Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996
From: •••@••.••• (CAROLYN BALLARD)
To: •••@••.•••
Subject: CORP. POWER: DEMOCRACY'S GREATEST THREAT
1. From NameBase NewsLine, No. 14, July-September 1996:
Along Came the Transnationals: "Let them eat globaloney"
by Daniel Brandt
Many of us sense that the end of history will occur sometime during
the next century. We pick up the newspaper and then look out the window,
hoping to explain the eeriness of the front page. If there's a full moon
in the sky, then maybe -- just maybe -- the approaching millennium isn't
as close it seems. This might at least give us time to quibble over which
aspect of social life -- cultural, economic, ecological, or political --
will prove most unstable during the decline of Renaissance man.
Those who escape thought-reform at the end of history may trace
our decline back to 1886, when the U.S. Supreme Court declared that
corporations are legal persons whose life, liberty and property are
protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. Ratified to protect freed slaves,
it took railroad-company lawyers less than two decades to turn this
amendment into a loophole. By 1904, corporations controlled four-fifths
of the nation's industrial production. Today transnationals control the
world's cultural and economic production as well, and generate most of
its pollution.
A mere three decades ago, investment abroad meant that a U.S.
corporation anticipated a foreign market for goods produced domestically.
Today it means factories in many countries, through complex global
sourcing, production, and sales networks. The labor movement, which
created the middle class by stunting corporate growth during the first
half of this century, can no longer keep up with these changes. Neither
can governments -- since the first trade deficit in 1971, the U.S. has
shifted from the world's largest creditor nation to the world's largest
debtor. By 1991, foreign-owned firms controlled half of the U.S.
consumer-electronics industry, a third of the chemical industry, a fifth
of the auto industry, and half of the film and recording industry.
The political clout of corporations has kept pace with their economic
growth, so there's no longer any need for absurd Supreme Court decisions.
Now a lawyer can shop for a congenial off-shore bank, deposit a briefcase
of mumbo-jumbo in a room with an empty desk, and claim corporate
sovereignty anywhere in the free-trade world. Not satisfied with the
collapse of socialism, nor with the worldwide integration made possible
by advances in communications, transnationals are setting up international
courts such as the World Trade Organization, packed with their own puppet
judges.
Never before have corporations enjoyed such power. Many of the few
hundred transnational giants are bigger than most nations. The economy of
Ford is larger than Saudi Arabia's and Norway's, and the annual sales of
Philip Morris exceed the gross domestic product of New Zealand.[1]
Corporate hierarchies are rigidly totalitarian; as the transnationals
control more of the world, this inescapably means a loss of rights and
resources for many of its citizens.
U.S. law was the first casualty of this corporate onslaught.
Originally, corporate charters were designed to serve the public interest.
These were state charters -- there is no mention of corporate rights in
the U.S. Constitution, and very few rights came from legislation. As late
as the 1870s, states were still removing charters, which were seen as
legal fictions, when they no longer served the public. Charters were
granted for fixed terms, and owners, managers and directors were
responsible for corporate debts and any harm caused by the corporation,
sometimes at double or triple the damage.
Then came the trusts. New Jersey was the first state to grant
corporations any right they wanted. As money flowed into New Jersey, other
states did the same thing.[2] Lawyers hired by the trusts created a body
of case law through the courts, which continues to grow stronger. In
Buckley v. Valeo (1976), the Supreme Court decreed that corporations are
legal persons with First Amendment rights of free speech, and corporate
cash is a form of speech. Two years later, in First National Bank v.
Bellotti, Justice Lewis Powell's opinion was that corporate spending to
influence votes during a referendum campaign "is the type of speech
indispensable to decision-making in a democracy, and this is no less true
because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual."
Three justices, Byron White, William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall,
dissented in the Bellotti case. They argued that corporations are
"artificial entities" whose "special status" has "placed them in a
position to control vast amounts of economic power.... The State need
not permit its own creation to consume it." Two other decisions in 1986
expanded the rights of corporations in elections. In a dissent to one
of these, Brennan added that "resources in the treasury of a business
corporation ... are not an indication of popular support for the
corporation's political ideas."[3]
Democracies don't stand a chance against these giant treasuries.
Corporations can control the way the world thinks simply through the power
of saturation. In 1989 they spent over $240 billion on advertising and
another $380 billion on packaging, design, and other promotions. This
amounts to a total of $120 per person around the world, or double what the
average citizen of Mozambique earns in a year.[4] And it seems that one
result of saturation advertising in the Third World is a decline in the
perception of class differences. By focusing on the product rather than
the lifestyles of the rich, a semblance of equality is projected: everyone
has access to the same thrills in a can of Coca-Cola.[5]
Farmers in India had better hope that Coca-Cola will suffice, because
transnational corporations want them to stop what they've been doing for
generations -- namely, swapping seeds for the mutual benefit of the
community. Under the intellectual property-rights provisions in GATT,
which are now enforced by the World Trade Organization, farmers are
expected to pay royalties to patent-holding companies such as Cargill,
the world's largest grain company.[6] And in Canada, one effect of the
free trade agreements is to give U.S. pharmaceutical corporations the
clout to stop generic drugs, which are available there at a fraction of
the cost.[7]
Transnational economic agreements, beginning with the International
Monetary Fund and World Bank fifty-two years ago, have escalated in the
last decade with NAFTA, GATT, and now the WTO. In response to the 1982
debt crisis in the South, the IMF and World Bank imposed "structural
adjustment programs" on poor countries as a condition for new loans.
While the loans themselves are guaranteed by the U.S. taxpayer, the
"adjustments" benefit only the rich investors. The aim is to weaken
domestic entrepreneurial groups in poor countries by eliminating
protectionist barriers, price supports, and government services.
Frequently the currency is devalued, communally held lands are privatized,
and production is reoriented toward export rather than subsistence.
The official justification is that government bureaucracies are
holding back development. What's good for business is good for the whole
community; free trade is the rising tide that lifts all boats. But in
practice this means the deregulation of economic activity, the
privatization of functions once public, and the commercialization of
activities once social. In short, it means a net transfer of power from
governments and the people to transnationals and private wealth.
Although governments are too often undemocratic, their mandate is to
represent the public interest. Sometimes they stand or fall based on how
well they fulfill this mandate. Corporations, on the other hand, are never
democratic, and frequently claim that their only obligation is to the
bottom line of their shareholders. Their transnational character makes
them almost immune to organizing. If you manage to restrict their
activities in one location, they can come back to haunt you.
The most tragic example of this occurred during the early 1970s,
when transnationals were just beginning to feel invincible. A coalition
of international banks and corporations, led by ITT, secretly worked
together to put pressure on a new democratic government in Chile.
Eventually Richard Nixon and the CIA joined the effort, resulting in
a bloody coup and years of repression. Presumably it also resulted in
happy shareholders.
Poor countries have always wanted foreign exchange for industrial
machinery, but now they need foreign exchange just to feed their people.
The model imposed by the World Bank requires poor farmers to plant
high-margin export crops, in order to earn enough to buy imported food.
This becomes risky at best, as international commodity prices can
fluctuate unpredictably. In Mexico, government support of domestic
agriculture has declined by 70 percent since the mid-1980s. Many Mexicans,
whose buying power declined by 60 percent during that decade, cannot
afford imported corn and beans.
The export model encourages migration from the land to the cities,
and to the extent that city slums offer little hope, it also encourages
migration across national borders. The logic promoting this is that
small farmers are "inefficient" producers compared to export-driven
agribusiness. About a quarter of all fruits and vegetables imported into
the U.S. are now from big companies operating in Mexico, where labor and
land are cheap, exchange rates are attractive, and environmental laws
almost nonexistent.[8]
To feed themselves, many Mexicans end up working in the 2,000
factories along the border, where U.S. companies pay 89 cents an hour for
industrial jobs that were once filled by union labor in U.S. factories.
NAFTA was designed to encourage this trend and increase the profits of
transnational corporations. During the negotiations between India and the
IMF in 1991, one of the "conditionalities" of the IMF loan, which India
resisted, was a cut in food subsidies. "It is clear that hunger, if not
starvation, has become an instrument of economic adjustment," writes
Jeremy Seabrook, a critic of development trends.[9]
United Nations experts predict that half of the world's population
will live in cities by the turn of the millennium, and two-thirds by the
year 2025. Already, these experts say, 500 million people living in cities
are homeless or live in inadequate housing.[10] Governments are unable to
cope with this level of urbanization, and shantytowns sprout faster than
they can be torn down. As governments are forced by the transnationals to
become less responsive to the needs of the people, it's unclear what will
happen over the next several decades. Meanwhile, the transnationals could
not care less what happens, as long as their profits increase. Since no
one is in a position to tell them differently, they claim that it's not
their problem.
The political and economic impact of transnationals in developing
countries has been apparent for 25 years, but only recently has this
global "rollback," as Noam Chomsky calls it, been felt in the U.S. as
well. This term comes from Cold War doctrines that aimed to destroy Soviet
power, but Chomsky uses it to describe today's war against the social
contract that once mediated between public and private interests. Freedom,
democracy, human rights, and other threats to authority, which evolved
through many decades of social struggle, are being rolled back in favor
of the discipline of the unregulated market, resulting in predatory
capitalism and the "nanny state," with its welfare for the rich.[11]
Only the classical economist from a corporate-funded think tank,
or the libertarian who places property rights above human rights,
bothers disputing the accumulated evidence. Bankruptcies, credit card
delinquencies, and consumer debt are all at record highs.[12] Falling
wages and downsizing are the norm, and Social Security and Medicare may
not be there for the next generation of retirees. The figures are in:
the U.S. middle class is rapidly disappearing.
Less publicized is the shift in taxation from corporations to
individuals. In the 1950s, corporations operating in the U.S. paid an
average of 39 percent of all federal income taxes, but in the 1980s this
figure had shrunk to 17 percent. The same is true at the local level: in
1957 corporations generated 45 percent of property tax revenues, but by
1987 their share had dropped to about 16 percent.[13]
Ronald Reagan's 1981 tax cuts were a bonanza for corporations.
General Electric had profits of $6.5 billion from 1981-1983 and saw its
tax burden go from $330 million a year to minus $90 million per year.
GE used the rebates not to create jobs (50,000 were slashed from the
payroll), but to acquire companies like RCA and NBC. Most new investment
by U.S. corporations during this period occurred in foreign countries.
"American taxpayers, in other words, were unwittingly subsidizing the
globalization of their own industrial structure."[14]
Transnationals also use "transfer pricing" to avoid taxes. With
operations around the world, it's a simple matter to arrange transactions
so that the profits show up in jurisdictions with lower taxes. When
California attempted to compute taxes on the basis of assets in the
state, rather than the corporation's declared profits in the state, Sony
chairman Akio Morita went to work and organized campaign contributions
to California legislators. Twenty-seven states had followed California's
lead, but all of them repealed their laws. California kept the law, but
added a provision to exempt any corporation that paid a modest fee.[15]
Although another federal tax law in 1986 was sold as an attempt to
restore the balance between corporations and individuals, it didn't work
out that way. This new law allowed corporations to deduct their interest
on debts, while curtailing the same privilege for consumers. Speculative
instruments such as futures markets, stock options, leveraged buyouts,
and mergers and acquisitions continued, financed with corporate borrowing.
By now we have a "casino society," with corporate debt at record levels in
response to short-term financial considerations, and a decline in tangible
assets such as new plants and equipment, relative to the GNP.
Governments are unable to steer this juggernaut. Every day over
a trillion dollars pass through worldwide currency exchanges, and an
estimated $150 billion in U.S. government bonds changes hands. About
ten percent of these figures involve the normal transfer of goods and
services, while the rest is purely speculative. "A financial crisis could
assume global proportions in the blink of an eye," said Michel Camdessus,
managing director of the IMF, at the June meeting of G7 leaders in Lyon,
France.[16] The tail of U.S. debt is now wagging the dog of U.S. policy.
When Bill Clinton came into office with plans for a "stimulus package,"
bond holders considered this inflationary. The threat that they would
unload their bonds meant that interest rates would be driven up. This
would have slowed the economy and cancelled out the stimulus package.
Clinton's idea was killed at birth.[17]
It's clear that our public institutions are unable or unwilling
to ask transnationals to operate in the public interest. Thousands of
lawyers, lobbyists, trade association employees, think tank experts,
public relations specialists, politicians, and prominent journalists are
drawing fat fees, on one level or another, by fronting for free trade and
the private interests of international speculators and transnationals.
Aligned against them are a rapidly-increasing number of activists
from around the world. They come from labor movements on the left to
anti-globalist and anti-immigration movements on the right, and include
environmentalists as well as independent experts on Third World
development issues. All of them are now focusing on the effects of
unregulated globalization, which is emerging as the most important
political issue of the 1990s.
Because of the economic and environmental pressures that motivate the
activists opposed to globalization, this will be an important issue well
into the next century. Social life promises to get worse before it gets
better. World population will increase from 5.5 billion to more than nine
billion in the next 50 years, with 95 percent of this increase in the
poorest regions of the world. This growth rate is clearly unsustainable,
as it depends on an ecosystem that's losing its capacity to support even
current numbers, given the inability of governments to organize in the
public interest.
For travelling author Robert D. Kaplan, the anarchy and chaos of
West Africa is a premonition of the future, "_the_ symbol of worldwide
demographic, environmental, and societal stress."[18] Borders become mere
conventions used by mapmakers, as refugee migration, smuggling, official
corruption, criminals and armed rebels all contribute to the general
disintegration:
It is time to understand "the environment" for what it is: _the_
national-security issue of the early twenty-first century. The
political and strategic impact of surging populations, spreading
disease, deforestation and soil erosion, water depletion, air
pollution, and, possibly, rising sea levels in critical, overcrowded
regions like the Nile Delta and Bangladesh -- developments that will
prompt mass migrations and, in turn, incite group conflicts -- will
be the core foreign-policy challenge from which most others will
ultimately emanate.[19]
Kaplan wrote this almost three years ago, before the term
"globalization" was used as a handle to identify those private interests
that are contributing to the problem. Even when direct acts by the
transnationals are not seen as the problem, it is still the case that
only these private interests have the wealth and resources necessary to
improve the public welfare. Unfortunately, they have yet to even express
an interest in lending a hand.
Judging from the people behind Kaplan, he might not use the word
"globalization" even today. Kaplan sees the next century with an eye
toward its strategic implications for national security, rather than in
terms of international class conflict. This isn't surprising. Kaplan
received support from the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Foreign Policy
Research Institute for expanding his article into a Random House book;
both of these sponsors are linked to the U.S. intelligence community.
While Kaplan captures the sense of social dissolution felt by many
of us, his imagination is limited. He envisions a world where private
security forces and proxy armies are in perpetual low-intensity conflict
with disenfranchised marauders, armed cults, and organized gangs. Given
this scenario, it's easy to guess which side the Pentagon and CIA will
support -- our national security elites were bought and paid for long ago
by the transnational elites. There aren't yet any politicians with the
clout to challenge this establishment, and only a handful with the
courage. But this does not preclude the possibility of organized,
effective opposition to globalization.
Currently the major battle is over popular culture and information
-- a battle for the hearts and minds of consumers and citizens. More
precisely, it's a battle that will determine whether the average person
will have a heart and mind at all, after another generation of McCulture
and infotainment. "Why Johnny can't dissent" is a question that's answered
by watching MTV and its many imitators. The boundaries between advertising,
entertainment, and -- with MTV's three-second interviews with political
figures -- information, are being utterly destroyed. Special effects have
replaced content. These debased messages and images, many coming from a
television that's on 50 hours a week in the average American home, has
caused a serious decline in literacy and critical thought. Even newspapers,
such as USA Today, have turned the news into easily-digested bites,
surrounded by color.[20]
Behind the canned news and advertising of the ideology industry are
thousands of well-paid professionals. At many universities, journalism
schools now share resources with public relations and advertising courses
under the same "communications" department. PR practitioners in the U.S.
now outnumber reporters, and some of the best journalism schools send more
than half of their graduates into these firms.
The distinction between journalism and public relations is
fadingeverywhere. Some estimate that about forty percent of all video
"news"
is fed from PR firms to newsrooms. Journalists get two versions: a slick
final version, and a raw one that they can edit. Most budget-conscious
newsrooms simply present the slick version as hard news. And worthwhile
new books are becoming rare: today's literary agents and publishers
consider a promising investigative expose to be a manuscript that offers
titillating gossip about private lives in Hollywood.
It's the rich corporations that can afford the services of PR
professionals. Nearly every major advertising agency either owns or is
paired with a large PR firm. Along with those catchy "video news releases"
that newsrooms love so much, some PR firms offer industrial espionage,
infiltration of civic and political groups, planted stories, and phony
grass-roots campaigns. Their corporate clients call this "integrated
communications." The grass-roots campaigns, commonly referred to as
"astroturf movements," are disguised as concerned citizens driven by
conscience to petition the government. Since big money is available just
underneath this facade, many politicians are no doubt grateful for the
cover that astroturf provides.[21]
Frequently PR firms flack for foreign governments, and must register
with the Justice Department as foreign agents. Not so long ago, our media
was more like a bumbling giant, certainly less centralized and seemingly
less homogenous. In a story that made headlines in 1978, Prime Minister
John Vorster was forced to resign when South Africa's apartheid government
earmarked millions to secretly purchase two major U.S. dailies, The
Sacramento Union and The Washington Star. After the scandal broke, South
Africa had to settle for increasing the number of U.S. public relations
firms on its payroll: in 1979 there were 22 and by 1984 there were 31.
Haiti, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Turkey also used PR
firms.[22]
South Africa's attempt to purchase newspapers no longer seems so
scandalous. Today's smart dictator would merely create an off-shore
holding company with laundered money, and purchase newspapers as an
"investment." Our culture is so saturated with debased messages that abuse
of media power rarely shows up on our radar. Even government officials
get involved with illegal propaganda. In the mid-1980s, the U.S. State
Department, with CIA assistance, set up their own PR front and called it
the "Office of Public Diplomacy." This was a "private, domestic network
designed to influence the Congress, the media and public opinion on behalf
of the Administration's policies as related to the Iran/Contra affair."
The investigation of OPD was minimal, and soon forgotten.[23]
The media of the 1990s is significantly different from the media
of the 1970s and 1980s. During the Gulf War, Hill & Knowlton, then the
world's largest PR firm, collected $11 million from their Kuwait account.
One of their tricks was to arrange the testimony of "Nayirah," full name
unstated, to the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. This 15-year-old
sobbed while telling how she witnessed Iraqi soldiers in a Kuwaiti
hospital pulling 312 babies from their incubators and putting them on the
cold floor, and then leaving with the incubators. This story was repeated
countless times before the war started three months later; even George
Bush used it. After the war it turned out that Nayirah was the daughter of
the Kuwaiti ambassador, her testimony was coached by Hill & Knowlton, and
the entire story was false. Since the U.S. Senate supported the war by a
mere five-vote margin, this story may have made a difference.[24]
The media's behavior during the Gulf War had a different quality
to it. Their disinterest in antiwar demonstrations around the country
was matched only by their fascination over Pentagon video clips from the
nose-cones of smart bombs. The latter was understandable, since access
to stories from the front was controlled by the Pentagon under it's
new "journalist pool" system. But the former felt strange for many
demonstrators:
Spectacular society leads us to dismiss our own experiences when it
diverges too far from the official story. For example, the sustaining
energy of the anti-Gulf War demonstrations in U.S. cities was in part
drained by trivializing, limited media coverage. In San Francisco,
100,000 antiwar protesters were just another "opinion" alongside 300
prowar protesters in the suburbs. The reality of living through such
a large demonstration became hard to believe when it was not
reinforced in the "real" public sphere, TV.[25]
Twenty years ago, journalism schools were popular in response to
Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in "All the President's Men." For a time
there was even a television series about storefront lawyers, battling in
court for the rights of the little guy, in return for poverty-program
wages. Fast forward to the 1990s, and watch a pack of coiffured, vacuous
TV "journalists" scratching for the best angle on one of O.J.'s lawyers,
every day for many months.
Herbert I. Schiller, 76, a retired communications professor and
author of some ten books, has squarely placed the blame on the big
corporations:
What corporate domination of culture means is that those who get jobs
in the varied cultural fields are subject, in different measure, to
the commanding logic of corporate business. This logic insists on the
unquestioned priority of extracting the largest profit possible from
the specific cultural product. It should provide as well, unless it
interferes with profitability, ideological comfort and support to the
prevailing social order. These are the working instructions, hardly
necessary to be put into manuals, for the employee cohorts of the
cultural industries. Employees, whatever their rank and status,
disregard them at the cost of their job security.[26]
Alex Carey, an Australian writer who died in 1988, goes even further.
One of Carey's biggest fans is Noam Chomsky, who mentions Carey in
interviews and speeches. Carey traces the history of corporate propaganda
from the early part of the century, drawing on the American experience but
with an emphasis on its lessons for Australia. "The twentieth century,"
Carey wrote, "has been characterised by three developments of great
political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate
power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting
corporate power against democracy."[27]
If Carey were alive to consider the globalization issues emerging
during the 1990s, he might have added a fourth development: along came the
transnationals. But he would be correct to remain focused on corporate
propaganda, which is where the struggle is being waged today.
Our first task is to devalue the word "shareholder" in our vocabulary.
U.S. corporate law holds that the management of publicly-held companies
must act primarily in the economic interest of shareholders. Federal law
should return to the spirit of early state laws, perhaps by substituting
the word "stakeholder" for "shareholder." Stakeholders include everyone
-- not only shareholders, but also employees, customers, and local
communities. If there is any justification at all for granting superpower
corporations the rights of a person, it can only be in proportion to their
respect and concern for all of the people.
In addition, Congress and the Supreme Court should require the
President to justify any giveaway of our nation's power to govern its own
affairs. Our sovereignty is at risk. This has long been of concern to
conservative populists, but recently the labor movement and environmental
movement have also spoken clearly on this issue.
A window of opportunity for some effective and timely organizing has
abruptly come into view. If we fail to take advantage of it, this window
may disappear just as unexpectedly.
1. Richard J. Barnet and John Cavanagh, Global Dreams: Imperial
Corporations and the New World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster -
Touchstone, 1995), p. 14.
2. Noam Chomsky, "Rollback: The Return of Predatory Capitalism,"
Alternative Press Review, Winter 1996, p. 45.
3. Richard Grossman, "Corporations must not supplant `we the
people'," Maine Telegram, 4 February 1996.
4. Barnet and Cavanagh, Global Dreams, pp. 171-2.
5. Richard J. Barnet and Ronald E. Mueller, Global Reach: The Power of
the Multinational Corporations (New York: Simon & Schuster -
Touchstone, 1974), pp. 175-6.
6. Daniel Zoll, "Global Warning: The International Forum on
Globalization may signal a new agenda for the progressive movement,"
San Francisco Bay Guardian, 22 May 1996. The example was from a
presentation by Indian activist Vandana Shiva at the IFG conference.
7. Noam Chomsky, "The Free Market Myth," Open Eye, No. 3, 1995, p. 12.
8. Barnet and Cavanagh, Global Dreams, pp. 250-6.
9. Jeremy Seabrook, Victims of Development: Resistance and Alternatives
(London: Verso, 1993), p. 10.
10. Refet Kaplan, "Conference on cities may end up in gridlock,"
Washington Times, 3 June 1996, p. A1.
11. Noam Chomsky, "Rollback," pp. 43-4.
12. Betsy Pisik, "Record numbers of people declaring bankruptcy,"
Washington Times, 9 June 1996, pp. A1, 14; Martin Crutsinger, "U.S.
consumer debt rises as uses of credit cards expand," Associated Press
as published in Washington Times, 13 April 1996, pp. B7, 9.
13. Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, America: What Went Wrong?
(Kansas City: Andrews and McMeel, 1992), p. 47.
14. William Greider, Who Will Tell the People (New York: Simon & Schuster
- Touchstone, 1993), pp. 341-2.
15. Barnet and Cavanagh, Global Dreams, pp. 345-6.
16. Reuters New Media, "G7 Set Seal on Serious Summit," 30 June 1996.
17. Barnet and Cavanagh, Global Dreams, pp. 407-8.
18. Robert D. Kaplan, "The Coming Anarchy," Atlantic Monthly, February
1994, p. 46.
19. Ibid., p. 58.
20. Herbert I. Schiller, Information Inequality: The Deepening Social
Crisis in America (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 67; Barnet and
Cavanagh, Global Dreams, pp. 153-4.
21. John C. Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You:
Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (Common Courage
Press, Box 702, Monroe ME 04951), 236 pages. This investigative book,
published in 1995, is strongly recommended. To order with Visa or MC
($16.95 plus $3 postage), call 800-497-3207 or fax 207-525-3068.
22. Greg Goldin, "The Toughest Accounts: How Madison Avenue Sells Foreign
Dictators," Mother Jones, January 1985, pp. 27-31.
23. Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives. Staff
Report. State Department and Intelligence Community Involvement in
Domestic Activities Related to the Iran/Contra Affair, 7 September
1988, 33 pages.
24. Stauber and Rampton, pp. 169-74; John R. MacArthur, Second Front:
Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War (New York: Hill and Wang,
1992), pp. 37-77; Arthur E. Rowse, "Flacking for the Emir,"
Progressive, May 1991, pp. 20-2.
25. Chris Carlsson, "The Shape of Truth to Come: New Media and
Knowledge." In James Brook and Ian A. Boal, eds., Resisting the
Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information (San Francisco:
City Lights, 1995), p. 243.
26. Schiller, p. 8.
27. Alex Carey (Andrew Lohrey, ed.), Taking the Risk Out of Democracy:
Propaganda in the US and Australia (Australia: UNSW Press, 1995).
Introduction by Noam Chomsky.
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