The 14 Worst Corporate Evildoers

Read the article and then take the poll. The article is divided into 14 short and interesting sections highlighting the misdeeds of companies. Due to size Limitations, the poll only has my personal top ten.


http://www.alternet.org/story/29337/

~Ulrika~

Where's the darn article? I want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

Oops. I forgot the link. It's up there now.

~Ulrika~

Wally World is taking over the world and soon earth will be called Wally World....There is a great south park episode on the subject....


That is all...

That artical makes some nasty allegations, which if true, would be disturbing to say the least. However, since the author makes no attempt to present any actual evidence, I can't consider anything in it to be fact. Where are the footnotes? Where are the links to offcial records of all the alleged law suits? Where are the interviews with the accusers? Where are the witnesses? Where are the responses from representatives of the accused?

All we've got is the author's word. It really should go without saying that that's not good enough. All the artical says is "Look at all these terrible things these companies have done, because I said so." That is not journalism.

If the allegations are true, then I'd think twice about doing business with these companies. I have to assume they're innocent though until I'm presented with something more than hearsay.

Also, the facts are never as simple as the artical would have you believe. Out of curiosity, I did a little research of my own on the first issue on the list, the Caterpillar bulldozers.

The artical implies that the Caterpillar company sold products directly to the Israeli military with knowledge that they would be used for destroying Palestinian homes. What I've read outside that artical strongly suggests that this is absolutely not the case.

According to Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the organizations trying to stop the sale of bulldozers to the Israeli military, the machines in question were purchased first by the US military and then resold to the Israelis under a program called the Foreign Military Sales Program.

So, the first obvious question then is who, besides the Israelis themselves, is really to blame? Caterpillar or the US government? How exactly is a supplier like Caterpillar supposed to know what the government (or anyone else) will do with a product after they buy it? Why does the blame in the artical fall squarely on the shoulders of Caterpillar and not at all on the US government? Is it perhaps because it's easier to paint a coporation as evil and greedy than it is the federal government?

I this particular case, you could say maybe Caterpillar should just refuse to participate in the Foreign Military Sales Program. I'm not sure they can, but even if they could, it would mean the world's largest maker of construction equipement would be cutting off supply for positive purposes as well. How is Caterpillar to know when our military is buying a bulldozer for home-destruction in Gaza versus when they're buying one for something like Tsunami relief in Asia?

I don't know nearly enough about the issue to answer that question, and that artical certainly didn't serve to educate me, but from what I have read, it sounds very much like a witch hunt. Nothing can be done to stop the actual perpetrators, the Israeli military, so the scapegoat becomes the maker of the tools they happend to use, without regard for how they obtained them.

Is my impression correct? I don't know, and that's pretty much the point. Caterpillar could be guilty as sin or they could simply be pawns of sinister elements of two powerful governments. The artical makes no room for the latter possibility though, without offering a shred of actual evidence, just opinionated rhetoric.

Once again, until I'm presented with facts, I have to assume there's no deliberate wrong-doing. "Innocent until proven guilty" is, afterall, supposed to be one of those high and mighty values that makes free societies like ours so great, isn't it? Show me some difinitive proof for anything in that artical and then I'll vote in your pole.

Nope. You've also got your own initiative and the internet to help you educate yourself. The article has done what it has intended -- it has gotten your attention. Now go out there and find that information you need to convince yourself of its accuracy.

~Ulrika~

What a ridiculous assertion. Everyone knows that the internet is where answers are provided for us when we log in. That's the whole point. I mean, if I had to search for them then all those handy articles I see when I open hotmail would be like, useless or something.

Man that article looked interesting. It's a shame it violated my one hand rule. I almost made it to Caterpillar too!

Some corporations are more truthful and helpful to humanity than are the people who attack them.

Consider LL. The world run by the Lindens is far better than a world run by the Lindens' detractors would be. Log in. You'll see.

I like in the comments, that one fellow who wonders why Microsoft isn't on there. I mean, I use Microsoft products and all, but in light of The Simpsons parody that ran sometime back, I just found it funny!

You forgot Anshe Chung.

Where is the fun poll option, like Pecan Pie? I would most certainly boycott Pecan Pie for it's horrendous activities over see... don't believe me? Search the internet til you find evidence.

Meh.

Most of those I'm more or less aware of. Many are true. Many have glaring inaccuracies. And the whole piece could use some sourcing.



That said, welcome to the pursuit of higher profits and the "American Dream." Yet, a few of the posters are absolutely right about the level of greed/corruption/add-evil-term-here being higher in second and third world countries, plus certain areas of Europe and South America. American corporate crimes are just more widespread with their pestilence.



I do not hold the corporations as a whole responsible for some of these acts. I do hold the asshats that authorized them and direct supporters responsible, including the ones that cognizantly fund specific projects like Agent Orange.

For my piece, the only times I will buy from one of these firms is due to lack of choice at a given time. I purchase Dasani water (the artificial "blue tint" version scares me away, however) when it's my only available option. I'll drink soda for the same reason, and rarely on my own (something I should stop again). And while I do not own a car, my only available mode of rapid transportation is a Ford. Often, I carpool.



Still, morality is certainly not a zero-sum game. What I find unsettling isn't that some of these atrocities happen, nor the names involved in them. I'm scared that the same people authorizing them have controlling interest in current government policy.

Excellent post from top to bottom. Thank you.

~Ulrika~

My pleasure.

You can't even be serious about that list unless you put Tyson Foods on it. They had 7 people die on the job in one year, including a 15-year-old Mexican boy who was working at 2 am. It would have cost Tyson $348 to fly his remains home, but Tyson wouldn't pay. They had sales of $4 billion that year. They only settled with the family when the story ran in the paper.


-----


reread carefully about overseas crime. OK, what I described above happened in the US, but it's damn criminal, still

I'm utterly shocked that no clothing manufacturer made this list for all the sweat-shop outsourced labor.

Wow. Great stuff on the forums tonight.

I found a link that highlights a lot of recent Tyson misdeeds.

That's just one of many disturbing entries.

http://www.ufcw.org/tyson/history_of_tyson_greed/index.cfm

~Ulrika~

The easiest way to identify corporate scandal:

Watch television for about an hour, wait for the PR campaign ads to come up (e.g. Ecomagination)...


... then Google the sponsor with "lawsuit" as a search term.



Deadly serious. Try it sometime.

Let's not forget Barrick.



Barrick's Board of Directors includes one Stephen J. Shapiro--Director, of Burlington Resources Board of Directors also on the board of Vastar and Southern Company Energy Marketing. Keep an eye on this space--Dick Cheney, George Bush, and Ken Lay are not too far afield.

Oh, my vote for corporate offenders include: Nike and Starbucks.

Every man's duty is the King's, but every man's soul is his own. Its silly to blame a corporation for actions ultimately taken by people. If you wish to assign blame for the bulldozing of the palestinian homes. Start with the guy driving the buldozer, not the people who sell it.

this has always been my problem with the radical left, they are quick to balme institutions and slow to blame individuals.

Call it getting my attention if you want, but all the artical did for me was to get my curiosity high enough to do a brief fact check on the first example on the list, and that was only because it had been linked from this board, and I had nothing better to do at the time. Had I happened across the artical elsewhere, it's lack of evidence alone would have been enough for me to simply dismiss it on the spot as nothing by hype. However, since I wanted to have something intelligent to say here, I decided to investigate. So, I gues you could say it was you, not the artical, that got my attention. Anyway, once I discovered that first example to be misleading, I considred that to be enough to cast doubt on everything else the artical said, and I didn't have any desire to bother with the rest.

The point is when a writer has something legitimate to say, they make sure to include enough documented factual background information so that anyone and everyone reading will be educated enough on the subject to know what's going on. When they don't do that, you know they're just stating their own opinion. Was I the only one paying attention when they covered that in every single writing class from elementary school through college?

I despise wal-mart and do everyhting in my power to not shop there, especially after they built a store in Teotihuacán, Mexico, showing no regard for other people's cultures and way of life.

Leilany


http://www.mindfully.org/Industry/2004/Wal-Mart-Teotihuacan3sep04.htm

In these writing classes that you took from elementary school to college, did they happen to discuss the spelling of the word "article" with you?

~Ulrika~

Dear Lord, not you too? You are one person on the forums I though would be above such petty sniping.