Collusion: FTC

When the Federal Trade Commission is staffed with corporate lawyers, lobbyists, and the like, do you really expect is to function on behalf of us consumers?

A little “fun fact” - Jodie Bernstein, the head of the FTC’s consumer protection division in the Clinton administration, became an Amway lobbyist, fighting proposed regulations that would have required Multi-level marketing companies to disclose information to potential distributors. [source]

One more, since these are so much fun:

Amway contributed $500,000 to the National Organization for Marriage, a political organization which opposes legalization of same-sex marriage. [source.]

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Americans still smoke 350 billion cigarettes a year. It’s still the leading cause of death. It still kills over 400,000 Americans per year. It’s still two jumbo jets crashing every day.
Stanford professor, Robert Proctor.

Proctor has a new tome out called Golden Holocaust - a “devastating compendium of the tobacco’s industry’s sins that lays out in head-shaking detail how a handful of companies painstakingly designed, produced, and mass-marketed the most lethal product on the planet.” 

Michigan's Hostile Takeover

written by Paul Abowd, published in Mother Jones.

A new “emergency law” pushed by a Koch-backed think tank is turning Michigan cities over to powerful managers who can sell off city hall, break union contracts, privatize services, and even fired elected officials.

sciencecenter: Don’t look now, but the world’s fisheries are plummeting.

sciencecenter:

Don’t look now, but the world’s fisheries are plummeting.

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Every scientist, in the process of their training, has had to repeatedly discover that their intuitions about the world are simply wrong, or at least incomplete.
What I Wish My Pastor Knew About… The Life of a Scientist, Part 1 | The BioLogos Forum (via sociolab)

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thedailywhat: Street Art of the Day: A new Banksy has surfaced on the wall of a Poundland shop in London, and it depicts a child of Asian origin hard at work sewing Union Jack bunting. (Embiggen) Chances are, the location of the work is significant: In 2010, Poundland launched an investigation after it was discovered that a 7-year-old boy was working 100 hours a week in an Indian sweatshop, producing items for the store. A spokeswoman said at the time: “Poundland does not tolerate child labor under any circumstances and will not work with companies that employ children.” [highsnobriety]

thedailywhat:

Street Art of the Day: A new Banksy has surfaced on the wall of a Poundland shop in London, and it depicts a child of Asian origin hard at work sewing Union Jack bunting. (Embiggen)

Chances are, the location of the work is significant: In 2010, Poundland launched an investigation after it was discovered that a 7-year-old boy was working 100 hours a week in an Indian sweatshop, producing items for the store. A spokeswoman said at the time: “Poundland does not tolerate child labor under any circumstances and will not work with companies that employ children.”

[highsnobriety]

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Occupy Graduation.

Dylan Ratigan discusses the debt-for-diploma crisis our country faces.

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I guess I never caught that bug where you’re only supposed to care about your own country or your own local area. To me, 49 decapitated Mexicans is just as bad as 49 decapitated Americans and I know if there were 49 decapitated Americans in the street anywhere in the country, it would be like 9/11 all over again. It would be the largest news story for years - if it just happened once - but it happens time and time again in Mexico… and I guess as long as Americans aren’t getting decapitated, apparently the rest of the country, and especially our media, couldn’t give a damn and that’s part of what’s sick and wrong with this country’s media. And so, we march on as if nothing is wrong, as if everything is hunky dory, as if the war on drugs makes sense and hasn’t created these grotesque gangs that grow larger and more grotesque by the day - and it’s not because of the drugs. It’s because the drugs are illegal.
Cenk Uygur commenting on the 49 bodies that were recently found decapitated in Mexico and on the continued War on Drugs, which has claimed over 62,000 lives since just 2006 (via mohandasgandhi)

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benjaminlandy: Feeling stressed? Here’s some food for thought….. Americans now work an average 122 hours more per year than their Anglophone counterparts in Britain, and 378 hours more than the industrious Germans. That’s partly because we work more hours per week than anywhere else in the developed world. But it’s also a result of our weak labor laws. Every other country in the OECD has legal protections for weekends, paid annual leave and mandated days off for public holidays. And of course the United States is one of the only countries in the world that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave, along with Sierra Leone, Liberia, Samoa, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea. Enjoy the weekend!

benjaminlandy:

Feeling stressed? Here’s some food for thought…..

Americans now work an average 122 hours more per year than their Anglophone counterparts in Britain, and 378 hours more than the industrious Germans. That’s partly because we work more hours per week than anywhere else in the developed world. But it’s also a result of our weak labor laws.

Every other country in the OECD has legal protections for weekends, paid annual leave and mandated days off for public holidays. And of course the United States is one of the only countries in the world that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity leave, along with Sierra Leone, Liberia, Samoa, Swaziland and Papua New Guinea. Enjoy the weekend!

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Azerbaijan: Demonizing the Web

written by Sarah Kendzior & Katy Pearce for Slate.

Over the past few years, the Azerbaijani government has waged an aggressive media campaign against the Internet. Social media has become synonymous with deviance, criminality, and treason. Television programs show ‘‘family tragedies’’ and ‘‘criminal incidents’’ after young people join Facebook and Twitter. In March 2011, the country’s chief psychiatrist proclaimed that social media users suffer mental disorders and cannot maintain relationships. In April 2012, the Interior Ministry linked Facebook use with trafficking of woman and sexual abuse of children. Since May 2011, the Azerbaijani parliament has been debating laws to curtail social media, citing the deleterious effect on society. Social media has become a vital political issue despite the fact that 78 percent of Azerbaijanis have never used the Internet, only 7 percent go online daily, and just 7 percent—almost all male, highly educated, and wealthy—use Facebook.

Azerbaijan has a long history of media censorship. During the Soviet era, media were state-controlled, and dissidents faced harsh penalties for publishing political works. Little changed when Azerbaijan became independent in 1991. Almost all media outlets are owned or controlled by the state. The few opposition journalists face harassment, physical violence, imprisonment, and even death.

Most authoritarian states treat the Internet the same way they do print media: They censor it. Azerbaijan has taken a more insidious route. They do not heavily filter or block the Internet but instead leave it open, allowing the government to better monitor and punish rebellious activities. In 2010, two online activists were arrested for posting a video satirizing government waste on YouTube. Their case was never mentioned in Azerbaijan’s print media—but was relentlessly showcased online, where it frightened the bloggers’ peers. As a result, Azerbaijan’s frequent Internet users became less supportive of activism, and online dissent has quieted.

This strategy worked quite well with elites. But after the events in Tunisia and Egypt in early 2011, the Azerbaijani government decided to adopt a more aggressive strategy to shield regular citizens from discussions of dissent or collective action. Azerbaijan has moved from intimidating users who are already online to keeping the rest of the nation offline by making social media use seem like a form of bad citizenship. CLICK for more.

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