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Corporations
Outside Agitator
How Darryl Cherney Set Out To Save The Redwoods And Ended Up Suing The FBI (And Winning)
A radical is somebody who goes out to the furthest edge of the debate in order to gain leverage with which to move the larger body of thought. If an ant wants to move an elephant, he has to move as far out onto the seesaw as possible. Then, through the laws of physics, he can move the great weight. That’s what activists do, only in a more psychological fashion. You go as far out there as you can in order to move society. The problem is that, once you’re out there, you’re perceived as an extremist and society is unwilling to embrace you.
September 2002
Down To Business
Paul Hawken On Reshaping The Economy
I don’t believe you can train anybody, especially people in business. You can only present and embody ideas. I try to help people understand the idea that valuing and conserving our stock of natural capital can lead to astonishing breakthroughs in processes, products, and design. Again, people move toward possibility. Once they see that we can actually improve the quality of life for everyone on earth by using radically less “life,” they get excited.
April 2002Next To Godliness
The Story Behind Dr. Bronner’s Soap — An Interview With Ralph Bronner
A few times a month, I’m asked whether we’re a New Age religion or a cult. Well, we’re not, or if we are, we have no members. Our family is running a soap business based on Dad’s teachings. All he did is what any religious person does: he read the great works — the Torah, the Bible, Thomas Paine — and picked what he liked. His theology was a sort of cosmic soup.
January 2001Invasion Of The Classroom
How Corporations Buy Access To Children — An Interview With Alex Molnar
Schools get the Zap Me labs for no upfront cost, but they have to guarantee that children will use them for so many hours a day. And guess what: the browser portal has advertising on it. This means kids’ ability to do their schoolwork is contingent upon their viewing advertising.
November 2000Crimes Of Punishment
An Interview With Christian Parenti
I describe SWAT teams in Fresno as a kind of postmodern public execution — a highly ritualized, highly theatrical display of the sovereign’s power. Like an invading army, they occupy whole neighborhoods, harass the residents, and surround the houses. They have machine guns, barking dogs, and armored personnel carriers. This is state propaganda, political theater, directed not at the “perp” holed up in the house, but at the hundreds of community members watching.
October 2000Liberation Marketing And The Culture Trust
Liberation marketing takes the old mass-culture critique — consumerism as conformity — fully into account, acknowledges it, addresses it, and solves it. Liberation marketing imagines consumers breaking free from the old order, tearing loose from the shackles with which capitalism has bound us, escaping the routine of bureaucracy and hierarchy, getting in touch with our true selves, and, finally, finding authenticity, that holiest of consumer grails.
March 1999War On Truth
The Secret Battle For The American Mind — An Interview With John Stauber
Public relations is now inseparable from the business of lobbying, creating public policy, and getting candidates elected to public office. The PR industry just might be the single most powerful political institution in the world. It expropriates and exploits the democratic rights of millions on behalf of big business by fooling the public about the issues.
March 1999Enemy Of The State
An Interview With John Zerzan
I’m talking about time not existing. Time as a continuing thread that unravels in an endless progression, linking all events together while remaining independent of them — that doesn’t exist. Sequence exists. Rhythm exists. But not time. This reification of time is related to the notion of mass production and division of labor. Tick, tick, tick, as you said: Identical seconds. Identical people. Identical chores repeated endlessly. But when you realize that no two occurrences are identical, and that each moment is different from the moment before, time simply disappears. If events are always novel, then not only is routine impossible, but the notion of time is meaningless.
September 1998The Rules Of Corporate Behavior
Most people are familiar with the destructive behavior of corporations: closing factories and exporting jobs; dumping toxic waste; devastating the environment; abandoning communities for “free-trade zones,” where environmental and social laws are lax. But few understand why corporations behave this way.
December 1997
