Disinformation » Corporation Watch

Your Life Will Some Day End; ACTA Will Live On

Raymond — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 03:03:11 +0000

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) isn’t just another secret treaty—it’s a way of life. If ACTA passes in anything like its current form, it will create an entirely new international secretariat to administer and extend the agreement.

Knowledge Ecology International got its hands on more of the leaked ACTA text this week, including a chapter on “Institutional Arrangements” that has not leaked before. The chapter makes clear that ACTA will be far more than a standard trade agreement; it appears to be nothing less than an attempt to make a new international institution that will handle some of the duties of groups like the WTO and WIPO.

Why bother? Well, from the perspective of countries like the US, the existing institutions have problems. For one, they feature a huge number of nations, some of whom have blocked some of the anti-counterfeiting provisions desired by the US and others. Call this the UN problem—getting much done with so many people in attendance can be tricky, and ACTA has become a “coalition of the willing” who have decided to go form their own club instead.

[Read more at Ars Technica]

Work Kills More People Than War

Ralph Bernardo — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:00:08 +0000

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). According to the ILO’s SafeWork programme, work kills more people than alcohol and drugs together and the resulting loss in Gross Domestic Product is 20 times greater than all official development assistance to the developing countries.

Each year, 6,570 US workers die because of injuries at work, while 60,225 meet their maker due to occupational diseases. (Meanwhile, 13.2 million get hurt, and 1.1 million develop illnesses that don’t kill them.) On an average day, two or three workers are fatally shot, two fall to their deaths, one is killed after being smashed by a vehicle, and one is electrocuted. Each year, around 30 workers die of heat stroke, and another 30 expire from carbon monoxide.

Although blue collar workers face a lot of the most obvious dangers, those slaving in offices or stores must contend with toxic air, workplace violence, driving accidents, and (especially for the health-care workers) transmissible diseases. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration warns that poisonous indoor air in nonindustrial workplaces causes “[t]housands of heart disease deaths [and] hundreds of lung cancer deaths” each year.

But hey, everybody has to go sometime, right? And since we spend so much of our lives in the workplace, it’s only logical that a lot of deaths happen — or at least are set into motion — on the job. This explanation certainly is true to an extent, but it doesn’t excuse all such deaths. The International Labor Organization says that half of workplace fatalities are avoidable. In A Job to Die For, Lisa Cullen writes:

In the workplace, few real accidents occur because the surroundings and operations are known; therefore, hazards can be identified. When harm from those hazards can be foreseen, accidents can be prevented….

Most jobs have expected, known hazards. Working in and near excavations, for example, poses the obvious risks of death or injury from cave-in …. When trenches or excavations collapse because soil was piled right up to the edge, there is little room to claim it was an accident.

References: International Labor Organization. “Workers’ Memorial Day Ceremony to Focus on Emergency Workers, Firefighters.” Press release, 24 Apr 2002. • Cullen, Lisa. A Job to Die For: Why So Many Americans Are Killed, Injured or Made Ill at Work and What to Do About It. Common Courage Press, 2002. This book uses the following as its sources for the US statistics I’ve cited: Bureau of Labor Statistics and Costs of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses by J. Paul Leigh (University of Michigan Press, 2000).

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Look for more 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know under the tag “50 Things” on disinfo.com.

Coca-Cola Intimidates Student Group Over Film Screening

disinfogreg — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 22:57:35 +0000

Maybe I’ll have a Pepsi instead. Via Art Threat:

What can make a giant tremble? When a penniless student group gets a threat from New York lawyers — in this case, Coca-Cola’s lawyers — on account the students want to show a film condemning human rights abuses, the optics suggest that the giant has something to hide. ‘Screening truth to power’, it seems, has its consequences.

Earlier this month, Coke threatened legal action to prevent the screening of a new documentary film The Coca-Cola Case. The $141 billion company (with annual revenues of $28 billion) threatened a small non-profit media-arts group called Cinema Politica which shows documentary films for free at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec and through a network of independent locals across Canada, in the United States, and in Europe and Latin America.

Health Care Insurer Assurant, Targeted HIV Patients to Drop Coverage

Ralph Bernardo — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:55:21 +0000

Talk about a terrible name regarding these circumstances … “Assurant” Health? Why purchase health insurance in the first place if this can happen? Murray Waas writes on Reuters:

WASHINGTON — In May 2002, Jerome Mitchell, a 17-year old college freshman from rural South Carolina, learned he had contracted HIV. The news, of course, was devastating, but Mitchell believed that he had one thing going for him: On his own initiative, in anticipation of his first year in college, he had purchased his own health insurance.

Shortly after his diagnosis, however, his insurance company, Fortis, revoked his policy. Mitchell was told that without further treatment his HIV would become full-blown AIDS within a year or two and he would most likely die within two years after that.

So he hired an attorney — not because he wanted to sue anyone; on the contrary, the shy African-American teenager expected his insurance was canceled by mistake and would be reinstated once he set the company straight.

But Fortis, now known as Assurant Health, ignored his attorney’s letters, as they had earlier inquiries from a case worker at a local clinic who was helping him. So Mitchell sued.

Lehman Brothers Was More Dangerous Than Enron

Ralph Bernardo — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:54:48 +0000

Here’s an excellent explanation from The Dylan Ratigan Show of an arcane “accounting gimmick”, employed by Lehman Brothers as the firm failed in 2007 and 2008.

According to the 2,200-page court examiner’s report this practice, known as “Repo 105″ (“Repo”? Really, why not call it “Steal 105″?), was like “a drug” propelling the bank to conceal the true nature of its financial health.

The collapse of “venerable” Wall Street investment house Lehman Brothers was the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Here’s Dylan Ratigan and Eliot Spitzer making sense of what is clearly a crime against the economic health of the United States:

Exposed: Chevron’s Cover-up of Gross Environmental Abuses in Ecuador

Raymond — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:50:48 +0000

From Alternet:

What is a lost culture? Is it just some intangible time before? Is it an economy? Can you inventory a lost culture in the number of lives lost or rivers polluted?

Those questions haunt the lawsuit brought by Ecuadorian indigenous groups against the U.S. oil giant, Chevron, for environmental destruction it allegedly wrought as Texaco in the Amazon rainforest of eastern Ecuador. On paper, the suit asks Chevron (which acquired Texaco in 2001) to pay for the environmental cleanup of an area three times the size of Manhattan, pocked with open oil pits and steeped in 18 billion gallons of dumped industrial wastewater. The damages in the case — calculated by a court-appointed expert at a record $27 billion — would also establish a health fund to pay for the estimated 1,400 cases of cancer caused by the pollution — a number that will likely continue to grow until the site is cleaned up. The rest of the damages fall into the catchall category, “compensation.”

Emergildo Criollo is president of the Cofan people, who have been among the hardest hit and are one of the plaintiffs in the case. For Criollo, 52, the case isn’t just about what Texaco workers did or didn’t do starting in the 1960s. It’s about the dissolution of his traditional culture into the modern world as a result of oil workers simply being there and building roads to get there. And no one company can be held accountable for that. But Chevron has used the same prevailing wind of cultural dominance to confuse the facts of the case enough potentially to avoid being stuck with the monstrous bill. The company points to an agreement under which Texaco shared its operations in Ecuador with the state-owned oil company, Petroecuador. It also claims that Texaco cleaned up its work sites before leaving Ecuador in 1992. But the company’s legal hedges don’t line up with residents’ first-hand accounts, as Criollo makes clear.

[Read more at Alternet]

Wal-Mart Fires Associate Of Year, Cancer Patient, For Medical Marijuana Use

Ralph Bernardo — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:26:45 +0000

Steve Elliott writes on Toke of the Town:

Despite medical marijuana being legal in Michigan, WalMart has fired a cancer patient and former employee of the year who tested positive for the drug, which was recommended by his doctor.

“I was terminated because I failed a drug screening,” ex-WalMart employee Joseph Casias told WZZM-13.

In 2008, Casias was Associate of the Year at the WalMart store in Battle Creek, Mich., despite suffering from sinus cancer and an inoperable brain tumor. At his doctor’s recommendation, Casias legally uses medical marijuana to ease his pain.

“It helps tremendously,” Casias said. “I only use it to stop the pain. To make me feel more comfortable and active as a person.”

Casias said he went to work every day during his five years at WalMart. “I gave them everything,” he said. “One hundred and ten percent every day. Anything they asked me to do, I did. More than they asked me to do. Twelve to 14 hours a day.”

Then Casias sprained his knee at work last November. During the routine drug screening that follows all workplace injuries, marijuana was detected in his system. Casias showed WalMart managers his Michigan medical marijuana card, but was fired anyway.

Why Google Is A Hungry Beast (Video)

Ralph Bernardo — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:10:20 +0000

Wow, if Google was making its money in the defense industry (could be) instead of advertising, it would be Skynet. Don’t be evil, right guys?

Great video from the Hungry Beast. If you’re in Oz you can watch here, otherwise see below:

NYC Schools Prohibit Sale of Home-Made Food and Allow Junk for Fundraising?!?

phunkychic666 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:37:36 +0000

From NYC Green Schools:

Regulation A-812 prohibits home-baked foods from being sold at school fundraisers, while permitting Doritos and Pop-Tarts instead! Yes, this regulation mandates that if we want to raise money for our schools, we have to buy and sell junk food to our children!

VOICE YOUR OPPOSITION TO REGULATION A-812!

— Our schools cannot become venues for big food corporations, like Pepsi Cola and Kellogg’s to advertise and sell their processed foods to our children!

— Our children must not receive the message that junk food is healthier for them than foods cooked at home!

— We, as parents, must be allowed to participate in the discussion about our children’s health and nutrition!

Join us at City Hall on Thursday March 18th. We will be setting up one table with the approved DOE items and another table with home-baked goods — with a list of ingredients for everyone to see.

Get More Info at NYC Green Schools

Coca-Cola and Water Use in India: “Good Till the Last Drop”

Raymond — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:08:18 +0000

From ScienceBlogs.com:

The marketing executive who came up with Coca-Cola’s popular slogan in 1908 most likely never expected it would be taken so literally. However, a hundred years ago there probably weren’t many who imagined a term like “water wars” could exist in a region that experiences annual monsoons.

On February 25 a complaint was filed in the New York Supreme Court against the The Coca-Cola Company alleging that they knew about and sought to cover up human rights abuses in Guatemala. While that trial gets started, the company’s controversial practices in India continue involving the over-exploitation of limited water resources and the contamination of groundwater supplies. In response to public outcry the soft drink company is now championing itself as a longtime environmental leader and the business community is eager to advertise their claim. Yesterday CNN Money reported that:

Coke has been a leader when it comes to environmental issues: It is aiming to be water neutral — meaning every drop of water used by the company will be replenished — by 2020.

This would come as a surprise to the Plachimada community in the State of Kerala. Ever since Coca-Cola opened a bottling plant on their land in 2000 they have been faced with chronic drought and polluted water. In 2006 these residents of a small impoverished community in southern India began a pitched campaign to evict Coca-Cola from their land which led to fierce battles with local authorities.

[Read more a ScienceBlogs.com]

The Government Can Take Your House and Land, Then Sell Them to Private Corporations

Ralph Bernardo — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 07:25:48 +0000

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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It’s not an issue that gets much attention, but the government has the right to seize your house, business, and/or land, forcing you into the street. This mighty power, called “eminent domain,” is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Fifth Amendment: “… nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” Every single state constitution also stipulates that a person whose property is taken must be justly compensated and that the property must be put to public use. This should mean that if your house is smack-dab in the middle of a proposed highway, the government can take it, pay you market value, and build the highway.

Whether or not this is a power the government should have is very much open to question, but what makes it worse is the abuse of this supposedly limited power. Across the country, local governments are stealing their citizens’ property, then turning around and selling it to corporations for the construction of malls, condominiums, parking lots, racetracks, office complexes, factories, etc.

The Institute for Justice — the country’s only nonprofit, public-interest law firm with a libertarian philosophy — spends a good deal of time protecting individuals and small businesses from greedy corporations and their partners in crime: bureaucrats armed with eminent domain. In 2003, it released a report on the use of “governmental condemnation” (another name for eminent domain) for private gain. No central data collection for this trend exists, and only one state (Connecticut) keeps statistics on it. Using court records, media accounts, and information from involved parties, the Institute found over 10,000 such abuses in 41 states from 1998 through 2002. Of these, the legal process had been initiated against 3,722 properties, and condemnation had been threatened against 6,560 properties. (Remember, this is condemnation solely for the benefit of private parties, not for so-called legitimate reasons of “public use.”)

In one instance, the city of Hurst, Texas, condemned 127 homes so that a mall could expand. Most of the families moved under the pressure, but ten chose to stay and fight. The Institute writes:

A Texas trial judge refused to stay the condemnations while the suit was ongoing, so the residents lost their homes. Leonard Prohs had to move while his wife was in the hospital with brain cancer. She died only five days after their house was demolished. Phyllis Duval’s husband also was in the hospital with cancer at the time they were required to move. He died one month after the demolition. Of the ten couples, three spouses died and four others suffered heart attacks during the dispute and litigation. In court, the owners presented evidence that the land surveyor who designed the roads for the mall had been told to change the path of one road to run through eight of the houses of the owners challenging the condemnations.

In another case, wanting to “redevelop” Main Street, the city of East Hartford, Connecticut, used eminent domain to threaten a bakery/deli that had been in that spot for 93 years, owned and operated by the same family during that whole time. Thus coerced, the family sold the business for $1.75 million, and the local landmark was destroyed. But the redevelopment fell through, so the lot now stands empty and the city is in debt.

The city of Cypress, California, wanted Costco to build a retail store on an 18-acre plot of land. Trouble was, the Cottonwood Christian Center already owned the land fair and square, and was planning to build a church on it. The city council used eminent domain to seize the land, saying that the new church would be a “public nuisance” and would “blight” the area (which is right beside a horse-racing track). The Christian Center got a federal injunction to stop the condemnation, and the city appealed this decision. To avoid further protracted legal nightmares, the church group consented to trade its land for another tract in the vicinity.

But all of this is small potatoes compared to what’s going on in Riviera Beach, Florida:

City Council members voted unanimously to approve a $1.25 billion redevelopment plan with the authority to use eminent domain to condemn at least 1,700 houses and apartments and dislocate 5,100 people. The city will then take the property and sell the land to commercial yachting, shipping, and tourism companies.

If approved by the state, it will be one of the biggest eminent domain seizures in U.S. history.

In 1795, the Supreme Court referred to eminent domain as “the despotic power.” Over two centuries later, they continue to be proven right.

References: Berliner, Dana. Government Theft: Top 10 Abuses of Eminent Domain, 1998-2002. Castle
Coalition (Institute for Justice), 2003. • Berliner, Dana. Public Power, Private Gain: A Five-Year, State-by-State Report Examining the Abuse of Eminent Domain. Castle Coalition (Institute for Justice), April 2003.

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Look for more 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know under the tag “50 Things” on disinfo.com.

Working For Walmart

aaroncynic — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:39:22 +0000

Outside the Wal-Mart in Orland Hills, IL, by Clean Wal-Mart.

Kevin Robinson writes on Chicagoist:

As part of our on-going coverage of Wal-Mart’s attempt to break into the Chicago retail market, we take a look this week at the company’s employment practices in the Chicago metropolitan area. Chicagoist met up with three Wal-Mart employees to talk to them about their jobs, company policy, and why they work there.

Roslyn Lindfair also knows what it’s like to be hurt on the job at Wal-Mart. She worked at the Cary, Illinois store for five years as a cashier before she was fired after her arm got caught in a turnstile.

“It was maybe about 7:30, I was ringing up a customer, and she was turning the turnstile one way, and I was turning another way. And it hit me in my arm. It hurt, and I just kinda waited a while, and I noticed my arm started swelling up.

“It was about 9 o’clock, and I decided I wanted to go to the doctor. So they took me to the hospital. I came back to work, I worked the whole day. On Thursday they presented me with a five-year service award. That Friday I worked the whole day, and then at 3:30 I was getting off of work, and they called me into the office.

“And they wanted to go over the whole incident, tell them what happened. Basically they interrogated me for 30 minutes, 40 minutes. Asked me did I do it on purpose. I told them no, I know my way around. They asked me would I change anything. I told them no, I wouldn’t change anything. They kept going, asking me different questions.

“And I said ‘you can keep asking me the same question over and over again. My yes means yes and my no means no. No I did not do it on purpose. Yes I know my surroundings, and no I will not change anything.’ So they said ‘well, we’re just going to have to fire you for practicing unsafe work habits.’”

Read the full post at Chicagoist

Why Jeff Bridges is Really ‘The Dude’

Ralph Bernardo — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 06:31:03 +0000

As one of the millions of people affected by the ABC-Cablevision pow-wow on Sunday night, yes it is actually true…

The Dude Abides.

Here is evidence why Jeff Bridges is actually “The Dude”… as The Big Lebowski showed us — the viewing audience — in this Dude’s heart, the man behind the character, said in his own words raising his statuette to the heavens he said:

I want to thank my mum and dad for turning me on to such a groovy profession. My mum and dad loved showbiz so much. This is honoring them as much as it is me.

Corporate Spies Like Us: A Peek Into a Shadowy World

majestic — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 14:24:05 +0000

From Daily Finance:

Some social critics say companies that lay off employees are doing permanent damage to themselves. After all, they’ve spent years training the workers they’re casting aside. Moreover, they may be abruptly discarding a great deal of institutional memory.

It turns out there’s another cause for concern: Laid-off workers could be a valuable source of information to corporate spies. Such spooks have been known to stage fake job interviews to ferret out information about a former employer’s ways and future plans. Even still-employed workers “can be surprisingly candid about their own company when they think they’re interviewing for a job,” writes Politico correspondent Eamon Javers.

At its best, Javers’s uneven, intermittently absorbing new book, Broker, Trader, Lawyer, Spy: The Secret World of Corporate Espionage, exposes a little-known world of black ops, eavesdropping, and corporate skullduggery. But the book is marred by an elastic definition of corporate espionage, stretched to include everything from routine financial investigations to ordinary detective work conducted by Kroll Associates. Worse, the volume’s historical chapters are poorly researched and larded with extraneous detail.

‘Mafiya’ Wars

Javers kicks off the book with one of his strongest stories: an account of a covert 2005 operation, Project Yucca. Conducted by private intelligence firm Diligence LLC for the Russian financial-industrial conglomerate Alpha Group Consortium, the mission entailed finding out as much as possible about Bermuda-based rival IPOC International Growth Fund. The operatives, all veterans of Western intelligence services, targeted an impressionable British-born KPMG accountant, Guy Enright.

In clandestine meetings, Diligence agents hinted that IPOC, a KPMG client, might be tied to the Russian mob — and that Enright could serve his country by turning over confidential financial documents. This he did, furtively leaving such papers at designated, secret drop-off points. Cue the James Bond theme, running through Enright’s Walter-Mitty-like brain. “It was a huge intelligence haul for Diligence,” Javers writes, “which used it to stir up problems for IPOC.” But within months, the operation was short-circuited when KPMG was tipped off by parties unknown — and the accountancy filed suit against the intelligence firm. The spook outfit, which still maintains an office two blocks from the White House, today says that it has changed its roguish ways…

[continues at Daily Finance]

“Retail Terrorists” Strike Brooklyn American Apparel Store

disinfogreg — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:30:53 +0000

Has the iconic/ironic hipster mecca finally reached the tipping point?
via freewilliamsburg:

Somebody threw rocks through the windows of Williamsburg’s American Apparel last night, in what looks to be a bout of “retail terrorism.”

I called up the store to ask just what happened, and was told that yes, indeed, someone threw rocks inside the store but then they were caught by the police. I asked if they think the leggings assassins were acting maliciously, or just drunks, and they said, “Yea, they wrote that on their blog. They have blogs. Someone took pictures and put them up on a blog.” I asked which blog that was, but they didn’t know.

Update 1-1:44 pm: Heard from a tipster who knows an employee at a nearby establishment. That person’s report from the scene makes it sounds a heck of a lot scarier than just a few kids throwing rocks! Per his recollection, there were about 50 guys dressed all in black, wearing masks, and “causing total mayhem” all along No. 6th St, “dumping out trash dumpsters and setting everything on fire in the streets, and then smashing all the windows of the american apparel.”

Hurricane Katrina Victims to Sue Oil Companies over Global Warming

Ralph Bernardo — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:44:46 +0000

Via the Telegraph:

Victims of Hurricane Katrina are seeking to sue carbon gas-emitting multinationals for helping fuel global warming and boosting the 2005 storm.

The class action suit brought by residents from southern Mississippi, which was ravaged by hurricane-force winds and driving rains, was first filed just weeks after the August 2005 storm hit.

“The plaintiffs allege that defendants’ operation of energy, fossil fuels, and chemical industries in the United States caused the emission of greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming,” say the documents seen by the AFP news agency.

The increase in global surface air and water temperatures “in turn caused a rise in sea levels and added to the ferocity of Hurricane Katrina, which combined to destroy the plaintiffs’ private property, as well as public property useful to them.”

More than 1,200 people died in Hurricane Katrina, which lashed the area, swamping New Orleans in Louisiana when levees gave way under the weight of the waves. The suit, claiming compensation and punitive damages from multinational companies including Shell, ExxonMobile, BP and Chevron, has already passed several key legal hurdles, after initially being knocked back by the lowest court.

Mapping The American Burger Wars

majestic — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:09:48 +0000

The excellent WeatherSealed by Stephen Von Worley graphically illustrates the battle for dominance in the American fast food stakes:

Imagine, if you will, the burger force – a field of energy that radiates from every freshly-cooked patty, earth-penetrating and inverse-squared with distance, compelling the hungry carnivore to seek out and devour the well-done ground beef at the source.

Now, wrap that concept in a Star Wars motif – set in the present day, with the second-tier burger chains as the rebels – each, by themselves, without mutual aid, battling the 12,000-plus restaurant McEmpire. The situation is most dire, for the upstarts control but a few significant islands of territory amid the overwhelming and darkly-rendered influence of the McForce:

Territory controlled by the eight largest U.S. burger chains.

In this and the following graphic, each individual restaurant location has equal power. The entity that controls each point casts the most aggregate burger force upon it, as calculated by the inverse-square law – kind of like a chart outlining the gravitational wells of galactic star clusters, but in an alternate, fast food universe.

By far, the largest pocket of resistance is Sonic Drive-In’s south-central stronghold: more than 900 restaurants packed into the state of Texas alone. Sheer density is the key to victory!

The rebels already have the numbers – over 24,000 locations in total – but they’ve divided and conquered themselves by strict adherence to the peacetime principles of brand identity and corporate structure. This is war, and for the sake of self-preservation, all must be sacrificed! …

[continues at WeatherSealed]

Weight Watchers Endorses McDonalds

majestic — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:52:54 +0000

How to destroy your brand fast! As reported in the Guardian:

McDonald’s is hardly an ideal dining location for anyone struggling to stay slim. But the fast food chain scored a PR coup today when Weight Watchers agreed to endorse some of its products in New Zealand – a move met with outrage by nutritionists and obesity experts.

As part of the deal, which the company says is the first of its kind in the world, McDonald’s will use the Weight Watchers logo on its menu boards and Weight Watchers will promote McDonald’s to dieters.

The link-up is the fast-food chain’s latest attempt to improve its reputation by securing endorsements. In January, to the horror of gastronomes, Italy’s agriculture minister, Luca Zaia, helped launch the McItaly range of burgers. For a representative of one of the world’s greatest culinary nations to do such a thing was “a sign of the moral bankruptcy of Silvio Berlusconi’s government”, wrote Matthew Fort in the Guardian.

Several items on the fast food giant’s menu – the Filet-O-Fish, Chicken McNuggets and Sweet Chilli Seared Chicken Wrap – have been approved for the Weight Watchers diet in McDonald’s 150 New Zealand restaurants. Each meal is worth 6.5 points on the programme, which assigns points to food items and allows dieters to consume 18 to 40 points each day to achieve their goal weight.

McDonald’s New Zealand managing director, Mark Hawthorne, said: “We were able to include some of our most popular items because of the many changes we have made over the years.

“For instance, the switch to a healthier canola blend cooking oil means items such as the Filet-O-Fish and Chicken McNuggets contain 60% less saturated fat than six years ago.

Chris Stirk, Weight Watchers’ director of business in Australia and New Zealand, said the partnership between the companies reflected “part of our philosophy that you can enjoy life … while still achieving your weight loss goals”.

But nutritionists and obesity experts said the menu items were a marketing ploy to lure customers into the restaurant…

[continues in the Guardian]

What Disinfo.com Readers Are Saying About This Universal Healthcare Map

disinfogreg — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:45:47 +0000

Just to help put things in perspective, via Wikipedia:

Public universal health care around the world (as of December 2009).

BLUE = Single-payer universal health care (16)
GREEN = Public universal health care through other means (51)
GRAY = No universal health care or no data

Have You Ever Been Billed $1,000 For a Toothbrush in a Hospital?

phunkychic666 — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:40:21 +0000

From CNN, a medical billing advocate shows Elizabeth Cohen some of the wasteful charges she’s seen in bills:

Kraft Foods Employees Sell Millions of Molded Tomato Products For Bribes

Ralph Bernardo — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 07:34:29 +0000

His name was Robert Watson. (There are three others.) WILLIAM NEUMAN reports in the New York Times:

Robert Watson, a top ingredient buyer for Kraft Foods, needed $20,000 to pay his taxes. So he called a broker for a California tomato processor that for years had been paying him bribes to get its products into Kraft’s plants.

The check would soon be in the mail, the broker promised. “We’ll have to deduct it out of your commissions as we move forward,” he said, using a euphemism for bribes.

Days later, federal agents descended on Kraft’s offices near Chicago and confronted Mr. Watson. He admitted his role in a bribery scheme that has laid bare a startling vein of corruption in the food industry. And because the scheme also involved millions of pounds of tomato products with high levels of mold or other defects, the case has raised serious questions about how well food manufacturers safeguard the quality of their ingredients.

Over the last 14 months, Mr. Watson and three other purchasing managers, at Frito-Lay, Safeway and B&G Foods, have pleaded guilty to taking bribes. Five people connected to one of the nation’s largest tomato processors, SK Foods, have also admitted taking part in the scheme.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

“Take ‘Er Down”: The American Dream Turned Nightmare

disinfogreg — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 23:13:17 +0000

Not sure how I feel about this very American expression of homeowner rage:

from death+taxes

It’s undeniable that the recession has unleashed anger across the nation. And that anger’s rapidly devolving into madness. From Joe Stack’s flight into an IRS building to Terry Hoskins, the man who bulldozed his house ahead of foreclosure, seemingly average Americans are lashing out in crazy ways. While Stack’s attack qualifies as the most dramatic outburst, the Hoskins incident, hardly isolated, provides a far more telling glimpse into the ways the economic crisis has soured, and scorched, the American dream.

Owning a home once ranked as the primary goal in the American experience. It was the pinnacle of national striving and homes were icons. Now, as millions face foreclosure, that dream has turned into a nightmare. At his wit’s end about a potential foreclosure, and undoubtedly angry with the bank, Ohio man Terry Hoskins decided to take matters into his own hands and destroy his home. “When I see I owe $160,000 on a home valued at $350,000, and someone decides they want to take it — no, I wasn’t going to stand for that, so I took it down,” explained Hoskins. It’s a compelling tale, one that gives a face to universal public frustration. It’s also turned Hoskins into something of a hero.

Scores of people are praising Hoskins’ middle finger to big business. That’s not surprising. It was, after all, a somewhat charming way to get back at the bank. Rush Limbaugh called his and Stack’s actions “defiance.” Neighbors and sympathizers have started a website to collect donations for Hoskins, who still owes the bank and IRS hundreds of thousands, and may lose his business. Local businesses are showing their support by selling t-shirts and hats that depict a bulldozer and read “Take ‘Er Down.” It’s unclear if “‘er” means the banks, the government, or just foreclosed homes. A sympathetic singer, meanwhile, has written a ballad about Hoskins.

It doesn’t matter to many that Hoskins insists he didn’t do it to “stick it to the man.” He unwittingly embodies public anger, and the public likes to see a mirror image. Though Hoskins gained widespread exposure for his antics, he’s hardly the only American taking drastic steps to avoid foreclosure. He’s just the most flamboyant and, therefore, spellbinding.

‘Toyota Defense’ Might Free Jailed Minnesota Man

Ralph Bernardo — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 21:10:28 +0000

Koua Fong Lee

STEVE KARNOWSKI writes on the AP via Yahoo News:

LINO LAKES, Minn. – Ever since his 1996 Toyota Camry shot up an interstate ramp, plowing into the back of an Oldsmobile in a horrific crash that killed three people, Koua Fong Lee insisted he had done everything he could to stop the car.

A jury didn’t believe him, and a judge sentenced him to eight years in prison. But now, new revelations of safety problems with Toyotas have Lee pressing to get his case reopened and his freedom restored. Relatives of the victims — who condemned Lee at his sentencing three years ago — now believe he is innocent and are planning to sue Toyota. The prosecutor who sent Lee to prison said he thinks the case merits another look.

“I know 100 percent in my heart that I took my foot off the gas and that I was stepping on the brakes as hard as possible,” Lee said in an interview Wednesday at the state prison in Lino Lakes. “When the brakes were looked at and we were told that nothing was wrong with the brakes, I was shocked.”

Lee’s accident is among a growing number of cases, some long resolved, that are getting new attention since Toyota admitted its problems with sudden acceleration were more extensive than originally believed. Numerous lawsuits involving Toyota accidents have been filed over the recent revelations, and attorneys expect the numbers will climb.

The New York Times on Its ‘Kill More Civilians’ Op-Ed Writer

Ralph Bernardo — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:42:55 +0000

Glenn Greenwald writes in Salon:

Last week, I wrote about the mysterious Op-Ed writer, Lara M. Dadkhah, published by the New York Times, who urged that the U.S. be less restrained about slaughtering Afghan civilians with air attacks (when Dadkhar reads things like this from today — “Airstrike kills dozens in Afghanistan … Ground forces at the scene found women and children among the casualties” — she presumably thinks: “yes, that’s exactly what we need more of”).

As I noted, beyond how deranged the argument was, virtually no information was disclosed about Dadkhah herself, who was allowed to tout her work for a “defense consulting company” without even specifying who it was. The Hillman Foundation’s Charles Kaiser asked NYT Op-Ed Page Editor David Shipley about this strange matter and received this reply:

We found Ms. Dadkhah from work she did in Small Wars Journal, work that was part of her Ph.D. dissertation at Georgetown. Ms. Dadkhah only recently took a job at Booz Allen. We tend not to mention the names of companies — as it can run the risk of seeming self-promotional. I thought it was sufficient to have the author say, as she did high up in the piece, that “While I am employed by a defense consulting company, my research and opinions on air support are my own.” It’s worth underscoring that Ms. Dadkhah’s research regarding close air support came entirely from her doctoral research, and that these are issues she has written about over the the last couple years for Small Wars.

Read More of Glenn Greenwald’s article in Salon

The Tattoo Used in Auschwitz Was Originally An IBM Code Number

Ralph Bernardo — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:29:07 +0000

Here is another (controversial) 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 tattooed numbers on the forearms of people held and killed in Nazi concentration camps have become a chilling symbol of hatred. Victims were stamped with the indelible number in a dehumanizing effort to keep track of them like widgets in the supply chain.

These numbers obviously weren’t chosen at random. They were part of a coded system, with each number tracked as the unlucky person who bore it was moved through the system.

Edwin Black made headlines in 2001 when his painstakingly researched book, IBM and the Holocaust, showed that IBM machines were used to automate the “Final Solution” and the jackbooted takeover of Europe. Worse, he showed that the top levels of the company either knew or willfully turned a blind eye.

A year and a half after that book gave Big Blue a black eye, the author made more startling discoveries. IBM equipment was on-site at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Furthermore:

Thanks to the new discoveries, researchers can now trace how Hollerith numbers assigned to inmates evolved into the horrific tattooed numbers so symbolic of the Nazi era. (Herman Hollerith was the German American who first automated US census information in the late 19th century and founded the company that became IBM. Hollerith’s name became synonymous with the machines and the Nazi “departments” that operated them.) In one case, records show, a timber merchant from Bendzin, Poland, arrived at Auschwitz in August 1943 and was assigned a characteristic five digit IBM Hollerith number, 44673. The number was part of a custom punch-card system devised by IBM to track prisoners in all Nazi concentration camps, including the slave labor at Auschwitz. Later in the summer of 1943, the Polish timber merchant’s same five-digit Hollerith number, 44673, was tattooed on his forearm. Eventually, during the summer of 1943, all non- Germans at Auschwitz were similarly tattooed.

The Hollerith numbering system was soon scrapped at Auschwitz because so many inmates
died. Eventually, the Nazis developed their own haphazard system.

Reference: Black, Edwin. “The IBM Link to Auschwitz.” Village Voice, 9 Oct 2002.

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Look for more 50 Things You’re Not Supposed to Know in the next 50 days
under the tag “50 Things” on disinfo.com.