Frightening food for thought

You may know Monsanto for its role in those old chestnuts PCB, dioxin and Agent Orange, poisons so pervasive and so stubborn they have spread their toxic stain from pole to pole.

But did you know the 100-year-old company is a major player in the GMO revolution? Under the plausible guise of eradicating world hunger with genetically modified seeds resistant to Round-Up, a best-selling herbicide it also developed, Monsanto has launched an insidious campaign to achieve worldwide market supremacy, regardless of the social cost to small farmers and rural economies.

It's all laid out in previously classified documents, and confirmed by scientists, politicians and victims. What the evidence suggests is that Monsanto has long waged a dirty war of pressure campaigns, corruption, collusion with government and prevarication, also known as big fat lies.

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It's not scary. It's terrifying. Like a Kurt Vonnegut Ice Nine effect, Monsanto's GMO market penetration looks to turn the world to mono-culture and potential environmental catastrophe. Rather than feed the planet, says Robin in this essential wake-up call, Monsanto is well on the road to ruining it.

Read the rest. And if you know nothing about Monsanto, then do some research and learn a little bit. More than likely, you will not like what you discover.

Patenting the "Climate Genes" ...and Capturing the Climate Agenda

BASF, Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta, Dupont and biotech partners have filed 532 patent documents (a total of 55 patent families) on so-called “climate ready” genes at patent offices around the world. In the face of climate chaos and a deepening world food crisis, the Gene Giants are gearing up for a PR offensive to re-brand themselves as climate saviours. The focus on so-called climate-ready genes is a golden opportunity to push genetically engineered crops as a silver bullet solution to climate change.

Whatever, it's all about greed.

Read more.

Multinationals make billions in profit out of growing global food crisis

Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.

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The Future of Food

I watched this documentary last week. Learn about the relationships between agriculture, big business, and of course the government. There are things in this documentary that everyone should know about so I encourage you to check it out.

Read more, then go rent the film.

The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see.

On March 11 a new documentary was aired on French television (ARTE - French-German cultural tv channel) by French journalist and film ... all » maker Marie-Monique Robin, The World According to Monsanto - A documentary that Americans won't ever see. The gigantic biotech corporation Monsanto is threatening to destroy the agricultural biodiversity which has served mankind for thousands of years.

Watch the documentary here.

3 CEOs made $460 million - House panel

House oversight committee prepares to investigate why executives at companies battered by the mortgage crisis were awarded big payouts.

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Bank Of America Won't Let You Access Your Money

I think I'm getting somewhere but then a supervisor comes on and
explains to me that "Everyone in the United States that uses Bank of
America has a daily spending limit of 5000.00 no matter what."

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Target tells a blogger to go away

Early this month, the blog's founder, Amy Jussel, called Target, complaining about a new advertising campaign that depicted a woman splayed across a big target pattern--the retailer's emblem--with the bull's-eye at her crotch.

"Targeting crotches with a bull's-eye is not the message we should be putting out there," she said in an e-mail interview.

Target offered an e-mail response:

"Unfortunately we are unable to respond to your inquiry because Target does not participate with nontraditional media outlets," a public relations person wrote to ShapingYouth.

Not a good move, Target.

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RIAA shreds Washington Post story in debate

National Public Radio hosted in on-air debate between Marc Fisher, the Post columnist, and Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The way I saw it, Fisher was ill advised to debate. What was exposed was a reporter who doesn't want to admit to making a mistake and has dug his heels in. Meanwhile, according to Sherman, Fisher has misled consumers.

Read more.

Washington Post sticks by RIAA story despite evidence it goofed

Marc Fisher, a Post columnist, wrote on Sunday that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) asserted in a legal brief that anyone who copies music from a CD onto their computer is a thief. The document, filed last month, was part of the RIAA's copyright suit against Jeffrey Howell, an Arizona resident accused of illegal file sharing.

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The problem with Fisher's story is that nowhere in the RIAA's brief does the group call someone a criminal for simply copying music to a computer. Throughout the 21-page brief, the recording industry defines what it considers to be illegal behavior and it boils down to this: creating digital recordings from CDs and then uploading them to file-sharing networks.

And THAT I would agree with!

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Download Uproar: Record Industry Goes After Personal Use

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

The RIAA is desperate to hang on to its antiquated business model because it was so easy for the big record companies to make a shitload of money. However, that old model no longer works. In fact, it is dead and the RIAA is just trying to use its muscle to garner as much money as it possibly can through lawsuits instead of trying to devise a business model for the 21st century.

Seems all those years people were making mixed tapes just never happened because no lawsuits were filed during those days and mixed tapes were everywhere. They even made movies where mixed tapes played important roles in the story. Yet, today, if you transfer your legally purchased compact discs onto your computer you have cheated the record companies out of some money?

Um, no. I don't think so.

I feel cheated for having to purchase, for example, Pink Foyd's The Dark Side of the Moon and The Eagle's Greatest Hits 1971-1975 multiple times. Not only because I wore the LP's out, but because I also had to buy the cassette tape, then I had to buy the CD. I mean how many times should we have to buy the same freakin' album?

And that's the issue, isn't?

With today's technology, we only have to buy an album/song once. Then we'll have multiple backups in case a hard drive dies or whatnot. And if one does, we'll still have the album/songs we legally purchased and will not have to purchase them again.

That has to disturb the powers that be at the RIAA. They can't make their easy money any more.

Compound that with today's youth who believe music should be free, and the RIAA is in a world of hurt.

The RIAA's legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed. Four years of a failed strategy has only "created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies," Beckerman says. "Every problem they're trying to solve is worse now than when they started."

And they are too stupid to see that.

Hey big record companies, keep treating your good customers like this and soon you won't matter.

Read the rest.

The Viacom Permalance Slave System

Here's what we hear from what we believe has truly become the Viacom sweatshop. (One Viacom permalancer estimates that almost 50% of the staff are contract workers at this point.) A 50-hour workweek will now be standard, at least at MTV Digital (which means no overtime until after 50 hours, and no overtime at all for higher-level people, like producers and segment producers), and all will go from a day rate to an hourly rate. Healthcare, which was offered to permalancers after a staggering year of service, will now be offered only to employees who have worked 1,280 hours (25 of those 50-hour workweeks) in any one division. And that's the catch: Get transfered, as often happens, from VH1 to MTV or the like, and you start over on that clock.

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Tuition reimbursement is gone. Dental is gone. Commuter pre-tax deductions via WageWorks is gone. The healthcare goes from United Healthcare to Aetna.

Best of all: The company has asked workers to sign the paperwork before they attend the informational session that explains it.

Read more.

The Gap: New Frontiers in Child Abuse

It was enough to make you vomit all over your new denim jacket. The Gap has been caught using child labor in an Indian sweatshop, and not just child labor--child slaves. As extensively reported on the news, the children, some as young as ten, were worked sixteen-hour days, fed bowls of mosquito-covered rice, and forced to sleep on a roof and use over-flowing latrines. Those who slowed down were beaten with rubber pipes and the ones who cried had oily cloths stuffed in their mouths.

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Risking kids to sell fish

That's why it was so disturbing when a group called the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition released a report recently encouraging pregnant women to increase their consumption of fish despite the well-known risk of mercury and other contaminants commonly found in certain seafoods.

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The National Fisheries Institute, the main trade association for the fishing industry, paid the travel expenses of the researchers who generated the report for the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition and gave each of them honorariums of $1,000 to $1,500.

Read more, but don't each much fish if you're pregnant.

RIAA accused of ‘Failure to Warn’

"I explained to them what I believe is right, that the principle is that stealing music is stealing music. Frankly, right is right and wrong is wrong, particularly when a parent is talking to a child. A bright line around moral responsibility is very important. I can assure you they no longer do that."

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[The above quote is] from Warner Music boss Edgar Bronfman jr who admits his seven children have shared music online.

So, will they, too, be publicly hounded and humiliated by Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG’s RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America)’?

Not a chance. They’ve been punished. But all they had to suffer was a ludicrous lecture on ‘bright shining lines’.

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“In what has to be one of the most outrageous verdicts ever recorded in America, without a shred of hard evidence, judge Michael J. Davis virtually instructed the jury to find Jamie Thomas guilty of copyright infringement, saying she must pay close to a quarter of a million dollars,” p2pnet said recently, and the case continues to generate headlines around the world.

But she, Michelle and Bobby are fighting back and as they do so, the members of the multi-billion-dollar organised music cartel, Vivendi Universal (France), Sony BMG (Japan and Germany), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US), are slowly but steadily haemorrhaging what little credibility they had in their claims that they’re being “devastated” (the word they use) by file sharers.

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Verizon Can Charge You$175 If They Cancel Your Service "For Good Cause"

We're all very familiar with the idea that a consumer has to pay an early termination fee if they drop service before their contract is over, but this clause comes as somewhat of a surprise: "An early termination fee will apply...if we terminate [your service] early for good cause."

WTF?

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New AT&T terms of service: We'll cut off your Internet connection for criticizing us

AT&T has brought down new Terms of Service for its network customers. From now on, AT&T can terminate your connection for conduct that "tends to damage the name or reputation of AT&T, or its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries." So AT&T customers aren't allowed to write/podcast/vlog critical things about AT&T, its billing-practices, or its cooperation with illegal NSA wiretapping, on pain of having their connections disconnected.

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Two Major Airlines Admit to Price Fixing

British Airways, Korean Air Fined $300 Million in Price-Fixing Conspiracy Case.

Yes Virginia, conspiracies happen.

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See Who's Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign

On November 17th, 2005, an anonymous Wikipedia user deleted 15 paragraphs from an article on e-voting machine-vendor Diebold, excising an entire section critical of the company's machines. While anonymous, such changes typically leave behind digital fingerprints offering hints about the contributor, such as the location of the computer used to make the edits.

In this case, the changes came from an IP address reserved for the corporate offices of Diebold itself. And it is far from an isolated case. A new data-mining service launched Monday traces millions of Wikipedia entries to their corporate sources, and for the first time puts comprehensive data behind longstanding suspicions of manipulation, which until now have surfaced only piecemeal in investigations of specific allegations.

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Toymaker knew about lead

The company also revealed that its own records show it knew about the problem five years ago. But instead of recalling the tops, a Schylling executive said, the company changed the design to a plastic knob.

Don't play with toys here.