Delicious Irony: Foot-shooting philanthropy. (Citings).WHY IN THE world would an enormous multinational corporation multinational corporation, business enterprise with manufacturing, sales, or service subsidiaries in one or more foreign countries, also known as a transnational or international corporation. These corporations originated early in the 20th cent. give millions of dollars to pesky anti-globalization groups? It's all about the ice cream. On October 16, Britain's Financial Times ran an almost humorous piece on how consumer products giant Unilever lavishes piles of cash on vocal street marchers such as Global Exchange, the Ruckus Society The Ruckus Society is an organization that sponsors skill-sharing and direct action training camps for activists from impacted communities working on social justice, human rights and environmental justice. , and United for a Fair Economy. The bizarre subsidy began last year, when Unilever took over Ben &Jerry's, the famously left-wing ice cream company. It seems the hippies at BaJ mustered one last socially conscious gasp before bolting with the cash. According to according to prep. 1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians. 2. In keeping with: according to instructions. 3. the Financial Times, "When Unilever was courting Ben Cohen Ben Cohen may refer to:
or kohen (Hebrew: “priest”) Jewish priest descended from Zadok (a descendant of Aaron), priest at the First Temple of Jerusalem. The biblical priesthood was hereditary and male. , and a minimum [$1 million] a year commitment to grants for social change groups." Unilever isn't the only corporate masochist. The Capital Research Center (capital research.org), a conservative nonprofit that studies corporate giving, has found that businesses regularly give huge chunks of change to the very protesters who would bring them harm. In the latest version of its annual Patterns of Corporate Philantbropy, the CRC (Cyclical Redundancy Checking) An error checking technique used to ensure the accuracy of transmitting digital data. The transmitted messages are divided into predetermined lengths which, used as dividends, are divided by a fixed divisor. reports that "corporations like Aetna, Merrill Lynch, Georgia Pacific and Target Stores--along with many others--donated $31.7 million to left-of-center groups advocating bigger government, more regulation and higher taxes, vs. only $8.1 million to groups advocating free market solutions, lower taxes and conservative reform." These numbers are for 1997, the latest year for which numbers are available, but if Unilever is any indication, the pattern is still holding true. |
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