THE CORPORATION: A powerful & compelling documentary

[Gaia]

The Corporation is the Canadian most successful documentary in history, is the winner of 26 international awards and 10 Audience Choice Awards including the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.


The film charts the development of the corporation as a legal entity from its genesis to unprecedented legal protection stemming from creative interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, that is from its origins as an institution chartered by governements to carry out specific public functions, to the rise of the vast modern institutions entitled to some of the legal rights of a "person."


One central theme of the documentary is an attempt to assess the "personality" of the corporate "person" by using diagnostic criteria from the DSM-IV; Robert Hare, a University of British Columbia Psychology Professor and FBI consultant, compares the modern, profit-driven corporation to that of a clinically diagnosed psychopath.


https://youtu.be/KMNZXV7jOG0

[Bill Ryan]

:bump:

Yes, do everything you can to see it. I first saw it on the big screen in a mainstream movie theater in Edinburgh when it came out in 2003.

It compares large corporations with psychopathic humans... a chillingly exact analogy.

After it ended, I couldn't speak for something like 45 minutes. It had that great an impact on me.

[Gaia]

Yes indeed Bill this movie is a real mind opening !

[Bill Ryan]

.
Here it is: (my recommendation: download it using keepvid.com (http://keepvid.com) and watch it in 720p high quality)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMNZXV7jOG0

[BMJ]

One central theme of the documentary is an attempt to assess the "personality" of the corporate "person" by using diagnostic criteria from the DSM-IV; Robert Hare, a University of British Columbia Psychology Professor and FBI consultant, compares the modern, profit-driven corporation to that of a clinically diagnosed psychopath.


https://youtu.be/KMNZXV7jOG0

I was laughing that hard I almost chocked on my coffee when I read this. Thank you Gaia that made my day.

[Atlas]

The Difference Between a Corporation & a Company (http://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-corporation-company-5182.html)
http://www.companioncorp.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/COMPcreatorsof.png

[Tintin]

:bump: :bump: :bump:

This truly very important and compelling film is a MUST SEE.

Although still available online --- for how long these days is a moot point what with the corporate purge on freedom of speech currently in full swing ---we have also included this for you now in the Avalon Library and it can be accessed via the links below:

• http://avalonlibrary.net/The_Corporation.mp4 - Uninterrupted version (Full) - lower resolution
• http://avalonlibrary.net/The_Corporation_HD_Part_1.mp4 - Part 1 - running time 39:52 (higher resolution)
• http://avalonlibrary.net/The_Corporation_HD_Part_2.mp4 - Part 2 - running time 42:46 (higher resolution)
• http://avalonlibrary.net/The_Corporation_HD_Part_3.mp4 - Part 3 (http://avalonlibrary.net/The_Corporation_HD_Part_3.mp4 - Part3) - running time 40:31 (higher resolution)
• http://avalonlibrary.net/The_Corporation_HD_Part_4.mp4 - Part 4 - running time 20:52 (higher resolution)


And, because I simply can't resisit it, here, again, is the memorable narrative from 'Network' (1976) that I mentioned on this thread here (http://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?94731-Fake-News-and-the-War-on-Freedom-and-Truth&p=1218278&viewfull=1#post1218278):

Arthur Jensen: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.

It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale.

The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

Howard Beale: Why me?
Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
Howard Beale: I have seen the face of God.
Arthur Jensen: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.

[Cara]

Not sure if this is the best place to post this since this thread is about a specific film... however I couldn’t find a better thread to post this in.

Mods - Please move this if there’s a better place for it


This article points to the ongoing gains being made by global corporations towards taking overt roles in governance.

In this case, the gain made is via the World Economic Forum which has just signed a memorandum of understanding with the United Nations.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/how-united-nations-quietly-being-turned-public-private-partnership/


How the United Nations is quietly being turned into a public-private partnership
A new agreement with the World Economic Forum gives multinational corporations influence over matters of global governance.

Harris Gleckman
2 July 2019

A new corporate and government marriage quietly took place last week when the leadership of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Nations (UN) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) (https://weforum.ent.box.com/s/dj7x7z2fjxrox49farw5dfxfa1hfqw3h) to partner with each other. While this MOU is proudly displayed on the WEF website, it is nowhere to be found on the UN website. The only indication on the UN website of this important new development is a picture of the pen (https://www.unmultimedia.org/s/photo/detail/811/0811012.html) used to sign the agreement, and two pictures of the signing ceremony.

One reason for this difference is that the UN’s corporate-centered Global Compact has received a good deal of bad press (http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/images/pdfs/Fit_for_whose_purpose_online.pdf). Now the new WEF-UN agreement creates a second special place for multinational corporations inside the UN. There is no similar institutional homes in the UN system for civil society, for academics, for religious leaders, or for youth. It is hard to imagine a national government signing a similar formal partnership with one of its business organizations.

At the same time, the UN is under pressure from Donald Trump who wants to deconstruct the whole multilateral system. For Trump, dismantling the international system built after World War II is a companion piece to his domestic effort at deconstructing the administrative state. For the Secretary-General of the UN, the pact with the WEF may well be his effort to find new power actors who can support the current system, which is now celebrating its 75th anniversary (http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/images/pdfs/Fit_for_whose_purpose_online.pdf), in the face of Trump’s onslaught.

On the other side, the WEF recently received significant public criticism after giving Hungarian Prime Minister Orban and Brazilian President Bolsonaro a warm welcome at its 2019 Davos gathering. This marriage may be seen as a way for the WEF to re-establish itself as part of the global governance center.

The timing and managing of public perceptions are not the only interesting aspect of this arrangement. In 2009, the WEF published a 600 page report entitled the Global Redesign Initiative (https://www.umb.edu/gri), which called for a new system of global governing, one in which the decisions of governments could be made secondary to multistakeholder led initiatives in which corporations would play a defining role. In a sense this WEF study recommended a sort of public-private United “Nations” – something that has now been formalized in this MOU. The agreement announces new multistakeholder partnerships to deliver public goods in the fields of education, women, financing, climate change, and health.

The rather detailed MOU includes forms of cross organizational engagement up and down the UN structure. The MOU contains commitments that the Secretary-General himself will be invited to deliver a keynote address at the WEF annual Davos gatherings. His senior staff and the heads of the UN programmes, funds, and agencies will also be invited to participate in regional level meetings hosted by the WEF. It also contains a promise that the UN’s individual country representatives will explore ways to work with WEF’s national Forum Hubs. Aware of the mutual importance of public legitimacy each institution can provide for the other, the MOU also contains an agreement to cross-publicize their joint activities.

Besides the institutional blessing of the United Nations, what does the WEF get from the MOU? The scope of each of the five fields for joint attention is narrowed down from the intergovernmentally negotiated and agreed set of goals to one with more in line with the business interests of WEF members. So under financing, the MOU calls only for ‘build[ing] a shared understanding of sustainable investing’ but not for reducing banking induced instabilities and tax avoidance.

Under climate change, it calls for ‘ …public commitments from the private sector to reach carbon neutrality by 2050’, not actions that result in carbon neutrality by 2030 . Under education, it re-defines the Sustainable Development education goal to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education’ into one that focuses on education to meet the ‘rapidly changing world of work.’ The MOU explicitly restricts the WEF from making financial contributions to the UN, which might have ameliorated the economic impact of some of Trump’s threat to the budgets of the UN system. At the same time, it avoids any commitment to reduce global inequality, to make energy affordable, to hold multinational corporations accountable for human rights violations, or even to rein in the behavior of the WEF’s firms that act inconsistently to the re-defined goals set out in the agreement.

All this joint work might have some practical good if it were not for three crucial elements: firstly, the agreement circumvents the intergovernmental review process; secondly, the agreement elevates multistakeholderism as the solution to the problems with the current multilateral system; and thirdly the proposed multistakeholder partnerships are not governed by any formal democratic system. Were the Secretary-General convinced of the wisdom of a UN marriage with the WEF, he could have submitted the draft MOU for approval by the member states. Instead, the Secretary-General joined the WEF in declaring in effect that multistakeholder groups without any formal intergovernmental oversight are a better governance system than a one-country-one-vote system.

All multistakeholder governance groups are largely composed (https://www.tni.org/en/publication/multi-stakeholderism-a-corporate-push-for-a-new-form-of-global-governance) of a self-selected group of multinational corporations and those organizations and individuals that they want to work with. They work without any common internal rule book to protect the views of all who might be impacted by the group. Participation in multistakeholder group is a voluntary undertaking. The drop-in-drop-out arrangements are antithetical to the UN’s efforts for 75 years to build a stable secure global governance system with a clear understanding of obligations, responsibilities and liabilities.

What is surprising is that by accepting this marriage arrangement with the WEF, the Secretary-General of the UN is marginalizing the intergovernmental system in order to ‘save’ it.
From: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/how-united-nations-quietly-being-turned-public-private-partnership/


To me, it looks like there is a plan for the eventual merger of the UN and WEF. The paragraph that leads me to this speculation is this:


The rather detailed MOU includes forms of cross organizational engagement up and down the UN structure. The MOU contains commitments that the Secretary-General himself will be invited to deliver a keynote address at the WEF annual Davos gatherings. His senior staff and the heads of the UN programmes, funds, and agencies will also be invited to participate in regional level meetings hosted by the WEF. It also contains a promise that the UN’s individual country representatives will explore ways to work with WEF’s national Forum Hubs. Aware of the mutual importance of public legitimacy each institution can provide for the other, the MOU also contains an agreement to cross-publicize their joint activities.

[Cara]

I’m taking the opportunity of an interesting research paper shared on Catherine Austin Fitts’ twitter feed to bump this impactful film.

The paper:

The network of global corporate control
Stefania Vitali, James B. Glattfelder, and Stefano Battiston

Abstract
The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market com- petition and financial stability. So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie struc- ture and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic “super-entity” that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.

Full pdf here: https://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf

[Ernie Nemeth]

Thanks Cara, and Gaia.

Isn't it interesting that in our world, only the experts are heeded. It takes a 'study' to get people to believe what is absolutely obvious for even a child of ten to understand in broad terms - this world is corrupt!

But what I find most revealing is how it's easy to see that these corporations are the next step in the New World Order where the borders of our countries dissolve because no country has jurisdiction over multi-national corporations. They are above the law because no law has the reach to indict them. They can be fined. They can be reprimanded. They can be asked to behave a certain way. But...there is no way on earth to force them to comply to any legislation they do not wish to adopt.

I will enjoy this video.

[Bill Ryan]

:bump::bump::bump: