Supplement your Nutrition
Government Again Concedes Vaccines Cause Autism =A very long list of "serious" facts about our food and 'health' industry=Continued=
Pharmaceuticals found in fish across U.S.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29877241/
Tags:
SCIENCE/HEALTH/CLIMATE/NATURE
Fish caught near wastewater treatment plants serving five major U.S. cities had residues of pharmaceuticals in them, including medicines used to treat high cholesterol, allergies, high blood pressure, bipolar disorder and depression, researchers reported Wednesday.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Now I know why the sushi was so popular at the last party!
Water Supply Will Stay Poisoned With Gender-Bending Chemicals Due To “Carbon Footprint” Of Filtering Systems
http://www.prisonplanet.com/water-supply-will-stay-poisoned-with-gender-bending-chemicals-due-to-carbon-footprint-of-filtering-systems.html
Tags:
SCIENCE/HEALTH/CLIMATE/NATURE
In another example of how the manufactured problem of global warming is actually preventing real environmental crises from being addressed, water supplies will continue to be poisoned by substances which have also been linked to human infertility as sperm counts continue to drop.
THEFT OF WATER FOR PROFIT:
Public spigot stays open for water bottlers
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/carl-hiaasen/story/936589.html#none
Tags:
ECONOMY
You probably thought there was a serious water shortage in Florida.
It's why we're spending billions to repair and repurify the Everglades, right? It's why we're not supposed to run our lawn sprinklers more than once or twice a week.
But hold on. It turns out there's a boundless, virtually free supply of Florida water -- though not for residents. The public spigot remains open day and night for Nestle, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and 19 other corporations that bottle our water and sell it for a huge per-unit profit.
Webmaster's Commentary:
We actually had the same thing happen here in Hawaii. For years we were constantly being propagandized to conserve water, that there was a water shortage, bottles in the toilet, restrictor heads in the showers, blah blah blah, even though there seemed to be a lot of rain.
Then we realized that there was no water shortage; just lobbying by the sugar and pineapple companies to limit water to us mere humans because so much was needed for the cash crops.
Foreign Policy In Focus | The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5016
Foreign policy statement, USA, 1948:
We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population.... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.... We should cease to talk about vague and ... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
George Kennan, Truman Foreign Policy & Planning Chief Adviser, State Department, 1948, excerpted from Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
CorpWatch: Theft of Water
http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/corpwatch?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Theft+of+water&btnG=Search
One of History's Great Atrocities: The Corporate Theft of the Public's Natural Right to Water | CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/01/8655
t r u t h o u t | Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water
http://www.truthout.org/article/fighting-corporate-theft-our-water
Water is Life - Water Privatization Conflicts
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/VANOVEDR/
In her book Water Wars, the Indian author Vandana Shiva lists nine principles underpinning water democracy. At least two of these principles are directly compromised by the privatization of water. Point number four states that “Water must be free for sustenance needs. Since nature gives water to us free of cost, buying and selling it for profit violates our inherent right to nature's gift and denies the poor of their human rights.” When private companies try to make large profits through high water prices, it denies the poor the inalienable right to the most necessary substance for life. In accordance with this fact, point number seven states, “Water is a commons. . . It cannot be owned as private property and sold as a commodity.” How can one justify claiming water as their own through contractual agreement while letting another human being go thirsty? Water is a commons because it is the basis of all life. Water rights are natural rights and thus are usufructuary rights, meaning that water can be used, but not owned. As far fetched as water ownership may seem, it is happening at an increasing rate around the globe.
http://www.asahi.com/english/asianet/hatsu/eng_hatsu030222b.html
"The time has come when those who preach the dogmas of materialism, whether of the east or the west, whether of capitalism or socialism, must give account of the moral stewardship they have presumed to exercise..." (The Promise of World Peace October 1985)
Ottawa turns off tap on right to water
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5016
Canada and the United States are the only two countries to go on record at the United Nations to oppose the right to water.
Mar 23 08:37
Water, Crisis and War
http://www.zeenews.com/sci-tech/eco-news/2009-03-22/516904news.html
Tags:
SCIENCE/HEALTH/CLIMATE/NATURE
Many, including the US, may believe Iran and North Korea’s existent or non-existent nuclear weapons pose the gravest threat to human existence. However, the scarcity of safe drinking water will prove to be the biggest challenge to humanity in the coming decades.
Webmaster's Commentary:
There are some pretty effective and very inexpensive water purification and desalinization systems out there. And I have no doubt that if we were to take just 10% of the money spent on making bombs we could develop some pretty decent water treatment technologies.
But I suspect that this concern over the nonavailability of fresh water is being promoted, like global warming, for private profit. Already much water service, formerly a function of government is now in private hands. People drink water from plastic bottles because the tap water, harmless in my childhood, is now contaminated with industrial chemicals and medical wastes that the municipal water treatment plants cannot remove.
Corporations clearly want monopolistic control over the basic necessities of life; the better to control and exploit the masses!
INDEX RESEARCH: Water: The Impending Apocalypse
http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2007/11/water-impending-apocalypse.html
"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Public Citizen | Energy Program | Energy Program - Water Privatization: Issues & Debates
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/articles.cfm?ID=10842
Water Privatization: Issues & Debates
A worldwide crisis over water is brewing. According to the United Nations, 31 countries are now facing water scarcity and 1 billion people lack access clean drinking water. Water consumption is doubling every 20 years and yet at the same time, water sources are rapidly being polluted, depleted, diverted and exploited by corporate interests ranging from industrial agriculture and manufacturing to electricity production and mining. The World Bank predicts that by 2025, two-thirds of the world's population will suffer from lack of clean and safe drinking water.
Today, people around the world are losing ownership and control of the water which remains.
Instead of protecting their citizens’ water resources from self-interested profiteers, governments are retreating from their responsibilities and bending to the will of giant transnational corporations that are poised to profit from the shortage of water. Fortune magazine has predicted that "water is the oil of the 21 century," and now corporations are rushing to invest in the new get-rich economy of water. Giant water, energy, food, and shipping companies have plans to buy water rights, privatize publicly-owned water systems, promote bottled water, and sell "bulk" water by transporting it from water rich areas to thirsty markets. At the same time, to ensure maximum profits, these companies are lobbying to weaken water quality standards, and pushing for trade agreements that hand over the U.S. water resources to foreign corporations.
Why oppose the privatization of water?
Why protect water as a human right?
Water Privatization Fiascos
Alternatives to Water Privatization
Who is conspiring to own your water? The Major Water Corporations
What’s going on in the United States and Around the World?
GET IN-DEPTH! Go to the Water for All Online Water Rights Library.
NEW!
Watch an Audio Visual Presentation, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Water Privatization, NOW! Click Here.
more resources
Background Information
Fact Sheets
News
Other Helpful Sources
Press Releases
Publications
Reports
Statements
» cmep | Water
Because Public Citizen does not accept funds from corporations, professional associations or government agencies, we can remain independent and follow the truth wherever it may lead. But that means we depend on the generosity of concerned citizens like you for the resources to fight on behalf of the public interest. If you would like to help us in our fight, click here.
The Global Water Crisis
http://www.hermes-press.com/water.htm
Welcome to Millennium-Ark!
http://www.standeyo.com/index.html
Jan Edwards and Molly Morgan: Abolish Corporate Personhood
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/edwards_morgan_corporate.html
EXCERPT:
What would change if corporations did not have personhood? The first and main effect would be that a barrier would be removed that is preventing democratic change - just as the abolition of slavery tore down an insurmountable legal block, making it possible to pass laws to provide full rights to the newly freed slaves. After corporate personhood is abolished, new legislation will be possible. Here are a few examples. If "corporate persons" no longer had First Amendment right of free speech, we could prohibit all corporate political activity, such as lobbying and contributions to political candidates and parties. If "corporate persons" were not protected against search without a warrant under the Fourth Amendment, then corporate managers couldn't turn OSHA and the EPA inspectors away if they make surprise, unscheduled searches. If "corporate persons" weren't protected against discrimination under the 14th Amendment, corporations like Wal-Mart couldn't force themselves into communities that don't want them.
So what can we do to abolish corporate personhood? Within our current legal system there are two possibilities: the Supreme Court could change its mind on corporations having rights in the Constitution, and/or we can pass an amendment to the Constitution. Either scenario seems daunting, yet it is even more difficult than that. Every state now has laws and language in their state constitutions conceding these rights to corporations. So corporate personhood must be abolished on a state as well as a national level. The good news is that almost anything we do towards abolishing corporate personhood helps the issue progress on one of these levels. If a city passes a non-binding resolution, declaring their area a "Corporate Personhood Free Zone," that is a step toward passing a constitutional amendment at their state and eventually at the national level. If a town passes an ordinance legally denying corporations rights as persons, they may provoke a crisis of jurisdiction that could lead to a court case. We think both paths should be followed. However, it was undemocratic for the Supreme Court to grant personhood to corporations, and it would be just as undemocratic for this to be decided that way again. An amendment is the democratic way to correct this judicial usurpation of the people's sovereignty.
As the rights of human persons in the US are diminished and restricted by the Patriot Act on the one hand, they are also squeezed by corporate personhood on the other. We, the real people, have our rights caught between a rock and a hard place, while the rights of the corporate person continue to expand.
These systems of oppression weren't established overnight; they were gradually and sometimes surreptitiously introduced and refined in ways that made them acceptable. At the time of the Constitution, corporations were widely reviled, but a century later they were a commonplace business institution, and a century after that they've become our invisible government. They accomplished this over decades, changing the law incrementally when most people weren't looking.
Resistance to these oppressions evolved in a similar way. Those who wished to end slavery, for example, worked for many years collecting information, refining their analysis, and debating among themselves. They came to understand the issue as one of human rights and that the whole institution of slavery was fundamentally wrong. They didn't come up with a Slavery Regulatory Agency or voluntary codes of conduct for slave owners. They called themselves Abolitionists - the whole thing had to go.
We look at corporate personhood the same way. We see that corporate personhood was wrongly given - not by We the People, but by nine Supreme Court judges. We further see that corporate personhood is destructive, because it was the pivotal achievement that allowed an artificial entity to obtain the rights of people, thus relegating us to subhuman status. And finally, because of the way corporate personhood has enabled corporations to govern us, we must eradicate it.
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person.
Like abolishing slavery, the work of eradicating corporate personhood takes us to the deepest questions of what it means to be human. And if we are to live in a democracy, what does it mean to be sovereign? The hardest part of eliminating corporate personhood is believing that We the People have the sovereign right to do this. It comes down to us being clear about who's in charge.
The authors are active in the U.S. section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) In September, 2001 WILPF launched a campaign to abolish corporate personhood that has as its goal to delegitimize the institution of the corporation as a political entity.
Proposed Constitutional Amendments to U.S. Constitution-Reclaim Democracy.org
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/political_reform/proposed_constitutional_amendments.html
Ending Corporate Governance, Recommendable Links/Articles
http://www.ratical.org/corporations/ReadingLinks.html
Corporate Ethics International : Reports
http://corpethics.org/article.php?list=type&type=36&offset=15&qty=10
The Santa Clara Blues: Corporate Personhood versus Democracy
by William Meyers, Point Arena Resolution on Corporate Personhood
November 13th, 2001
"Corporate personhood is a legal fiction. The choice of the word “person” arises from the way the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was worded and from earlier legal usage of the word person. A corporation is an artificial entity, created by the granting of a charter by a government that grants such charters. Corporation in this essay will be confined to businesses run for profit that have been granted corporate charters by the states of the United States..."
"Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3310.htm
Corporate U.S. Flag | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters
http://www.adbusters.org/cultureshop/corporateflag
Transnational Corporations - When Corporations Rule the World Korten
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Korten/WhenCorpsRuleWorld_Korten.html
For Profit : Information Clearing House - ICH
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19951.htm
Review: The Secret History Of The American Empire - International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/13/arts/idbriefs14C.php
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18028.htm
Killing Hope page U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II William Blum
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/KillingHope_page.html
"[American leaders] are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care ... the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things."
William Blum. Killing Hope
War Against the Poor: Low-Intensity Conflict and Christian Faith
http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=2288&C=2187
WAR IS A RACKET - Major General Smedley D. Butler - USMC Retired
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
"It was in the early days of the fighting in Vietnam that a Vietcong officer said to his American prisoner: "You were our heroes after the War. We read American books and saw American films, and a common phrase in those days was 'to be as rich and as wise as an American'. What happened?
An American might have been asked something similar by a Guatemalan, an Indonesian or a Cuban during the ten years previous, or by a Uruguayan, a Chilean or a Greek in the decade subsequent. The remarkable international goodwill and credibility enjoyed by the United States at the close of the Second World War was dissipated country by country, intervention by intervention."
William Blum
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29877241/
Tags:
SCIENCE/HEALTH/CLIMATE/NATURE
Fish caught near wastewater treatment plants serving five major U.S. cities had residues of pharmaceuticals in them, including medicines used to treat high cholesterol, allergies, high blood pressure, bipolar disorder and depression, researchers reported Wednesday.
Webmaster's Commentary:
Now I know why the sushi was so popular at the last party!
Water Supply Will Stay Poisoned With Gender-Bending Chemicals Due To “Carbon Footprint” Of Filtering Systems
http://www.prisonplanet.com/water-supply-will-stay-poisoned-with-gender-bending-chemicals-due-to-carbon-footprint-of-filtering-systems.html
Tags:
SCIENCE/HEALTH/CLIMATE/NATURE
In another example of how the manufactured problem of global warming is actually preventing real environmental crises from being addressed, water supplies will continue to be poisoned by substances which have also been linked to human infertility as sperm counts continue to drop.
THEFT OF WATER FOR PROFIT:
Public spigot stays open for water bottlers
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/columnists/carl-hiaasen/story/936589.html#none
Tags:
ECONOMY
You probably thought there was a serious water shortage in Florida.
It's why we're spending billions to repair and repurify the Everglades, right? It's why we're not supposed to run our lawn sprinklers more than once or twice a week.
But hold on. It turns out there's a boundless, virtually free supply of Florida water -- though not for residents. The public spigot remains open day and night for Nestle, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and 19 other corporations that bottle our water and sell it for a huge per-unit profit.
Webmaster's Commentary:
We actually had the same thing happen here in Hawaii. For years we were constantly being propagandized to conserve water, that there was a water shortage, bottles in the toilet, restrictor heads in the showers, blah blah blah, even though there seemed to be a lot of rain.
Then we realized that there was no water shortage; just lobbying by the sugar and pineapple companies to limit water to us mere humans because so much was needed for the cash crops.
Foreign Policy In Focus | The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5016
Foreign policy statement, USA, 1948:
We have about 50% of the world's wealth, but only 6.3% of its population.... In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.... To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.... We should cease to talk about vague and ... unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.
George Kennan, Truman Foreign Policy & Planning Chief Adviser, State Department, 1948, excerpted from Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen
CorpWatch: Theft of Water
http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/corpwatch?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Theft+of+water&btnG=Search
One of History's Great Atrocities: The Corporate Theft of the Public's Natural Right to Water | CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/01/8655
t r u t h o u t | Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water
http://www.truthout.org/article/fighting-corporate-theft-our-water
Water is Life - Water Privatization Conflicts
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/VANOVEDR/
In her book Water Wars, the Indian author Vandana Shiva lists nine principles underpinning water democracy. At least two of these principles are directly compromised by the privatization of water. Point number four states that “Water must be free for sustenance needs. Since nature gives water to us free of cost, buying and selling it for profit violates our inherent right to nature's gift and denies the poor of their human rights.” When private companies try to make large profits through high water prices, it denies the poor the inalienable right to the most necessary substance for life. In accordance with this fact, point number seven states, “Water is a commons. . . It cannot be owned as private property and sold as a commodity.” How can one justify claiming water as their own through contractual agreement while letting another human being go thirsty? Water is a commons because it is the basis of all life. Water rights are natural rights and thus are usufructuary rights, meaning that water can be used, but not owned. As far fetched as water ownership may seem, it is happening at an increasing rate around the globe.
http://www.asahi.com/english/asianet/hatsu/eng_hatsu030222b.html
"The time has come when those who preach the dogmas of materialism, whether of the east or the west, whether of capitalism or socialism, must give account of the moral stewardship they have presumed to exercise..." (The Promise of World Peace October 1985)
Ottawa turns off tap on right to water
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5016
Canada and the United States are the only two countries to go on record at the United Nations to oppose the right to water.
Mar 23 08:37
Water, Crisis and War
http://www.zeenews.com/sci-tech/eco-news/2009-03-22/516904news.html
Tags:
SCIENCE/HEALTH/CLIMATE/NATURE
Many, including the US, may believe Iran and North Korea’s existent or non-existent nuclear weapons pose the gravest threat to human existence. However, the scarcity of safe drinking water will prove to be the biggest challenge to humanity in the coming decades.
Webmaster's Commentary:
There are some pretty effective and very inexpensive water purification and desalinization systems out there. And I have no doubt that if we were to take just 10% of the money spent on making bombs we could develop some pretty decent water treatment technologies.
But I suspect that this concern over the nonavailability of fresh water is being promoted, like global warming, for private profit. Already much water service, formerly a function of government is now in private hands. People drink water from plastic bottles because the tap water, harmless in my childhood, is now contaminated with industrial chemicals and medical wastes that the municipal water treatment plants cannot remove.
Corporations clearly want monopolistic control over the basic necessities of life; the better to control and exploit the masses!
INDEX RESEARCH: Water: The Impending Apocalypse
http://indexresearch.blogspot.com/2007/11/water-impending-apocalypse.html
"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?' But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Public Citizen | Energy Program | Energy Program - Water Privatization: Issues & Debates
http://www.citizen.org/cmep/Water/articles.cfm?ID=10842
Water Privatization: Issues & Debates
A worldwide crisis over water is brewing. According to the United Nations, 31 countries are now facing water scarcity and 1 billion people lack access clean drinking water. Water consumption is doubling every 20 years and yet at the same time, water sources are rapidly being polluted, depleted, diverted and exploited by corporate interests ranging from industrial agriculture and manufacturing to electricity production and mining. The World Bank predicts that by 2025, two-thirds of the world's population will suffer from lack of clean and safe drinking water.
Today, people around the world are losing ownership and control of the water which remains.
Instead of protecting their citizens’ water resources from self-interested profiteers, governments are retreating from their responsibilities and bending to the will of giant transnational corporations that are poised to profit from the shortage of water. Fortune magazine has predicted that "water is the oil of the 21 century," and now corporations are rushing to invest in the new get-rich economy of water. Giant water, energy, food, and shipping companies have plans to buy water rights, privatize publicly-owned water systems, promote bottled water, and sell "bulk" water by transporting it from water rich areas to thirsty markets. At the same time, to ensure maximum profits, these companies are lobbying to weaken water quality standards, and pushing for trade agreements that hand over the U.S. water resources to foreign corporations.
Why oppose the privatization of water?
Why protect water as a human right?
Water Privatization Fiascos
Alternatives to Water Privatization
Who is conspiring to own your water? The Major Water Corporations
What’s going on in the United States and Around the World?
GET IN-DEPTH! Go to the Water for All Online Water Rights Library.
NEW!
Watch an Audio Visual Presentation, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Water Privatization, NOW! Click Here.
more resources
Background Information
Fact Sheets
News
Other Helpful Sources
Press Releases
Publications
Reports
Statements
» cmep | Water
Because Public Citizen does not accept funds from corporations, professional associations or government agencies, we can remain independent and follow the truth wherever it may lead. But that means we depend on the generosity of concerned citizens like you for the resources to fight on behalf of the public interest. If you would like to help us in our fight, click here.
The Global Water Crisis
http://www.hermes-press.com/water.htm
Welcome to Millennium-Ark!
http://www.standeyo.com/index.html
Jan Edwards and Molly Morgan: Abolish Corporate Personhood
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood/edwards_morgan_corporate.html
EXCERPT:
What would change if corporations did not have personhood? The first and main effect would be that a barrier would be removed that is preventing democratic change - just as the abolition of slavery tore down an insurmountable legal block, making it possible to pass laws to provide full rights to the newly freed slaves. After corporate personhood is abolished, new legislation will be possible. Here are a few examples. If "corporate persons" no longer had First Amendment right of free speech, we could prohibit all corporate political activity, such as lobbying and contributions to political candidates and parties. If "corporate persons" were not protected against search without a warrant under the Fourth Amendment, then corporate managers couldn't turn OSHA and the EPA inspectors away if they make surprise, unscheduled searches. If "corporate persons" weren't protected against discrimination under the 14th Amendment, corporations like Wal-Mart couldn't force themselves into communities that don't want them.
So what can we do to abolish corporate personhood? Within our current legal system there are two possibilities: the Supreme Court could change its mind on corporations having rights in the Constitution, and/or we can pass an amendment to the Constitution. Either scenario seems daunting, yet it is even more difficult than that. Every state now has laws and language in their state constitutions conceding these rights to corporations. So corporate personhood must be abolished on a state as well as a national level. The good news is that almost anything we do towards abolishing corporate personhood helps the issue progress on one of these levels. If a city passes a non-binding resolution, declaring their area a "Corporate Personhood Free Zone," that is a step toward passing a constitutional amendment at their state and eventually at the national level. If a town passes an ordinance legally denying corporations rights as persons, they may provoke a crisis of jurisdiction that could lead to a court case. We think both paths should be followed. However, it was undemocratic for the Supreme Court to grant personhood to corporations, and it would be just as undemocratic for this to be decided that way again. An amendment is the democratic way to correct this judicial usurpation of the people's sovereignty.
As the rights of human persons in the US are diminished and restricted by the Patriot Act on the one hand, they are also squeezed by corporate personhood on the other. We, the real people, have our rights caught between a rock and a hard place, while the rights of the corporate person continue to expand.
These systems of oppression weren't established overnight; they were gradually and sometimes surreptitiously introduced and refined in ways that made them acceptable. At the time of the Constitution, corporations were widely reviled, but a century later they were a commonplace business institution, and a century after that they've become our invisible government. They accomplished this over decades, changing the law incrementally when most people weren't looking.
Resistance to these oppressions evolved in a similar way. Those who wished to end slavery, for example, worked for many years collecting information, refining their analysis, and debating among themselves. They came to understand the issue as one of human rights and that the whole institution of slavery was fundamentally wrong. They didn't come up with a Slavery Regulatory Agency or voluntary codes of conduct for slave owners. They called themselves Abolitionists - the whole thing had to go.
We look at corporate personhood the same way. We see that corporate personhood was wrongly given - not by We the People, but by nine Supreme Court judges. We further see that corporate personhood is destructive, because it was the pivotal achievement that allowed an artificial entity to obtain the rights of people, thus relegating us to subhuman status. And finally, because of the way corporate personhood has enabled corporations to govern us, we must eradicate it.
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property. Corporate personhood is the legal fiction that property is a person.
Like abolishing slavery, the work of eradicating corporate personhood takes us to the deepest questions of what it means to be human. And if we are to live in a democracy, what does it mean to be sovereign? The hardest part of eliminating corporate personhood is believing that We the People have the sovereign right to do this. It comes down to us being clear about who's in charge.
The authors are active in the U.S. section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) In September, 2001 WILPF launched a campaign to abolish corporate personhood that has as its goal to delegitimize the institution of the corporation as a political entity.
Proposed Constitutional Amendments to U.S. Constitution-Reclaim Democracy.org
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/political_reform/proposed_constitutional_amendments.html
Ending Corporate Governance, Recommendable Links/Articles
http://www.ratical.org/corporations/ReadingLinks.html
Corporate Ethics International : Reports
http://corpethics.org/article.php?list=type&type=36&offset=15&qty=10
The Santa Clara Blues: Corporate Personhood versus Democracy
by William Meyers, Point Arena Resolution on Corporate Personhood
November 13th, 2001
"Corporate personhood is a legal fiction. The choice of the word “person” arises from the way the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was worded and from earlier legal usage of the word person. A corporation is an artificial entity, created by the granting of a charter by a government that grants such charters. Corporation in this essay will be confined to businesses run for profit that have been granted corporate charters by the states of the United States..."
"Corporism: The Systemic Disease that Destroys Civilization."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3310.htm
Corporate U.S. Flag | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters
http://www.adbusters.org/cultureshop/corporateflag
Transnational Corporations - When Corporations Rule the World Korten
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Korten/WhenCorpsRuleWorld_Korten.html
For Profit : Information Clearing House - ICH
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19951.htm
Review: The Secret History Of The American Empire - International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/07/13/arts/idbriefs14C.php
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18028.htm
Killing Hope page U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War II William Blum
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/KillingHope_page.html
"[American leaders] are perhaps not so much immoral as they are amoral. It's not that they take pleasure in causing so much death and suffering. It's that they just don't care ... the same that could be said about a sociopath. As long as the death and suffering advance the agenda of the empire, as long as the right people and the right corporations gain wealth and power and privilege and prestige, as long as the death and suffering aren't happening to them or people close to them ... then they just don't care about it happening to other people, including the American soldiers whom they throw into wars and who come home-the ones who make it back alive-with Agent Orange or Gulf War Syndrome eating away at their bodies. American leaders would not be in the positions they hold if they were bothered by such things."
William Blum. Killing Hope
War Against the Poor: Low-Intensity Conflict and Christian Faith
http://www.religion-online.org/showchapter.asp?title=2288&C=2187
WAR IS A RACKET - Major General Smedley D. Butler - USMC Retired
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm
"It was in the early days of the fighting in Vietnam that a Vietcong officer said to his American prisoner: "You were our heroes after the War. We read American books and saw American films, and a common phrase in those days was 'to be as rich and as wise as an American'. What happened?
An American might have been asked something similar by a Guatemalan, an Indonesian or a Cuban during the ten years previous, or by a Uruguayan, a Chilean or a Greek in the decade subsequent. The remarkable international goodwill and credibility enjoyed by the United States at the close of the Second World War was dissipated country by country, intervention by intervention."
William Blum
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