In case you haven’t noticed, the superbowl was on some time ago, and most media were spewing typical garbage in relation to it.

From some random handegg ( we refuse to call THAT football ) player doing the #McResistance proud by…not going to the white house.

To the result somehow affecting the stock market. As opposed to the actual reason of markets being volatile, inconsistent and stuck in the underconsumption paradox.

Anyways, we dunno, we don’t care, we didn’t watch it.

I did take some interest in how the liberals and centrists reacted to a certain extent to one aspect of this shitshow, and that was the superbowl ads.

In this particular case, the Dodge ad which featured words by MLK somehow promoting buying Dodge.

First off, MLK, like most reasonable persons of car-purchasing age and capability, would have never bought a damn Dodge. They’re unreliable as fuck

Secondly, what in the inhuman fucking fuck.

Did these pricks at Dodge even listen to the fucking speech ?

MLK literally states: “Do you ever see people buy cars that they can’t even begin to buy in terms of their income? You’ve seen people riding around in Cadillacs and Chryslers who don’t earn enough to have a good T-Model Ford. But it feeds a repressed ego. You know, economists tell us that your automobile should not cost more than half of your annual income. So if you make an income of $5,000, your car shouldn’t cost more than about $2,500. That’s just good economics.”

And if that wasn’t shiesty enough, MLK goes hard on fucking car ads of all damn ironic things: “Now the presence of this instinct explains why we are so often taken by advertisers….You know, those gentlemen of massive verbal persuasion. And they have a way of saying things to you that kind of gets you into buying. In order to be a man of distinction, you must drink this whiskey. In order to make your neighbors envious, you must drive this type of car. In order to be lovely to love you must wear this kind of lipstick or this kind of perfume. And you know, before you know it, you’re just buying that stuff.”

The company must have dodged that bit. It would have been a challenge for them to put it in the ad.

[EDIT: Editor’s note-” If you have to stretch this far to make puns, don’t bother. Also, challenge ??? fucking really ? “~ FB]

As expected, The King Center, and Bernice King not approve of the message.

But it brought to mind that this is something typical in the pro-materialist world.

We’ve rarely touched on anti-capitalist theory on this site, in fact even on our old one, we avoided it except in special cases. But that wasn’t because we couldn’t talk about it, more so the fact that our criticisms wouldn’t have been seen in their full impact because we gave little to no examples. This time however, we’ve got more than a few.

In reality, and somewhat ironically for liberals and right wingers, one of the most intricate criticisms of private ownership of the means of production, as well as little to no state or public involvement, is the human nature aspect. Marx, and other writers go hard in the paint with this argument, talking about how the built in need and lust for profit overcomes the capitalists innate sense of compassion and ethics.

Alongside the whole exploitation thing and the theft of surplus value etc etc etc..

Obviously they describe it in far better detail than we did and with much much better nuance, but you get the picture right ?

So it’s with that in mind that we decided to dig thorough some of our old shit to find companies doing and promoting terrible things, behind a mask of social goodness.

Massachusetts has a long ass history with the abuse of the human psyche and body, through mostly the numbers of asylums and mental hospitals that are scattered throughout the damn place.

One of particular note is Fernald State school.

Back in the 40’s, the kids in the place were put through abuse on a depressing scale. I won’t go through what they endured not just for you guys, but myself as well.

One day, some nice, totally not evil men from MIT came over and with smiles of gold, told the kids that they’d be in a super special awesome science experiment, and in reward, they’d be given extra food, gifts and ” Trips to Redsox games “.

The latter sounds more like a punishment tbh.

In between the gifts and the fun ( and the occasional redsox torture ) they maybe-sorta-forgot to tell the kids that the porridge they’d be eating as extra food, was maybe-sorta-kinda-definitely laced with radioactive poison. ( In this case, poisonous salts of calcium and Iron )

Those MIT bastards, amirite ?

Oh wait, no the whole thing was the idea of some old smiley faced fucker on a box.

Yeah, that’s right, Quaker Oats wanted to measure their nutrition ratios with relation to iron and calcium versus competitors and they hired MIT “”scientists””” to do it.

So still, those MIT bastards, but also now those Quaker oats bastards.

” But those levels of radiation were harmless ” ! Your average libertarian would exclaim, while clutching his cum soaked copy of Fountainhead.

Weirdly, the kids weren’t informed that they’d be taking poison.

Interestingly enough, following in the tradition of the aforementioned dodge ( although not literally, considering this happened earlier ) Quaker Oats also used MLK to target black communities .

2. Barrick Gold is one of the largest exploit-sorry, “”companies”” in the world.

Like all mining companies, it takes the natural resources of developing and third world countries at a fraction of their market instigated price ( which they themselves decide and influence ), with next to none of the profit going to the indigenous peoples whose land have been ruined due to mining and who do the dirty work i.e the actual fucking mining, some going to corrupt politicians who extend the status quo, and most going to Barrick gold.

As most companies go, you’d try and cover this stuff up or at least gloss over it right ?

Barrick Gold is rather proud of it.

“Our vision is the generation of wealth through responsible mining — wealth for our owners, our people.. ”

Back in ’09, whilst liberals were just coming off their orgasmic Obama oriented high, some weird shit happened in the Barrick mine in Papua New Guinea. Among other things, such as Obama forgiving Bush and Cheney, the media sorta forgot to really tell anyone about this. ( I’m gonna call this concept of liberals ignoring shit that they’d rather not hear about the Barrick-Obama singularity )

Barrick faced opposition from the indigenous peoples via protests and strikes, so they hired a security firm and placed them under their own jurisdiction.

Not much of a jurisdiction, considering that it committed various crimes over an untold period of time, including a registered 14 rapes, arson of villager homes, full on fucking murder and straight up cover up of abuse.

HRW noted: ” Barrick’s history of angrily dismissing human rights and environmental concerns that the company should have treated more seriously and dealt with more transparently”

One noted incident was when the company, with the help of the police of course, burned hundreds of houses to make way for more mining operation, then the PNG government outlawed it, but Barrick lobbied and then got it legalised. In 2014, hundreds more houses were burnt again.

3. CITGO is a gas giant, and by that, I mean they’re full of hot air. But in reality, CITGO is one of the largest transporters and refiners of fuels. Venezuela’s PDVSA actually owns a majority stake in the company.

Back in 2007, CITGO violated the clean air act, thereby exposing residents of Texas to poisonous gases, whilst simultaneously generating 1 billion dollars worth of revenue.

They were fined 2 million dollars after many years of trial.

The victims and the families of those who died received the substantial sum of absolutely fuck all, with courts considering the company to big to punish and that it would take too long to calculate ho much would be given to each victim.

4. Nestle are a well renowned bunch of bastards. From over pricing in poorer nations, to giving out faulty products, to their CEO’s obsession with privatising water. But they’re probably most well known for their baby formula scandal that started in the 70’s and continues to this day.

Wait, you though that was a joke ? Nah brah, it still goes on to this day.

Under the guise of ” wanting to help the third world ” Nestle pulled off some dumb shit. And seem to be getting away with it.

See, they hired nurses to distribute free baby formula in the third world for as long as it took to ensure that mothers who were milking ran dry.

The baby, and by proxy the mother, became vulnerable and depended on the baby formula.

Now, this being the third world, they couldn’t exactly waltz up to a shop and buy it wholesale, no in reality most of them gave their children ” unquantifiable volumes ” of the formula. Meaning that the mother would scrape together what formula they could afford, and heavily dilute it in water.

Water which , again, this being the third world, wasn’t the cleanest.

Oh and don’t think this was just some men in coats going around to huts telling women to just use Nestle brand shit, no these dorknuts went to hospitals too In exchange for handing out “discharge packs” of formula, hospitals received freebies like formula and baby bottles: “The most insidious of these is a free architectural service to hospitals which are building or renovating facilities for newborn care….baby milk companies spend untold millions of dollars subsidising office furnishings, research projects, gifts, conferences, publications and travel junkets of the medical profession.” Nestle didn’t hold out like a bitch though, they went hard on those exposing their crimes and in 1974, sued and won against a German paper who basically used the headline ” Nestle kills babies “. Which is true. The W.H.O found that babies who used Nestle’s formula had an infant mortality rate 5-10 times greater than breast fed babies.

5. If you see someone going into mining, tell them not to bother. They’ll only be digging a hole for themselves.

Rio Tinto is widely regarded as having the worst track record for human rights among mining companies. Interestingly enough, its also the biggest private mining company in the world.

Back in the 70’s ( damn, the 70’s were an especially crap time to be a poor exploited worker from the third world ), Rio Tinto bought up the Rossing mine in Namibia, and used the funds to bribe the apartheid government of South Africa, the government of SA would then in return allow Rio Tinto special access in the country to mine for diamonds.

Read the whole link to be blown away by corporate bullshit.

From straight up shooting random ass natives, to telling miners that poisonous chemicals would cause them ” no harm “, to firing those workers even remotely associated with worker’s unions.

You know, I could leave it at that, but then I’d be forgetting the time They funded a civil war in Papua New Guinea for a mine then reusing to pay for the clean up of said mine.

Or for doing the exact same in Indonesia.

Or for locking out 600 workers in a contract dispute.

Weirdly enough, it’s won some awards for “ethical behaviour “, from an award group that no longer exists. An award that was sponsored by the also-known-for-their-ethical-behaviour Tate and Lyle.

This method of deflecting criticism by way of ” hey we can’t be bad, we just got this boss ass prize for ethics ” is referred to as ” greenwashing. ”

6. As a company, siemens is seminal to the global electronics market.

[EDIT: Editor’s note- ” Are you for fucking real ? “- FB]

They build typical shit you see in your house every day, ovens, washing machines, dishwashers, nazi gas chambers and computers.

Yeah, siemens built the chambers at Auschwitz.

They were also heavily involved in slave labour for the death camps.

And that’s not even all, they built the damn Reichsbahn, which transported millions to the death camps.

It’s not like they were simply doing what large multi-million currency generating companies do and simply exploiting the suffering of others. No Siemens funded the Nazis during the 30s.

Weirdly enough, they operated more than 300 companies, most of which used Jewish labour.

What’s in the past is in the past however. These days, they’ve moved on to more modern endeavours like leading a worldwide electronics cartel, paying off government officials, and bribing the entire country of Greece.

7. Ok, ok, so Wal-Mart isn’t exactly a poster-child for workers’ rights. From running sweatshops in China, hiring illegal workers to clean their stores, forcing them to work seven days a week and locking them in the stores at night, and refusing to hire women.

That last one is actually pretty weird tbh.

At the very least, everyone else on this list at least hired exploited women.

I’ll leave this one here, because let’s face it, you already know wal-mart sucks, without me having to tell you about their Koch brother infused family style attempt to secretly tell you rich people aren’t evil worker exploiting scumbags.

8. Alright, I’m not gonna hold out. Enron is bad.

Like reaaal bad.

Most everything you hear about them is in relation to some dick move they pull whenever it suits them. Newscasters roll their eyes while reading shit like ” Today Enron did some dumb shit that we’re all gonna forget in a few minutes “.

As far back as their conception people knew they were pricks, most didn’t care though.

People really began giving a shit in 2001, when reporters broke out the story that Enron may have caused power outages on purpose in order to hike up prices.

Their CEO dismissed that and people were suspicious but withheld for a while.

Didn’t help much when some tapes leaked of an Enron employee ( beautifully called ‘Richard’ ) calling up power plants and asking them to “get a little creative, and come up with a reason to go down.”.

The power plant employee refuses and slams the phone down. He’s not gonna involve himself in shit like this, especially during the California energy crisis.

Oh wait no, fucker went along with it.

Other tapes made the situation even worse for Enwrong ( I’m rather proud of that one ) which showed En-ron Hubbard employees straight up laughing at Californians, with stuff like ” stealing a million dollars a day “ from a certain Grandma Millie.

What tops this off, is how they talk shit about how TV fucks up the country.

9. United Fruit company, now Chiquita

We really, really, reeeeaaallly shouldn’t have to go into this one.

Just read it for yourself.

Castro however, gave a big eff you back when he nationalised these scumbags.

I could talk about a whole bunch of other times companies pulled evil shit, like coca cola influencing bars, restaurants and newsagents to stop giving water to customers and sell coke instead ( Not the drug. Coca cola are not that cool ). They even have a dam website for this shit. Which was weird because they sell ” specialised ” bottled water, which in reality is straight up tap water.

Or or how Union Carbide knowingly poisoned hundreds of thousands of people and ended up paying pennies in return, but honestly, I’m tired of reading up on this crap

~ Ryan.