If you haven’t noticed yet, EcoSalon has a bit of a crush on Russell Brand. I mean, he’s adorable and all, but it’s his brazen views on politics, commerce, and a fierce commitment to revolution that we find so irresistibly prescient. Take this, a clip from his recent visit to #OccupyWallStreet where he committed to use the sales of his new book “Revolution” to fund nonprofit causes to make this world a better place. Plus, he hugs a cop

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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The post Russell Brand is Fantastic, Brilliant and Amazing, Once Again [Video] appeared first on EcoSalon.

The Internet has changed a lot of things including the face of Corporate America. But can it save the wobbly tower of capitalism from collapsing in on itself?

The free market. It gave us Oreos. And fracking. It gave us stacked mega-corporations. And according to Klint Finley of TechCrunch, thanks to our inter-connectivity, it’s dissolving those mega-corporations too, so it seems.

What we have now, through the worldwide web, notes author and marketing expert Seth Godin in his book “We Are All Weird”, is the end of mass. “[I]t will fail; it must. The tide has turned, and mass as the engine of our culture is gone forever.” Granted, standing inside a Walmart soda aisle may have you thinking a bit differently, but Godin says that the way of the modern world is now, “more information, more choice, more freedom, and more interaction.” This benefits us certainly as individuals. Just Google anything, really (I randomly typed “ketchup cupcakes“, which I now regret). We can find each other now, we can weird out together. And so can companies. They kind of have to.

“Corporations are arguably more powerful today than ever before. But the economy isn’t dominated by a handful of megalithic conglomerates. It consists of hundreds or thousands of smaller, more specialized firms,” writes Finley. The future is dominated by “a new power structure: the mega network.” These companies are being linked by software technology, and directed by it, too, says Finley, ” The software network is diversifying and growing into the networked equivalent of a mega-conglomerate.”

And while these “mega-network” entities put a lot of the emphasis on “mega,” Godin says that approach won’t really last. “The thing that made us rich was our ability to process in mass, produce in mass, ship in mass, and market in mass.” But the wealth is fueling a movement “that undermines the foundation that earned us the wealth,” he writes. “We need a mass audience” for it all to continue, but the next breakthroughs aren’t going to be about fueling the mass, he says. “The demand for normal…is now ironically and inevitably clashing with the trend toward weird.”

And you can call that the beginning of the end of mass, or as Finley notes, the die-off of the conglomerates. Through networks, driven by the dotcoms, which are fueled by “the weird,” we’re expanding on our downsizing. Growing our small. Normalizing niches in ways that provide more chances to the little start-up with the support of massive networks. Make money, grow a business, but with the help of virtual corporations, “temporary alliances of businesses pursuing common goals. In other words, networks,” writes Finley. “Maybe this won’t last. Maybe Google, which is becoming pretty diverse itself, will become the dystopian mega-corporation the cyberpunks feared. But for now it seems that the mega-network is here to stay.”

But if the network can challenge out the heavy history of our Corporate America, is it bad to be mega?

Can the networks prevent another Enron? Can they reform Wall Street? Can they keep new flavors of diabetes and obesity causing soft drinks off the shelves? Probably not. But it seems they can help to broaden our options. Or as Godin puts it, keep things weird. “The biggest cultural shift that the Internet has amplified is the ability to make an impact on your own culture,” he writes. “New culture is created on top of the old one, and then another layer of culture goes on top of that.” Which is how networks work. Layers upon shifting layers. But unlike corporate conglomerates, networks don’t have to be endless unstable pillars built up to the sky. They can be closed loops—concentric circles that contain energy and resources—that maintain their wholeness infinitely, instead of eventually toppling over.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Who are the big corporations really looking out for?

In an increasingly consumer-aware world, it’s a necessity for the big labels and corporations to be participating in sustainable as well as ethical initiatives. But when you look behind the scenes (as we did with The Body Shop this week), how clean is their act? Here are 7 posts from our archives that peek behind the curtain to ask what the big names are really up to.

Eating your politics isn’t for everyone and it’s easy to go overboard with the food thing (see the Portlandia episode featuring Colin, the chicken), but there are some companies with politics so against everything I believe in that I simply can’t give them my money. Remember back in the day when Domino’s founder Tom Monaghan started donating to Operation Rescue and a bunch of doctors who provided abortions were killed? Chick-fil-A is one of these companies for me.

Jesus, Enough With The Chicken

Mega packaged food companies and investor groups buy successful organic brands that were started by visionaries who began the companies with a commitment to the organic ideal of family farms, a clean environment, and simple food without additives. But often, when the big companies buy in, this ideal flies out the window.

I’ve chosen ten of the more prominent organic and natural brands to survey. I’m comparing the stories they tell their customers to the likely (and often proven) reality, based on who owns them. Most of the company websites don’t clearly state that a huge global conglomerate runs them, but that’s when the chart above comes in handy.

The Stories (And Money) Behind 10 Of Your Favorite Organic Brands

Brazil had a ban on planting of GM seeds in effect since 1998, but it was one of the only holdouts in South America. Brazil’s neighbor, Argentina, was a large producer of GM soy. Monsanto encouraged farmers in Brazil to plant its “roundup ready” GM soybeans that were illegally imported from Argentina in defiance of the ban. Monsanto knew that once its seeds were in the ground they would be able to make a case for intellectual property rights. Armed with their patents, the company’s lawyers went to the courts to solidify its new Brazilian market.

By arguing that Brazil was impeding its legal right to collect royalties on its intellectual property (the seeds), Monsanto made its case and GM soy was legalized in Brazil in 2003. Still, the essential companion to Monsanto’s Roundup-ready GM soy, the herbicide Roundup, was not legal yet. In 2004, a congressman from southern Brazil pushed through a series of federal amendments legalizing the herbicide. This same congressman purchased a large farm from Monsanto for one-third of the market price. The Brazilian government is investigating the congressman for corruption.

Soy Powerful: How Monsanto Pushes Genetically Modified Soybeans On Unwilling Consumers

KFC vs. PETA: Flaming Silly to Monumentally Daft

As we’ve noted before, there’s nothing that PETA enjoys more than the smell of roasting Kentucky Fried Chicken – the company, that is. Their latest attempts to haul this fast food corporation over the coals? Firstly, PETA wants Indianapolis fire trucks to sign an advertising deal, the same way the fire department has with the finger-lickin’ folk – and secondly, a 5.5 foot tall statue of a gory chicken on crutches, artfully monikered “KFC Cripples Chickens.”

In both cases, local officials denied the requests, citing inappropriate context and legislation and, in the former case, the fact that “advertising on a fire truck could even lead motorists to believe a truck heading for an emergency was just performing a stunt.” Quite.

Oh For PETA’s Sake: 7 (More) Crazy Stunts

After putting its less well-capitalized and often more quirkily authentic brethren out of business, sucking the soul out of the neighborhood coffee house, and commoditizing coffee to the point where consumers couldn’t see the difference between a $4.00 latte at Starbucks and a $2.00 latte from McDonalds, Starbucks was hurting. The company’s latest strategy involves “Unbranding” a few select stores by taking away the Starbuck’s look and logo and instead naming the stores after the neighborhoods that surround them. They are also sending spotters into independently owned shops and copying the look and feel, as well as sourcing the décor items locally. If it works, they’ll roll it out all over the country. Oh Goody. This one makes me want to choke on my home-brewed, fair trade, organic blend.

Marketing Authenticity: 7 Corporations Riding On The Coattails Of A Movement

According to Change.org, opening Walmarts in areas known as “food deserts” is really just a band-aid that masks the underlying causes of poverty and inequality. This is true and there’s no doubt it is a complicated issue. Similarly, many commenters pointed out in this article by Marc Gunther that the entire model of how Walmart builds and spreads across the landscape is flawed. Again, indisputably true.

But Walmart isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon. Is it possible to look at some of their initiatives in a positive light?

The Mixed Grocery Bag That Is Walmart

It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. -Henry Ford

25 Quotes On Who Really Runs America

Images: stublog, iheartmacaroni, Nicola Romagna, Monochrome, ginnerobot, SqueakyMarmot and Mike138.

The post From The Vault: It’s A Corporate Thing appeared first on EcoSalon.

A collection of sayings from politicians and pundits on the role of corporations in government. 

It is well enough that the people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning. -Henry Ford

The real truth of the matter is, and you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson. -Franklin Roosevelt

Every effort has been made by the Federal Reserve Board to conceal its powers, but the truth is the FED has usurped the government. It controls everything here (in Congress) and controls all our foreign relations. It makes and breaks governments at will… When the FED was passed, the people of the United States did not perceive that a world system was being set up here… A super-state controlled by international bankers, and international industrialists acting together to enslave the world for their own pleasure! -Rep. Louis T. McFadden

The money power preys upon the nation in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. -Abraham Lincoln

The banks can and do create money… And they who control the credit of the nation direct the policy of governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the destiny of the people. –Reginald McKenna

Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun. -Kurt Vonnegut

Honestly, I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens. -Britney Spears (in 2003)

Some even believe we (the Rockefeller family) are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. -David Rockefeller

I knew that all corporate leaders get special attention in Washington. But the ones who are the most feared are media corporations. -Ben H. Bagdikian

They think they’re gonna get away with this. These people who stole the pension funds of the American public. Who stole their money, who stole the future of our kids and grand-kids they think… They’re kleptomaniacs and they think they’re gonna get away with it. They have taken our Democracy and formed it into a klep-tocracy. -Michael Moore

What we have today is a laissez faire American version of feudalism; a private government in the form of private corporations run by private individuals who consolidated power to govern entire activities within our political economy. -Barry C. Lynn

Private monopolies determine the brand of breakfast cereal we eat, the type of car we drive, where we bank, the medical treatment we receive, the fashion of our clothes, and the kind of toothbrush we use, in addition to the beer we drink, the health insurance we buy, and what we feed our pets. -Don Monkerud

What we’ve had since the Industrial Revolution was one or another form of state capitalism. It’s been overwhelmed, certainly in the last century, by big conglomerations of capital corporate structures that are all interlinked with one another and form strategic alliances and administer markets and so on. And are tied up with a very powerful state. So it’s some other kind of system – call it whatever you want. -Noam Chomsky

We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years… It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries. -David Rockefeller (at the Bilderberg Meeting in 1991)

To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we (will then) be taxed in our meat and our drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements. If we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people under the pretense of caring for them, they (will) be happy. -Thomas Jefferson

They’re upset about the fact that Wall Street has iron control over the economic policies of this country and that one party is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wall Street and the other party caters to them as well. -Alan Grayson (on the Occupy Wall Street movement)

I would have to say that who has had the largest effect on the whole planet without us really paying attention across the board and everywhere is the entire banking industry and their disregard for the people that they’re supposed to be working for… So the ways the bankers have kind of toppled the way money is distributed and taken most of it into their hands is as good as Stalin or Hitler and the evil guys… They’re not heroes, but they are people that had a really huge effect on the way the world is operating. -Mario Batali

The growth of the Nation and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world – no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men. -Woodrow Wilson

Our economy is based on spending billions to persuade people that happiness is buying things, and then insisting that the only way to have a viable economy is to make things for people to buy so they’ll have jobs and get enough money to buy things.” -Philip Slater

The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining super capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control… Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent. -Rep. Larry P. McDonald

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, and then by deflation, the banks and the corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their father’s conquered. -Thomas Jefferson

A private corporation, let’s say General Electric, is, in fact, just a pure tyranny… And when those institutions also control the government, the framework for popular decision-making very much narrows. In fact, that’s the purpose of shrinking government. It’s so that the sphere of popular decision-making will narrow and more decisions will fall into the hands of the private tyrannies. -Noam Chomsky

It is the system of nationalist individualism that has to go… We are living in the end of the sovereign states… In the great struggle to evoke a Westernized World Socialism, contemporary governments may vanish… Countless people… will hate the new world order… and will die protesting against it. -H.G. Wells

 -Allen Ginsberg

The dominion which the banking institutions have obtained over the minds of our citizens… must be broken, or it will break us. -Thomas Jefferson

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A place where everything is something.

Potential-president Romney’s onto something, and it’s not just his embrace of the “corporate personhood” concept championed and re-championed by the U.S. Supreme Court. If a corporation can be a person, like Romney says, then so can a host of other non-people people, too.

Weather. How many times do you hear some knuckle-headed weather people say, “This weather stinks,” or, “I hate the rain?” It’s pure discrimination frankly. Who decided that Old Man Winter was bad and that Aestas, Goddess of Summer, was good? It sounds a lot like the guys who’ve determined that Mexicans are bad and Anglos are good. And we can’t stand for that, can we? We need anti-discrimination-in-meteorology legislation, ASAP.

Fire. You know what the height of injustice is? The ongoing persecution of arsonists. We all know that it’s the fire that actually burns down the building, not the mere pawn who ignited it. If someone as mainstream as Ron Howard can understand this (and then make a B/B-minus movie about it), then we have to accept it. It’s simple logic, really: we blame the corporation for redistributing wealth from poorer to richer, not the fat cats who run the corporation! When a corporation implodes, you don’t punish the man at the helm; you give him a bonus and thank him for a great year. When you catch an arsonist, you give him a cup of cocoa and a warm blanket; the hero just survived a fire attack!

Traffic. There are all kinds of traffic these days – foot traffic, web traffic, drug traffic – and we should see this diversity as a sign of traffic’s inherent humanity. Imagine the accountability you’d inject into state departments of transportation if you were able to sue traffic for making you late and torpedoing your productivity. You’d see a flood of funding into public transportation, just so that the state could avoid costly lawsuits! Corporate personhood allows one to sue a corporation; gridlock personhood lets you take it to the streets.

Electronics. This personalization serves as a kind of amnesty for slow-running computers, pixilated cable boxes, and skipping portable audio players. Sure, it feels nice to throw a malfunctioning printer out the window, but isn’t that being a little harsh on a single, insignificant particle that constitutes but one tiny fragment of the electromagnetic web that encompasses us all? Just as it’s not your fault when your laptop runs a little raggedly after you’ve dropped it on the floor, it’s also not the laptop’s fault that it’s beholden to a unwieldy technological entity – i.e., electronics – that can’t evolve to the point where being dropped on the floor has no deleterious effects on functionality at all. After all, many animals can survive being dropped on the floor; it’s about time our technology caught up.

War. With gods like Ares, Woden, and Huitzilopochtli, the ancients were on the right track here. I mean, these days, what are those damn peace-niks actually protesting? A fusillade of bullets? The chemical commingling of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpetre? How could any chemistry buff hope to get behind a movement that disdains a classic oxidation-reduction chemical reaction? Redox makes the world go round! We definitely need a lightning rod here. But for our purposes, instead of having a war god, it’s much more practical to invest in a war person. We were close before; perhaps No. 43 is worth trotting out for a second encore?

Foods. We already do this with liquor and ice cream. “Jose Cuervo really kicked my ass last night,” you say; or “I have a date with Ben & Jerry tonight.” Foodies love to talk about the “character” of cheese, or wine, or coffee, but what if they were characters in and of themselves? Imagine the spate of excuses that would open up: “I can’t go to your three-hour a capella jam; I already made plans with [Monterrey] Jack.” Or: “I’d love to watch the Pawn Stars marathon with you, baby, but my Boy[Ardee] friend is coming over.” Sure, sharper minds may call you a cannibal, but, then, they’ve probably never spent a solid night drinkin’ and gamblin’ with the Man in Black himself, Cash[ew nuts].

Image: Mittromneys

The post In Defense of Non-Human Humanity appeared first on EcoSalon.

“Get real! This is the biggest crisis humanity has faced,” warns Annie Leonard in her latest environmental education video, The Story of Cap & Trade. It is getting mixed reviews as the dust settles since its recent release.

A follow up to her widely popular animated eco tutorial, The Story of Stuff, it offers a pureed breakdown of how energy traders (greedy corporations and industries) and Wall Street financiers hope to get rich off of pretending to save the planet. The method to the madness: capping carbon emissions by giving permits to the polluters, who will in turn have the free license to pollute, especially in the third world where lax standards pose disastrous consequences for farmers and villagers.

Leonard’s release of the video comes on the heels of what many considered the failed talks for climate change solutions at Copenhagen, and identified the devils in the existing caps and trade proposals. These include issuing free permits to major polluters rather than selling the permits instead and allotting dividends to citizens and paying back ecological debt.  She also cites fake offsets which let polluters make false claims about what they will do the cut emissions, as well as the most dangerous devil of the plan – distraction.

Leonard tells us relying on the scheme weakens our ability to make strong laws away from fossil fuels.

While climate talks in Europe or on Capitol Hill have yet to scratch the surface on global caps on carbon emissions, the video illustrates (with charming, monochromatic animated stick figures) that education of the masses is crucial for curbing any crisis, as witnessed with the AIDS public information campaigns of the early 80s.

Leonard is adept at making sense of it all with her wholesome, kindergarten teacher approach to feeding our overwhelmed brains one truth at a time. In the end, she basically throws up her arms to declare about the process, “It’s protecting business as usual.”

Not all agree. “Just colossally ignorant,” is how one Grist writer sums up the video’s treatment of the trade entities, such as Enron, and how Europe has botched its attempts at handing out permits to cut emissions. Of course, many of the critics calling the critique of cap and trade deceptive also lump Leonard with the rest of the “Left” making up all of this hogwash about fossil fuels contributing to climate change.

Meanwhile, eco activist Michael Gaworecki, writing for Change.org, agrees with the video’s arguments, but says he isn’t sure the cap-and-trade plan isn’t the best mechanism for lowering carbon emissions that we can put in place  in enough time to make a difference.

“America needs to take the lead on stopping global warming if we’re to stand a chance, and anything perceived to interfere with unfettered capitalism is unlikely to fly in the good ol’ US of A,” he says.

Gaworecki adds that the few alternatives, such as a straight-up tax on carbon pollution, could be simple and effective, but “would never make it out of the American Congress alive.”

Image: Telegraph

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