The Industry of Hunger
Photo: Tawheed Manzoor (CC)
Vandana Shiva on Al Jazeera English explains how, as mega-chains venture into industrial farming, they have created an epidemic of hunger- and generated billions in profit.
New Delhi, India – In November 2011, when the UPA government announced that it had cleared the entry of big retail chains such as Walmart and Tesco into India through 51 per cent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, it justified the decision saying that FDI in retail would boost food security and benefit farmers’ livelihoods.
But the assurance that FDI in retail would ease inflation did not resolve the political crisis the government was facing; it deepened it. Parliament was stalled for several days of the Winter Session, after which the government was forced to withdraw its decision.
The story of FDI in retail goes back to 2005, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed an agriculture agreement with the US, along with…
Breaking Apart An iPhone’s Cost
It’s still shocking to see just how little of the profits from an item go towards those who made it. From a piece on the power of transnational corporations, via Reports from the Economic Front:
The production of the iPhone offers one of the best examples of the logic and operation of these transnational corporate controlled cross border production networks.
Not surprisingly, the division of profits, as shown below, reflects the overall hierarchy that structures this and other cross border production networks.
Los Angeles Votes To End Corporate Personhood
The municipal government of Los Angeles has passed a resolution calling for a constitutional amendment to assert that corporations are not guaranteed the rights of people, and that spending money is not the same as free speech. Largely symbolic, but hopefully part of something bigger. The Los Angeles Times reports:
At a packed City Council meeting that included remarks from a man in a top hat with fake money tucked in the pocket of his suit, Los Angeles lawmakers Tuesday called for more regulations on how much corporations can spend on political campaigns.
The vote in support of state and federal legislation that would end so-called “corporate personhood” is largely symbolic. But anti-corporate activist Mary Beth Fielder, who spoke in favor of the resolution, called it “a symbol that’s going to be heard around the world.”
The council resolution includes support for a constitutional amendment that would assert that corporations are not entitled to…
Bloomberg Exposes Koch Brothers
The radical commies at Bloomberg have published a sweeping expose of the Tea Party-funding behemoth Koch Industries, claiming that standard practice at the company includes bribing government officials around the world, secretly selling technology to Iran, and general contempt for the legal and ethical constraints by which people normally operate:
In May 2008, a unit of Koch Industries Inc., one of the world’s largest privately held companies, sent Ludmila Egorova-Farines, its newly hired compliance officer and ethics manager, to investigate the management of a subsidiary in Arles in southern France. In less than a week, she discovered that the company had paid bribes to win contracts.
“I uncovered the practices within a few days,” Egorova- Farines says. “They were not hidden at all.”
She immediately notified her supervisors in the U.S. A week later, Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries dispatched an investigative team to look into her findings, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its November…
The Mythology of Business Part 2: The Dark Side
This is Part 2 of an excerpted series for Reality Sandwich from the anthology The Immanence of Myth published by Weaponized. Read Part 1 here.
Despite the exciting creative possibilities posed by new media in regard to myth, they do not come without a price. The danger presented by the presence of myth in modern media is paramount, and must be considered outside the mythic framework of industry, for instance, which reduces the material world to a matrix of profit and risk.
Though the propaganda of fascist mythologies such as those of Nazis or the USSR serve as the clearest example of these dangers, they exist in only slightly more subtle forms in the media produced by modern capitalist states. (Subtlety in this case not being an indicator of benevolence, necessarily.) After all, it was Mussolini who declared fascism to be the merger of state and corporate power.
Though media is ostensibly the watchdog of the government, both…
Elite Reptilian Overlords Like Eating Our Brains Cold
Title taken from the lyrics to Thee Aeon Falls (which makes a nice soundtrack for the following …)
The idea of reptilian aliens that rule the planet is of course on its face patently absurd, yet it is a myth that has driven a wide range of fictional media (V, Sitchen’s various novels, etc), as well as a surprising number of people who believe it quite literally, especially those that buy Icke’s implicitly anti-semitic model of reptilian aliens.
As I said in the Immanence of Myth:
Zecharia Sitchin has written several books about the “true” origin of Sumerian mythology: aliens. This, or the mythology of planet Niburu, is a wonderful modernization of ancient mythic elements, but considered as empirical fact, one may as well buy into the hollow Earth theory. The author David Icke takes it a step further: aliens, or reptilians, exist in the world today and control the world economy. Though there…
The Myth of Work Vs. The Reality of Abuse
Via Modern Mythology:
In the wake of yet another collosal political and social disappointment, I’d like to touch on an issue which, frankly, could be the topic of a book. And it’s a book that, if it hasn’t been written already, should be written. It needs to be written, and more importantly, it needs to be talked about.
Every culture has myths about work. What is acceptable for an employee or employer, what the nature of that relationship should be. It is in the benefit of the employer to have myths throughout the workforce that tie their very identity and sense of self worth into how well they meet that employers demands, and if there aren’t forces in place, either enforced through government oversight or the unionization of the workers in some configuration, these myths can run rampant. There is, after all, a word in Japanese for working one’s self to death. (They also apparently have a word for eating one’s self to ruin. But that’s another story.)
(Matt Damon speaks out on the importance of teachers):
This process is not inherently good or bad. As I said in the chapter on initiation in The Immanence of Myth, the prescriptive nature of indoctrination may sound ominous, but many of us know what humans become when left to be feral creatures. They can hardly be called human, at all.
However, this process can still break down in any number of ways…
The Final Nail In The Supply Side Coffin
Taxes are low and corporate profits are high, but nothing is trickling down to the American worker.
If politicians are going to continue kowtowing to every whim of the rich, can they at least think of a new excuse? Via Salon:
The theory of supply-side economics tells us that if you cut taxes on rich people and corporations, the moguls and businessmen will take their windfall and invest it, creating jobs and accelerating the rate of economic growth. The benefits of a light hand on the upper class, therefore, will “trickle down” to the working man and woman.
Ever since Ronald Reagan first attempted to make supply-side economics a reality and proceeded to inaugurate an era of persistent government deficits and growing income inequality, it has become harder and harder to make the trickle-down argument with a straight face. But we’ve never seen anything quite like the disaster that’s playing out right now.
The…
Disney World’s Army Of Intern Burger-Flippers
At the world’s most beloved theme park, thousands of interns serve the fast food, operate the rides, and mop up children’s vomit in what is billed as an “educational experience.” Is this the economic model of the future? Via Guernica:
Like other employers, Disney has mastered how to rebrand ordinary jobs as exciting opportunities. “We’re not there to flip burgers or to give people food,” a fast food intern told the Associated Press. “We’re there to create magic.” Yet training and education are afterthoughts: the kids are brought in to work. Having traveled thousands of miles and barely breaking even financially, they find themselves cleaning hotel rooms, performing custodial work, and parking cars in the guise of an academic exercise.
Like many a corporate titan, Disney likes to give the impression it’s in the education business. Disney University, born in 1955 as the company’s training division, predated McDonald’s Hamburger University, Motorola University, and…
Is Myth Dead?
An excerpt from the upcoming Immanence of Myth anthology:
It may seem that the word “myth” has lost its meaning to us as a psychological or spiritual term. No, the situation is more drastic than that. Myth has become the opposite of fact, something that is generally accepted but untrue; “it is a myth that reading by flashlight ruins your eyesight.” The popular television show on the Discovery Channel, Myth Busters, uses this definition, attempting to disprove “myths” with something vaguely resembling science. The myths of antiquity are looked upon as quaint stories, despite the fact that they have shaped our cultural history. It is neatly overlooked that myths remain at the center of the bloody stage of modern religious, national, economic or ideological dynamics, not to mention our personal and everyday lives.
The fact that the word “myth” has become synonymous with untruth belies an underlying shift in the Western epistemological focus over…
Subway Passes McDonald’s As Dominant Global Fast Food Empire
In the grim future years to come, we will be mandated daily to eat not a McDonald’s burger, but a Subway sandwich. Some credit for Subway’s ascension goes to the chain’s willingness to expand fast food franchising to nontraditional locations such as schools, churches, and bodies of water. CNNMoney introduces our new corporate overlords:
Subway has surpassed McDonald’s to become the world’s largest restaurant chain in terms of units, the sandwich company confirmed Monday.
Subway had 33,749 restaurants around the globe at the end of 2010, said company spokesman Les Winograd. McDonald’s had 32,737 at year end, according to a February regulatory filing from the burger giant.
“Last year was actually pretty average for us, growth-wise,” Winograd said. “We aim to open between 1,000 and 2,000 locations globally each year.”
About half of the company’s unit growth is overseas, Winograd said. Subway now has more than 1,000 locations in Asia, and it just opened its…
How Corporations Gained Personhood
The Story Of Stuff Project has a brief and breezy animated guide to the concept of corporations as people, beginning with the Founding Fathers and leading up to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The grinning, clumsy robot used to symbolize corporations is adorable and would make a fantastic plush doll.
Corporations Versus Individuals: The End of the Left/Right Paradigm
Nolan chart. Source: Camilo Sanchez (CC)
Looks like the New World Order isn’t going to be a global Big Socialist Government (unless, perhaps, you count corporate socialism). Barry Ritholtz wrote in September of last year:
Every generation or so, a major secular shift takes place that shakes up the existing paradigm. It happens in industry, finance, literature, sports, manufacturing, technology, entertainment, travel, communication, etc.
I would like to discuss the paradigm shift that is occurring in politics.
For a long time, American politics has been defined by a Left/Right dynamic. It was Liberals versus Conservatives on a variety of issues. Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice, Tax Cuts vs. More Spending, Pro-War vs Peaceniks, Environmental Protections vs. Economic Growth, Pro-Union vs. Union-Free, Gay Marriage vs. Family Values, School Choice vs. Public Schools, Regulation vs. Free Markets.
The new dynamic, however, has moved past the old Left Right paradigm. We now live in an era defined by increasing Corporate influence and…
Vermont Proposes Resolution To Ban ‘Corporate Personhood’
Talk about a victory for common sense, in the face of one of the most harmful and breathtakingly idiotic judicial precedents in U.S. history. AlterNet reports:
A year ago today, the Supreme Court issued its bizarre Citizens United decision, allowing unlimited corporate spending in elections as a form of “free speech” for the corporate “person.” Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the dissent, had the task of recalling the majority to planet earth and basic common sense.
“Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires,” wrote Stevens. “Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their ‘personhood’ often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of ‘We the People’ by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.”
Fortunately, movements are afoot to reverse a century of accumulated powers and protections granted to corporations by wacky judicial decisions.
In Vermont, state…
Rebranding BP
Greenpeace UK held a rebranding contest to generate fresh new redesigns of the BP logo.
That plain green flower was introduced in 2000, and ten years later … it’s time for an update.
One of my favorites is to the right.
500+ results are included in a Flickr set. Enjoy.
BP CEO On The Gulf Spill: “I Want My Life Back”
Who’s the greatest victim of the “relatively tiny” oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? BP Ceo Tony Hayward explains that there’s “no one who wants this thing over” more than he does, because, “I’d like my life back.”
City Of Topeka Renamed ‘Google, Kansas’ For March
Lame joke? Apt metaphor? Sign of the apocalypse? Future trend? In an effort to gain Google’s favor in the hopes of winning a high-speed internet sweepstakes, Kansas’s capital city has temporarily renamed itself after the company. CNN reports:
In a formal proclamation Monday, Bunten announced his city will be known as “Google” — Google, Kansas.
The unusual move comes as several U.S. cities elbow for a spot in Google’s new “Fiber for Communities” program. The Web giant is going to install new Internet connections in unannounced locations, giving those communities Internet speeds 100 times faster than those elsewhere, with data transfer rates faster than 1 gigabit per second.
World’s Top Firms Cause $2.2 Trillion of Environmental Damage
From the Guardian:
Report for the UN into the activities of the world’s 3,000 biggest companies estimates one-third of profits would be lost if firms were forced to pay for use, loss and damage of environment.
The cost of pollution and other damage to the natural environment caused by the world’s biggest companies would wipe out more than one-third of their profits if they were held financially accountable, a major unpublished study for the United Nations has found.
The report comes amid growing concern that no one is made to pay for most of the use, loss and damage of the environment, which is reaching crisis proportions in the form of pollution and the rapid loss of freshwater, fisheries and fertile soils.
Later this year, another huge UN study – dubbed the “Stern for nature” after the influential report on the economics of climate change by Sir Nicholas Stern – will attempt to put a price on such…
Grayson Introduces ‘Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act’ In Congress
Last week the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision overturning restrictions on corporations’ political activity.
The Consumerist reports that, in response, cranky rogue Florida congressman Alan Grayson has introduced a bill before Congress called the “Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act.” The BSMOBA would tax corporate political contributions and spendings on political ads at a rate of 500%.
I’m not sure what the odds are of this getting any traction, but one can always dream.
