Lets talk about the worst corporations ever.

[vadger1]

So what's everybody's favorite horrible corporation?

Recently mine has been Bayer, which http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_haemophilia_blood_products">sold HIV-contaminated drugs to hemophilia patients overseas to make a marginal profit off stuff they couldn't sell here.

It's not American but there's DeBeers, which exploited cheap labor through Apartheid and artificially raised the prices of diamonds so as to make them valuable.

How about Siemens, which http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens_AG#World_War_II_Era">built ovens for Nazi Germany knowing full well what they'd be used for.

One I'm interested in now is Bacardi, which was the driving corporate sponsor behind the Cuban trade embargo and gave money to FANC, a right-wing organization accused of sponsoring terrorism in Cuba. I'm http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/boycott-bacardi-buy-better-booze">boycotting them now. As should you.

Feel free to share your own amazing discoveries about the corporate system. It amazes me how little they're held accountable for these crimes, especially Bayer and Bacardi. I'm sure there's even worse ones out there.

[KittyWampus]

1. Monsato

[HCE SuiGeneris]

10. I concur.

[Imagevision]

2. FauxNews

[mrreowwr_kittty]

3. Halliburton. Blackwater.

Enough said.

[timtom]

57. Interestingly enough, Blackwater

has changed its strategy.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3661902&mesg_id=3661902

I only received one response/rec for that post.

Don't you agree it's significant?

[Initech]

4. My nominee: Dell Computer

They recently announced closings of 2 plants in Texas, laying off some 8.800 workers, then Michael Dell (GOP shill extrodinaire) announced that he's investing something like $2 billion in India factories. :mad:

[lpbk2713]

13. He literally took food out of the mouths of hundreds of children by doing that.

But what would he care about it.

[SmileyRose]

35. Well, American children - but maybe some Indian children will get to eat?

I can dream can't I?

[Patchuli]

50. We should boycott Dell...nt

[anonymous171]

5. Every Big Media Corporation. They are what is wrong with America.

[JDPriestly]

6. It's an old one: the old Standard Oil (the successors don't begin to be as bad as Standard Oil)

The stockholders of Siemens of today should not be held to answer for the ovens of yesterday. It is right to recall and never forget that history. But let's focus on the corporate criminals of our time more than on the criminals of the past.

[vadger1]

12. Well, let's not forget...

Several years ago Siemens tried registering a brand called "Zyklon" for its products, including gas ovens. Yes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2233890.stm

I mean I still agree with you but we shouldn't let Siemens go scott-free.

[Selatius]

29. The law provides an opening for you. Siemens is considered as separate from shareholders.

The shareholders may not be liable, but because a corporation is its own legal entity, it can be held responsible for its past actions.

[napi21]

7. I think EVERY era or generation has a few. I wasn't alive, but

I sure have read about how horrible the railroads treated the people who built them. The steel industry was almost as bad. How about the stories of those who build Hoover Dam?

[polichick]

8. The U.S. Military-Industrial Complex

[elehhhhna]

24. Carlyle Group, where the Bushes & Bin Ladens make big, big money.

[polichick]

31. And the reason Bush isn't looking for Osama??

[lonestarnot]

45. And the reason they'd love to do Iran.

[kestrel91316]

9. Monsanto - because they invented Terminator Seeds.

[SacredCow]

11. Didn't know that about Bacardi....

I guess I'll have to make my Mojitos out of 10-Cane, instead!!! :bounce:

[Hydra]

14. The commercial pig factories come to mind

Your noms are all good. How about IBM for supplying the Nazis with database capabilities for tracking their concentration camp occupants?

How about this one from a few days ago?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3663898

Oh, And the date rape drug and lead toys?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/08/toy.recall/

Exxon getting their penalty nulled by SCOTUS?

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/25/scotus-slashes-exxon-damages-for-valdez-spill-by-2-billion/

Man, I could do this all day.

[elehhhhna]

25. Tyson ain't so clean, either.

[Ian David]

15. DuPont / Union Carbide

http://www.studentsforbhopal.org/WhyBhopal.htm

[nosmokes]

16. Monsanto certainly hasta make the top three, but there is no shortage of

contestants.

[Blue_Tires]

20. MBNA and Blue Cross/Blue Shield

two of my faves which i deal with daily

[iamahaingttta]

17. The Carlyle Group.

The company that brought us George W Bush, 9/11 and the Iraq War.

http://www.carlyle.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Carlyle_Group

http://www.hereinreality.com/carlyle.html

[Radical Activist]

18. McDonald's and General Electric

GE for being a defense contractor along with bringing us Ronald Reagan, Global Warming and being a major player in the globalization rush to the bottom.

McDonald's for poisoning and killing millions and millions with their unhealthy food and pushing the unsustainable industrialization of agriculture.

[Marie26]

19. Dyncorp!

100% pure evil.

[LostInAnomie]

21. Walmart

They are the absolute worst example of the free market and globalism in action.

[elehhhhna]

22. UBS, Phil Gramm's bank, which has admitted to helping US citizens hide 18B dollars

from taxation, illegally.

The news broke last week, it's an international scandal, and the US MSM? Not a peep!

[elehhhhna]

23. Whoever owns Nutrasweet -- a good galpal of mine dated one of their Div. Presidents and even HE

wouldn't drink anything that contained it.

[FredScuttle]

26. I've always thought Omni Consumer Products (OCP) were dicks

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omni_Consumer_Products

[readmoreoften]

27. IBM. Sold Hitler punchcard systems to organize the death camps. Provided on-site maintenance.

Per Edward Black's award winning IBM and the Holocaust

Coca-Cola gets Honorable Mention for creating Fanta Orange to sell to Nazis, since they couldn't sell Coke outright.

[readmoreoften]

28. ITT and Ford: Proud sponsors of the Neo-con led establishment of Pinochet's dictatorship.

Per Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine

[Contrary1]

30. I agree with Bayer being high on the worst list, but for a different reason.

In 1992, Dr. Nicholas Kouchoukos, one of this country’s top heart surgeons, conducted a small study, not funded by Bayer, in which Trasylol was given to 20 patients. Thirteen of these patients had problems with kidney function after the procedure.

My mother had heart surgery in 1992. We were told to expect a loss in kidney function before they even wheeled her into the operating room. She was on dialysis the rest of her life. Ultimately, her cause of death was listed as ischemic bowel. That is fancy lingo for a stroke, which just happened to be another serious risk of using Trasylol that Bayer didn't want to make public.

One Thousand Lives A Month

"Thirteen of these patients had problems with kidney function after the procedure," Kouchoukos says"Trasylol patients were 27 percent more likely to die than those getting a rival drug a decade after open-heart surgery, according to a review of 10,275 patients at Duke University Medical Center. Another study of 78,199 patients, presented to regulators last year after Bayer initially withheld the data, found a 78 percent higher death risk a week after surgery.

The controversial med was approved in the US in 1993 to reduce transfusions and bleeding during open-heart surgery, but a 2006 study linked the drug to higher rates of heart attack, stroke, kidney failure and death..."

http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/02/bayers-trayslol-raises-risk-of-death-studies/

[lonestarnot]

43. And I guess it is still being used?

[Riktor]

47. And an oldie, but a goodie...

Bayer was the first company to synthesize heroin, which they then marketed as a cough suppressant.

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

32. Newscorp and Blackwater spring immediately to mind

for obvious and egregious reasons :mad: :nuke:

[timtom]

58. See post #3 and #57 above

n/t

[Wednesdays]

33. Faux Noise

And the rest of the lying M$M come in a close second. :grr:

[Kip Humphrey]

34. Bushco.

[Jed Dilligan]

36. Dow, G.E., ExxonMobil...

Every really big one has done really bad things.

[RufusTFirefly]

37. Folks! Folks! You're asking the wrong question!!

Choosing the worst corporation among a group of potential candidates is an utterly pointless exercise.
The "worst" corporations are actually the "best," because they maximized return on their shareholders' investment. Corporations that failed to compete with IBM or Siemens or Monsanto are actually bad corporations because they allowed empathy and humanity to get in the way of their mission of maximizing return.

Better, far more complicated questions are these:

• Why do we live in a society that rewards profit at the expense of compassion?
• Why do we live in a world where hurting people is actually profitable and where helping people is considered "bad for business"?

[Hannah Bell]

38. that's the question, alright. but most people subscribe to the "bad apples" theory.

the whole set-up is designed to create bad apples.

[RufusTFirefly]

39. Yup. "Bad apples" and "lone nuts." Life is just so goldurned simple!

Here's the "bad apples" medley, preceded -- all too ironically -- by a corporate ad

http://www.spike.com/video/corporation-bad/2532373

We now return you to "Survivor" and "American Idol."

[checks-n-balances]

41. Deep, thought-provoking questions to end a sobering thread

(unless someone else posts on it after this.)

It's like the past 100+ years of history have witnessed a slow but steady buildup, layer upon layer, of science-fiction-like developments, the effects of which multiply exponentially, and will ultimately damage or destroy every aspect of life on earth.

Except it's not fiction.

By the way...why isn't there a "war" on this "terror"?

[mnhtnbb]

46. Good questions. What about the answers?

[lonestarnot]

48. Answer comes back to stop supporting their shit and take them down

somehow. If the money stops flowing to shareholders, they will stop seeing investment. If they stop seeing investment, the stop growing, if they stop growing, they start shrinking and enough shrinking they die. The look at the bad corps here is not a bad thing as some here have implied and that we are asking the wrong question. How many people really know the things discussed on this thread. I was enlightened with regard to a couple.

[vadger1]

60. Boycott.

Boycotting these corporations is really the only way to go. These companies understand ONLY economic incentives.

Look at the Montgomery Bush boycott, probably the most famous example. Or on a smaller scale, the A&F boycott when they sold offensive t-shirts people disagreed with.

I linked to my http://www.thepoint.com/campaigns/boycott-bacardi-buy-better-booze">Bacardi boycott for a reason. Maybe I'm just naive but I honestly think that there's a clear and easy way to hold corporations like these accountable provided we have enough people behind us.

[femrap]

40. Monsanto, Dow Chemical

I'm in an anti-chemical mood of late. Also I hate the ag-food folks....ConAgra and I forget the names of the others. Just how much ag land do these corps own anyhow???? Cargill...that's one. Hell...add the food processors in there...Nestle from Switzerland is getting on my nerves. There's Kraft, Sara Lee, etc....of course they were hand in hand with the Chemical Corps to add shit to our food.

Then there is Big Pharma. And who could forget Halliburton??? Not me! At least Bechtel left Iraq after 55 of their employees were killed. Halliburton's male employees stayed cuz they could rape women, including American women, with no repercussions.

Exxon-Mobil goes without saying...

Any and all corps that have moved their manufacturing to China....I still won't buy crap that is made in China. IF EVERYONE DID THAT, WE'D BE POWERFUL.

Walmart, needless to say.

[lonestarnot]

42. Appleton and Cruzan now, but why is WTO supporting a condemnation.

Seems against their grain, no?

[vadger1]

59. Free trade

Because the embargo happens to be anti-free trade too. It really has the unique characteristic of pissing off both human rights groups and neo-liberal advocates. It's really that bad.

[mnhtnbb]

44. How could this list not have Enron on it?

[Riktor]

49. Because...

... in the grand scheme of things, Enron is a blip on the radar. What they did, which is not to be trivialized, pales in comparison to, say, United Fruit's coups in Guatemala.

[PeaceNikki]

51. Bayer isn't "American" either.

[Blue_In_AK]

52. EXXON. n/t

[morgan2]

53. the original evil company

The British East India Company?
as far as evil corporations you gotta go with the ones over throwing governments and mercenaries.
-united fruit
-every major oil company(BP Exxon Chevron etc)
-Blackwater, Dyncorp, and on and on
-Union Carbide of course because of their handling of Bhopal

[conspirator]

54. Chiquita. Sponsors of right wing militias in Latin America nt

[lostnfound]

55. How about an honorable mention for CCI and Wackenhut?

The for-profit prison industry is a blight on American democracy and justice.

[cascadiance]

56. Some more: Diebold, Clear Channel, MZM, US Steel

o Diebold - They are probably the most pronounced of the election machine companies, but certainly the others deserve consideration too.
o Clear Channel - The way they've taken over the radio spectrum *AND* other advertising like Billboards, etc. makes them just as bad a monopoly as any company.
o MZM Corporation - One of the bribing companies at the center of the Duke Cunningham fiasco.
o U.S. Steel - According to Douglas Blackmon (author of "Slavery by Another Name"), was one of the worst companies in the south that in effect made use of slave labor under stealth circumstances even after the Civil War.
o AT&T - at the fore of trying to rebuild their monopoly and shut down things like public tv access and net neutrality.
o East India Company - This was what the Boston Tea Party was all about and what lead to our country being created.
o BCCI - into all kinds of chicanery.
o Countrywide - OK, my sister works there still now, and a lot of the worst people are out of there now, but it still was evil.
o Ptech - Indira Singh needs to be able to tell us more about these folks, as do others.
o Philip Morris - Making too much money giving more people cancer.



And fully agree with others here on:
WalMart, Halliburton, NewsCorp, Blackwater, Union Carbide, Exxon, Monsanto,

[Initech]

61. Clear Channel - owners of broadcasting rights to Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage, and O'Reilly

Total GOP shills.

[LWolf]

62. Monsanto. hands down. n/t