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Haiku for the Greening of Mitsubish (r)



Subject: Re: Haiku for the Greening of Mitsubishi

> Date:          23 Mar 1996 09:08:59
> Reply-to:      Conference "reg.burma" <burmanet-l@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> From:          chayco@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject:       Re: Haiku for the Greening of Mitsubishi
> To:            Recipients of burmanet-l <burmanet-l@xxxxxxxxxxx>

(large sections deleted)

> There is your enemy. Mitsubishi  or any other company is just
> taking advantage of OUR shortsighted greed.
> 
> But...............ahh, maybe I am wrong.

Perhaps, being 34, I am almost qualified to address this issue.

I agree as a Buddhist that greed born of ignorance is the underlying
source of the problem.  However, as Henry James prophesied over
ninety years ago, this is the century of advertizing. According to
some economic theories, capitalism should have collapsed of its own
weight in the 1930s.  However, in the 1920s, taking inspiration from
the new age-like Theraputic Ethos of the 1910s that rose out of the
breakdown of hegemonic christianity at the turn of the century, the
first national ad campaign was born.  The '20s were the time of the
Red Scare, when large movements were pointing to the ills of society
and seeking means of redress.  Listerine mouthwash was marketed at
this time with the slogan "Ask yourself."  In other words, don't
blame society for your lack of success.  Instead search for your own
reflection in the shifting surfaces of the sea of consumer
commodities.  The culture of artificial need was born.  Workers 
turned out to make a fine consumer class, and were easy to convince 
that they were middle class.  As M. Tanaka might say, a pseudo-middle 
class.

Yes, one place to address the problem is in our own hearts, by 
awakening to the truth of existence, but blaming the people for what 
corporations have done to them is blaming the victim.  

The most glaring error in your criticism of David's message was your
claim that the people chop and sell the trees.  In Thailand the
people fight pitched battles to keep the trees standing, because the
forest is the source of their entire way of life.  The trees are
chopped typically by generals who have cut sweet deals with Japanese
companies, since the generals have the power to decide that the
peasants don't own the land where they have always lived.  After the
generals have hauled off the old growth and planted allellopathic
eucalyptus in its place, and the Japanese PR firms have done their
work convincing the concerned Japanese populace that these pulp wood
plantations will prevent floods and create jobs (when in fact they
destroy the soil and eliminate entire forest product industries),
the peasants fight back by going in at night, cutting down the
plantation saplings, and replanting biodiverse forests.   is only
when this way of life is smashed by the forces of modernity that the
people have to resort to illegal unsustainable logging to survive.
Hydroelectric projects in the developing world, for example,
typically displace hundreds of thousands of peasants, who might be
paid off in cash if at all, or resettled on land they don't have the
cultural knowledge to manage, e.g. at a different altitude. I
remember often seeing villagers sitting in mute protest of the Pak
Moon (sp) dam project in front of Thammasat University in Bangkok,
while the technocrat prime minister Anand kept putting the
environment further and further down Thailand's World Bank-supplied
agenda . Again, blaming the villagers for the destruction is blaming
the victim.

You say that if Mitsubishi moved out it would be replaced by another 
company.  But Mitsubishi, like Exxon, is what is known as a bad 
actor.  Other companies might do many of the same things, but not to 
the same extremes with the same indifference for the consequences.  
As David mentioned, the structure of the board of directors of 
Mitsubishi would be illegal in most countries.  In fact the Allies 
fought a war to stop this way of doing business in the 30s and 40s.  
The kind of lack of accountability that Mitsubishi enjoys might be 
efficient in some senses, but it leads only to corruption and violent 
destruction.

In fact all corporations lack accountability because the law was
distorted by American corporations in the late 19th century.
Essentially they stole the rights of individuals for themselves, and
broke out of social control by bribing judges and rigging elections.
They also set up the system of limited liability, which equals
limited responsibility and accountability. In the '80s under Reagan
they grabbed for themselves even more rights than individuals have. 
They thrive because they have managed to institutionalize injustice. 
If the law was fair perhaps your points might have some merit.  But
in the current situation, for the sake of our children and the world,
we should be doing everything in our power to bring corporations back
to heel, where they belong.

I suppose that some might argue that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 
Climatologists wouldn't argue that.  It's broke, and getting broker 
all the time.

You also mentioned the law of supply and demand, with regards to the
heroin trade.  I wish I could give you a better source than the PBS
special where I learned this several years ago, but at one point a
Burmese heroin warlord managed to control the entire heroin shipment
for the year.  It turned out the guy had a moral conscience, and
tried to sell the heroin to the CIA at cost, so they could destroy
it.  They refused him, and in 5 days he was dead.  The heroin made
it to the inner cities as usual, where it does a wonderful job of
keeping African American culture a basket case.  We wouldn't want a
million angry young African American men coming out of their stupors
of despair en masse, now would we?

So in general, the reason why the US is not a police state is it 
doesn't need to be.  It has Madison Avenue and heroin to keep the 
masses nicely hegemonized to the gills.  The only ones left with the 
rights of citizens are corporations.  At least let's try to hold them 
accountable for their actions.

Alex Turner

What was that about spiders and lions?