User Profile

Why Most Corporations Are Inherently Evil - Badcorp.org
Wall to Wall Wal-Mart - Why this global menace is stronger than you think and less successful than you realise - knowmore.org
Take Action Against Coke - Destroying lives, livelihoods and communities - Unthinkable, Undrinkable - corpwatch.org
How Gate Gourmet and British Airways screwed their workers - a classic example of "the legal chicaneries that companies use to blindfold us to their real actions." - corporatewatch.org.uk

Profile

When talking to an acquaintance about the wrongdoings of a particular corporation, I find it incredibly frustrating when the reply recieved is "well that's awful, but all those companies do bad things."

First of all, isn't this proof that the economic model in place is inherently incapable of being just? Certain companies are worthy of high-profile boycotts for their extreme crimes against humanity - Coke, Nestlé, Nike, Shell, Esso, Mcdonalds, so on and so on - but the fact that corporations of a decent size are always up to no good is all the more reason to oppose as many of them as possible and throw the corporate model off our planet, not a reason to not oppose the worst of those offenders.

I believe in my quest for self-improvement, whatever that may consist of.

Secondly, the fact that this response is so frequently recieved and understood shows that most people are well aware that our system is unfair. We are strong and we are the majority.

A well known saying is that you "need money to make money" - how can anyone percieve this as fair? It's hard starting a business and easy when your business is rich. Rich companies can afford the best lawyers and advertising and scientists and have the most outreach to shoo off those activists that attack them. This is how we get monopolies. Once Tesco and Wal-Mart get rich it's easy for them to continue getting richer. It should be easy to get a business going and more difficult as your company gets more wealthy.

Capitalism has infested every part of the world - to areas of supposed communism, socialism and tribalism - because it needs to spread to survive. It creeps into increasing areas of public life, and will continue to do so because geographically it has run out of places to go. But this gives it inherent weakness. It allows capitalism to be attacked from all sides, resisted in every way. Anti-Capitalism is an opposition to the system and the people who most benefit from it. The system may be incapable of good, but that doesn't mean those within it are free of guilt. Those who doubt the existance of a market forces empire operating through "developed" countries should realise that European empires of past centuries were mainly the result of pirates and oceanic criminals from those countries doing their own evils, the governments only getting on board later. The blood squeezed from the poor parts of our world today is no different.

Globalisation is not the key to equality the capitalists claim it is. Of course it isn't. It is a way for the rich to get richer at the expense of the poor. Sweatshop wages are blindingly obvious proof of this. If companies believed their excuses they'd pay their workers in Indonesia the same as the required minimum wages in the wealthiest countries. Globalisation has devastated and raped the planet of resources. I'm sure I am not alone in thinking the discovery of fossil fuels was probably the worst thing to happen to humanity.

Quotes

"Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiness of men for the nastiness of motives can work for the benefit of all."
-John Maynard Keynes

"The struggle between people and corporations will be the defining battle of the twenty-first century. If the corporations win, liberal democracy will come to an end. The great social democratic institutions which have defended the weak against the strong - equality before the law, representative government, democratic accountability, and the sovereignity of parliament - will be toppled. If, on the other hand, the corporate attempt on public life is beaten back, then democracy may re-emerge the stronger for it's conquest. But this victory cannot be brokered by our representatives. Democracy will survive only if the people in whose name they govern rescue the state from it's captivity."
-George Monbiot - Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain

"Let me say, with the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love."
–Che Guevara

"I don't know what I am, but I am not a Marxist."
-Karl Marx

Lyrics

We're all hypocrites,
But you're a patriot.
-Against Me! - "Baby, I'm an Anarchist!"

Yeah I'm young, I may have got it wrong
But at least I can admit, react and move forward
You'll twist inside, fearing damage to your pride
-Capdown - "Unite To Progress"

Free trade over fair trade with their trickle down theory,
But the facts are all there to show this simply isn’t working.
-Five Knuckle - "The Rise And Fall (?) Of Corporate Rule"

If we don't do something now,
Don't ever find our voice
We'll be overrun by things in time
And we may lose our minds...
To those we now support blindly
-Fireapple Red - "Buy Yourself"

You could call it anger
You could call it fear
You could call it frustration
-Minor Threat - "Little Friend"

Hear the anthems of the Pepsi generation
See the martyrs of our spiritual degradation
-Operation Ivy - "Artificial Life"

The course of human progress staggers like a drunk
It's steps are quick and heavy and it's mind is slow and blunt
-Operation Ivy - "Freeze Up"

Until we try how will we know? How will we know until we try?
So let's say we give it a go - to find the world that we're looking for
-Pennywise - "Wouldn't It Be Nice"

I got a bone to pick with capitalism, and a few to break
-Refused - "Worms Of The Senses"

Your possessions have possessed you, you're afraid of what's inside
Talk of benefits and tell me what I need
The benefits of an abstract world, the benefits are free

And I can't stand to see the waste.
No more of your store away then throw away mentality.
-Smoke Or Fire - "Southpaw"

I hope that you never lose the fire
-Stiff Little Fingers - "Hope Street"

"Were anyone to ask me what the point of this work is, I would reply that it’s to cause as much trouble as possible, in the hope of creating a less violent world."
-George Monbiot - In Defence of Trouble

For every person and body I hear of that disgusts me there is someone who I trust, who teaches me, who inspires me, who understands me, who stands by me and who I stand by. We are not outnumbered and we will win.

Friends (115):

Friend of (79):