N.S.A. Collecting Millions of Faces From Web Images - NYT

[Tsiyu]

94. Hmmmmmm

http://www.slideshare.net/mruesch/corporations-and-their-role-in-violent-conflict-presentation


http://what-when-how.com/interpersonal-violence/corporate-violence/

Victims of Corporate Violence

There are several categories of victims of corporate violence, such as individuals, groups of individuals (e.g., employees and consumers), and the natural environment. Several case studies conducted by scholars of corporate violence illustrate the harms caused to these categories of victims.

One case that illustrates violence against workers is the Imperial Food Products fire in Hamlet, North Carolina. In this instance, 25 workers died in a fire at the Imperial Foods processing plant when plant managers locked the fire escapes to prevent employees from stealing chicken nuggets. Other forms of violence against workers can result when companies do not follow Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) laws, thus failing to protect workers.

For example, with the deaths of several miners in recent years, attention has been given to the subject of unsafe working conditions. However, those who study corporate violence have noted that there is a long history of some corporations in the mining industry failing to adequately protect workers (e.g., “black lung” disease, collapsing mines, fires and explosions). Finally, some corporations have been accused of conspiring with paramilitary death squads in economically undeveloped countries to prevent unionization through acts of violence directed toward union organizers and/or employees.

Consumers have also been victimized by corporate violence, which has been documented in a substantial body of research. One example is the crash of ValuJet Flight 592 in 1996 where 105 passengers (and 5 crew members) were killed as a result of ValuJet’s failure to follow Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. Other groups of consumers who may have been victims of corporate violence include those killed or injured because of fires in Ford Pinto cars resulting from design flaws, women who were harmed by the Dalkon Shield (an IUD birth control device known to be the cause of uterine infections, blood poisoning, and the deaths of 12 women), children born with birth defects because their mothers had taken thalidomide (a drug used to offset morning sickness), those who have died or have serious illnesses caused by the effects of products sold by major tobacco companies, and those involved in accidents linked to unsafe tires.






http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1987/04/formula.html

From the above link:

Today, dioxin is known as one of the most deadly synthetic chemicals. Three ounces of dioxin placed in the New York City drinking water supply could wipe out the city's entire population. "Dioxin is the most poisonous small molecule known to man. It is alone one of the most powerful carcinogens known," says Mathew Meselson professor of biochemistry at Harvard. "We have not yet found any dosage at which it is safe, at which it has no observable effect."

Dioxin also appears to have a cumulative effect, Messelson said. "It is quite stable and is soluble in fat but not water, and will build up in body fat."

An estimated 130 pounds of dioxin was dumped on Vietnam before 1970, and some of that was inevitably brought home by the more than two million GI's who sprayed or patrolled the dense jungle forests of South Vietnam. When these dioxin-contaminated individuals lose weight, the dioxin breaks down and is carried into the blood stream, says Professor Barry Commoner, at Queens College.

Many Vietnam veterans have reported the now classic symptoms of dioxin poisoning: irrational emotional outbursts, numbing of the hands and feet, an acne-like rash covering the entire body, and sharp stomach pains.







http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3169238/

The above is a great article on resource extraction, explaining why we had to, for example, bomb Iraq to smithereens for oil.

https://www.galtung-institut.de/network/groups/anything-galtung/forum/topic/understanding-galtungs-violence-triangle-and-structural-violence/

Cultural violence is the prevailing attitudes and beliefs that we have been taught since childhood and that surround us in daily life about the power and necessity of violence. We can consider the example of telling of history which glorifies records and reports wars and military victories rather than people’s nonviolent agitation, movements, rebellions or the triumphs of connections and collaborations. Almost all cultures recognise that killing a person is murder, but killing tens, hundreds or thousands during a declared conflict is called ‘war’ or killing of innocent people by the security forces are often declared as caught in the crossfire.

Structural violence exists when some groups, classes, genders, nationalities, etc are assumed to have, and in fact do have, more access to goods, resources, and opportunities than other groups, classes, genders, nationalities, etc, and this unequal advantage is built into the very social, political and economic systems that govern societies, states and the world. These tendencies may be overt such as Aparthied or more subtle such as traditions or tendency to award some groups privileges over another. Constitutional privileges of Job reservations and financial supports in the name of the welfare of the “tribes or backwards” and non-uniform land law, which bans one group to own landed property in their own land while other groups are free to own landed property wherever they want are also examples of structural violence.

Theories of structural violence explore how political, economic and cultural structures result in the occurrence of avoidable violence, most commonly seen as the deprivation of basic human needs (will be discussed later). Structural theorists attempt to link personal suffering with political, social and cultural choices. Johan Galtung’s original definition included a lack of human agency; that is the violence is not a direct act of any decision or action made by a particular person but a result of an unequal distribution of resources.

Here, we must also understand “institutional violence”. “Institutional violence” is often mistaken for structural violence, but this is not the case. “Institutional violence” should be used to refer to violence perpetrated by institutions like companies, universities, corporations, organisations as opposed to individuals. The fact that women are paid less at an establishment than men is an act of direct violence by that specific establishment. It is true that there is a relationship with structural violence as there is between interpersonal violence and structural violence. And Structural violence is the most problematic area to be addressed for conflict transformation







http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Foreign_Policy/TruthBehindUSForeignPol.html


But this is the only area in which the corporations wish an emasculated government. Without a bloated military budget, not only would Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, Grumman, Raytheon and Lockheed-Martin be in trouble, but the automobile companies as well, plus the oil companies, the majority of hi-tech firms, and the major suppliers of all these firms.

And the corporations need much more. Profits would be much lower if they had to build and maintain the roads, electric, water, and sewage lines to their plants, run a public transportation system for their workers (or customers), and so on, and were not consistently the recipients of tax breaks.

At the international level, US corporations need the government to ensure that target countries are "safe for investment" (no movements for freedom and democracy), that loans will be repaid, contracts kept, and international law respected (but only when it is useful to do so). It is also the task of the US government to create and maintain markets overseas for US goods, and to protect the corporations from genuine competition from abroad whenever it is feasible to do so.

Finally, the US government must remain on constant standby to rescue US corporations when their mismanagement becomes conspicuous, from consistently subsidizing agribusiness, to the Chrysler bailout, to a bill currently before the House to provide a $1.5 billion loan guarantee to steel corporations that are not competitive with Japan or Taiwan, even though the wage differential is slight (and in the case of Japan, favors the US).


I can provide many, many more examples if you need them