1999

        Thursday, April 1, 1999 is just another day in corpoworld. The food and lumber sectors are busy felling forests at two acres a second while the mining sector continues creating town-sized craters. And a thousand dolphins die each day entangled in the fishing sector's nets. Meanwhile, Dunloe continues fattening its market share by inventing ever more appetite-enhancing chemicals to add to its "reconstructed" food products. 

        They are powerless to stop. Even if they wanted to, they are so addicted it would take decades. Thus, the planet is already in a state of enbvironmental emergency.

        Killarney would appear to be one of the last of the unpolluted places. It is the beautiful keystone of the Ring of Kerry which consists of a hundred miles of spectacular East-Atlantic ocean-cliff scenery. Since the 1800's the town has seen a steady stream of tourists and business groups from all over Europe. Assures the Castle Hotel brochure: "The beauty and anonymity of Killarney and its lakes conspire to create a perfect setting for a private meeting." But the postcard weather hasn't been seen in weeks. And Killarney's postcard lakes are quite polluted.

        The anonymous figures behind the Dunloe Group are now arriving. By semi-limo. The arrival of executive helicopters has been ruled out, the top guns hitching limo rides with each other. The limo their very limit of austerity. Their chieftain is not among them.

        Suit & tie being best disguise of all, they additionally wear convention name tags and dress in a conventional way to control hotel staff. 

        This meeting will be different. The PR biz, if you have the money, will not only keep you in the public eye, it will protect you from it.  Indeed, PR itself leads corpland in hiding its own effectiveness. Dunloe has lived long on this fact.

        But present are public-relations specialists. Indeed, the subject of the meeting is PR!

        It is the culmination of a year's of work at the internet- group level. The PR types and the others have never shaken hands until today but they know each other fairly well from their frequent emails and videoconferences.

        Dunloe structures its top decision-making process in a two-level system. At the lower-top are experts and executives employed by Dunloe and "outside" consultants who are called in for their particular areas of expertise. As in ancient Greece's city states, all vote together to make advisory recommendations to the top level and have no other than advisory powers. Most importantly, their jobs were at the will of the corporation.

        The lop level is the owners of the corporation. They are in constant meeting status. This is accomplished with their email phones. They much prefer electronic meetings over office ones. Today, however, they are in HQ watching the meeting on in-house TV. They see the lower level, but the lower level does not see them.

        Months ago, Lower had been asked to answer the question: What is the best way to present Dunloe if it were in the world spotlight? Their answer: (1) a news conference on worldwide TV. (2) Dunloe should be represented by a single spokesman. He should be expert in answering questions. He should look, and be, extremely media-friendly. (3) His answers to questions should be simple, short and sweet, and appeal to a very limited set of possible answers. (4) That set of possible answers should be well thought out by the PR, marketing, and legal departments. (5) No other persons in the corporation should speak to the press, especially any of the owners.

*

        It is now 9:30pm in Killarney, the rush-hour. One can be lost in thought in a quiet pub at nine, and by half-nine be lost in a noisy crowd. Down at famous-for-fish Foley's on High St., now in its 50th year, the smokey bar is filled with hungry customers waiting to eat fresh John Dorrey or lobster. Dan the piano man gets another request as cigarette particulates drift in and out of his lungs. He can actually recognize whether he's getting a direct hit from the hot end or a recycle blast from someone's lung. The requesters spew even more smoke and talk while he plays their song. They've called the tune.

        Down High St. is The Laurels, Ireland's famous singing pub. Singing is very big in Ireland, so there's a lot of competition. Singers like Jimmy Sugrue who perform at The Laurels have to be very good indeed.

        Having departed the Castle Hotel for a Friday night in Killarney town, a few of the Dunloe Group are at Foley's for fresh lobsters just separated from their lifelong-spouses in the window tank and then boiled to death. While pianoman continues, some converse in Irish. They are not hiding anything. It is their medal, their pride. They are at the top. The meeting is on their turf.

        Food has turned out to be the biggest business in corpoworld. In recent years, Dunloe has grown ever larger as consumers of its food products grow ever larger. The Dunloe Group is at the top of the food sector, itself the most powerful sector. 

        But there has to be something else to explain the predominance of one tribe over another, of one leader over another. True, power is the electricity of business. But at the top everyone's got power, whether it's the food biz or government.

        The difference may be in the Kerryman's culture. It has a long tradition of scholarship at all levels of society. Tourists are rather surprised at the farmer scholars who can give lectures on many subjects, or recite Yeats in the pub. Some in the Dunloe Group have been known to make sure that every day they read a good poem, or hear some good music, or take a look at an art book, and to speak a few reasonable words. They stand in marked contrast to the visiting New York types who don't smile much. It could be jetlag, but the Manhattans show signs of wear and tear from their compulsive lives in "The Capital of Capital." They work more hours, spend less time with their families, drink more, and always seem to be rushing to the next stop.

        Corporations. There is no escaping them. Your mortgage or your apartment is owned by corporations. You step into a street owned by an incorporated city. The passing cars are mostly owned by banks or other finance corporations, and so are the buses, trucks and taxis. In fact, most corporations are owned by corporations.

        In most sports one corporation plays another, even in tennis. The games are televised by corporations and viewed in pub and bar corporations. We go to supermarket corporations, and to movie corporations. Even shelters for the homeless are corporations. And all of the above were built by corporations.

        But who owns the corporations? That is the question. Who are the far-removed persons raking in dysfunctional amounts of dough while their employees struggle to pay the bills? And how do they manage to stay so anonymous?

*

        Meanwhile, it's 11 at night in Tralee. There is still some light in the sky on this longest day of the year. Ian is to meet Gerard at the No Name Pub. (Yes, its the pub made famous by the song.) It's filled to the gills, as usual. Owner Pat keeps his prices down, but that's probably not the reason it's so crowded. It's the crowd that draws the crowd: writers, poets, musicians, business types, and families and kids too.

        Tralee is nearly nine-hundred years old. Many local historians say its name means Strand of the Lee and refers to the Lee river and sandy stretches coming in from Tralee Bay on Ireland's west coast. Others say Li (Lee) was a family name.

        The town has been burned down a few times through the centuries. But Tralee rose each time. In its present charming incarnation it is a busy, progressive city of 22,000, plus a considerable daily bulge because it is the county city of Kerry. Its town park features a one-mile walk under a canopy of magnificent trees and presents hundreds of roses in dozens of varieties. The song The Rose of Tralee is world famous.

        Tralee has escaped much of the industrial world's pollution, and yet progress has not passed it by. One rarely needs to send away for computer software, or books, or office supplies. It is the home of the National Folk Theater of Ireland. It is the home of the famous Tralee Scribblers writers' group which meets in the Poets Corner at Harty's Pub. It has a considerable intellectual life with educational groups, concerts of Irish-trad, jazz, and classical music, art galleries, live rock pubs, and discos which open at 11:30 at night when the pubs close.

        Ian finds Gerard in the No Name. Gerard owns Infobytes, Ltd. He's a big player on the world's information superhighway and his business is at a big intersection. Ian wants Gerard to link up with Dunloe but Gerard enjoys the independence of having his own corporation. Indeed, he savors it and knows it is healthy. At the same time, he must be polite to corporate raiders, merger mongers, and buyout bidders or he'll make enemies. In corpoworld, most corporations do most of their business with other corporations, so Gerard's policy of politeness is a wise one.

        Both are tech kids. Both went to top American colleges. After college, Ian returned to Ireland not out of concern for his country's brain-drain problem but because of his big job with Dunloe. Gerard is a better business man, Ian a better scientist and corporate player. Gerard spends more time with his wife and kids than in the pubs. Ian likes new women. His scientific work is for financial gain, not the joy of discovery. He has no real respect for the scientific method other than for its money value. The Dunloe group consider him one of their whiz kids. He has a brilliant future with them.

        At the No Name, the music on the house system competes with the sound of the TV. If one strays from one's conversation and listens to it, one is distracted right back into one's conversation. Ian jokes about the big weekend he had. He has still not completely recovered. The last year of the supposedly greatest millennium in history is cause for considerable celebration in Tralee as well as in NYC.

        They drink and talk as the Goodness Stout flows through them. It splashes through their livers and into their lives. Vitamin G , it's called. Rivers of it flow every day. The profits are enormous but the Irish don't get the money. Foreigners own all the beer and whiskey corporations.

        Ian says to Gerard, "Big things are going to happen."

        Gerard takes it to mean another big buyout by Dunloe. "Who is it now, Coca Cola? How big need to get?" he asks half admiringly.

        "No, it's bigger than that. It's amazing."

        Gerard figures Ian's had one too many.

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