Raise the Hammer

At first I wasn't going to comment on this, since its starting to venture way off topic, but since you directly called my morality into question, I'm going to respond.

First off, who said anything about me supporting multinationals who "...made their money supporting both sides in the two world wars...", and who "...contributed to the death and destruction of millions of people..."?

What I said was that one should look at the sum total of the good and bad done by those companies,decide for yourself, and then buy accordingly. If a company committed the kinds off actions you describe then the good products they sold would have to be pretty damn good (or at least pretty damn necessary) before I'd buy them.

The problem is, that's often easier said than done. If you're in the hospital dying from an infection, you don't usually have the opportunity to say "No doctor, I'd rather you use Brand X's antibiotics, not Brand Y's". Not to mention the problem of conglomerates, Brand A makes missiles, Brand B makes lifesaving cancer drugs but both are owned by the same company, would you use Brand B's cancer drug?. This is of course assuming the consumer is adequately informed on the options and the companies, though realistically the public isn't, either through, bad news reporting, PR spin or simple ignorance of the facts.

You also talk a lot about not supporting the "bad guys" (multinationals, the military), but where do you draw the line? Are the farmers who's farms supply the army guilty too? Should Hitler's house painter have been tried at Nuremberg? How about the old man who as a kid in the 40's collected cans to be recycled into tanks or artillery shells? Hell, by your logic everything made by companies around during the 2 world wars shouldn't be used since those companies directly or indirectly helped their nation's war effort. (I use those wars as the example since they were "total wars" where the entire home front mobilized for the war effort.)

To get back on topic, Bombardier was a company on the brink of bankruptcy before it recapitalized and got rid of its military division, it's now one of the more successful small plane manufacturers in the world, building solely civilian planes, trains, snowmobiles and personal water craft. They're a perfect example of what you're talking about, why shouldn't we support that?