Corporate Attack
Burbach, Roger
In recent months, NACLA has been the target of an attack by one of the world's largest agribusiness corporations, Castle & Cooke. The company accuses NACLA of being a fountainhead of...
...While some of Kirchhoff's allegations against NACLA and the company's other critics are ridiculous and even humorous, the company's obvious attempt to stoke the embers of McCarthyism are all too serious...
...NACLA and the company's other critics are not a "carping melodramatic elite" as Kirchhoff alleges, but are a part of a growing popular groundswell of disaffection with the U.S...
...Mobil Oil, Xerox, Citibank, Exxon, Chase Manhattan-these are just several of the economic giants that have laid out millions of dollars trying to prop up the ideological foundations of capitalism...
...Excerpted from Barrons-Feb...
...We operate at cross purposes to NACLA and its front organizations, because they view social improvement as an obstacle to revolutionary change...
...Spokesmen from prestigious church organizations have confronted Castle & Cooke at annual stockholders'meetings with charges so outlandish that they would not normally warrant any comment...
...This campaign has challenging implications for everyone in this room-and for everyone who believes in the opportunity for people to grow in a climate of personal and economic liberty...
...According to Castle & Cooke president, D.J...
...Kirchhoff I wanted to speak with you today about a campaign being waged against Castle & Cooke by some so-called "public interest" groups, many of them church-related...
...The company's greatest fear is that the anticorporate movement might spill over to a movement for more fundamental social change...
...infamous in Central America) and is today one of the world's three largest banana companies...
...Castle & Cooke is simply following quaint local customs by scattering its dollars around in government and military circles...
...In late 1977, NACLA 38 visited the company's operations in Honduras and discovered that Castle & Cooke had busted the union in its plantation there and that some union leaders had been thrown in jail...
...SMOKE SCREEN In public statements Castle & Cooke has never directly responded to the charges made by NACLA...
...Like any good corporate citizen caught with its hand in the till, the company publicly claims that its actions are above reproach...
...Bechtel, a large transnational construction firm, is trying to discredit Mother Jones magazine for exposing the company's ties with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA...
...On TV and radio, in newspapers and magazines, the corporations and big banks are now selling us not only their products and brand names, but also the capitalist system itself...
...Other groups besides NACLA have been on the corporate firing line in recent months...
...One of its recently acquired subsidiaries, Bud Antle Co...
...I spoke of the attacks on Castle & Cooke by these church groups as being orchestrated...
...I am convinced that our path, rather than theirs, is the one that offers more hope for the future, but it cannot be accomplished in a vacuum or by one corporation...
...Progressive forces should be ready for this challenge...
...And Nestle, another of the world's largest agribusiness corporations, has unleashed a well-financed campaign against a network of groups lobbying for an end to the sale of Nestle's infant formula milk in third world countries...
...As the economic crisis deepens, and as the capitalist system proves increasingly incapable of meeting our most fundamental needs, the corporations will step up their offensive...
...NACLA research may simultaneously appear in attacks against your company at stockholders' meetings, in the straight and underground press, in the hostile press at your overseas locations and in the journals that NACLA itself publishes and distributes...
...In 1964, Castle & Cooke bought the Standard Fruit & Steamship Co...
...Let's revitalize our corporate leadership and take the offensive, in the best tradition of American capitalism...
...We have been accused of depressing conditions of our host countries, holding down wages and contributing to Third World malnutrition by exporting goods for profit...
...We, therefore, are a high-priority target of NACLA and those church groups that are either NACLA's allies or unknowingly provide an appearance of respectability...
...What concerns me today is a more direct assault on our economic system...
...NACLA Reportupdate * update update * update The sources of this disillusionment are evident...
...And the Inter-faith Center on Corporate Responsibility, which files dissiSept/Oct 1979 " Those Who Believe in Capitalism Must Fight Back by D.J...
...Later, in 1978, NACLA obtained and publicized official company documents revealing that Castle & Cooke made regular payments to Honduran military officers, customs officials and local newspaper reporters...
...What he conveniently fails to mention is that NACLA played a role in exposing some of Castle & Cooke's corrupt and repressive activities abroad...
...Kirchhoff, NACLA, the "Kremlin," and "terrorists" are leading religious groups and other respectable organizations down the path of revolution...
...Off the record", however, it told some of its church critics that making payments to military officers and local officials is the only way that business can be conducted in a country like Honduras...
...NACLA was organized in 1967...
...The company also assisted a military raid on a nearby plantation run by a workers' cooperative on lands abandoned by Castle & Cooke...
...Revelations of political slush funds in this country and interventionist meddling on behalf of repressive regimes abroad have all contributed to the growing loss of corporate credibility...
...In reality, Castle & Cooke has good reason to be worried, as do the other corporate giants that dominate the economy...
...Today we are witnessing only the beginning of the corporate assault on progressive organizations...
...According to a recent Harris poll, only 18 percent of Americans express significant confidence in business leaders, compared to 55 percent in the early '70s...
...NACLA's attempt to document and articulate a perspective that sees corporate abuses as an inherent part of our economic system is precisely what has drawn such heavy fire from the company...
...CORPORATE PROFILE With sales of over $1.3 billion, Castle & Cooke operates on three continents...
...Why is Kirchhoff leveling this attack at NACLA and "those church groups that are either NACLA's allies or unknowingly provide an appearance of respectability (sic...
...THE CORPORATE OFFENSIVE Castle & Cooke's attacks are just one small skirmish in a much broader offensive by the corporate world aimed at overcoming this growing popular disaffection...
...It is ironic that our principal antagonists, or at least our principal visible antagonists, come from the church community...
...The American people know they are forced to bear the brunt of double-digit inflation, lagging economic growth, high unemployment, environmental pollution, and skyrocketing oil prices-all this while they watch corporate profits continue to rise...
...Many of these charges appeared on the front page of'Barron's (a leading business weekly with a circulation of over 230,000) which saw fit to reprint Kirchhoff's remarks before the Merchants & Manufacturers Association...
...THE HONDURAN SCANDAL As part of its world-wide empire, Castle & Cooke operates large banana plantations in Central America...
...economic system...
...It is a principal source of so-called "research" against U.S.-based multinationals...
...Castle & Cooke is a stabilizing force in our host countries, contributing to their political and economic well-being...
...In one Central American country, where we have made important contributions to personal welfare and the national economy, a leftist newspaper tried to discredit our operations by alleging that we were paying local police to break strikes...
...Eliot Janeway puts it best: "The Kremlin has found a new outlet for its well known technique of harnessing the religious cadres it detests to the political conspiracies it hatches...
...In the Philippines, where the company owns vast plantations, Castle & Cooke has been criticized by martial law opponents for its cozy relationship with the Marcos government...
...Church and secular organizations, which had been pressuring Castle & Cooke for several years to end its more exploitative practices at home and abroad, denounced the company's Honduran activities at Castle & Cooke's annual meeting in 1978...
...By portraying groups like NACLA as sinister Marxist organizations that are misleading others, the company clearly hopes to divide the diverse forces that are involved in the anticorporate movement...
...Castle & Cooke knows that far more than its public image is at stake...
...This siege is spearheaded by what can only be called a "movement"-an amorphous group of people who believe as an act of faith that capitalism is inefficient, wasteful, unjust, inhumane, exploitative, monopolistic and profit-oriented at the expense of the workers...
...The attempts at red-baiting are also likely to intensify as the corporations look for scapegoats to blame for the problems they have created...
...Instead, the president of Castle & Cooke is trying to throw a smoke screen around the company's activities by mounting a campaign to discredit its critics...
...Kirchhoff has also attacked NACLA in university speeches, in business forums, and at the company's annual meeting...
...Some of the leaders of the cooperative were arrested and imprisoned for well over a year...
...The seeds of this slanderous "Yankee go home" attack were sown by a Marxist, tax-exempt New York and Oakland-based organization called the North American Congress on Latin America, or NACLA...
...The company accuses NACLA of being a fountainhead of "misinformation" and one of the main instigators of a social movement that is out to destroy American values...
...a large California lettuce grower) has been involved in bitter labor disputes with the United Farm Workers Union...
...19, 1979 dent stockholder resolutions, has been attacked by a number of corporations, including Nestle and Castle & Cooke...
...He claims that his assault is "part of my responsibility to my shareholders, to my employees and to the American people...
...The fact that Kirchhoff feels threatened by an organization like NACLA (whose total budget is less than half of his own annual salary) is a sign of the corporation's loss of public credibility...
...Best known for its Dole-brand pineapples and bananas, as well as Bumble Bee Seafoods, it is also a major real estate speculator in California and Hawaii...
...Founded in Hawaii by missionaries in 1851, the company was a leading force in colonizing the Islands...
Vol. 13 • September 1979 • No. 5
