THE CORPORATION: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power - Enterprises controlling and destroying the world ... (A MUST SEE documentary)

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* A MUST SEE * DOCUMENTARY

ABOUT THE POWER OF ENTERPRISES

 

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http://www.thecorporation.com/index.php?page_id=46

 

 

SYNOPSIS

 

THE CORPORATION explores the nature and spectacular rise of the

dominant institution of our time. Footage from pop culture, advertising, TV

news, and corporate propaganda, illuminates the corporation's grip on our lives.

Taking its legal status as a " person " to its logical conclusion, the film puts

the corporation on the psychiatrist's couch to ask " What kind of person is it? "

Provoking, witty, sweepingly informative, The Corporation includes forty

interviews with corporate insiders and critics - including Milton Friedman, Noam

Chomsky, Naomi Klein, and Michael Moore - plus true confessions, case studies

and strategies for change.

 

Winner of 24 INTERNATIONAL AWARDS, 10 of them AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARDS

including the AUDIENCE AWARD for DOCUMENTARY in WORLD CINEMA at the 2004

SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL. The long-awaited DVD, available now in Australia and

coming in March to North America, contains over 8 hour of additional footage.

 

The film is based on the book The Corporation: The Pathological

Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan.

 

THE CORPORATION - DETAILED SYNOPSIS

In THE CORPORATION, case studies, anecdotes and true confessions

reveal behind-the-scenes tensions and influences in several corporate and

anti-corporate dramas. Each illuminates an aspect of the corporation's complex

character.

 

Among the 40 interview subjects are CEOs and top-level executives

from a range of industries: oil, pharmaceutical, computer, tire, manufacturing,

public relations, branding, advertising and undercover marketing; in addition, a

Nobel-prize winning economist, the first management guru, a corporate spy, and a

range of academics, critics, historians and thinkers are interviewed.

 

A LEGAL " PERSON "

In the mid-1800s the corporation emerged as a legal " person. " Imbued

with a " personality " of pure self-interest, the next 100 years saw the

corporation's rise to dominance. The corporation created unprecedented wealth.

But at what cost? The remorseless rationale of " externalities " -as Milton

Friedman explains: the unintended consequences of a transaction between two

parties on a third-is responsible for countless cases of illness, death,

poverty, pollution, exploitation and lies.

 

THE PATHOLOGY OF COMMERCE: CASE HISTORIES

To more precisely assess the " personality " of the corporate

" person, " a checklist is employed, using actual diagnostic criteria of the World

Health Organization and the DSM-IV, the standard diagnostic tool of

psychiatrists and psychologists. The operational principles of the corporation

give it a highly anti-social " personality " : It is self-interested, inherently

amoral, callous and deceitful; it breaches social and legal standards to get its

way; it does not suffer from guilt, yet it can mimic the human qualities of

empathy, caring and altruism. Four case studies, drawn from a universe of

corporate activity, clearly demonstrate harm to workers, human health, animals

and the biosphere. Concluding this point-by-point analysis, a disturbing

diagnosis is delivered: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism

fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a " psychopath. "

 

MINDSET

But what is the ethical mindset of corporate players? Should the

institution or the individuals within it be held responsible?

 

The people who work for corporations may be good people, upstanding

citizens in their communities - but none of that matters when they enter the

corporation's world. As Sam Gibara, Former CEO and Chairman of Goodyear Tire,

explains, " If you really had a free hand, if you really did what you wanted to

do that suited your personal thoughts and your personal priorities, you'd act

differently. "

 

Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, the world's largest commercial

carpet manufacturer, had an environmental epiphany and re-organized his $1.4

billion company on sustainable principles. His company may be a beacon of

corporate hope, but is it an exception to the rule?

 

MONSTROUS OBLIGATIONS

A case in point: Sir Mark Moody-Stuart recounts an exchange between

himself (at the time Chairman of Royal Dutch Shell), his wife, and a motley crew

of Earth First activists who arrived on the doorstep of their country home. The

protesters chanted and stretched a banner over their roof that read,

" MURDERERS. " The response of the surprised couple was not to call the police,

but to engage their uninvited guests in a civil dialogue, share concerns about

human rights and the environment and eventually serve them tea on their front

lawn. Yet, as the Moody-Stuarts apologize for not being able to provide soy milk

for their vegan critics' tea, Shell Nigeria is flaring unrivaled amounts of gas,

making it one of the world's single worst sources of pollution. And all the

professed concerns about the environment do not spare Ken Saro Wiwa and eight

other activists from being hanged for opposing Shell's environmental practices

in the Niger Delta.

 

The Corporation exists to create wealth, and even world disasters

can be profit centers. Carlton Brown, a commodities trader, recounts with

unabashed honesty the mindset of gold traders while the twin towers crushed

their occupants. The first thing that came to their minds, he tells us, was:

" How much is gold up? "

 

PLANET INC.

You'd think that things like disasters, or the purity of childhood,

or even milk, let alone water or air, would be sacred. But no. Corporations have

no built-in limits on what, who, or how much they can exploit for profit. In the

fifteenth century, the enclosure movement began to put fences around public

grazing lands so that they might be privately owned and exploited. Today, every

molecule on the planet is up for grabs. In a bid to own it all, corporations are

patenting animals, plants, even your DNA.

 

Around things too precious, vulnerable, sacred or important to the

public interest, governments have, in the past, drawn protective boundaries

against corporate exploitation. Today, governments are inviting corporations

into domains from which they were previously barred.

 

PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT

The Initiative Corporation spends $22 billion worldwide placing its

clients' advertising in every imaginable - and some unimaginable - media. One

new medium: very young children. Their " Nag Factor " study dropped jaws in the

world of child psychiatry. It was designed not to help parents cope with their

children's nagging, but to help corporations formulate their ads and promotions

so that children would nag for their products more effectively. Initiative Vice

President Lucy Hughes elaborates: " You can manipulate consumers into wanting,

and therefore buying your products. It's a game. "

 

Today people can become brands (Martha Stewart). And brands can

build cities (Celebration, Florida). And university students can pay for their

educations by shilling on national television for a credit card company (Chris

and Luke). And a corporation even owns the rights to the popular song " Happy

Birthday " (a division of AOL-Time-Warner). Do you ever get the feeling it's all

a bit much?

 

Corporations have invested billions to shape public and political

opinion. When they own everything, who will stand for the public good?

 

THE PRICE OF WHISTLEBLOWING

It turns out that standing for the public good is an expensive

proposition. Ask Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, two investigative reporters fired

by Fox News after they refused to water down a story on rBGH, a controversial

synthetic hormone widely used in the United States (but banned in Europe and

Canada) to rev up cows' metabolism and boost their milk production. Because of

the increased production, the cows suffer from mastitis, a painful infection of

the udders. Antibiotics must then be injected, which find their way into the

milk, and ultimately reduce people's resistance to disease.

 

Fox demanded that they rewrite the story, and ultimately fired Akre

and Wilson. Akre and Wilson subsequently sued Fox under Florida's whistle-blower

statute. They proved to a jury that the version of the story Fox would have had

them put on the air was false, distorted or slanted. Akre was awarded $425,000.

Then Fox appealed, the verdict was overturned on a technicality, and Akre lost

her award. [For an update on the case see Disc 2 where we learn that at one

point, Jane and Steve became liable for Fox's $1.8 million court costs, later to

be reduced to $200,000.]

 

DEMOCRACY LTD.

Democracy is a value that the corporation just doesn't understand.

In fact, corporations have often tried to undo democracy if it is an obstacle to

their single-minded drive for profit. From a 1934 business-backed plot to

install a military dictator in the White House (undone by the integrity of one

U.S. Marine Corps General, Smedley Darlington Butler) to present-day

law-drafting, corporations have bought military might, political muscle and

public opinion.

 

And corporations do not hesitate to take advantage of democracy's

absence either. One of the most shocking stories of the twentieth century is

Edwin Black's recounting IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany-one that

began in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continued well

into World War II.

 

FISSURES

The corporation may be trying to render governments impotent, but

since the landmark WTO protest in Seattle, a rising wave of networked

individuals and groups have decided to make their voices heard. Movements to

challenge the very foundations of the corporation are afoot: The corporate

charter revocation movement tried to bring down oil giant Unocal; a

groundbreaking ballot initiative in Arcata, California, put the corporate agenda

in the public spotlight in a series of town hall meetings; in Bolivia, the

population fought and won a battle against a huge transnational corporation

brought in by their government to privatize the water system; in India nearly

99% of the basmati patent of RiceTek was overturned; and W. R. Grace and the

U.S. government's patent on Neem was revoked.

 

As global individuals take back local power, a growing

re-invigoration of the concept of citizenship is taking root. It has the power

to not only strip the corporation of its seeming omnipotence, but to create a

feeling and an ideology of democracy that is much more than its mere

institutional version.

 

THE DVD

Along with the groundbreaking 145-minute theatrical version of the

film, the two-disc set has eight hours of never-before-seen footage. All of your

favourite heroes and villains are back. In addition to two commentary tracks,

deleted scenes, Q's and A's, additional languages and descriptive audio for the

visually impaired, 165 never seen before clips and updates are sorted " by

person " AND " by topic. " Get the details you want to know on the issues you care

about. Then, check out the web links for follow-up research and action.

 

 

 

 

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