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Show 66 priorities for private interests in military, medical, and environmental contexts. In the United Kingdom, corporations such as Cadbury, Cargill, Coca-Cola, and Kraft effectively persuaded the European Union to not introduce a "traffic light" food labeling system that would indicate the healthiness of food on a color-coded scale (Corporate Watch, 2010). In Nigeria, WikiLeaks revealed that Shell Oil is more powerful than the Nigerian government. After claiming eminent domain in the Niger Delta for an oil pipeline, Shell financially assisted the Nigerian Government in perpetrating violence against locals angered by oil spills and unfair access to oil contracts and payments (Rowell, 2011). In the Democratic Republic of Congo, Chinese corporations persuade governments to allow large-scale environmental mining on the basis that the industry builds roads, schools, and social services for local populations (Marysee & Geenen, 2009), evoking a new form of postcolonialism. In fact, the wealth of many industrial corporations exceeds the wealth of entire countries (Morgenson, 1999). Obviously, we can see how these privileged actors have proliferated in tremendous ways in the turn of the 21st century. To Hardt and Negri (2000), corporate domination of public space has produced an empire where these new sovereign subjects are now without boundaries. Protestors in Seattle knew this all too well in 1999 when they broke windows, threw Molotov cocktails, and vandalized private property to protest the World Trade Organization. As DeLuca and Peeples (2002) observe, "corporate interests are inextricably entwined in ‘public' activities, a process that sociologist Boggs terms ‘corporate colonization' - the ‘increased corporate penetration into virtually every corner of modern American life'" (Boggs, 2001, p. 9, in DeLuca & Peeples, 2002, p. 126). |
