I found an article on AlterNet.org by Reese Erlich, entitled “Bush’s Agenda in Iran”.
In an effort to reach as many people as possible I have taken the liberty of posting here a portion of the final paragraph of that article.
“…the decision whether to bomb Iran depends, in part, on actions by the American people. Now is the time to let your national and local politicians know that we don't need another human disaster in the Middle East. Code Pink is organizing a national campaign to get local city councils to pass resolutions against attacks on Iran. Now is the time for anti-war demonstrations around the issues of both Iraq and Iran.”
Bush and Cheney must be stopped. Do not believe their rhetoric. Attacking Iran will only serve to push us closer to the brink of the end of America as we now know it. We do not want terrorists in our streets. Bush, Cheney and many others, guided only by political loyalty, are pushing us toward that reality.
Please read the article in its entirety here and visit Codepink.org today.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Another sales gimmick
A consumer watchdog group Center for Science in the Public Interest submitted a petition last November to the Food and Drug Administration advocating a national system of symbols to adorn packaged foods. The idea is to create an easy method for consumers to spot healthy food products so they don't have to read through the fine print while grocery shopping.
Are you freaking kidding me?
Is this group made up of a bunch of kindergarten teachers? Do they think people are too stupid to read the nutritional labels on food products? They have to give us little colored dots to tell us what foods are good for us and what foods are bad?
Are they next going to devise a plan to give good, healthy eaters gold stars?
This is an insult to consumers.
They are denigrating the fact that food shopping for nutritious foods is a very important process and should not be trivialized by using colored labels.
It is bad enough that food manufacturers have resorted to using cartoon characters and flashy pictures and symbols to appeal to children to buy their sugar drenched crap that passes for food, now consumer groups are talking down to us too.
Maybe they think our lives are so hectic and tightly scheduled that giving us colored dots will get us through the trauma of shopping so we get out of the store faster.
Maybe they think we can’t understand what the hell the food companies are printing on their labels.
“Gee, I don’t know, 13 grams of fat seems awfully high, Marge? Oh, I don’t bother with that old-fashioned, indecipherable printed label anymore. I just look for the green dot and place all of my faith in the company that made the product, they wouldn’t lie to us.”
I am all for forcing food makers to label their products so we know what we are eating, I also advocate restaurants telling us the nutritional value of their menu items. But we are not five year olds.
Maybe food companies are behind this campaign so they can cover up what is really in the package. Use symbols so people won’t look at the printed nutritional labels. Eventually they won’t even print the nutritional labels anymore. They will just go down to the local stationary store and buy up a bunch of colored dots and slap them on the package instead.
“Hello, Local Stationary? Yeah, send over some more of those green dots. No, don’t bother with the red dots, sales on those items are down. That’s right, and throw in a few yellow ones just to make consumers think we are actually rating this stuff.”
Our education system is crap and outdated compared to the rest of the world and this illustrates why. The people who came up with this gem are products of that same education system. This scares the hell out of me.
We need to start teaching more real life subjects like food nutrition, money management, critical thinking, ethics and social skills (which should include a healthy dose of anger management). Something that will actually prepare us for the real world. More emphasis on current events, science and math would help a lot.
The FDA is tasked with protecting the public's health and safety from products created and sold in the U.S. market. It is a monumental undertaking by an organization that is understaffed facing a mountain of new products every year. Drugs and food items are submitted to the FDA along with results of testing conducted by the manufacturer of these same products. This system is inherently flawed, as evidenced by this example. There are a host of other examples we hear about, only after the product has been on the market and usually after peoples lives have been damaged or lost.
If you leave it to food conglomerates to come up with their own labeling they will use cheery, cartoonish symbols designed to catch the consumers eye. Use of these labels will lead to abuse and consumers still will not be any better informed than they were with the printed labels.
The FDA cannot save everyone from themselves but they can treat those of us who actually use our abilities to read to think for ourselves about what is nutritious if we only had a definitive guide of what levels of nutrition we need.
The claims that organic food is best for us have been so skewed by companies jumping on the bandwagon with products that cannot possibly be organic that we don’t know what is best for us.
We hear claims that studies show that such and such causes cancer or organ damage and then we hear contradictory studies that ‘prove’ otherwise.
Vegans preach how eating only vegetables will give you a longer, healthier life. Meat eaters retort that humans have gotten stronger through eating meat. Studies can be found that contradict or prove both.
We consumers are alone in determining what is best for us to eat. We cannot count on the government to protect us. There are just too many untrustworthy people selling items with false claims. Sure, some companies get punished for their misconceptions but the tide is too great.
Using a bunch of brightly colored stickers and cartoon characters will not help us at all. They are only designed to sell, sell, sell.
Are you freaking kidding me?
Is this group made up of a bunch of kindergarten teachers? Do they think people are too stupid to read the nutritional labels on food products? They have to give us little colored dots to tell us what foods are good for us and what foods are bad?
Are they next going to devise a plan to give good, healthy eaters gold stars?
This is an insult to consumers.
They are denigrating the fact that food shopping for nutritious foods is a very important process and should not be trivialized by using colored labels.
It is bad enough that food manufacturers have resorted to using cartoon characters and flashy pictures and symbols to appeal to children to buy their sugar drenched crap that passes for food, now consumer groups are talking down to us too.
Maybe they think our lives are so hectic and tightly scheduled that giving us colored dots will get us through the trauma of shopping so we get out of the store faster.
Maybe they think we can’t understand what the hell the food companies are printing on their labels.
“Gee, I don’t know, 13 grams of fat seems awfully high, Marge? Oh, I don’t bother with that old-fashioned, indecipherable printed label anymore. I just look for the green dot and place all of my faith in the company that made the product, they wouldn’t lie to us.”
I am all for forcing food makers to label their products so we know what we are eating, I also advocate restaurants telling us the nutritional value of their menu items. But we are not five year olds.
Maybe food companies are behind this campaign so they can cover up what is really in the package. Use symbols so people won’t look at the printed nutritional labels. Eventually they won’t even print the nutritional labels anymore. They will just go down to the local stationary store and buy up a bunch of colored dots and slap them on the package instead.
“Hello, Local Stationary? Yeah, send over some more of those green dots. No, don’t bother with the red dots, sales on those items are down. That’s right, and throw in a few yellow ones just to make consumers think we are actually rating this stuff.”
Our education system is crap and outdated compared to the rest of the world and this illustrates why. The people who came up with this gem are products of that same education system. This scares the hell out of me.
We need to start teaching more real life subjects like food nutrition, money management, critical thinking, ethics and social skills (which should include a healthy dose of anger management). Something that will actually prepare us for the real world. More emphasis on current events, science and math would help a lot.
The FDA is tasked with protecting the public's health and safety from products created and sold in the U.S. market. It is a monumental undertaking by an organization that is understaffed facing a mountain of new products every year. Drugs and food items are submitted to the FDA along with results of testing conducted by the manufacturer of these same products. This system is inherently flawed, as evidenced by this example. There are a host of other examples we hear about, only after the product has been on the market and usually after peoples lives have been damaged or lost.
If you leave it to food conglomerates to come up with their own labeling they will use cheery, cartoonish symbols designed to catch the consumers eye. Use of these labels will lead to abuse and consumers still will not be any better informed than they were with the printed labels.
The FDA cannot save everyone from themselves but they can treat those of us who actually use our abilities to read to think for ourselves about what is nutritious if we only had a definitive guide of what levels of nutrition we need.
The claims that organic food is best for us have been so skewed by companies jumping on the bandwagon with products that cannot possibly be organic that we don’t know what is best for us.
We hear claims that studies show that such and such causes cancer or organ damage and then we hear contradictory studies that ‘prove’ otherwise.
Vegans preach how eating only vegetables will give you a longer, healthier life. Meat eaters retort that humans have gotten stronger through eating meat. Studies can be found that contradict or prove both.
We consumers are alone in determining what is best for us to eat. We cannot count on the government to protect us. There are just too many untrustworthy people selling items with false claims. Sure, some companies get punished for their misconceptions but the tide is too great.
Using a bunch of brightly colored stickers and cartoon characters will not help us at all. They are only designed to sell, sell, sell.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Phone companies as censors
So, you think you can say anything you want, any time you want over the internet or through text messaging? Not if AT&T and Verizon has anything to say about it.
Read the fine print of your ‘terms of agreement’ and you will find that either company, among others, can terminate your contract with them anytime they want at their discretion.
It is their equipment and they should have the right to refuse service to anyone.
My objection is their ability to access the content of those private conversations in order to determine if they are politically ‘offensive’ to their beliefs.
These corporations are business entities not political entities. If they want to enforce their political bias on their customers then we customers should be allowed to void our contract with them because we don’t agree with their political views.
Verizon blocked text messages from a national pro-choice group who wanted to send it to their customers.
When they were busted Verizon claimed it was a ‘glitch’ in their software and they felt really bad about it. A glitch? Right. A glitch that singularly prevented a pro-choice group from sending text messages to its customers. I’m not buying it.
In August, AT&T censored a live webcast of a Pearl Jam concert just as lead singer Eddie Vetter criticized President Bush. They also hid behind a faulty ‘glitch’.
Are these companies telling us that their multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art software is faulty?
Both companies have a history of handing over customer phone records to the National Security Agency. These events were not followed a scapegoat as mundane as a ‘glitch’, they were just flat out denied. As a result of being discovered, they are both pushing the White House for immunity from lawsuits.
The phone companies have placed themselves in a position to determine what we can and cannot say in our supposedly ‘private’ conversations. This is a very dangerous time to for freedom of speech.
Does this smack of Big Brother? You bet it does. Should we worry? Hell yes. Anything that deteriorates our right to privacy or our right to free speech or for that matter any right granted us by the Bill of Rights should be viewed with extreme suspicion.
No communications provider should put themselves in the position to censor or deny any speech we wish to participate in. They should not even have access to the content of our messages.
Network neutrality is an issue that should be supported by everyone or we will soon find ourselves restricted to what communication we can participate in. Also, we may find ourselves giving money to organizations that are practicing politics counter-productive to our own beliefs.
We need to protect our rights to free speech through every forum, including the internet and cell phones. Telecommunications companies are not culpable for what transmissions get sent using their equipment, therefore they should not be worried about what subject matter is transmitted.
One thing I do not understand is that since the very same people that run these companies and sit on their boards do not want their private conversations intercepted or censored, why should they facilitate the governments ability to do it to their own customers?
Read the fine print of your ‘terms of agreement’ and you will find that either company, among others, can terminate your contract with them anytime they want at their discretion.
It is their equipment and they should have the right to refuse service to anyone.
My objection is their ability to access the content of those private conversations in order to determine if they are politically ‘offensive’ to their beliefs.
These corporations are business entities not political entities. If they want to enforce their political bias on their customers then we customers should be allowed to void our contract with them because we don’t agree with their political views.
Verizon blocked text messages from a national pro-choice group who wanted to send it to their customers.
When they were busted Verizon claimed it was a ‘glitch’ in their software and they felt really bad about it. A glitch? Right. A glitch that singularly prevented a pro-choice group from sending text messages to its customers. I’m not buying it.
In August, AT&T censored a live webcast of a Pearl Jam concert just as lead singer Eddie Vetter criticized President Bush. They also hid behind a faulty ‘glitch’.
Are these companies telling us that their multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art software is faulty?
Both companies have a history of handing over customer phone records to the National Security Agency. These events were not followed a scapegoat as mundane as a ‘glitch’, they were just flat out denied. As a result of being discovered, they are both pushing the White House for immunity from lawsuits.
The phone companies have placed themselves in a position to determine what we can and cannot say in our supposedly ‘private’ conversations. This is a very dangerous time to for freedom of speech.
Does this smack of Big Brother? You bet it does. Should we worry? Hell yes. Anything that deteriorates our right to privacy or our right to free speech or for that matter any right granted us by the Bill of Rights should be viewed with extreme suspicion.
No communications provider should put themselves in the position to censor or deny any speech we wish to participate in. They should not even have access to the content of our messages.
Network neutrality is an issue that should be supported by everyone or we will soon find ourselves restricted to what communication we can participate in. Also, we may find ourselves giving money to organizations that are practicing politics counter-productive to our own beliefs.
We need to protect our rights to free speech through every forum, including the internet and cell phones. Telecommunications companies are not culpable for what transmissions get sent using their equipment, therefore they should not be worried about what subject matter is transmitted.
One thing I do not understand is that since the very same people that run these companies and sit on their boards do not want their private conversations intercepted or censored, why should they facilitate the governments ability to do it to their own customers?
Rush Limbaugh does not represent America
You boisterous, blubbering, buffoon. How dare you attack the integrity of military personnel for voicing their opinion. They who have put aside their desire to live a comfortable civilian life with their family and friends to serve their country only to have an overly opinionated, self-important, blowhard such yourself condemn them for having an opinion, deserve better than your callous, unthinking attack on their character.
It might come as some surprise, sir, but your very narrow view of the right to free speech extends far beyond you and because you can so easily condemn others for exercising their right goes to illustrate the danger your ilk presents to this country. You think your opinion is the only one that matters in all aspects of American life and politics.
I condemn this war and the sneaky, lying, underhanded way in which we were forced into it but I am proud of every individual who has proven their willingness to answer the call to defend our great nation and their brothers in uniform despite the detestable actions of the spineless, deceitful, coward who is placed in command of them through no other qualification than because he sits in the presidents office.
Since you are so fond of casting your opinion of others I am interested in hearing what your opinion is of Americans who weasel their way out of military duty? Or, once they are in the military, do not show up for duty? Keep in mind that your beloved president refused to show up for his National Guard duty for a period of approximately one year in the early '70s to avoid service in Vietnam. Does this fact change your opinion of him now?
Will you so eagerly condemn him as a “phony soldier”? Since you are unlikely to say it yourself, allow me, George W. Bush is the true definition of a “phony soldier”.
He had the nerve to fabricate a photo opportunity, on an aircraft carrier no less, so he could wear a military uniform that he does not deserve to wear and I did not hear you once call him a “phony soldier”.
By blindly accepting George W. Bush as an honorable, legitimate commander in chief you have locked yourself into a very narrow and dismal view of what a true leader is and this makes you a sad individual indeed.
And what about your military record, Mr. Limbaugh? What qualifies you to say anything derogatory about our constitutions' defenders?
You have sullied the name of every military person who has ever served for this country with your thoughtless and demeaning comment. You must know that very few soldiers ever really want to go to war. You have to know that every decent one of them suffered psychological damage for having killed another human being or witnessed their brother’s death in this senseless, ill-conceived war.
You cut quite the ridiculous image sitting back in your wide, comfortable chair in that air conditioned radio booth sucking on those ugly, nasty cancer causing cigars condemning much better human beings than you will ever hope to aspire to be. And you do this all under the banner of ‘Excellence in Broadcasting’? You great twit.
Senator Harry Reid and others are wrong in looking to condemn Rush Limbaugh for his remarks and should back off because this is outside their purview. Their efforts are transparently political and they are treading dangerously close to trampling on a citizens right to free speech. They should know better than to go down this road.
But you, sir, should search deep inside your soul and try to find the decency to apologize for your unfounded remarks.
It might come as some surprise, sir, but your very narrow view of the right to free speech extends far beyond you and because you can so easily condemn others for exercising their right goes to illustrate the danger your ilk presents to this country. You think your opinion is the only one that matters in all aspects of American life and politics.
I condemn this war and the sneaky, lying, underhanded way in which we were forced into it but I am proud of every individual who has proven their willingness to answer the call to defend our great nation and their brothers in uniform despite the detestable actions of the spineless, deceitful, coward who is placed in command of them through no other qualification than because he sits in the presidents office.
Since you are so fond of casting your opinion of others I am interested in hearing what your opinion is of Americans who weasel their way out of military duty? Or, once they are in the military, do not show up for duty? Keep in mind that your beloved president refused to show up for his National Guard duty for a period of approximately one year in the early '70s to avoid service in Vietnam. Does this fact change your opinion of him now?
Will you so eagerly condemn him as a “phony soldier”? Since you are unlikely to say it yourself, allow me, George W. Bush is the true definition of a “phony soldier”.
He had the nerve to fabricate a photo opportunity, on an aircraft carrier no less, so he could wear a military uniform that he does not deserve to wear and I did not hear you once call him a “phony soldier”.
By blindly accepting George W. Bush as an honorable, legitimate commander in chief you have locked yourself into a very narrow and dismal view of what a true leader is and this makes you a sad individual indeed.
And what about your military record, Mr. Limbaugh? What qualifies you to say anything derogatory about our constitutions' defenders?
You have sullied the name of every military person who has ever served for this country with your thoughtless and demeaning comment. You must know that very few soldiers ever really want to go to war. You have to know that every decent one of them suffered psychological damage for having killed another human being or witnessed their brother’s death in this senseless, ill-conceived war.
You cut quite the ridiculous image sitting back in your wide, comfortable chair in that air conditioned radio booth sucking on those ugly, nasty cancer causing cigars condemning much better human beings than you will ever hope to aspire to be. And you do this all under the banner of ‘Excellence in Broadcasting’? You great twit.
Senator Harry Reid and others are wrong in looking to condemn Rush Limbaugh for his remarks and should back off because this is outside their purview. Their efforts are transparently political and they are treading dangerously close to trampling on a citizens right to free speech. They should know better than to go down this road.
But you, sir, should search deep inside your soul and try to find the decency to apologize for your unfounded remarks.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Chevron’s Corporate hypocrisy
Chevron launched an ad campaign on the television news show 60 Minutes in an attempt to show themselves as having a soul. A soul that cares about the very environment it is helping to destroy.
The campaign, called “Power of Human Energy” will be shown in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
They want to divert our attention away from the profit they are making on global warming and try to convince us that we need them to continue the search for fossil fuels, because we have to have fossil fuels in our future. Wink, wink.
They continue to support Myanmar’s brutal military regime who just recently slaughtered human rights protestors in the streets.
They spend millions to strike down any legislation to fund alternative fuel sources which are desperately needed to reverse the effects that burning oil products have created on our environment.
They refuse to cleanup their oily mess that has contaminated ground and water in Ecuador.
They refuse to take responsibility in the deaths of Nigerian anti-Chevron protestors in 1998 and 1999.
They have manipulated supply to drive up gasoline prices at their pumps.
They are slowly buying back their own stock to push the value of their stock prices up.
So, how much money is it going to cost this oil conglomerate to present this disingenuous, new image to the American people? They won’t give any details, of course, but if you look at the scope of the campaign, i.e., ads on television, newspapers, radio, pamphlets, and the internet, the budget is estimated at around $40 million.
They can afford it. The reason they can afford it is because we continue to give them the money at their gas pumps.
I know we don’t have any alternative but to continue to purchase gasoline for our vehicles because we need to get to our jobs, our schools, our shops, our entertainment venues, our vacations, our friends houses, our own houses, and our graves. We do not however, need to buy gasoline from a corporation that obviously has no soul, lies to us about caring for the environment and us and has to resort to buying our sympathy for their struggle to bring their products to us.
Their use of smiling people and smiling families in their ads put forth the image that people are damned lucky to have Chevron as a friendly corporate neighbor.
This is so very touching and heart-warming to think that this oil giant is taking the time, and spending their hard earned dollars, to show us they care.
What a load of crap!
It never ceases to amaze me how the human conscience, while hiding behind a corporate logo, can be convinced that it is okay to destroy the environment and support the slaughter of innocent people all in the name of profit and then try to convince the rest of the world they care.
By the way, Texaco is now owned by Chevron, so if you want to stop feeding this corporate giant your hard earned money then stop feeding Texaco too.
The campaign, called “Power of Human Energy” will be shown in the U.S., Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
They want to divert our attention away from the profit they are making on global warming and try to convince us that we need them to continue the search for fossil fuels, because we have to have fossil fuels in our future. Wink, wink.
They continue to support Myanmar’s brutal military regime who just recently slaughtered human rights protestors in the streets.
They spend millions to strike down any legislation to fund alternative fuel sources which are desperately needed to reverse the effects that burning oil products have created on our environment.
They refuse to cleanup their oily mess that has contaminated ground and water in Ecuador.
They refuse to take responsibility in the deaths of Nigerian anti-Chevron protestors in 1998 and 1999.
They have manipulated supply to drive up gasoline prices at their pumps.
They are slowly buying back their own stock to push the value of their stock prices up.
So, how much money is it going to cost this oil conglomerate to present this disingenuous, new image to the American people? They won’t give any details, of course, but if you look at the scope of the campaign, i.e., ads on television, newspapers, radio, pamphlets, and the internet, the budget is estimated at around $40 million.
They can afford it. The reason they can afford it is because we continue to give them the money at their gas pumps.
I know we don’t have any alternative but to continue to purchase gasoline for our vehicles because we need to get to our jobs, our schools, our shops, our entertainment venues, our vacations, our friends houses, our own houses, and our graves. We do not however, need to buy gasoline from a corporation that obviously has no soul, lies to us about caring for the environment and us and has to resort to buying our sympathy for their struggle to bring their products to us.
Their use of smiling people and smiling families in their ads put forth the image that people are damned lucky to have Chevron as a friendly corporate neighbor.
This is so very touching and heart-warming to think that this oil giant is taking the time, and spending their hard earned dollars, to show us they care.
What a load of crap!
It never ceases to amaze me how the human conscience, while hiding behind a corporate logo, can be convinced that it is okay to destroy the environment and support the slaughter of innocent people all in the name of profit and then try to convince the rest of the world they care.
By the way, Texaco is now owned by Chevron, so if you want to stop feeding this corporate giant your hard earned money then stop feeding Texaco too.
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