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The Corporation: The Movie

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andrew

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Has anybody seen this movie or know anything about it?  A quick look at their website doesn't make the movie look to appealing.  www.thecorporation.com

All I needed to see was the name of Michael Moore in the credits to know what sort of anti-capitalist bullsh*t the movie must be.

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"The whole "big-business-is-out-to-enslave-and-impoverish-mankind" message is just wearing thin and trying my patience. How can people believe it despite all the evidence to the contrary?! "

Because the evidence to the contrary is in books and in rational business and economic sense. All of which, most countries youth completely lack, much less could read. Also, the lack of responsibility of one's own life.

IMO...it's imperative that a counter-argument to this movie is necessary...

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IMO...it's imperative that a counter-argument to this movie is necessary...

The fact that the movie exists and is being shown in theatres is the counter-argument. At the bottom of their website:

© Copyright 2003 - 2004, Big Picture Media Corporation MMIII

The movie is produced and distributed by a corporation and is shown in corporate theatres. :P

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All I needed to see was the name of Michael Moore in the credits to know what sort of anti-capitalist bullsh*t the movie must be.

Michael Moore, surely one of the most morally disgusting men on earth, also happens to be a hero of the Democratic Party. Chairman of the Democratic National Committe, Terry McAuliffe, attended a screening of Fahrenheit 9/11 and pronounced it "very powerful," and agreed that the film was "essentially fair and factually based." Democratic Senator Tom Harkin urged all Americans to see the film because "It's important for the American people to understand what has gone on before, what led us to this point, and to see it sort of in this unvarnished presentation by Michael Moore." Other Democrats attending the screening were Tom Daschle, Max Baucus, Barbara Boxer, Bill Nelson, Charles Rangel, Henry Waxman, and Jim McDermott. Link: World War IV, on page 40 of an excellent 48 page essay on the current war---or criminal investigation, depending on your party of choice.

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On the site there is a link talking about a petition for a "Global referendum on corporate power" that says  "Vote! Wouldn't it be nice to have a say in how corporations do business?".

You know, sometimes as I read Atlas Shrugged I think to myself, "This must be an exaggeration. How can people be this openly stupid?" It's things like this that change my mind.

I think a bunch of Capitalist should get together and make a "Documentry", except actually include facts in it;)

What about www.michaelmoorehatesamerica.com?

I'm not going to pay to see this film.

I might end up watching it to see how they go about their arguments.

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  • 1 year later...

I was compelled to watch this film (at least some of it, it's supposed to be nearly 3 hours long) in a philosophy class yesterday and my mind is still trying to recover from the mental pillaging the evil in this movie performed on it.

The entire premise of the film is that Corporations, as legal persons (the movie never draws the distinctions between corporate "persons" and real persons, so the audience assumes they share all the same legal rights) are psychotic violators of law and decency and pretty much evil towards their workers, the environment and the consumers.

It's selective use of imagery, interviews and facts present a very consistant, effective propaganda to press this message. It provides for interviews, among others, with the former head of Royal Dutch Shell, except completely dismisses anything he has to say, and pretty much plays whatever the CEOs as a joke or some duplicitous lie. They went through the trouble to get interviews with economic geniuses such as Milton Friedman and give him about 20 seconds of air time, not actually presenting his point of view.

If this is what our generation is being taught with, if their minds are vulnerable to it, we truly are doomed.

Edited by Captain Nate
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I've bought the movie because I liked the name. 'Corporation'. :D

Well I liked some parts of the movie. It's a very mixed message. There are some very good points against Corporatism (business plot, military industrial complex, United Nations, WTO, (Corporate) Intelligence Services etc.). Unfortunately no effort was undertaken to stress the point that there is a difference between capitalism and corporatism.

Some points are raised which are real issues. You cannot call it 'privatizing' by letting the government decide which competitor to have the monopol of the water supply. The only real privatization is possible by allowing competition.

Television can be a problem, too. People should be more aware of the influence moving pictures have on the subconciousness. If you are not aware of the influence you are manipulated, even with an objective view.

Food production can also be a problem. But I think it sources again in the government and not in the market. If there was no FDA people would need start to think what to eat and what not, they would have to pay companies to investigate what food is healthy and what not. Instead companies just pay the FDA to stay silent and people are fooled into believing the safety. Without the FCC there also would be a better access to information.

In Genetic Modified food I see also an issue because the modified seeds is able to spread to other fields.

Michael Walker also makes some good points about privatizing the nature to rescue it. Or Vizer how they secured the neighborhood because the city was unable.

Chomsky makes me puke :P

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In Genetic Modified food I see also an issue because the modified seeds is able to spread to other fields.

I thought most GM foods had defects (like susceptibility to a virus) built in that would minimize the "damage" caused by an overgrowth of edible material.

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I thought most GM foods had defects (like susceptibility to a virus) built in that would minimize the "damage" caused by an overgrowth of edible material.

Well, the main problem of the GM food is that once you introduce a gene it is very hard (if not impossible) to remove it from nature again. While the new species itself would probably easy to extinguish seeds of the plants will mix with 'normal' plants.

People argue that man always has modified the genes of plants, so what's wrong with 'genetic modified' plants?

Well, the main difference is that the modifications man used in the last few millenia can also happen naturally. Simply said: A dog is a wolf. It's just a special combination of wolf genes.

But in GM Food new genes from other species are introduced. It cannot happen naturally that fish genes mix with tomato genes or cockroach genes with strawberry genes.

And these genes stay in the gene pool and slowly mix with all plants.

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And does this cause a problem? I'm completely ignorant on this subject.

It is a problem. To understand it you have to study evolution and some biology (and maybe some computer science) but I try to explain it easily:

DNA is like a computer program. Although science has shown that single genes are responsible for certain aspects all genes work in a network if you change a gene it could have an effect on an other gene.

What the food industry does not is long-term tests. Animals and plants have evolved in parallel in billions of years, the animals have adapted to the plants' genomes. You 'trust' an apple more than for example a drug more because the creator was nature (i.e. billions of years of development and testing compared to the few years within a pharma company). But with GM food nobody knows what long-term effects it could have. Maybe some effects will show only years later or in the children.

The problem, especially with food, is that people can hardly tell what they buy. That causes the market to move in the direction to exploit that lack of knowledge. With GM food it is certainly possible to increase the food supply by a factor 2-10. But it's often at the cost of other factors like nutrition (e.g. vitamines).

And if you look at current legislations in the US there is a move to reduce the labelling of GM food even more.

Theoretically it does not matter if GM food is possible dangerous or not. If it is then you simply switch to organic food. But if organic food is 'infected' with the GM food then your choice is gone. In addition companies like Monsanto sue the farmers whose crops were infected by the GM food (-> patent infringement) and try to gain more and more patents to corner the market. Cornering the market IS possible because the possibility to infect other plants and to enforce the own patents through the government.

I encourage you to research this, it's a complex subject and worth to take interest (it's your own health after all):

I've put some videos on my homepage:

Contaminated Food (7 min, 27 mb)

Future of Food (85 min, 290 mb)

@Eternal:

Yes, exactly :)

equilibrium.jpg

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  • 2 years later...
Some points are raised which are real issues. You cannot call it 'privatizing' by letting the government decide which competitor to have the monopol of the water supply.

This is one thing that really bothered me about the movie, but which you almost had to expect -- they show some things and leave out others.

They are talking about shock therapy and privatization and the terrible effects it had on Bolivia. If I remember Commanding Heights correctly, though, Bolivia was about the only place where this policy didn't pan out too well. Why didn't they go ask the Polish what they thought about shock therapy?

Anyways, I had suspicions that when they were talking about "private water" what was really the case was that the government had granted monopoly status to some water company, although it wasn't mentioned in the movie. Does anybody know what actually happened with Bolivian water? DID the Bolivian government or World Bank, through it's terms of privatization, give exclusive rights to one company?

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