The Corporation

Picture yourself in a courtroom. You stand accused of defamation after publishing an article critical of the dealings of a ghoulish individual. You are indicted with undermining his character and transgressing his rights. Even if the court’s decision lands in your favour, the inevitable bleeding of your meagre funds through the appeal process will render this person all the stronger. You scan the courtroom trying to locate your accuser, but in vain. He is not only fathomlessly wealthy – he is both invisible and immortal.

With regret, this is not a story about unethical vampires. The individual you are faced with is a corporation. As tempting as it is to apply ‘blood-sucking’ and ‘undead’ to the multi-nationals that control many aspects of our lives, it would insult Dracula, who at least once lived as a man.* You might question this comparison, however consider the fact that a corporation not only has the same rights as you do, it is considered just as human as you are in the eyes of the law.

In theory, the creation of the corporation was a beneficial concept for all – a “free association of people pooling their capital.” The early 17th Century saw the creation of the East India Company, which allowed English merchants to purchase a stake in the lucrative spice trade from Asia, guaranteed by a Royal Charter for fifteen years of competitor-free business. After a few successful voyages, the East India Company saw astronomical profits and the joint-stock company was born, along with what we now know as shareholders.

"We don't want to control you personally, 

just every aspect of your life."

In practice, the East India Company was a power unto itself – commanding a formidable military force, declaring war and peace at will, and constructing fortresses at strategic trading outposts. Coupled with a general disregard for any native people along the way, the company eventually hacked and bribed its way into India by the 1750s; effectively becoming the rulers of the subcontinent. The British Empire could only dream of the efficiency in which contemporary multi-nationals hold entire governments to ransom with a single threat of moving their business elsewhere.

Think of a corporation as a loaf of bread, made from small amounts of dough contributed by many people – the baked product being shared by all in dividends. The idea of ‘limited liability’ means that if the bread fails to rise, you only lose the amount of dough you originally put in and are not responsible for the consequent hunger. When the bread gets big enough, a Board of Directors assumes responsibility for the baking, often with some dough of their own mixed in. Simple enough, but once the bread takes on a legal personality, is protected by freedom of speech, can donate to political parties and grows so large it absorbs all the other dough around it – you get some idea of the position the public is now in.

Today, the dough is baked into ever-larger loaves and shareholders expect more bread in return, year after year. Huge banks and massive multi-nationals were built on the back of the ‘free market’, yet the entire capitalist system has shot itself in the foot as our ‘competitive’ commercial choices are owned by fewer and more powerful corporations. Pretending that corporations are people is a nice way to accumulate a lot of money – however this same pretence has seen commercial interests become not only the equivalent of human rights, but often their superior.

* As an added twist, the word corporation derives from the Latin corpus, meaning ‘body’ or a ‘body of people’.

Smoking

Denial is a powerful tool – an all-purpose shifting spanner that can tighten the nuts and bolts of an untenable argument, allowing it to withstand a cyclone of common sense and evidence to the contrary. When the cyclone is cancer and early death, a lot of denial is needed to prop up the tin shed of smoking. The air may now be sweeter atop my non-smoking high horse; however this lofty perspective was earned after ten years’ service in the Smokesmen’s Infantry. Today’s effort is intended to help non-smokers understand why people smoke despite the obvious drawbacks.

At first puff, smoking seems not so bad – with increased memory, alertness and reaction time among the useful side effects. Native American shamans used tobacco not only for health reasons, but to consult the spirits of their dead; the headspins generated from my first few smokes testify to this. As we now know, anything pleasurable swiftly becomes addictive and, much like masturbation, the occasional thrill of smoking quickly becomes a chafing ritual that must be completed several times a day.

Without trying to shovel the blame upon America; America was to blame. The impoverished colony of Virginia faced famine in 1612 and it was saved by the entrepreneur and husband of Pocahontas, John Rolfe, who introduced a tasty new strain of tobacco from the Caribbean. Although Europe had tasted tobacco before this time, it was hard to come by and this new cash-crop from the colonies fed their new addiction and, with the help of another innovative concept – slavery - helped Virginia become the most prosperous colony in the New World.

Moderation is the key to contentment.

Not all of Europe embraced this new practice; King James I even wrote a book named A Counterblaste to Tobacco in 1604, labelling it “a custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the…smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.”. Pope Urban VIII even issued a Papal Bull threatening excommunication for smoking in holy places in 1624. Even then, it seems, god was on the side of big tobacco companies and the ban was overturned a hundred years later.

When two German scientists found evidence of that smoking led directly to heart disease and lung cancer in the 1920s, it took another thirty years of effective denial before the findings were taken seriously. The father of an old ex-girlfriend used to plough through three 50g packets of rolling tobacco each week – unfiltered – yet doctors told him he still had the lungs of an eighteen year old. Smokers need ammunition to support their denial, such smoking success stories are of great benefit in the face of irrefutable facts.

Even though they (once we) are killing themselves, spare a moment for smokers. A memorable scene from Supersize Me comes to mind, where the protagonist asserts that it is socially acceptable to point to a smoker saying “You’re killing yourself!” yet such slurs cannot be directed to the obese. What was once the Benson and Hedges World Cup is now the KFC Twenty20. Tobacco is a vice that everybody can lay into without retribution; however isolation and scapegoating is no way to serve a marginalised minority that is hopelessly addicted.

State-sponsored restrictions and community resentment aside, smoking is enough of a battle for those without the willpower to kick the habit. Rest assured, that for the smoker, the gentle harshness on the back of the throat with every puff brings a mixture of pleasure and self-awareness; the inescapable knowledge that damage is being done alongside the proud display of a middle-finger to people who think they know better. Until society dolls out equal criticism and limitations to gambling, alcohol and obesity, allow smokers to quit in their own time or let them die trying.

24-hour News

Thanks to digital television, no longer do we require a diarrhoea-stricken week in a Vietnamese hotel room, unable to comprehend any TV channel bar CNN, to appreciate the continual nausea that is 24-hour news. This stew of commentary, opinion and speculation – simmering the same stale ingredients for days at a time – is now available free to air, providing us with as much new information as Dora the Explorer could tell you with a week-old Daily Telegraph.

When a big story breaks, the formula of 24-hour news shows its effectiveness. The scrolling marquee provides instant gratification; satisfying our need for the most up-to-date information available. Well-powdered beauties or authoritative, veteran presenters deliver the latest facts in measured, serious tones – crossing to live reporters or consulting with multiple experts. Flashy graphics seamlessly combine all elements together into an engaging display of television’s potential.

Without a big story, however, this symphony becomes a primary school music class – a room full of fumbling children tooting Three Blind Mice on plastic recorders. On slow news days, one can both pity and admire the producers of these channels. In theory, 24-hour news can perpetuate a never-ending feeling of the ‘breaking story’; gradually building on a narrative with new information. In practice, the art lies in turning the slightest skerrick of information into hours of repetitive, reactionary fluff under the guise of ‘expert analysis’*.

"How could we ever do anything evil?"

This art has proved so successful that news networks cannot resist the money-saving benefits of having a studio full of speculating talking heads in place of journalists investigating in the field. CNN established itself in the 80s and 90s as a viable news option – receiving recognition for its coverage of the First Iraq War and OJ Simpson’s flight from justice. Watch an hour of CNN today, however, and the incessant commercials about “extensive and up-to-the-minute coverage” seem more extensive than the minutes of actual coverage.

Inevitably Australian news networks will reinvent themselves into clones of Fox News or MSNBC; networks that blatantly appeal to either side of the political spectrum, blurring the line between news and opinion while simultaneously asserting their ‘fair and balanced’ coverage. A vast confusion exists between opinion and analysis – made worse by presenters spending half their time patting each other on the back with their mutual blathering and the other half refuting the opinions of their competitors. Little time or resources remain for news gathering.

The next time we have a nuclear meltdown or bushfire, appreciate that 24-hour news can aid us in times of strife and keep us updated. However, the next time a politician is asked to produce a birth certificate and it receives the same amount of coverage –beware. 24-hour news is a well-oiled machine that feasts upon our prejudices. Once we fail to see through drummed up controversy or rely on one source of information because we like what we hear, we forsake our own minds and our own judgement in the face of public relations dressed as news.

* Unlike humble online columnists.