Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

Archae

(46,337 posts)
Mon May 23, 2016, 01:06 PM May 2016

Monsanto is constantly slammed here, but this greedy company never gets mentioned.

Why?

Meet the abusive ‘world’s largest company’ you’ve never heard of

Giant corporate entities have become so far-flung and impersonal that “human relations” departments have been created within the soulless structures to cloak the fact that there’s really nothing human about them. HR is mostly known for sending the corporate rank and file peppy motivational memos that boil down to: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”

The beatings of American workers (wage slashing, axed benefits, union busting, mass firings, offshored factories, and brutish abuse of worker rights) have been increasing in frequency, intensity, and scope—mostly ordered by CEOs in the posh, faraway headquarters of multi-tentacled global empires. These detached autocrats are wrecking the lives of hardworking people for no reasons but institutional greed, calculated self-interest … and because our corporate-coddling government lets them get away with it. Let’s meet one of the most powerful of these lords of rapacious global capitalism—Glencore.

Never heard of Glencore? Neither had I until February, when I visited some members of the United Steelworkers Union outside a Glencore-owned aluminum plant (Sherwin Alumina) on the Texas Gulf Coast. In 2014, after months of negotiating a new contract, Glencore suddenly tossed these workers a take-it-or-leave-it offer that would drastically cut wages, increase healthcare costs, and eliminate pensions for new hires. (Glencore’s profit that year was $4.6 billion). Fed up, 98 percent of the union’s members voted against the contract. Glencore’s reaction was to lock them out and replace them with contract workers.

Some 5,500 miles away from these proud, principled workers, you’ll find Glencore’s sleek global headquarters (dubbed by Reuters as “the biggest company you never heard of”) in Baar, Switzerland.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/meet-the-abusive-worlds-largest-company-youve-never-heard-of/

9 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies

Archae

(46,337 posts)
3. So...fucking...what?
Mon May 23, 2016, 01:40 PM
May 2016

Going to blame them for inventing heroin over a hundred years ago, like a poster did?

 

floriduck

(2,262 posts)
4. Not sure why you are so hostile. I was just adding another equation to your post.
Mon May 23, 2016, 01:42 PM
May 2016

I'm not attacking you. Please take a deep breath.

Archae

(46,337 posts)
5. It's a diversion.
Mon May 23, 2016, 01:48 PM
May 2016

Create an "eee-vil strawman," and knock it down.

Meanwhile a really nasty bunch in Switzerland is doing a dump on it's workers and not getting the attention they deserve.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
9. Cheney exposed in February 2016 for covering up CIA-Mafia assassination program. So, no. Not really.
Mon May 23, 2016, 02:55 PM
May 2016


Gerald Ford White House Altered Rockefeller Commission Report in 1975; Removed Section on CIA Assassination Plots

White House Aide Dick Cheney Spearheaded Editing of Report to Dampen Impact

New Documents Cast Further Doubt on Commission’s Investigation, Independence


National Security Archive Briefing Book No. 543
Edited by John Prados and Arturo Jimenez-Bacardi
Posted - February 29, 2016

Washington, DC, February 29, 2016 – The Gerald Ford White House significantly altered the final report of the supposedly independent 1975 Rockefeller Commission investigating CIA domestic activities, over the objections of senior Commission staff, according to internal White House and Commission documents posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org). The changes included removal of an entire 86-page section on CIA assassination plots and numerous edits to the report by then-deputy White House Chief of Staff Richard Cheney.

Today’s posting includes the entire suppressed section on assassination attempts, Cheney’s handwritten marginal notes, staff memos warning of the fallout of deleting the controversial section, and White House strategies for presenting the edited report to the public. The documents show that the leadership of the presidentially-appointed commission deliberately curtailed the investigation and ceded its independence to White House political operatives.

This evidence has been lying ignored in government vaults for decades. Much of the work of securing release of the records was done by the John F. Kennedy Assassinations Records Board in the 1990s, and the documents were located at the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland; or at the Gerald R. Ford Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Additional mandatory declassification review requests filed by Archive fellow John Prados returned identical versions of documents, indicating the CIA is not willing to permit the public to see any more of the assassinations story than we show here. The documents in this set have yet to be incorporated into standard accounts of the events of this period.

Among the highlights of today’s posting:

* White House officials of the Ford administration attempted to keep a presidential review panel—the Rockefeller Commission—from investigating reports of CIA planning for assassinations abroad.

* Ford administration officials suppressed the Rockefeller Commission’s actual report on CIA assassination plots.

* Richard Cheney, then the deputy assistant to the president, edited the report of the Rockefeller Commission from inside the Ford White House, stripping the report of its independent character.

* The Rockefeller Commission remained silent on this manipulation.

* Rockefeller Commission lawyers and public relations officials warned of the damage that would be done to the credibility of the entire investigation by avoiding the subject of assassinations.

* President Ford passed investigative materials concerning assassinations along to the Church Committee of the United States Senate and then attempted—but failed—to suppress the Church Committee’s report as well.

* The White House markup of the Rockefeller Commission report used the secrecy of the CIA budget as an example of excesses and recommended Congress consider making agency spending public to some degree.

CONTINUED...

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB543-Ford-White-House-Altered-Rockefeller-Commission-Report/


Jerry Ford, the then-congressman who altered the Warren Report to say President Kennedy was shot through the neck, and not the back, so the Lone Nut Magic Bullet nonsense would sound more plausible.

I know the crisis in Australian chiropractic requires immediate attention, but perhaps you recall the role Cheney and Rumsfeld played in covering up the death of CIA scientist Frank Olson. Too bad it's censored history for most of the USA, that's why I bother to bring up such "bleached bones."


Latest Discussions»General Discussion»Monsanto is constantly sl...