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Corporatism

America’s Merchants Of Death Then — And Now

August 23, 2021 Sam Pizzigati, Common Dreams. , ,
The tag “merchants of death” has long since disappeared from our American political lexicon. But the problem Nye named remains. Our contemporary corporate moguls are continuing to get rich off the preparations that make wars more likely and massively multiply death counts when the actual shooting starts. America’s longest war — the war in Afghanistan — offers but the latest example.

Keep Big Oil Out Of Public Science

August 11, 2021 Alice Procter, Tribune Magazine. , ,
It feels so tired to be going through another museum sponsorship drama. Accepting money from a fossil fuel company? In this climate? How quaint. We’ve had this conversation before; we know that corporations use relationships with museums and arts institutions to launder their reputations. Pharmaceuticals, weapons, and pollutants get washed away by these wholesome acts of public philanthropy. The Science Museum Group’s longstanding relationship with Shell has been the subject of controversy and protest for years. There is a particularly glaring hypocrisy in such a catastrophic polluter as Shell sponsoring an exhibition about carbon capture and the future of climate change, but that kind of brazen behaviour is barely shocking enough to make major headlines.

Time For Medicare For All

August 6, 2021 Jake Johnson, Common Dreams. , , ,
The United States spends far more of its GDP on healthcare than other rich countries yet still has the highest infant and maternal mortality rates, the lowest life expectancy at age 60, and the most glaring inequities, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Commonwealth Fund. Using a range of criteria to evaluate the healthcare systems of 11 countries—Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and U.S.—the Commonwealth Fund's latest analysis (pdf) shows that the U.S. once again "ranks last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity, and healthcare outcomes." The lone bright spot for the for-profit U.S. healthcare system, according to the new report, is in a category dubbed "care process," which includes "measures of preventive care, safe care, coordinated care, and engagement and patient preferences."

Declaration Of The Counter-Mobilization To Transform Corporate Food Systems

July 27, 2021 By Via Campesina. , , ,
The only just and sustainable path forward is to immediately halt and transform corporate globalized food systems. The first step on this path is fully recognizing, implementing, and enforcing the human right to adequate food. While foundational, the right to adequate food is indivisible from other basic human rights, such as the right to health, housing, safe working conditions, living wages, social protection, clean environments, and civil-political rights including collective bargaining and political participation, which collectively should be central to any food system process.

UN Food Systems Summit: Here Is Why We Are Boycotting It

July 26, 2021 Elizabeth Mpfou and Edgardo Garcia, La Via Campesina. , , ,
Yet, the organised peasant and indigenous movements from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas that collectively represent most of the world’s small-scale food producers have called for a total boycott of this summit. In April this year, scores of scientists, researchers, faculty members, and educators who work in agriculture and food systems, also issued an open call to boycott the event. To understand why social movements and scientists are staying out of a UN-sponsored summit, it is important to know how the world’s food system works today.

Private-Equity ‘Vampires’ Run Into A Wall Of Worker Resistance

July 17, 2021 Roger Bybee, The Progressive Magazine. , , ,
At the peak of the Great Recession in 2008, General Motors was bailed out by U.S. taxpayers and survived. Bail-out money in hand, GM sharply increased its production in China and other low-wage nations on its way to recovering its past heights of profitability. But back in Janesville, Wisconsin, GM closed its plant, costing an estimated 9,000 jobs and widespread social misery that has not abated. And now Janesville finds itself again at the mercy of another far-off corporation. OpenGate Capital, a Los Angeles-based private equity firm, is planning to close the 120-year-old plant of a company named Hufcor Inc., wipe out about 160 jobs, and ship them off to Monterrey, Mexico. Hufcor has been an established, familiar fixture in the community, and workers are intent on keeping it that way.

Scheer Intelligence: Something’s Rotten In The Science Of Food

July 16, 2021 Robert Scheer, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
Leading nutritionist Marion Nestle has spent much of her long illustrious career writing about what we eat and the science of food. The James Beard award-winner and author of the blog Food Politics has written a whopping 14 acclaimed books on subjects related to nutrition, including “Soda Politics” and “What to Eat.” And yet, “Unsavory Truths: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat, ” a book journalist Robert Scheer calls one of her most important books to date, has gone largely ignored by mainstream media. On this week’s installment of “Scheer Intelligence,” Nestle joins Scheer to discuss some of the shocking revelations  the author uncovered about the links between food science and the incredibly powerful food industry. 

Climate Breakdown And The Corporate Media

July 13, 2021 Media Lens. , , ,
In today’s world, the prospects for human civilisation, never mind the existence of historians in the future, look bleak indeed. According to many leading climate scientists and biologists, the most likely outcome for humanity is the collapse of what is called ‘civilisation’. They warn that it may already be too late to change course.

Environmental Groups Call On Big Plastic To Drop Lawsuit

July 10, 2021 Environmental Defence, Cision. , , ,
Toronto, Canada - This Plastic-Free July, Canadian environmental groups are calling out the top three producers of plastic in Canada: NOVA Chemicals, Dow Chemical and Imperial Oil/ExxonMobil. These three companies are suing the federal government in an effort to stop the federal action plan to reduce plastic pollution. This trashy tactic is aimed at protecting Big Plastic's bottom line. "Big Plastic likes to pretend that plastic waste is someone else's fault: consumers, litterers and municipal waste management," said Karen Wirsig, Program Manager for Plastics at Environmental Defence. "But the real issue is that there's already too much plastic and the industry wants to prevent the government from doing anything about it. That's why our #1 tip to Canadians this Plastic-Free July is to tell Big Plastic to drop its lawsuit."

Kucinich Memoir Is A Moving Account Of The Battle Against Corporate Power

July 9, 2021 Chris Hedges, ScheerPost.com. , , ,
The Division of Light and Power,” by Dennis Kucinich, like Robert Caro’s “The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,” is a gripping, moving and lucidly written account of the hidden mechanisms of corporate power in the United States and what happens when these corporate interests are challenged. It is essential reading, especially as we face an intensified corporate assault, done in the name of fiscal necessity following the financial wounds imposed by the pandemic, to seize total control of all public assets.   Kucinich warns that this assault is more than the seizure of public assets for private gain.  These corporate forces, which function as a shadow government in Washington and cities across the country, threaten to achieve a monolithic lock on all forms of power and extinguish our anemic democracy.

Fascist Plots: Contemporary Lessons From The 1934 ‘Business Plot’

July 8, 2021 Gabriel Rockhill, Liberation School. , , ,
Six months ago, on January 6, 2021, a racist mob, incited by outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump, stormed the U.S. Capitol in a chaotic attempt to prevent the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election results, a necessary step before the inauguration of Joe Biden. The assault on the Capitol was led by militarized fascist groups composed of many current or former military and police.[1] Some of the leaders of the organizations involved, such as Enrique Tarrio and Joseph Biggs of the Proud Boys, had direct ties to U.S. intelligence agencies, having served as FBI informants.[2] Only one fifth of Capitol Police were on duty that day, and they were unprepared and under-equipped, even though the U.S. national security state had advance knowledge of the plot.

Weaponizing Science In Global Food Policy

June 26, 2021 By Maywa Montenegro, Matthew Canfield, and Alastair Iles, Inter Press Service. , , ,
Santa Cruz, CA - In July, the United Nations will convene “Science Days”, a high-profile event in preparation for the UN Food Systems Summit later this year. Over the course of two days, the world will be treated to a parade of Zoom sessions aimed at “highlighting the centrality of science, technology and innovation for food systems transformation.” Nobody disputes the need for urgent action to transform the food system. But the UNFSS has been criticized by human rights experts for its top-down and non-transparent organization. Indigenous peoples, peasants, and civil society groups around the world know their hard-won rights are under attack. Many are protesting the summit’s legitimacy and organizing counter-mobilizations.

UnitedHealthcare Has Been Denying ER Claims For Years

June 26, 2021 Andrew Perez, Daily Poster. , , ,
The man’s son had been vomiting, feeling nauseous, and experiencing bad heartburn for several weeks. The child’s pediatrician eventually made the call: It was time to take the boy to the ER. The father, who requested anonymity, wasn’t the sort of person who went to the emergency room on a whim. He was an internal medicine physician after all, so he tried to avoid ER visits as much as possible. But in late 2019, he listened to the boy’s doctor and took his son to the ER near where they lived in Florida, then took him a second time when he once again couldn’t hold down food. The decision ultimately seemed to make sense. Tests found the boy was suffering from a newly onset auto-immune disorder. But the family’s insurer, UnitedHealthcare, refused to pay the bills, which totaled $7,000...

Fair Trade USA’s Dairy Label Fails Workers

June 11, 2021 Fair World Project. , , ,
Fair Trade USA released a new “Fair Trade Dairy” label in partnership with Chobani. It’s a program that has been opposed by farmworker and human rights organizations since it was first announced. Now that there is yogurt on the shelf, but still no final standard released, this report looks at the label claims and evaluates “Fair Trade Dairy” based on the available standards. The critique focuses on three key areas: Inadequate standards development process Standards that are not fit for purpose Lack of enforcement mechanisms Finally, the report also reviews the rising tide of research that shows that corporate-developed and led certifications are inadequate and points instead to existing models that are better suited to defending workers’ rights and safety.

A People’s Guide To The War Industry: The New BOSS

June 3, 2021 Christian Sorensen, Consortium News. , , ,
To make more money, more and more aspects of life must be pulled into capital. This is why we see everything in civilian life being commodified, including food, housing, land and water. And this is why corporations take over many military functions. A given corporation now in charge of what was once a governmental job needs to get a layer of profit out of the task. To obtain that profit the corporation ends up over-charging, cutting jobs, polluting, and/or harming unions. Corporate America is in charge of the tasks that keep a military installation up and running. They call it “base operations support services,” or BOSS — one of the many business sectors of war. Corporations selling BOSS usually provide a combination of facility management, fire and emergency services, grounds maintenance, janitorial services, pavement clearance, pest control and waste management.
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