So the top 120 men on the Black Disciples’ pyramid were paid very well. But the pyramid they sat atop was gigantic. ibid.
Corporate culture today seems ideal for the psychopath. Horizon: Are You Good or Evil? BBC 2011
What I loathe is the multinational conglomerates who must take responsibility for the degradation and pollution of so much of our landscape with their factory farming and greed. Fay Godwin
The huge arrogance of the companies developing GMO crops and their determination to destroy the line of accountability which links the developer to the product is breath-taking. When something goes wrong, as it inevitably will, there will be a great benefit to those who have taken a stance against genetically modified organisms. Jonathan Porritt
Tonight’s show is all about how we are about to subsidize some of the richest corporations on the planet so that they could be able to dump their crap on some of the poorest most vulnerable people on the Earth and call it charity … Drug dumping: this is about dumping of useless drugs and pharmaceuticals in third world countries, usually in a crisis. Mark Thomas Comedy Product s6e3, Channel 4 2002
‘We were sent silicon breast implants.’ ibid. Malawi health service
This documentary examines the nature, evolution, impact and futures of the modern business corporation. The Corporation, 2003
These are not just a bunch of bad apples.
cf.
This is just a few bad apples. ibid. old men on TV
The modern corporation has grown out of the industrial age. ibid. comment
The dominant role of corporations in our lives is roughly a product of the last century. ibid. Noam Chomsky
The corporation is a person. And the Supreme Court goes along with that. ibid. Howard Zinn
600,000 people were killed to get rights for people. And then with strokes of the pen over the next 30 years judges applied those rights to capital and property, while stripping them from people. ibid. comment
Corporations were given the rights of immortal persons, but then special kinds of persons. Persons who had no moral conscience. ibid. Chomsky
The bottom line: how to make as much money as they can. ibid. Michael Moore
They are required by law to place the financial interests of their owners above competing interests. In fact, the corporation is legally bound to put its bottom line above everything else. Even the public good. ibid. narrator
Harm to workers: Layoffs, union busting, factory fires, sweatshops … ibid. caption
The trouble is, the people who handed us the labels [companies who sponsored with sweatshop] were 13 years old. ibid. investigator
As the petrochemical era grew and grew warning sins emerged that some of these chemicals could pose hazards. ibid. Epstein
Most industries have known about this and have attempted to trivialise the risks. ibid.
Industry is largely responsible for this overwhelming epidemic of cancer. ibid.
Whether you obey the law or not is a matter of whether it’s cost effective. ibid. comment
In their institutional roles they are monsters because the institutions are monsters. ibid. Chomsky
Shell Nigeria can flare unrivalled amounts of gas making it one of the world’s single worst sources of pollution. ibid. narrator
The guy who is the head of the company [Nike] has never walked through his own factories [Indonesia]. ibid. Michael Moore
Privatisation does not mean you take a public institution and give it to some nice person. It means you take a public institution and give it to an unaccountable tyranny. Public institutions have many side benefits. ibid.
It’s the biggest brand in Britain. Tonight we’ve access to hundreds of secret documents and internal emails – Dispatches lifts the lid on what’s really going on inside Coca-Cola. We reveal the behind the scenes tactics as the global giant takes on the government over the sugar tax. And we disclose confidential details of Coke’s relationship with an influential scientist. Dispatches: Secrets of Coca Cola, Channel 4 2017
As nations battle to control Covid-19, Pfizer’s successful vaccine has made it one of the most powerful companies on the planet. Dispatches reveals new details about Pfizer’s pandemic profits. We disclose how Pfizer’s cash helped spread misleading claims about rival vaccines. We hear from a whistleblower who raises questions about Pfizer’s rush to get approval for its lifesaving jab. And we discover just how little of its vaccine has reached poorer countries. Dispatches: Vaccine Wars: The Truth About Pfizer, Channel 4 2021
We reveal how illegal child labour is being used to suppose cocoa beans to Cadbury, Britain’s favourite chocolate brand. We’ve been filming undercover in Ghana to show children as young as ten working gruelling hours. Dispatches: Cadbury Exposed, Channel 4 2022
The brand has been misleading consumers on how ethical its chocolate really is. ibid.
We all own a pair [trainers] but some spend more than others. The world’s two biggest trainer brands have promised to help save the planet. But is it all just greenwash? Dispatches: The Truth About Nike & Adidas, Channel 4 2022
The average Brit has seven pairs of trainers. We spend £4 billion a year on trainers in the UK. ibid.
Every year 300 million pairs of shoes are thrown away in Britain. Around 90% of them end up in landfill. ibid.
How sustainable can trainers ever be? ibid.
Every year the world produces 24 billion pairs of shoes. And around a quarter of them are trainers. ibid.
In November 1991 the body of tycoon Robert Maxwell was recovered from the Atlantic. He had fallen overboard from his own luxury yacht … Maxwell was a crook. He had stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from his employees’ pension fund … In the boardroom Maxwell displayed some strong psychopathic traits. Meet the Psychopaths II, Power Psychopaths, Channel 5 2015
‘Enron has all the hallmarks of a classic psychopathic company.’ ibid. Professor Clive Boddy
How Walmart is Destroying America (and the World). Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price, 2005
I’ve seen a lot of small communities crucified and forced out … It appears that that is their intent. ibid. Don Hunter
Walmart drives down retail wages $3 billion every year. ibid. caption
Walmart public costs: $86 to California taxpayers; $25 million more to County taxpayers: health care, income tax credits, housing subsidies, food stamps. ibid.
Walmart workers on public assistance: Alabama: 3,864 children of Walmart employees are enrolled in Medicare; Arizona: 2,700 workers on Medicaid … Walmart costs taxpayers $1,557,000,000 to support its employees. ibid.
Walmart is very opposed to unions. ibid. Jon Lehman, store manager 19 years
$7,000 anti-union camera package per store; $30,000 undercover spy van per store; $100,000 24-hour anti-union hotline; $7,000,000 rapid response team with corporate jet. ibid. caption
Walmart is fighting legal battles with scores of former employees in 31 states, hourly workers who say the company has cheated them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime pay. ibid. news report
Walmart is paying $11 million to settle federal allegations it used illegal immigrants to clean its stores. ibid. news report
We truly are living the American dream. ibid. television advert
City of Cameron gives Walmart $2.1 million to set up shop. ibid. caption
Currently in the US there are 26,699,678 square feet of empty Walmarts. ibid.
2001: EPA orders Walmart to pay $1 million fine for Clean Walter violations in Texas, Oklahoma and Massachusetts … fined $3.1 million etc. ibid.
The worker is given a fake pay slip … We really work day and night in order to get the wage of less than $3 a day. ibid. Chinese Walmart worker
Bangladesh: forced to work from eight in the morning to ten o’clock at night … trapped in utter misery … sucking down standards all around the world. ibid. critic
In reality the US Chamber of Commerce is a large corporation that is reported to lie to the public on behalf of even bigger corporations. The Yes Men, 2003
Their plans are to prevent us from passing climate-change legislation. ibid.
Just as psychopaths tend to rise in human society, so psychopathic corporations tend to rise in the corporate structure of the economic world. The Corbett Report, Our Leaders are Psychopaths, James Corbett online July 2017
Corporatocracy is at least one of the governing modes of the current form of western ‘democratic political system’. The Corbett Report, Meet the Corporatocracy, James Corbett online 2012
August 1947: Nuremburg case #6: I G Farben … The conviction of 13 or the original 24 defendants. ibid.
The munitions industries were very much in collusion with the government at a very high level in order to make war and the prospect of war more likely. ibid.
‘Barach Obama dances to ‘Government’ Sachs’ tune.’ ibid. Max Keiser, interview France 24
Corporations are always behind the regulation that are meant to regulate their industries. ibid.
The tax rates corporations actually pay is at an all-time low. Alex Gibney, Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream, 2012
I thought I had found the perfect car … The ads sucked me in … What I didn’t know was that I was driving a killing machine … ‘Volkswagen Shares Tumble Following Emissions Allegations’ … VW had lied to me: they had pitched me a vision of my dream car that was polluting fifty times more than advertised. Dirty Money I: Hard Nox, Netflix 2018
How could a company have lied to its customers on such a massive scale? ibid.
Diesel exhaust disgorges much nastier stuff. ibid.
‘The pressure on everybody to increase sales became unbearable.’ ibid. VW executive
The cheating and how to handle it was an open secret among many executives in Germany. ibid.
‘This was a corporate culture permeated by fraud.’ ibid. lawyer
VW was forced to pay over $25 billion in fines. ibid.
They [countries] are willing to look the other way when companies cheat. ibid.