1 - Dutch
West India Company
Granted a charter to monopolize the
Atlantic slave trade, the
Dutch West India Company transported African slaves to sugar
and cotton plantations in the Americas.
On average, 15 percent of slaves
died from suffocation, starvation, violence, and disease during
the voyages.
2 - Colorado
Fuel & Iron Company
After 14-hour work days and filthy
working conditions, Colorado miners had had enough. They went on strike in 1914.
Then,
members of the Colorado National Guard and the Colorado Fuel
& Iron Company (CFI) descended
upon a group of strikers in Ludlow, Colorado, killing two dozen
people - including women and children at
The Ludlow Massacre.
CFI, owned by
John D. Rockefeller, was never charged.
3 - Philip
Morris
In May 2011, Philip Morris CEO
Louis Camilleri claimed,
"It's not that hard to quit smoking."
The year before, the company had
collected $27 billion in revenue. Meanwhile, smoking is
responsible for
one in five deaths in the United States.
Philip Morris has often dodged
lawsuits and continues to market its deadly product to teenagers
who, they hope, will become lifelong customers–provided these
are substantially shortened lives.
4 - Zimbabwe
Mining Development Corporation
About 10,000 subsistence diamond
diggers were working small plots in the
Marange diamond field in Chiadzwa, Zimbabwe in 2006.
After taking over the mining field,
the government of Zimbabwe began shooting the unlicensed miners
from helicopters. Today, the field is operated by seven
companies, all partnered with the government affiliate,
ZMDC.
5 - Dole
In April 2013, plaintiffs filed a
wrongful death suit on behalf of 73 Colombians who accused
Dole of driving small farmers from banana zones, sanctioning
union leader murders, and using terror tactics to discourage
local resistance.
Dole and rival banana magnate,
Chiquita, have long been accused of funding paramilitaries to
squelch labor rights.
6 - Royal
Dutch Shell
Shell, long a mistress of the
Nigerian government, has regularly faced accusations of razing
villages to install pipelines, flaring billions of dollars'
worth of natural gas, mucking up water quality, and committing
human rights abuses
culminating in murder.
Yet in the Supreme Court case,
Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum Co.,
the judges dismissed the pleas based on "lack of subject matter
jurisdiction."
7 - Temmler
Werke
Methamphetamine was first marketed
as
Pervitin, an alertness
enhancer, by Berlin-based drug manufacturer,
Temmler Werke, in 1938.
It was
used widely through World War II in Germany, Japan, and even
America.
Addicted soldiers were known to
shoot themselves and others in psychotic phases. Pervitin was
removed from the market, but of course, meth remains and
its Big Pharma cousin,
Adderall (and other
amphetamines), contributes to premature death and psychiatric
disorders every year.
8 - CITGO
Petroleum Corporation
For 10 years,
CITGO expelled
carcinogenic waste gases from its oil refinery in Corpus
Christi, Texas.
But in 2014, Judge John D. Rainey
decided that calculating the real-life amount owed to local
victims would,
"unduly delay the sentencing process" and "[outweighed]
the need to provide restitution to any victims."
Make no mistake, this corporation
was responsible for the
premature deaths of dozens of victims.
9 - Kansas
Pacific Railroad
The
Kansas Pacific Railroad
transported businessmen, tourists, and the military to and from
Kansas City to Denver in the early 1870s.
It encouraged travelers to
shoot American bison from the train windows for a jolly good
time. By 1890, the buffalo populations had dropped from its 1492
peak of
60 million to just 750.
Some call that near extinction,
others call it murder.
This entry is representative of
countless corporations responsible for the deaths of animals,
including the livestock industry and oil companies like BP that
killed thousands of birds, sea turtles, and marine mammals.
Accusations of the mass-murder of
buffalo to starve out Native Americans also possibly play into
the Kansas Pacific Railroad's decision to systematic slaughter
of the buffalo.
US Colonel Richard Dodge
famously
said in 1867,
"Every buffalo dead is an Indian
gone."
10 -
Monsanto
Monsanto is a
special breed of
evil.
The multinational agrochemical and
agricultural biotechnology corporation is best likened to a
serial killer that you could arrest for murder but never be sure
of exactly how many people he killed.
The deaths we know about involve the
Indian farmers who commit suicide every thirty minutes because
the GMO seeds they are basically forced to plant fail to produce
necessary yields.
Disturbingly, some of the farmers
committed the act by consuming the same Roundup
herbicide Monsanto gave them for their crops. The
total death count is estimated at 290,000.
Additionally, Monsanto may very well
be causing irreversible
kidney damage and
cancer on large-scale populations with the herbicide
glyphosate marketed as Roundup.
The city of San Diego is even suing
Monsanto for polluting its bay with cancer-causing PCBs
(polychlorinated biphenyls).
