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…
Naomi Klein: How Corporate Branding Has Taken Over the U.S. Government
Naomi Klein writes in the Guardian:
Ten years after the publication of No Logo, Naomi Klein switches her attention from the mall to Barack Obama and discovers that corporate culture has taken over the US government.
In May 2009, Absolut Vodka launched a limited edition line called “Absolut No Label”. The company’s global public relations manager, Kristina Hagbard, explained that “For the first time we dare to face the world completely naked. We launch a bottle with no label and no logo, to manifest the idea that no matter what’s on the outside, it’s the inside that really matters.”
A few months later, Starbucks opened its first unbranded coffee shop in Seattle, called 15th Avenue E Coffee and Tea. This “stealth Starbucks” (as the anomalous outlet immediately became known) was decorated with “one-of-a-kind”…
For $65, Tourists Get Peek at Los Angeles Gangland
SFGate reports:
Only miles from the scenic vistas and celebrity mansions that draw sightseers from around the globe — but a world away from the glitz and glamour — a bus tour is rolling through the dark side of the city’s gang turf.
Passengers paying $65 a head Saturday signed waivers acknowledging they could be crime victims and put their fate in the hands of tattooed ex-gang members who say they have negotiated a cease-fire among rivals in the most violent gangland in America.
Why Those Hamburgers You See On TV Look So Damn Good…
A segment from the 1990 series, “Buy Me That: Kids and Advertising”, created by HBO in a collaboration with Consumer Reports Television. In this clip, we’ll meet a “makeup artist for food” who surprises us all with this behind-the-scenes look at how burgers (and fries) are made to look their best for television…
One Third Of Children’s Toys In The U.S. Are Toxic
AFP reports that you may be giving your kids a stocking full o’ cancer and developmental defects this Christmas:
A third of the most popular children’s toys in the United States this year contain harmful chemicals including lead, cadmium, arsenic and mercury, a US consumer group said Wednesday.
The Ecology Center tested nearly 700 toys ahead of the Christmas shopping season and found that 32 percent contained one or more toxic chemical.
Lead levels in toys varied, with seven percent containing more than 40 parts per million (ppm), the highest level recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2007. Another three percent of the products tested had levels exceeding 300 ppm, the federally-mandated limit.
Among the toys with detectable lead levels were the Barbie Bike Flair Accessory Kit, the Dora the Explorer Activity Tote…
Blood Gold at Wal-Mart; Five Million Dead in the Congo
One of the most interesting things I found out about in this 60 Minutes story is that Wal-Mart is the largest gold retailer in the United States. Here at Disinfo, we distributed Robert Greenwald’s Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, and here’s another troubling consequence to add to this idea, that low price doesn’t come without costs that you, the consumer, may not be aware of. Costs that can make you think twice about exactly what you are buying.
Scott Pelley reports on 60 Minutes:
Now in Stores, Spray-On Jesus!
From Lizz Winstead posted on HuffPo:
Here what we know:
- Jesus is in a can
- Jesus is bleeding
- There’s now 20% more Jesus.
Here’s what we don’t know:
- How Jesus got in the can.
- Whether or not Jesus appears when you spray this.
- Who handles Jesus’s PR. This seems like a horrible misstep in what seemed to be an otherwise promising career.
Whatever this is, it’s hilarious. A google translation of “Aerosol de Poder Atraccion” yields “Attraction Power Spray.” So there’s a chance that Jesus is changing the body-spray game. Hey Axe! Jesus is here, and the ladies can’t resist a man walking on water and smelling good. Check and mate.
Americans Toss Out 40 Percent of All Food
Robert Roy Britt writes on LiveScience:
U.S. residents are wasting food like never before.
While many Americans feast on turkey and all the fixings today, a new study finds food waste per person has shot up 50 percent since 1974. Some 1,400 calories worth of food is discarded per person each day, which adds up to 150 trillion calories a year.
The study finds that about 40 percent of all the food produced in the United States is tossed out.
Meanwhile, while some have plenty of food to spare, a recent report by the Department of Agriculture finds the number of U.S. homes lacking “food security,” meaning their eating habits were disrupted for lack of money, rose from 4.7 million in 2007 to 6.7 million last year.
About 1 billion people worldwide don’t have enough…
The Ultimate Christmas Gift? Buy Nothing
Reverend Billy Talen writes in the Guardian:
[Today] is Buy Nothing Day in the United States. A group of people including myself will preach and sing at the front door of Macy’s department store in New York. We do this every year. We’ll be there at 5am, when shoppers who have been up all night wait in line rush the glass doors. This is the human comedy at its most sad, and it is an environmental “shopocalypse”.
Buy Nothing day is an old idea — that we should drop out of consumerism for 24 hours on Black Friday, the day when we are supposed to shop the most. The radical rechristening of the corporate Christmas took place back in the 90s, long before most of us equated consumerism with destruction of the Earth.
So kudos to the people at Adbusters for venturing forth with this. Nonetheless, Buy Nothing day is not enough, not for the emergency we face now. The American consumer’s carbon footprint is exponentially the most sinful of all, 20 times the average…
AFA List Of Anti-Christmas Stores To Boycott
It may seem a little early, but now is the time of season to get irate over Christmas. The conservative Christian American Family Association has compiled their color-coded “Naughty or Nice” list of retailers to boycott for being on the wrong side of the “War on Christmas.”
The website explains that “AFA reviewed up to four areas to determine if a company was Christmas-friendly.” A boycott of the P.C., Christmas-censoring Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic stores is being called for; why, why does Old Navy hate Jesus so much?
