Pornography and American Corporations
by kathy@truthisbetter.org Last updated 2005-04-18

Pornographic movies and Internet pornography often publicly record rape, violence, and even the infection with Aids of young women. Pornography encourages later violence towards women by the men who watch it.

The rise of pornography gives radical fundamentalist terrorists rationale for anti-American terrorism because of its contrasts to Muslim culture where women's modest dress is considered a way to protect women and encourage them to be treated them as intellectual equals. For example, more women are in the Iranian Parliment than are in the US Congress.

Companies like General Motors, AOL Time Warner, owner of Fox News, and Marriott earn revenue by piping adult movies into Americans' homes and hotel rooms, but you won't see anything about it in their company reports. And you won't hear them talking about the production companies that actually make the films or the performers the producers hire, men and women as young as 18, for sex that is often unprotected. Among the banks currently or previously facilitating the Internet pornography trade: Minotola National Bank of Vineland, N.J.; Heartland Bank of St. Louis, Mo.; Benchmark Bank of Dallas; Amtrade International Bank of Atlanta; and First Data's First Financial Bank, along with a firm known mainly to porn peddlers: Paycom Billing Services of Marina del Rey, Calif.

the big names in pornography were Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, and Bob Guccione. Today, these guys look like small-time hustlers. Dworkin's critique of pornography is more relevant than ever as pornography goes mainstream into cable, the Internet, and, very soon, mobile phones.

Chief among the big players is Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which owns DirecTV, the satellite cable company that makes more than $200 million a year in pay-per-view pornography. Murdoch also owns Fox, the New York Post, and Harper Collins, which published porn star Jenna Jameson's bestselling book ''How to Make Love Like a Porn Star." Another big player is Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, which makes more than $50 million from distributing pornographic movies. Comcast's E! Television network ran a highly rated ''E! True Hollywood" story starring none other than Jameson. Hefner could never have dreamed of such business synergy.