Star Man
06-26-2013, 01:58 PM
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2013-06-27_11-17-11.png (https://truth-out.org/)Mankind: Death by Corporation
Wednesday, 26 June 2013 00:22 By Dr Brian Moench (https://truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/44807), Truthout (https://truth-out.org) | Op-Ed
Downloaded June 26, 2013 from https://truth-out.org/opinion/item/17178-mankind-death-by-corporation
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This is my personal comment. It is not part of the article.
WaccoBBeans familiar with my posts know that I have railed against the corporatocracy for several years. (I tried to take credit for the word, because I do think I had first use of it, but a WaccoBBean vehemently and snarkily disagreed. It's not important. But I do have a blog entitled "Corporatocracy." In any case, here is Dr. Brian Moench laying out the ways in which corporations poison and murder humans. "Corporatocracy" refers to the ways in which corporations have bought the Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary. The corporatocracy includes Big Media which disseminates the corporate mindset. Big Telecommunications is part of the corporatocracy, and the current flap over Edward Snowden and cyberspying is really about how Google and Facebook and many others have been coopted into the corporatocracy and now share data that will be used to identify opponents to the insinuation of corporate control into every aspect of our lives.
Star Man
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https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2013-06-27_11-14-56.pngThe word "corporation," derived from the Latin corporare, means to physically embody. In his History of the Corporation, Bruce Brown notes how in the first thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire, "the world's most powerful corporations were all trying to embody the Christian God." In 1534, Saint Thomas More spoke of Jesus Christ as the ultimate corporation. "He [Jesus] doth . . . incorporate all christen folke and hys owne bodye together in one corporacyon mistical."
Needless to say, in the 21st century, corporations as creations of civilization make no pretense of embodying the Christian God. In fact, today, corporations come much closer to embodying Mary Shelley's Frankenstein than Jesus Christ. Ironically, created by and managed by humans, corporations have become almost robotic monsters, perpetrating, even feeding off human misery, threatening every aspect of human life - the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat - and even the future of mankind itself. What have these corporate Frankenstein monsters done for us lately?
At least 1,127 people have died in a collapsed garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the deadliest such accident in world history. As of this writing, the largest American clothing corporations, Gap, Walmart and Target, who are end users of these death-trap factories, are still unwilling to commit to any safety improvements. Fifteen people were killed and over 200 injured in West, Texas, from an explosion at a fertilizer plant. Despite the deaths of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary school, no meaningful legislation to subdue ongoing gun slaughter in the United States will get passed.
All of these recent tragic headlines have a common denominator. Corporate profits were, and are, allowed primacy over all other considerations. Even Wayne LaPierre's foaming-at-the-mouth speech about freedom, liberty and second amendment rights is a smokescreen for ginning up profits for gun manufacturers, because American gun owners are on a steady, 30-year decline (https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/03/chart-day-gun-ownership-30-year-decline). The death certificate of all these victims - at Dhaka, West and Sandy Hook - should read, "Death by corporation."
But rummaging over the current and historical larger-scale threats to entire societies, countries and mankind in general, we see a grotesque, recurrent theme - corporations willing to kill, maim and destroy even their own creators in the name of profit.
The science on the broad consequences of cigarette smoking was well established in Nazi Germany by the early 1940s. Nonetheless, tobacco corporations successfully fought any substantive regulation for the next three decades, while tens of millions of people died early deaths in the name of tobacco profits. Recall the testimony in 1994 from the CEOs of the seven largest tobacco corporations before Congress (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ZDQKq2F08) unanimously declaring that nicotine is not addictive, knowing full well that killing people was part of making them rich. Marketing cigarette addiction to children was an integral part of the strategy.
But the tobacco industry was no worse than the lead industry for the first 70 years of the 20th century. Awareness of lead's serious health consequences - including madness and death - dates back to the Romans (https://www.epa.gov/history/topics/perspect/lead.html), the first to use it extensively. Symptoms of "plumbism," or lead poisoning, were already apparent as early as the first century BCE. Mental incompetence from lead exposure came to be synonymous with the Roman elite, manifest by the shockingly imbecilic emperors Caligula, Nero and Commodus.
Fast forward to 1980. ...
Continues at: https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2013-06-27_11-14-56.png
Wednesday, 26 June 2013 00:22 By Dr Brian Moench (https://truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/44807), Truthout (https://truth-out.org) | Op-Ed
Downloaded June 26, 2013 from https://truth-out.org/opinion/item/17178-mankind-death-by-corporation
* * * * * * * *
This is my personal comment. It is not part of the article.
WaccoBBeans familiar with my posts know that I have railed against the corporatocracy for several years. (I tried to take credit for the word, because I do think I had first use of it, but a WaccoBBean vehemently and snarkily disagreed. It's not important. But I do have a blog entitled "Corporatocracy." In any case, here is Dr. Brian Moench laying out the ways in which corporations poison and murder humans. "Corporatocracy" refers to the ways in which corporations have bought the Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary. The corporatocracy includes Big Media which disseminates the corporate mindset. Big Telecommunications is part of the corporatocracy, and the current flap over Edward Snowden and cyberspying is really about how Google and Facebook and many others have been coopted into the corporatocracy and now share data that will be used to identify opponents to the insinuation of corporate control into every aspect of our lives.
Star Man
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2013-06-27_11-14-56.pngThe word "corporation," derived from the Latin corporare, means to physically embody. In his History of the Corporation, Bruce Brown notes how in the first thousand years after the fall of the Roman Empire, "the world's most powerful corporations were all trying to embody the Christian God." In 1534, Saint Thomas More spoke of Jesus Christ as the ultimate corporation. "He [Jesus] doth . . . incorporate all christen folke and hys owne bodye together in one corporacyon mistical."
Needless to say, in the 21st century, corporations as creations of civilization make no pretense of embodying the Christian God. In fact, today, corporations come much closer to embodying Mary Shelley's Frankenstein than Jesus Christ. Ironically, created by and managed by humans, corporations have become almost robotic monsters, perpetrating, even feeding off human misery, threatening every aspect of human life - the air we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat - and even the future of mankind itself. What have these corporate Frankenstein monsters done for us lately?
At least 1,127 people have died in a collapsed garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the deadliest such accident in world history. As of this writing, the largest American clothing corporations, Gap, Walmart and Target, who are end users of these death-trap factories, are still unwilling to commit to any safety improvements. Fifteen people were killed and over 200 injured in West, Texas, from an explosion at a fertilizer plant. Despite the deaths of 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary school, no meaningful legislation to subdue ongoing gun slaughter in the United States will get passed.
All of these recent tragic headlines have a common denominator. Corporate profits were, and are, allowed primacy over all other considerations. Even Wayne LaPierre's foaming-at-the-mouth speech about freedom, liberty and second amendment rights is a smokescreen for ginning up profits for gun manufacturers, because American gun owners are on a steady, 30-year decline (https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/03/chart-day-gun-ownership-30-year-decline). The death certificate of all these victims - at Dhaka, West and Sandy Hook - should read, "Death by corporation."
But rummaging over the current and historical larger-scale threats to entire societies, countries and mankind in general, we see a grotesque, recurrent theme - corporations willing to kill, maim and destroy even their own creators in the name of profit.
The science on the broad consequences of cigarette smoking was well established in Nazi Germany by the early 1940s. Nonetheless, tobacco corporations successfully fought any substantive regulation for the next three decades, while tens of millions of people died early deaths in the name of tobacco profits. Recall the testimony in 1994 from the CEOs of the seven largest tobacco corporations before Congress (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_ZDQKq2F08) unanimously declaring that nicotine is not addictive, knowing full well that killing people was part of making them rich. Marketing cigarette addiction to children was an integral part of the strategy.
But the tobacco industry was no worse than the lead industry for the first 70 years of the 20th century. Awareness of lead's serious health consequences - including madness and death - dates back to the Romans (https://www.epa.gov/history/topics/perspect/lead.html), the first to use it extensively. Symptoms of "plumbism," or lead poisoning, were already apparent as early as the first century BCE. Mental incompetence from lead exposure came to be synonymous with the Roman elite, manifest by the shockingly imbecilic emperors Caligula, Nero and Commodus.
Fast forward to 1980. ...
Continues at: https://www.waccobb.net/forums/waccobb/keep90days/2013-06-27_11-14-56.png