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Corporate Watch latest news
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As an organisation that is partly dependent on outside funding, Corporate Watch often faces the dilemma of balancing its financial survival with a critique of funding bodies and grassroots activists funded by them. While maintaining a critical view of corporate and non-corporate funders, we also recognise their role in political organising and social movements and the difficulties of being totally independent. Thus, while trying our best to avoid dodgy money and money with strings attached, some difficult questions seem unavoidable: Is there good funding and bad funding?
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The Arts Council describes itself as “the national development agency for the arts... distributing public money to help artists and arts organisations.” Wherever there is the smell of money, however, art inevitably becomes a political issue. In this article, Corporate Watch takes a look at why a government body that is meant to “get more high quality work to a wider range of people” would be interested in radical and subversive arts projects. |
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The Camden Green Fair and Bikefest, held to coincide with the World Environment Day, advertises itself as aiming to “inspire Londoners to help make their capital a world-class green city, letting visitors find out about the huge and growing number of sustainable companies, products, campaigns, and lifestyle choices that are available to us all.” |
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CSR, or Corporate Social Responsibility, is a phenomenon that free-market gurus like the late Milton Friedman railed against, and that concerned non-governmental organisations often rush to embrace. Yet, both of these seemingly paradoxical reactions to CSR are arguably misinformed: they falsely take the rhetoric of CSR at face value and believe that its proponents are actually concerned with improving corporate social responsibility to the broader population, not just to their shareholders. |
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Investigations of for-profit corporations are proceeding well, but not-for-profit corporations, although part of the same problem, are mostly neglected. And these not only include foundations, but also charities, causes, non-governmental organisations and think-tanks. |
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The calls for a boycott of Israeli goods are gaining increased mainstream credence. Much noise has been made about the British government finally beginning to question Israel on their export of settlement produce. But the single direct result so far has been a freeze on negotiations on an upgrade of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which already gives Israel preferential trade terms with the 27 EU countries. Whilst politicians make symbolic gestures, it is the people of Palestine who feel the harsh reality of Israel’s illegal settlement economy, writes Therezia Cooper. |
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For almost a decade, the small rural community of Killcommon, County Mayo, Ireland, have been successfully resisting a Shell-led consortium’s attempts to build and operate a high pressure gas pipeline and refinery in their remote and ecologically sensitive region. For the past four years, the community-led campaign, Shell To Sea, has been supported by the Rossport Solidarity Camp. The unusual situation of a local community campaign with an integral international activist element has resulted in an inspiring struggle which remains dynamic, both tactically and ideologically. |
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During the past three years, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service have launched a new campaign against anti-corporate animal rights campaigns across the country. The crackdown has lead to the imprisonment of activists linked to Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) for a total of 50 years and the jailing of Sean Kirtley, who was linked to the Stop Sequani Animal Torture Campaign (SSAT), for four and a half years. The sentences, the charges and the nature of the prosecutions have all been political. |
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Five days of camping, music, theatre, sustainable living and workshops - a seedbed of peace, climate and environmental consciousness-raising. So, what have the former managing director of the world’s largest corporate producer of live music, Live Nation, and the Anschutz Entertainment Group, owners of the O2 Arena and funders of wide screen, blockbuster biblical parables with roots in the oil industry and links to homophobic campaigns, got to do with the Big Green Gathering? |
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Corporate Watch has moved to a new office. (This time to a room with windows.)
Contact us on 0207 426 0005 or c/o Freedom Press, Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High Street, London, E1 7QX
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*Tuesday 23rd - Monday 29th June - No Border Camp – Calais* - The camp calls for the freedom of movement for all, an end to borders and to all migration controls. It calls for a radical movement against the systems of control, dividing us into citizens and non-citizens, into the documented and the undocumented.
For more information see http://calaisnoborder.eu.org/ and http://noborders.org.uk/
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