Re: Conclusions

In a message dated 01-01-07 19:43:51 EST, richard@cyberjournal.org writes:

> > Simplistic solutions? David Korten? Thought they were a couple.
>  
>  Brilliant, insightful, informative.
>  
>  Do you always read your 'killed' mail?
>  
>  Keep up the productive work,
>  rkm

Michael and I go quite a while back. Indeed, he is quite a productive person, 
especially on the [right-left] list dedicated to studying and fighting the 
influences of right on the left. Although at times I disagree with him on 
this or that, I have utmost respect for Michael.

I also have some experience in dealing with cyber crusaders like you Richard. 
There are many of them, some of them with firm believes that they found the 
answer and all of them with their own agendas. For example, there was this 
Angel character on the May Day list, John H. St. John on the S26 list and 
several others whose names I don't recall any more.

And the only solution I managed to come up is this: Just ignore them, but do 
this collectively, and eventually they get bored and leave.  

For your enjoyment dear WSN members, I also include below an essay I received 
from one of my cyber crusaders very recently. He or she keeps sending me 
his/her great works every now and then for reasons that are unknown to me. 

Who knows, maybe after this experience, one of the social scientists on this 
list will take an interest in this phenomenon and write a paper or two on the 
subject?

Best,
Sabri

----------

The Militant Investor
by John H. St.John


"Talk radio", has become a propaganda medium for the fascist. It is aimed at 
those successful folk who are seeking information and have given up on TV. 
When you have a choice of Rush Limbaugh, Roger Hitchcock, Rick Roberts, and 
Drudge; it is apparent that the large corporate network, that features these 
worthies, is trying to do something to one's mind. It is an emotional appeal 
that ignores any other political spectrum and concentrates on two fabricated 
positions: The Liberal, and The Conservative, and uses this position to 
eulogize greed and place any group of thinkers in the position of "liberal" 
who do not go along with the "conservative". 

The fascist has always been a minority, and to make up for this weakness has 
to divide in order to conquer. Rush attacks women as "feminazis" to initiate 
a war of the sexes. Others have seized on the Catholic and fundamentalist 
notion of a right to life for the unborn. The war against drugs, and getting 
tough on crime, are an assault on those easy targets; the urban youth. The 
driver communicating with the talk-show host with a cell phone from his 
oversized, gas guzzling, SUV is a willing listener to a loud mouthed fascist 
in the pay of the oil companies, the lumber companies, and the mines, that 
are putting all of humanity in danger from global warming and ozone 
depletion. 

Sprinkled in with the rabid "conservative", however, are various financial 
advisors, and talk shows that give investment advice. It was on one of these 
that I became aware of a new potential enemy of the corporation: The investor 
who is enraged at the boards of directors of corporations. One such was very 
agitated. He was concerned about the relationship between these boards and 
the corporation CEOs where an obvious quid pro quo rewards the CEO with 
enormous salary increases, stock options, and "golden parachutes", 
(retirement benefits). One good thing about reading the business page is that 
you get to hear a lot of truth. There is very little lying about money. 
Things that never make the front page, or the editorials, are headlined here. 

The caller, an investor enraged that the boards milked the corporation for 
their own benefit, spoke of "the business judgment rule" a legal loophole 
that kept invidious board decisions from being question by the Securities 
Exchange Commission. He mentioned that the legal system is stacked in favor 
of the boards. Our radical investor wanted to get his fellow investors to 
unite and pool their proxies so that they could vote out of office any board 
that made a habit of screwing investors. As most corporation boards own a 
controlling interest that seldom exceeds one or two-percent of the 
outstanding common stock, it would seem an easy thing to do, but investors 
are individuals who are constantly shuffling the paper in their portfolios, 
and the institutional investors are too busy keeping their finger on the 
market's pulse, to worry about the internal shenanigans of any particular 
corporation. 

Here we have a whole new class of protesters: the militant investors. On 
second thought the idea did not seem too strange. On Black Monday in 1929, it 
was the investors who were lining up on the roofs of tall buildings awaiting 
their turn to jump. I never heard of a Ford, or a Dupont sky diving without a 
kite. I hardly think that Ted Turner, Bill Gates, or Ruppert Murdoch will 
take to the air over Manhattan. 

If what I have stated is so; the militant investor has a lot of muscle to use 
in the fight against the corporation. How about an investors union? Instead 
of a sit-down strike, a battle of massed proxies. Even the institutional 
investor would have time to mail his proxies to union headquarters so that 
the union leader can confront the members of the board at the next meeting. 
It is not unthinkable that the militant investor might take kindly to the 
idea of converting common stock to limited partnership stock. The ownership 
provisions of his stock doesn't mean anything to him. It is only important to 
his enemy: the chairman of the board. 

So far as the militant investor is concerned, the UN-owned corporation could 
belong to anybody. He is not interested in the internal concerns of General 
Motors. He sees himself as what he is, not an owner, but an investor. If 
General Motors were turned into a cooperative, he would still be an investor 
as a limited partner, and be able to draw down honest dividends that would 
actually reflect the true profits of the organization. He would still be able 
to buy and sell his shares on the Wall Street Casino. 

Investors of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.