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unwarranted's avatar

Brilliant, Karim. I saw a headline - I can't remember where - Vijay Prashad is arguing that the world is hungry for socialism. I know I am, and I sense that my fellow country men and women are as well. I had the thought reading this, the outrage of human trafficking is always shunted toward the inability to eradicate it. That is such compelling proof of the truth of your piece. Our leaders have taught us that rhetoric is for losers, and power isn't for us. It has been the ultimate Faustian bargain to grow up in a chorus of inverted truths, only to discover it after generations have unwittingly girded it. This western empire has stage four cancer, and the patient is requesting swift termination.

Ruby's avatar
Nov 17Edited

Canadian law professor, Joel Bakan wrote a book titled "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power", in which he discusses the concept of limited liability and the legal (but often unlawful) obligation of corporate leaders to maximize shareholder wealth. Bakan argues that it is these features which make genuine corporate social responsibility legally impermissible and practically impossible. The trans-national corporation is the fundamental vehicle by which capitalism inflicts its systematic and widespread crimes across the world.

In 2003, "The Corporation" was released as a documentary film. A central theme of the film is the assessment of corporate behavior using diagnostic criteria from Psychiatry's DSM-IV, comparing the modern corporation to a clinically diagnosed psychopath. This includes traits such as callous disregard for others, inability to maintain relationships, reckless disregard for safety, deceitfulness, lack of guilt, and failure to conform to social norms. The film features interviews with prominent critics like Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, and Howard Zinn.

Link to film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpjypnxnS4U

Catherine Austin-Fitts, founder of Solari Report, warns that "Crime that pays is crime that stays". Until C-suite executives face prison time for corporate crimes committed under their watch, perverse incentives will motivate them to continue violating natural law. Holding corporate executives legally liable for corporate crimes would make them think twice before riding rough shod over their millions of victims. Also, if the legal obligation to maximize shareholder wealth were removed, that would go a long way towards defanging these predatory machines.

A network of countless corporations have been shown to be complicit in aiding and abetting the worst crime on the planet for the past 2+ years by enabling the genocide in Palestine. The corporate executives of these corporations knew that Israel was accused of "plausible genocide" and yet they criminally continued to provide their products and services, while the IOF maimed and murdered over 100,000 Palestinians. Let's not forget that the weapons of mass surveillance, Artificial Intelligence and annihilation that have been "battle-tested" in Palestine are being sold to tyrannical governments across the world. It's time to dismantle criminal corporations.

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