How Corporations Became People (video)

(Bozasonic) "The Corporation," full movie. Corporations are people? Corporations are not people. "They have no 'soul' to save, no body to incarcerate." They do have a profit motive.

"The Corporation" is a classic Canadian documentary exploring how we ended up with business entities that are legally bound to place "profits before people." How are we to assess a corporation's "personality"?

The documentary concentrates on North American corporations, particularly those from the United States.

The film was written by Joel Bakan and directed by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. It is critical look at the modern-day "limited liability" corporation, considering its legal status as a class of PERSON. And it evaluates its behavior towards our society and the world at large the way a psychiatrist examines a patient.

The exploration goes through specific examples. It has been shown worldwide -- on TV, DVD, file sharing, and free downloading. Bakan wrote a book, The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power, during the filming of this documentary.

Showing the development of the contemporary business corporation, the movie follows the definition in court. Corporations went from legal entities that originated as government-chartered institutions engaged in public functions to commercial institutions entitled to most of the legal rights of a human being, US citizen, and now multinational body with no allegiance to the US.

They gained personhood as a result of an 1886 case in the US Supreme Court. Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite referred to corporations as "persons" having the same rights as human beings based on the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution. The film's assessment is effected via the diagnostic criteria in psychology's Bible (DSM-IV).

FBI consultant and professor of psychology Robert Hare, Univ. of British Columbia, compares the profile of the contemporary profitable business corporation to that of a clinically-diagnosed PSYCHOPATH.

The film is in vignettes examining and criticizing corporate business practices. It establishes parallels between the way corporations are systematically compelled to behave and the DSM-IV's symptoms of psychopathy, i.e. callous disregard for the feelings of other people, the incapacity to maintain human relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness (continual lying to deceive for profit), the incapacity to experience guilt, and the failure to conform to social norms and respect for the law.

(otherwords.org)

The topics covered include:

• the Business Plot in 1933 where the popular Gen. Smedley Butler exposed a corporate plot against US Pres. Franklin Roosevelt
• the tragedy of the commons
• Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower's warning people to beware of the rising "military-industrial complex"
• economic externalities
• suppression of an investigative news story about bovine growth hormone on a Fox News Channel affiliate TV station
• the invention of the soft drink Fanta by the Coca-Cola Company due to the trade embargo on Nazi Germany
• the alleged role of IBM in the Nazi holocaust (see IBM and the Holocaust)
• the Cochabamba protests of 2000 brought on by the privatization of Bolivia's municipal water supply by the Bechtel Corporation
• general themes of corporate social responsibility
• the notion of "limited liability"
• the corporation as a psychopath
• and the corporation as a person.
  

(H5N1XD) "The Corporation," short form

Greenwashing: False "Green" Claims (video)

(Living Green Channel) For big business, going "green" has become the trendy and profitable thing to do: On the shelves of any store we can find products that boast "green" claims -- eco-friendly, energy-efficient, organic, partially recycled.

But how many of these claims do you think are either partly untrue or completely false? If you guessed that 99.9% are false, you are correct! It's called whitewashing, only it's green. But the only green thing about them is the money to be made as corporations go green with envy for natural product companies' gains in market share.

According to a study from Terrachoice Environmental Marketing, out of 1,018 common consumer products reviewed, only one product did not commit one of the "Six Sins of Greenwashing."

When looking for an eco-friendly product that actually backs up its claims by being good for the planet, where can we turn?

Unfortunately this study shows that these products do not exist. Here's why: According to Terrachoice's research, over 50% of products tested with "eco-friendly" labels fail to mention the enormous environmental drawbacks such as containing hazardous waste and travel costs.

These need to be factored in when considering to buy and eco-friendly product. For example, even eco-popular CFL (Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs) contain mercury. This means they cannot be thrown away in the trash. (They are hazardous waste that need to be disposed of properly or they will pollute the environment). Moreover, 90% of them have been manufactured and shipped from China! This is called the "sin of hidden trade-off" by Terrachoice.

Think of it this way. No matter which way you slice it, a can of soda will never be good for our health or the health of the environment. Diet soda has replaced the [14 teaspoons per can of] corn and cane sugar with an artificial sweetener that has proven to be an excito-toxin and a known carcinogen. In many cases the diet sodas still contain excessive amounts of caffeine, artificial chemicals: colorings, flavors, phthalates (from the plastic lining inside the aluminum can). Forget the nonexistent nutritional value of carbonated and sweetened chemicals harmful to our health.

When we factor in a manufactured can that needs to be recycled and the travel costs, what is the impact on our health and the environment?

But by calling their products "green," companies are making a mint. Let's take a stand against greenwashing.

• Go green at livinggreenchannel.com
• VIDEO: Sierra Club's Earth Day viewing suggestions