In most countries, corporations are defined as “legal people”

In the documentary, THE CORPORATION, its creators ask:  “If the corporation were a person, what sort of person would it be?”

Using the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders to match behavior against the list of symptoms, they found that corporations exhibit many of the characteristics that define psychopaths.

• Reckless disregard for safety of self or others
• deceitfulness as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning of others for personal profit or pleasure
• impulsive or failure to plan ahead
• irritability and aggressiveness as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults
• consistent irresponsibility as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
• lack of remorse as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated or stolen from another.

************************************************************

In his book, The VALUE OF NOTHING, Raj Patel points out a great example of a corporation as a psychopath–MONSANTO.

Monsanto poisoned an entire Alabama town and withheld the knowledge that it was doing so because it did not want, according to a confidential memo, to “lose a single dollar in business.”  The details of what Monsanto did which were uncovered in a Washington Post report in 2002 are hideous.  For decades, Monsanto employees suppressed knowledge about what happened when they dumped toxic waste from the Anniston, Alabama plant into local streams–the fish died within ten seconds, spurting blood and shedding skin.

Here is the sum of that Washington Post report:  “They also know that for nearly 40 years, while producing the now-banned industrial coolants known as PCBs at a local factory, Monsanto Co. routinely discharged toxic waste into a west Anniston creek and dumped millions of pounds of PCBs into oozing open-pit landfills. And thousands of pages of Monsanto documents — many emblazoned with warnings such as “CONFIDENTIAL: Read and Destroy” — show that for decades, the corporate giant concealed what it did and what it knew.”

**********************************************************************

“Today, parts of Anniston are so contaminated that residents have been told not to grow vegetables in the soil, kick up dirt, eat food, chew gum or smoke cigarettes while working in their yards. ‘Our children have to play in the streets, on the sidewalks, because they can’t play in the grass because it’s contaminated,’ says resident David Baker. ‘We have to wear masks if we cut our grass. Where else in the United States of America are people doing that?’”

Proclaim the Queen!

•