Spooky Business: Corporate Espionage Against Non-profits
“Corporate espionage against nonprofit organizations is an egregious abuse of corporate power that is subverting democracy,” said Gary Ruskin, author of Spooky Business. “Who will rein in the forces of corporate lawlessness as they bear down upon nonprofit defenders of justice?”
Many of the world’s largest corporations and their trade associations — including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Walmart, Monsanto, Bank of America, Dow Chemical, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Chevron, Burger King, McDonald’s, Shell, BP, BAE, Sasol, Brown & Williamson and E.ON – have been linked to espionage or planned espionage against nonprofit organizations, activists and whistleblowers.
Many different types of nonprofit organizations have been targeted with corporate espionage, including environmental, anti-war, public interest, consumer, food safety, pesticide reform, nursing home reform, gun control, social justice, animal rights and arms control groups.
From the Center for Corporate Policy. Full report is here in pdf form.
= new reply since forum marked as read
AlterNet / By Steven Rosenfeld
The Corporate Bully Whose Front Groups, Willful Distortions and Hate-Mongering Has Poisoned U.S. Politics
: Meet Richard Berman
- snip -
Dr. Evil is Richard Berman, a Washington-based lawyer-turned-hitman for Big Food who pioneered and still deploys many of the most intentionally deceptive, inflammatory and anti-democratic tactics used in corporate propaganda campaigns today. For nearly four decades, Berman’s attacks have tried to smear, discredit and destroy public-interest causes and groups by a toxic brew of industry front groups, distortion-filled attacks, ridicule and bullying to stoke prejudice and hatred as a means of turning the public’s attention and regulators away from his paymasters’ business practices.
Take his effort to cripple the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and defame the character of its CEO, Wayne Pacelle. He ran a television ad during the 2013 Academy Awards telling people not to give to HSUS. He created a YouTube video viewed 1.7 million times calling Pacelle “the Bernie Madoff of the charity world.” He set up a non-profit front group called Humane Watch to undermine donations intended for the HSUS and a website attacking its funding. He even threatened the Better Business Bureau to drop HSUS' accreditation under the business group's Wise Giving Alliance, and then attacked BBB when it refused to do so.
- snip -
It is stunning how many fights have been picked by Berman's corporate protection racket. He’s also gone after teachers' unions, food processing industry union drives, Obamacare and Obama’s tax policies, and groups such as Center for Science in the Public Interest. He’s defended the tanning salon and payday lending industries. His Employment Policies Institute exists to keep minimum wages as low as possible. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) in Washington, which created BermanExposed.org in 2009, tracks his efforts—the front groups, attack websites and propaganda. “Berman runs at least 23 industry-funded projects, such as the Center for Union Facts, and holds 24 ‘positions’ within these various entities,” BermanExposed said.
- more at link -
You'd think big business would be good citizens, as well as pay their employees better:
1. with all the money they squirrel away in off-shore accounts,
2. the money they save by paying little to no taxes,
3. the money spent lobbying,
4. the money spent pulling evil shit,
5. the money made from subsidies,
6. their exorbitant profits,
7. outrageous bonuses & parachutes
