement funds, in no small measure, through the sexual abuse of our children.

 

Separately, the bill also would require divestiture from all companies that advocate abortion. From this, the bill as a whole is likely to fail on 1st Amendment grounds, regardless of how morally reprehensible abortion might be.

A Strategic Blunder

Posted on by
Reply

Or not. In his Friday Wall Street Journal op-ed, Tunku Varadarajan cited the historian Robert Service as saying that two immense strategic blunders caused Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The first supposed blunder is illustrative of how far our…intellectuals…have deviated from reason and morality.

The first [immense strategic blunder] came on November 10, when the US and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership, which asserted America’s support for Kyiv’s right to pursue membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

No.

It’s never a blunder, large or small, to do a right thing, and acknowledging a sovereign nation’s right to pursue its own friendly, peaceful, or defensive ends always is a right thing. Beyond that, the right time to do a right thing always is right away.

If there was an immense strategic blunder, it was President Joe Biden’s (D) thinking he could virtue-signal with petty ink on a piece of paper and not actually have to back up those words with concrete support for Ukraine.

Full stop.