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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

JCC Jabba's Big Book of Corporate Malfeasance

Discussion in 'Community' started by Jabbadabbado, Sep 24, 2015.

  1. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
    Why should VW get all the love? There are great stories of dodgy corporate behavior ongoing, all around us and throughout history. In these pages, let us lovingly detail some of the more entertaining stories.

    Here's a truly fun one:

    Exxon's Own Research Confirmed Fossil Fuels' Role in Global Warming Decades Ago
    http://insideclimatenews.org/news/1...confirmed-fossil-fuels-role-in-global-warming

    The year is 1977. Exxon's scientists conclude that "carbon dioxide from the world's use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity."

    Further research suggested "a doubling of the carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration in the atmosphere would increase average global temperatures by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit), and as much as 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) at the poles."

    The kicker: "Present thinking," [Exxon scientist James Black] wrote in the 1978 summary, "holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical."

    Cut to 1990. Exxon spins up its PR, lobbying and research muscle "behind efforts to manufacture doubt about the reality of global warming its own scientists had once confirmed. It lobbied to block federal and international action to control greenhouse gas emissions. It helped to erect a vast edifice of misinformation that stands to this day."

    Hard decisions needed to be made. Exxon pioneered in building the sociopolitical infrastructure to keep those decisions from being made.

    Share your own greatest hits list!
     
  2. JoinTheSchwarz

    JoinTheSchwarz Former Head Admin star 9 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Nov 21, 2002
    What about Nestlé pushing baby formula in developing countries, forcing international organizations to not recognize access to water as an inalienable right so that they can profit from aquifers, making Ethiopia pay their debt during one of the worst famines they've suffered, regularly using child labor in cocoa plantations in Africa, and probably buying Satan's soul for a dime?
     
  3. Darth Punk

    Darth Punk JCC Manager star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 25, 2013
    De Beers - purest evil
     
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  4. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
  5. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    Here's a short video RE: Exxon knowing about anthropogenic climate change since 1977.

     
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  6. SuperWatto

    SuperWatto Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Sep 19, 2000
    Anyone remember the Sony rootkit?

    Whenever you'd buy a Sony CD and play it on your computer, it would go right ahead and install some software that kept you from copying the CD. While at it, it also created security holes, gobbled up system resources, and could make your computer crash. 22 million CDs with the stuff were sold.

    This is ten years ago already. Time flies. At the time, I wrote blogs about how scandals like this would force big companies to be more transparent in the future. In my work I'd tell clients that in market communication they'd need to be transparent.
    How naieve.
    Sure, they all put the word "transparent" in their communication. Like "green" before it. Hollow phrases.
    At least people don't buy CDs anymore.
     
  7. Sith_Sensei__Prime

    Sith_Sensei__Prime Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    May 22, 2000
    The 7 Dwarfs of Tobacco testifying that nicotine is not addictive.
     
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  8. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    Is there a time limit on this? For example, so many large, successful companies such as BASF, Bayer, ExxonMobil, Chevron, BMW, Volkswagen, Coca-Cola, Chase, IBM, Ford, and Nestle (hey, two of these have already been mentioned!) collaborated to varying degrees with the Third Reich (Exxon and Chevron, as Standard Oil, maintained a close relationship and even tried to plan for the event of war between Germany and the U.S.) and participated in the Holocaust (BASF and Bayer, as IG Farben, manufactured the gas; IBM manufactured the punch cards used to efficiently keep track of victims). Shockingly, most of them faced little-to-no consequences and, as in the case of BASF and Bayer, the people behind the collaboration continued to run the companies after the war. As many people may be aware, Coca-Cola still proudly markets the drink they invented for the cola-syrup-starved Nazis.

    There's also leaded gasoline, which was a total crock from the beginning and invented by DuPont and General Motors solely to make money by poisoning workers and billions of people.
     
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  9. mrsvos

    mrsvos Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Nov 18, 2005
    [​IMG] Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer. [​IMG]

     
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  10. CT-867-5309

    CT-867-5309 Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Jan 5, 2011
    And this is notable, why?
     
  11. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    I don't know. If a product was invented because a genocidal state was under a trade embargo and it was first manufactured with slave labor, I'd consider its legacy rather tainted. Maybe that's just me. I mean, I could feel differently if I were making a lot of money off of it or if I really enjoyed the taste of fruit-flavored sugar water.
     
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  12. Darth Punk

    Darth Punk JCC Manager star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 25, 2013
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  13. CT-867-5309

    CT-867-5309 Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Jan 5, 2011
    Unless Fanta, the liquid itself, was a Nazi, or an anti-Semite, or believed in eugenics, or carried out the holocaust, or turned Nazis into supersoldiers, I don't think there's a problem. But I'm pretty sure it's just a soft drink, and not a sentient Red Skull of soft drinks.
     
  14. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    its

    just

    a

    soft drink
     
  15. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
  16. EmpireForever

    EmpireForever Force Ghost star 8

    Registered:
    Mar 15, 2004
    lol classic
     
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  17. anakinfansince1983

    anakinfansince1983 Skywalker Saga/LFL/YJCC Manager star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Mar 4, 2011
    I just realized that if we avoid any product from any industry that ever demonstrated dodgy corporate behavior, we'd probably have to live in the woods and grow our own food.

    And 90 percent of all food-growing seeds are made by Monsanto so that might be out.

    Starvation and death from exposure it is.
     
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  18. DantheJedi

    DantheJedi Jedi Grand Master star 5

    Registered:
    Aug 23, 2009
    No Hugo Boss made the uniforms SS officers wore, or that Siemens built the gas chambers at Auschwitz?

    You people are slipping.
     
  19. Jabbadabbado

    Jabbadabbado Manager Emeritus star 7 VIP - Former Mod/RSA

    Registered:
    Mar 19, 1999
  20. Jabba-wocky

    Jabba-wocky Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    May 4, 2003
    Isn't that the whole issue, though? I could see some special argument for preserving it--or at least sparing punishment--if there was something redeeming about the enterprise. Taking for instance, Samuel Sewall, who is both infamous as a judge in the Salem Witch Trials and famous as one of the first to publish an abolitionist tract in the American colonies.

    But we're not dealing with such a case. You are arguing strenuously that we ought not to be to hard on a soft drink company lest we lose one of dozens of near identical formulations of sugar water. Why shouldn't they be condemned and thrown overboard? What's so worthwhile about it?

    I'm pretty sure it's just a soft drink.
     
  21. CT-867-5309

    CT-867-5309 Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Jan 5, 2011
    Why shouldn't Fanta be condemned and thrown overboard? Because it literally does and did no harm. To anyone (well, besides the harm such sugar water drinks do, but that's not the basis for the objection). It didn't do anything bad to need to be redeemed. Before we get to redeeming value, we have to establish that it was tainted. I don't think it was.

    But people like it, apparently. I mean, if it sells, apparently it's worthwhile and has redeeming value to someone. Idk, I don't think I've ever had any. I don't often consume soft drinks.

    Why should the fact that it was produced in Nazi Germany and consumed by Nazis be a reason for it to be tainted? Lots of things were produced in Nazi Germany and consumed by Nazis.

    The only potential aversion I see, the only aversion at all, is the fact that it was produced by slave labor. That's bad. But, as I suspected, lots of things in Nazi Germany were produced by slave labor. Should every building, railroad, road, etc that was built by slave labor be torn down?

    It's not produced by slave labor anymore.

    Are all the food products that were once produced by slave labor in America "tainted", too?

    I just think that particular point, and that point only (some of his other points had a much stronger basis, but with the same dilemma of so many things having connections to Nazi Germany) was a case of oversensitive Nazi aversion. Not everything that was ever touched by a Nazi is forever tainted and evil.

    And no, I don't think we should be hard on a soft drink company for making soft drinks for Nazis. It didn't do any harm. It didn't help the Nazis in any meaningful way. Why can't companies make money off Nazis, when they're not even helping them? Why does a company have to cut ties with local assets and the market just because there's a trade embargo? Why can't they do what they did, and make do with what was available in country? Why does a factory have to shut down? Why can't it stay in business, if it is able? Again, it's not hurting anyone.

    Now, if you want to say that Coca-Cola had a bunch of Nazi employees and should feel some shame over that, I guess that's fine. But that doesn't mean everything ever created by those employees is tainted. That's not how the world has worked. We've used lots of things created by the Nazis. So has everyone else.

    This ties into that one thread. Can you separate a person's work from their actions? The community overwhelmingly voted yes.

    Can you find something good in the bad?
     
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  22. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    Yes, especially if it's the same product produced by exactly the same entity.

    And really, from murdering union organizers to monopolizing local water sources, Nazi connections are far from Coca-Cola's only crimes.
     
  23. Diggy

    Diggy Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Feb 27, 2013
    I assume Darth Guys clothes were not made in any part of Asia.
     
  24. Darth Guy

    Darth Guy Chosen One star 10

    Registered:
    Aug 16, 2002
    I did not tell anyone to boycott anything. I'm aware that every for-profit industry engages in unspeakable activities in order to maximize their profits (such as collaborating with Nazis), which is why I am against them existing at all. In the meantime I am clothed in hypocrisy.
     
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  25. Darth Punk

    Darth Punk JCC Manager star 7 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 25, 2013
    The BBC for multiple cover ups of Jimmy Saville's organised paedophile ring