Work Kills More People Than War
Here is another chapter from Russ Kick’s classic bite-size Disinformation book 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know, published in 2003.
For more on Russ Kick, check out his website, The Memory Hole.
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The United Nations’ International Labor Organization has revealed some horrifying stats:
The ILO estimates that approximately two million workers lose their lives annually due to occupational injuries and illnesses, with accidents causing at least 350,000 deaths a year. For every fatal accident, there are an estimated 1,000 non-fatal injuries, many of which result in lost earnings, permanent disability and poverty.
The death toll at work, much of which is attributable to unsafe working practices, is the equivalent of 5,000 workers dying each day, three persons every minute. This is more than double the figure for deaths from warfare (650,000 deaths per year).…
Ponerology 101: The Psychopath’s Mask of Sanity
Harrison Koehli writes on Signs of The Times:
A Wall Street Psychopath?
In 1960 Bernie Madoff founded his Wall Street firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. As chairman of its Board of Directors until his arrest in December of 2008, Madoff saw his firm (and himself) rise to prominence on Wall Street, developing the technology that became NASDAQ, the first and largest electronic stock exchange in America, in the process.
A multimillionaire with over $800-million in shared assets with his wife and high school sweetheart, Ruth Alpern, Madoff was well-regarded as a financial mastermind and prolific philanthropist. He exuded an aura of wealth, confidence, and connections, and many trusted him as a pillar of the community. Sounds like a great guy, huh?
His humanitarian image was supported by his work for various nonprofit…
FEMA’s Sale of Katrina Trailers Sparks Criticism
Spencer S. Hsu writes in the Washington Post:
In a giant auction, the federal government has agreed to sell for pennies on the dollar most of the 120,000 formaldehyde-tainted trailers it bought nearly five years ago for Hurricane Katrina victims. But the sale of the units, perhaps the most visible symbol of the government’s bungled response to the hurricane, has triggered a new round of charges that it is endangering future buyers for years to come.
Consumer advocates and environmentalists are outraged that the government resold products it deemed unsafe to live in, saying warning stickers attached to the units will not keep people from misusing them.
Besides formaldehyde, units might be plagued by mold, mildew and propane gas leaks, FEMA acknowledged.
“Proceed with caution, extreme caution, if you are tempted to respond to…
Michael Moore Talks Wall Street Crime with Bill Maher on ‘Real Time’
Michael Moore returns to the scene of the crime of our time, interviewed in front of the Goldman Sachs offices in New York City on the March, 5, 2010 episode of Real Time With Bill Maher. The Moore interview begins at around 2:20 in this clip:
Toyota’s Consumer Safety Problems Are Dwarfed By Big Pharma’s Deadly Drugs
Mike Adams writes on Natural News:
Even as Toyota now finds itself the target of an increasingly hyped-up inquisition about “public safety,” skeptical consumers are asking the commonsense question: If public safety is so important, then why isn’t Congress asking about the dangers of Big Pharma’s deadly drugs?
Toyota’s problems with throttle controls and brakes haven’t actually killed anyone as far as we know. Even if deaths have occurred, their number would be extremely small compared to the number of deaths caused by Big Pharma’s products. FDA-approved pharmaceuticals kill nearly 270 people each day in the United States alone, and that’s according to conservative calculations published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That’s equivalent to a jumbo jet airliner falling out of the sky and crashing in a giant ball…
Detroit Schools Offer Class in How to Work at Wal-Mart
Muriel Kane writes on RAW Story:
Wal-Mart has been widely condemned for offering its employees only low-paying, dead end jobs. Even President Obama criticized Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential campaign for having served on Wal-Mart’s board and stated that the firm ought to pay “a living wage.”
In inner-city Detroit, however, where the unemployment rate is estimated at an astonishing 50%, the prospect of a Wal-Mart job may appear far more attractive.
Four inner-city Detroit high schools have decided that employment with Wal-Mart is an opportunity worth training their students to pursue. The schools have teamed up with the giant merchandiser to offer a for-credit class in job-readiness training that also includes entry-level after-school jobs.
Read More: RAW Story
The Top 5 Health Insurers Had A 56% Profit Gain in 2009
John Byrne writes on RAW Story:
If no health care overhaul passes Congress, health insurers may be in for a windfall — and one far larger that most Americans probably realize.
According to a study by a pro-health reform group published Thursday, the nation’s largest five health insurance companies posted a 56 percent gain in 2009 profits over 2008. The insurers including Wellpoint, UnitedHealth, Cigna, Aetna and Humana, which cover the majority of Americans with insurance.
The insurers’ hefty profit gains came even as 2.7 million more Americans lost their insurance coverage due to the declining economy.
A lobbyist for American’s Health Insurance Plans, the trade group that represents insurers in Washington, D.C., attributed the gain in 2009 profits to a poor performance in 2008. In 2008, insurers were forced to write down their…
Monsanto: The #1 Most Unethical Company In The World
Grace Kiser writes on the Huffington Post:
Can ethics be quantified? Or, better yet, can a lack of ethics be quantified?
This week, the Swiss research firm Covalence released its annual ranking of the overall ethical performance of multinational corporations. The idea behind the Covalence research is that there’s value — both for companies and consumers — in measuring corporations against an ethical standard. (We’re hoping this idea also applies to Wall Street firms.)
Monsanto, the Missouri-based agriculture giant, ranked dead last in the Covalence ethical index. The company, which leads the world in the production of genetically-engineered seed, has been subject to myriad criticisms. Among them: the company is accused of frequently and unfairly suing small farmers for patent infringement.
Lies, Damned Lies, and State of the Union Addresses
Nick P. at Black Sun Gazette:
While the capitalist media is treating Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address as some kind of “political pivot,” I didn’t hear much of the unexpected.
There was the usual economic nationalism, call for tax breaks for people who already have money, and stoking the flames of war while telling damned lies.
Hugo Chavez Says Playstation Is “Poison”
And who would argue with him? As reported by Yahoo News/AFP:
CARACAS (AFP) – Sony’s PlayStation video game console is “poison” and leads children down the capitalist “road to hell,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said.
Chavez, in his weekly radio-TV show “Alo Presidente,” called on Venezuelan manufacturers to make “educational” toys and dolls with indigenous peoples’ features to replace capitalistic counterparts like the Barbie doll that “have nothing to do with our culture.”
In expanding on his dislike of western toys and games — he already slammed Nintendo for promoting “selfishness, individualism and violence,” Chavez Sunday took on the world’s top selling game console, Sony’s PlayStation.
“Those games they call ‘PlayStation’ are poison. Some games teach you to kill. They once put my face on a game, ‘you’ve got to find Chavez to kill…
More People Will Die in Haiti This Week Than Hiroshima
Bob Ellis writes on ABC’s Drum Unleashed:
Fewer deaths occurred in Hiroshima in August 1945 than in Port-au-Prince last week and more people will die there soon than in Rwanda in 1994. Yet the modern global world was unprepared for it, so busy were they with Terrorism, which has killed fewer people in the last thirty years than quarrelsome Americans with handguns in the last eight months.
When are we going to get the arithmetic right, and distinguish what threatens us mightily from what threatens us barely at all?
Cuba, a socialist state, is well-prepared for natural disaster and few die there in the hurricane season, and rebuilding happens quickly. The United States, a capitalist nation, was ill-prepared for Hurricane Katrina though experts had warned for years of broken dykes, inundation, chaos, disease…
The Reality of The Economic Crisis
The reality is this. The housing market crashed because a house is built so that people can live in it. Not so that real estate tycoons can buy and sell them like stocks and bonds pushing their ‘value’ into the stratosphere. A home is a tangible structure which at one time was priced according to what working people could afford. It was. Until, like everything else in our society, they became merely another pawn in the profit game, and all the humanity was squeezed mercilessly out of the house.
They stopped being homes, and started being ‘the housing market.’
Darth Vader Opens Wall Street
Gee, anything think this might not be the best photo-op for Wall Street right now?
U.S. Firms Lose Out in Bidding for Iraq Oil Fields
Patrick Martin writes on World Socialist Web Site:
In a clear signal of the declining influence of American capitalism, even in a country conquered and occupied by the US military, companies from China, Russia, Malaysia and Angola, along with several European oil giants, won most of the rights for exploration and development of Iraq’s oil fields.
The concessions were awarded Friday and Saturday by the Iraqi oil ministry, after a competitive auction in which joint ventures of European and Asian companies won the lion’s share. Of the ten concessions awarded so far, including in an earlier auction, US-based companies will play the lead role in only one, while getting a lesser share in a second.
The most aggressive bidder was the China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), while Lukoil and Gazprom of Russia, and…
Aetna Forcing 600,000 to Lose Coverage to Raise Profits
Sam Stein reports on Huffington Post:
Health insurance giant Aetna is planning to force up to 650,000 clients to drop their coverage next year as it seeks to raise additional revenue to meet profit expectations.
In a third-quarter earnings conference call in late October, officials at Aetna announced that in an effort to improve on a less-than-anticipated profit margin in 2009, they would be raising prices on their consumers in 2010. The insurance giant predicted that the company would subsequently lose between 300,000 and 350,000 members next year from its national account as well as another 300,000 from smaller group accounts.
“The pricing we put in place for 2009 turned out to not really be what we needed to achieve the results and margins that we had historically been delivering,” said chairman and CEO…
Dylan Ratigan: The Cost of Corporate Communism
Dylan Ratigan writes on the Huffington Post:
Lately I have been using the phrase “Corporate Communism” on my television show. I think it is an especially fitting term when discussing the current landscape in both our banking and health care systems.
As Americans, I believe we reject communism because it historically has allowed a tiny group of people to consolidate complete control over national resources (including people), in the process stifling competition, freedom and choice. It leaves its citizens stagnating under the perpetual broken systems with no natural motivation to innovate, improve services or reduce costs.
Lack of choice, lazy, unresponsive customer service, a culture of exploitation and a small powerbase formed by cronyism and nepotism are the hallmarks of a communist system that steals from its citizenry and a major reason why…
Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité – Providence, Miracle or What Really Happened
By Robert Singer
Warning: Reading the following may be hazardous to your mental health. The material herein has caused readers to experience Cognitive Dissonance (CD). CD is the discomfort felt at the discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation that contradicts a strongly held belief system – It’s that queasy feeling that rises in your gut and screams, I DON’T BELIEVE THAT! Because, if you accepted the new information, you would have to admit you been ”had,” or ”conned,” in this case into shopping for stuff to trash the planet.
The benefit of the new information is that the world around you will finally make sense. Hot, flat, and crowded Thomas L. Friedman will finally know what planet George W. Bush is on. Bush lost the…
Pay Your Bills on Time? There’s a Fee for That.
In an attempt to squeeze more revenue out of consumers who don’t rack up much debt, Citigroup, Bank of America, and other credit card companies are adding new fees. According to USA Today credit card users are being hit with new “inactivity fees” and fees for not putting enough debt on your credit cards. Consumers thinking about canceling their cards face taking a hit to their credit scores for closing an account.
Other consumers may have no choice – Citibank has been closing some credit card accounts without reason or warning, damaging their customers credit ratings.
I cut-up my credit cards last night.
