The following is the text of the back cover for the new Godspeed You Black Emperor! album, and it illustrates how buying a major label album (or concert ticket) supports the war industry:


AOL Time-Warner is one of the remaining major label record companies and owns Atlantic, Elektra/Sire, Asylum, Reprise, Warner, American, Maverick, and others. It also owns AOL, which is involved in a co-venture with Hughes Electronics Corp called DirecTV. Hughes is owned 100% by General Motors. Hughes merged with Raytheon to form Hughes subsidiary Raytheon Industries. Raytheon Industries makes missiles and bombs.

Sony Corporaton is another of the major label companies. Sony is involved in a co-venture with the US Army and University of Southern California to develop advanced training simulations for use by the Army. Sony's face in this venture is known as Future Combat Sytems.

BMG owns Arista, RCA, BMG and other record labels. The Power Corporation of Canada is a significant shareholder in BMG, and in turn has holdings in Pargesa Group and Groupe Bruxelles Lambert. These holding companies own a stake in Totalfina, which owns an interest in the venture between Hutchinson Worldwide and Barry Controls. This venture produces sundry parts used in fighter aircraft and other miltary vehicles.

Vivendi Universal is the fourth and final major label company, counting MCA, Polygram, Motown, Geffen-DGC, Interscope, and Universal among its holdings. It has an arm called Vivendi Environnement, which owns a stake in Fomento De Construcciones Y Contratas, which in turn has a stake in Espelsa. Espelsa works on mission planning systems for the P-3 Orion aircraft (Lockheed Martin), as well as systems for the Typhoon Fighter (or Eurofighter), made by British Aerospace. Espelsa also works with the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, which produces military aircarafts and bombs, as well as with Alenia who, together with Boeing, makes bombs.

Buying anything supports the war machine. Riding a bus to get groceries supports the war machine because burning petroleum supports the oil companies.

Where do you stop? It's a non-sensical and tacticly ridiculous argument to make. Consumption by its very nature is problematic, but people HAVE to consume in order to survive, unless your one of a very small number of people who can live on the streets successfully and enjoy life that way. Most people, and especially the poor with families often don't have the luxury to be conspicuous consumers.

The politics of lifestyle consumption won't change anything. But organizing a mass movement against their abuses will (i.e. the anti-apartheid movement, the campaigns against Nestle, Nike, etc.).

You can extend the list of evil corporations till your blue in the face, but that won't change the structure of capitalism. We need better politics than the politics of consumption alone.

in solidarity,
000

Sorry 000, I disagree.
This one is certainly able to put the hurt where it is the most sensitive and cause the least bad public heat from media spin.
Also, it tends to form coalitions among political factions while encouraging education on common principles. I (ever so humbly )
have tried to participate in such ideas but I find curiously, it seems to draw so much derision.
You can always draw absolutes to shoot down a concept by making it seem ridiculous or unreachable, this doesn’t apply to absolutes. A boycott makes sense with selective strike techniques’, as in any tactical situation. We need to pursue this idea. It works. Carnation even had to react, temporarily withdrawing high pressure advertising of baby formula in South America when bad press caused a church group type of boycott wave .

It seems to me that corporations demonize themselves on a list of activities/misdeeds in common knowledge, to numerous to mention. They need a leash and a whip to get them to behave.

Bush Admirer - I see you left the Portland IMC to troll in the LA one. Worst of luck to you!
:)
Capitalism IS the enemy. It brought you Enron (they are ALL Enrons). It brought you both world wars. It brought you 9-11. It brought you endless wars and the "terrorist" counter-attacks that go along with it.

Hit them where it hurts - don't buy their stuff. Destroy their ability to profit - by any means necessary.

Make a decision of what you want - capitalism, endless war, and future worse-than-9-11s?

Or another system? It's your choice.

Socialism, democracy, communism, anarcho-syndicalism, ANYTHING is better than the plutocracy we now live in. Government OF the rich BY the rich and FOR the rich, perpetuated by filthy-rich Republicrats, is bringing the third-world into our own country, and will bring the ultraviolent wrath of our victims to US.

Music you make yourself is more rewarding. Everyone makes music, if even only in the shower. Better to see local approachable musicians exude their sonic excitement than see jaded professionals endure another night on the road.

Mr. Admirer, corporations ARE the government. The confluence of corporate control and the corruption within government are in unholy wedlock. Conflicts of interests abound and are destructive. This has been an accelerating trend resulting in global misery.
The leash and the whip.

-confiscate wealth from the rich and give it to the poor-
Ahh, a man after my own heart, even if you accidentally put it into a pile of rhetoric that tries to set up absolutes to knock down.
Capitalism is a form of an old social disease. Collecting power to enforce control over the majority of their fellow mankind and constructing systems of enforcement of this power to steal.
Ownership and use are different terms that you may not agree with me on nearly all perspectives. Most likely.
I don’t think any information is being exchanged in presenting such old tired disproven fallback clichés’.
We can take an example from ‘them’ (you).
We must demonstrate our credibility.
They need to learn to behave.
The whip and the leash.

Because it’s better than the shotgun and the nose.

freedom from coporate culture is no sacrifice

the problem with music

nice chart

I think the current managers of these big corporations are bumbling fools. All they know how to do is make themselves money treat people like dirt. Actually, I think that's the dictionary definition of "manager". Maybe if the money and power were to be taken out of their hands, they'd be forced to...dare I say PRODUCE SOMETHING FOR A LIVING, instead of living off other people's brains and sweat.