@Sic
You: "A corporation is bound by law to put making money above everything else, including environmental health, and human rights."

I call bullshit. In fact, quite the opposite is true. A corporations *goal* is to make a profit, yes, A corporation is bound by law to do *no* harm to people or the environment and the law says nothing at all about where making money falls. You clearly know nothing about the law you profess to speak of.

@Sic
"A corporation is bound by law to put making money above everything else, including environmental health, and human rights."
Wrong. A corporation is required to put the interests of it's shareholders first, that is a lot more than just making money. For example: breaking environmental rules risks a fine = not good for shareholders; abusing human rights risks a consumer boycott = not good for shareholders. In my company the rule is "don't do anything that you would be embarassed to tell your Granny about". We regularly make top 10 lists of ethical companies.

"They say money is the root of all evil, so what does that make an entity whose sole function of existence is to make money?"
Who are 'they'. What is to say that 'they' are right? This is cheap argumentative twaddle. You need to do better than this to win an argument.

@Sic
"See that wasnt so hard.
saying yes/no is tanamount to saying nothing. "
Don't be a dick. My first answer had absolutely no need for exposition. The second was clear enough.

@Sic
"So, a government repeatedly infringing on the rights of it's people makes their rule illegitimate? what is the threshold for this? where is the line? How many times and in what way does a government need to do this to have their governance invalidated?"

That is for the people to decide.

Once again, you have mischosen your words either accidentally or inteintionally (I believe it is generally the latter in your case) and will call me either pedantic or say it's a matter of semantics, but "failing to protect" does not equal "infringing upon". I may fail to control my car, but that doesn't mean I tried to run over someone. People may starve/freeze to death in a slum lord's tenament, but that doesn't mean the government slipped him money behind the scenes to reduce the surplus population. Failure to perceive and prevent a specific wrong does not equate with perfomring actions to make certain that specific wrong occurs.

Oh, and your they say quote... The quote is from the Bible and it is "For the *love* of money is the root of all evil." Money is not inherently evil, it is a love (and you need a better understanding of what that biblical version of love means in this instance - it means putting it above all else, including your own family) of money that is.

Your argument is that corporations rarely pollute or have horrible working conditions because they risk a fine or boycott?

really? OK how about Monsanto? Or Dow Chemical? How about Mcdonalds clear-cutting the amazon for cattle-grazing and the violent repression of objectors?

How about Chevron? The petrochemical company Chevron is guilty of some of the worst environmental and human rights abuses in the world. From 1964 to 1992, Texaco (which transferred operations to Chevron after being bought out in 2001) unleashed a toxic "Rainforest Chernobyl" in Ecuador by leaving more than 600 unlined oil pits in pristine northern Amazon rainforest and dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic production water into rivers used for bathing water. The toxic crude oil and formation water seeped into the subsoil, contaminating surrounding freshwater and farmland. As a result, local communities have suffered severe health effects, including cancer, skin lesions, birth defects, and spontaneous abortions. Indigenous communities have been dispossessed of their lands, and millions of hectares of rainforest have been destroyed to make way for the company's pipelines and oil wells.
Chevron is also responsible for the violent repression of nonviolent opposition to oil extraction. In Nigeria, Chevron has collaborated with the Nigerian police and military who have opened fire on peaceful protestors who oppose oil extraction in the Niger Delta. In 1998, two indigenous Ilaje activists were killed by Nigerian military officers flown in by the company while protesting at an oil platform in Ondo state. In 1999, two people from Opia village were killed by military personnel paid by Chevron, after soliciting a meeting to complain about the company's harmful effects on local fishing. And in 2005, Nigerian soldiers fired upon protestors at Escravos oil terminal, leaving one protestor dead.
Additionally Chevron is responsible for widespread health problems in Richmond, California, where one of Chevron's largest refineries is located. Processing 350,000 barrels of oil a day, the Richmond refinery produces oil flares and toxic waste in the Richmond area. As a result, local residents suffer from high rates of lupus, skin rashes, rheumatic fever, liver problems, kidney problems, tumors, cancer, asthma, and eye problems.
In December 2004, the Unocal Corporation, which recently became a subsidiary of Chevron, settled a lawsuit filed by 15 Burmese villagers, in which the villagers alleged Unocal's complicity in a range of human rights violations in Burma, including rape, summary execution, torture, forced labor and forced migration. Despite the settlement, human rights abuses continue along the oil pipeline in Burma, which is still "secured" by the Burmese military. Chevron is responsible for the risks associated with this pipeline.

Coca-cola

Human Rights Abuses: violent killings, kidnap and torture, water privatization, health violations, and discriminatory practices

Coca-Cola Company is perhaps the most widely recognized corporate symbol on the planet. The company also leads in the abuse of workers' rights, assassinations, water privatization, and worker discrimination. Between 1989 and 2002, eight union leaders from Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia were killed after protesting the company's labor practices. Hundreds of other Coca-Cola workers who have joined or considered joining the Colombian union SINALTRAINAL have been kidnapped, tortured, and detained by paramilitaries who intimidate workers to prevent them from unionizing. In Turkey, 14 Coca-Cola truck drivers and their families were beaten severely by Turkish police hired by the company, while protesting a layoff of 1,000 workers from a local bottling plant in 2005.

In India, Coca-Cola destroys local agriculture by privatizing the country's water resources. In Plachimada, Kerala, Coca-Cola extracted 1.5 million liters of deep well water, which they bottled and sold under the names Dasani and BonAqua. The groundwater was severely depleted, affecting thousands of communities with water shortages and destroying agricultural activity. As a result, the remaining water became contaminated with high chloride and bacteria levels, leading to scabs, eye problems, and stomach aches in the local population. Water shortages have occurred in Varanasi, Thane, and Tamil Nadu as well. The company is also guilty of reselling its plants' industrial waste to farmers as fertilizers, despite its containing hazardous lead and cadmium.

Coca-Cola is one of the most discriminatory employers in the world. In the year 2000, 2,000 African-American employees in the U.S. sued the company for race-based disparities in pay and promotions. In México, Coca-Cola FEMSA, the largest Coca-Cola bottler in Latin America, fired a senior bottling manager for being gay. Finally, by regularly denying health insurance to employees and their families, Coca Cola has failed to help stop the spread of AIDS in Africa. The company is one of the continent's largest private employers, yet only partially covers expensive medicines, while not covering generic medicines at all.

Nestle

There's a secret in the chocolate industry, and once people find out about it, their chocolate doesn't taste as sweet any more: Much of the chocolate eaten all over the world is made of cocoa beans that have been harvested by illegal child labor, including child slave labor.

The problem of illegal and forced child labor is rampant in the chocolate industry, because more than forty percent of the world's cocoa supply comes from the Ivory Coast, a country that the US State Department estimates had approximately 109,000 child laborers working in hazardous conditions on cocoa farms in what's been described as the worst form of child labor. In 2001, Save the Children Canada reported that 15,000 children between 9 and 12 years old, many from impoverished Mali, had been tricked or sold into slavery on West African cocoa farms, many for just $30 each. Just this summer, the International Labor Rights Fund and a Birmingham law firm filed a class-action lawsuit against Nestlé and several of its suppliers on behalf of former child slaves.

Nestlé is the target of this lawsuit and is singled out by corporate campaigners, because it is the third largest buyer of cocoa from the Ivory Coast, has processing, storage and export facilities there, and is well aware of the tragically unjust labor practices taking place on the farms with which it continues to do business. Nestlé and other chocolate manufacturers agreed to end the use of abusive and forced child labor on cocoa farms by July 1, 2005, but they failed to do so.

Nestlé is also notorious for its aggressive marketing of infant formula in poor countries the 1980s, which may have led to the deaths of countless children who did not receive the nutrients that would have been present in breast milk. Because of this practice, Nestlé is still one of the most boycotted corporations in the world, and its infant formula is still controversial. In Italy in 2005, police seized more than two million liters of Nestlé infant formula that was contaminated with the chemical isopropylthioxanthone (ITX), a component in the packaging's ink. It turned out the company knew about the contamination for months, but did not recall the formula.

Additionally, violations of labor rights are reported from Nestlé factories in numerous countries. In Colombia, Nestlé replaced the entire factory staff with lower-wage workers and did not renew the collective employment contract. In Cabuyao Laguna, Philippines, a 3-year strike against Nestlé was partially precipitated by Nestlé's refusal to include the retirement benefits of the workers in the collective bargaining agreement, despite the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of the workers. The company has brutally attempted to break the strike; this year, two unionists, including prominent labor leader Diosdado Fortuna, have been murdered.

I love how corporations always get blamed for the stuff that goes on in foreign countries. Hey...you know what...if the Amazon were so f*ing important, then you would be lobbying the South American governments to protect them, not bashing corporations on WebDip. If you don't like "x", then why tell McDonalds -- who's restaurants I'm sure you eat at. And if McDonald's *didn't* buy from the farms that so recdently were the all-important rain forests, then some other corporation would.

And it isn't the US's fault either...because McDonald's are a global company.

You can't stop the problem at the consumer level...you have to go to the heart of the matter. Except, the activist groups that **profit** from activism don't want to stop the problem, or else they lose their jobs...thus they rally the troops around false battle (like anti-McD's crap) to make you think you are fighting the good fight when you aren't really fighting any fight at all. But...the heads of the activist groupws that have issued the propaganda about McDonalds...they're living high on the proverbial hog by keeping people up in arms about "evil" greedy corporations. Too funny...

Dyncorp

Private security contractors have become the fastest-growing sector of the global economy during the last decade—a $100-billion-a-year, nearly unregulated industry. DynCorp, one of the providers of these mercenary services, demonstrates the industry's power and potential to abuse human rights. While guarding Afghani statesmen and African oil fields, training Iraqi police forces, eradicating Colombian coca plants, and protecting business interests in hurricane-devastated New Orleans, these hired guns bolster the security of governments and organizations at the expense of many people's human rights.

DynCorp's fumigation of coca crops along the Colombian-Ecuadorian border led Ecuadorian peasants to sue DynCorp in 2001. Plaintiffs argued that DynCorp knew—or should have known—that the herbicides were highly toxic, and should therefore be held accountable for health problems and death among local people and widespread environmental damage to their subsistence agriculture. A Colombian newsweekly called DynCorp—which also sprays herbicides in Peru and Bolivia—"lawless Rambos."

DynCorp's questionable actions in Haiti include its training of the national police force after the first coup against President Aristide, paving the way for (Tonton Macaoutes) to return to power.

In 2001, a mechanic with DynCorp blew the whistle on DynCorp employees in Bosnia for rape and trading girls as young as 12 into sex slavery. According to a lawsuit filed by the mechanic, "employees and supervisors were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, [and] forged passports." The mechanic observed DynCorp employees buying and selling women and bragging about the ages and talents of their female slaves. DynCorp fired the whistleblower, who later claimed that "DynCorp is just as immoral and elite as possible, and any rule they can break they do." The company transferred the employees accused of sex trading out of the country, eventually firing some. None were prosecuted.




Now are you starting to understand?
And dont even say these are a few bad apples, isolated incidents in an otherwise benevolent corporate community.

You know what.
name 5 large MNCorporations who have a totally clean track record. No ecological devestation, no murdering union organizers, no child labor, or child sex slaves, no poisoning of nearby towns or any of this crazy shit we let them all get away with.

So....does Sicarius live in a lean too in the woods and eat bark and berries? Because he seems to hate everything in the world that looks like a business. funny...I'll bet his internet provider is part of some evil multi-national, too! I wonder if that will dawn on him and then...being true to his word and beliefs...he will drop his internet provider and disappear forever?

Nahhh....I doubt it. Most likely he is a loud-mouthed hypocrite like most anti-corporate types are....

@ krellin
you're totally right. That is a huge problem among supposedly 'green' groups, some of whom get HUGE kickbacks from the same corporations they protest against.

http://webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=33926
I have to advertise in this thread since it keeps bumping down the Live games thread

Ever noticed how Sic quotes stuff from others without:
a) Vetting the information for truthfulness or accuracy
b) Giving a reference to his quotes
c) Actually telling you it was quoted from another source, even if he didn't specify the source, making it appear to behis own original writings.

@Sic
you have mentioned 5 companies over a period of 20 years. All of which have done bad things and been punished for them, all of which have improved their behaviour because of public and legal pressure. I do not say all MNCs are good; some are and some are not so good in the same way that some governments are better than others. Tarring all with the same brush is at best naive and at worst disingenuous.

Publicity about wrong-doing, ethical investor indices, consumer pressure are all good things because they drive MNCs to behave 'responsibly' in the same way that speed cameras and parking fines drive citizens to follow the law.

@Sicarius
"you're totally right. That is a huge problem among supposedly 'green' groups, some of whom get HUGE kickbacks from the same corporations they protest against."
Name them.

@Sic
"And dont even say these are a few bad apples, isolated incidents in an otherwise benevolent corporate community. "
I fucking well will. I resent your belief that you can tell what I may & may not say. As Krellin pointed out the smple fact that you are on this forum demonstrates you commercial support for evil corporations such as AT&T, Dell, Microsoft. You simply have no idea what you are talking about. Spouting rubbish from Naomi Klein et al. Go, see, do then report back.

I cant name them off the top of my head. maybe sierra club? I tried to look it up but couldnt find anything quickly so gave up.
I want to say the articles I saw were in NYtimes and huffington post but I could be wrong

@Sic
BTW better not mention your real name in case Nestle's libel lawyers come after you for implying that they arranged the murder of trade union officials.

@SIc
"I cant name them off the top of my head. maybe sierra club? I tried to look it up but couldnt find anything quickly so gave up.
I want to say the articles I saw were in NYtimes and huffington post but I could be wrong "
Come back when you can mudslinger.

ask krellin to name them he brought them up.


I am supporting AT&T, Dell, Microsoft by being on the internet?
Is an iraqi insurgent using a stolen american hummer supporting US imperialism?

Is your computer stolen? Is the OS and software on it stolen? Are you stealing bandwidth to get on here? If you answer "no" to any one of these, you are supporting a big evil corporation somewhere. Even legit borrowed systems (like from a library) were/are paid for by someone and that money is going to AT&T/Comcast/Verizon/Insight/Time-Warner for the Bandwidth and Apple or Microsoft for the OS in all likely hood, and the manufacturer of the hardware (Dell, Gateway, HP, whoever) for the computer itself.

laptop my mom gave me (which her friend gave her after finding it at the end of his driveway) with ubuntu on it, getting wi-fi from the mcdonalds across the street for free.

Anyway, I think in this day and age it's quite impossible to escape hypocrisy if you are against environmental destruction or our economic system. save no existing at all I see no way to escape hypocrisy completely.

Are yo usupporting AT&T/Dell?Microsoft by being on the internet of course you are! All companies who buy electronics made in third-world countries by cheap labor.

Believe it or not, you *can* live a simple computer/internet-free life **if you choose**. Many, many older people do. So...*can you* live your life by your anti-corporate rhetoric? YES. Will any of you? I sincerely doubt it...and you will come up with many, many lame excuses as to why you can't give up your third-world manufactured tech.

That's why the whole freaking corporate/anti-corporate arguments are all a bunch of bullshit...because one side is so clearly and utterly hypocritical it makes me want to puke.

And I'm just in a pissy, argumentative mood, to boot! so :P

McDonalds is paying a big huge corporation for that wifi, so you are supporting one. Oh, and I'm sure he "found it at the end of his driveway." That is receiving stolen property and is a felony if the property is over a certain dollar value in most states.

Wow...AS I WAS TYPING Sicarius demonstrated his hypocrisy and made up some lame excuse. Actually, he didn't even made up and excuse...he just 'fessed up.

BULLSHIT you can't live an unhypocritical life! BULLSHIT! Give up your laptop and your computer. Go live a simple life in the country. buy a plot of land, farm it, live off it to the best of your ability. BULLSHIT you **can't** live a life without being a hypocrite. You have to TRY, though. And THAT is why so many people hate loud-mouthed anti-corporate/environmental whacko types...because you are all such blatant liars. You don't even try to live the life you say everyone else should live.

I think I'm going to go idle my car all night and pollute just to piss some environmentalist off....

@krellin - I'd give you a plus one, but today's TVs (and I doubt many older people live without one of those) or even yesterday's with either HD boxes (gasp, computers on top of their TV sets!) or analog cable still fall into the same category. Got cable? You have one of the big bads providing it. Got a HD box or a modern TV? Who made it? Yeah, thought so...

Unfortunately Sic is right that you can't escape it today. Just having a phone (even a really old house line) means you are paying a big bad for their phone service. And electric/gas in your home/apartment/retirement cottage, look at the huge conglomerates like Duke Energy. Gas for your car? If you know anything about automotice gasoline, you know that they all share a common line in as it is more affrodable to ship together then add their distinctive blends locally and BP is one of the biggest suppliers of the gasoline pipeline to most of America. Remeber BP? The Gulf and the damage being doen as we speak?

So, no, in modern America you can't truly be free of the big bad corps.