Friday, August 12, 2011

'Corporations are people, my friend...'

Big businesses have long had the same economic rights as citizens, yet few of the moral responsibilities.

Mark LeVine

Al-Jazeera

"....
A green future?

For some reason, hearing Romney speak these words reminded me of Charlton Heston's famous line: "Soylent Green is people!" from the dystopian sci-fi thriller movie, Soylent Green. Heston screamed the line after realising that the remains of dead people - forcibly euthanised in the horribly overpopulated, polluted and poverty stricken world of 2022 - were being converted into food to be fed to the living.

When the book, on which the movie was based, was published in 1966 - and even when the movie itself was released in 1973 - such a future was a nightmare that could only be imagined and dramatised, because it still seemed far off and so fantastical that it couldn't possibly come to pass. At least not by 2022.

Today, with people like Mitt Romney and his corporate friends - real and fictive - running the country and the world, 2022 seems frighteningly close indeed. Let's hope the real people have the brains to put a stop to it before it's too late."

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