Christine Hall began her journalism career in 1972 writing for the "underground" newspaper the Los Angeles Free Press. From 1988 until 2005 she covered politics for various newspapers in the Greensboro, North Carolina area.
These days, Facebook is where a lot of us do our politicking. Like most soap boxes, we do a lot of preaching to the choir there, but that’s okay for reinforcement is a good thing. What we’re hoping for, of course, is that our arguments, expressed in the cute little graphics we “like” and “share,” will be so brilliant that we’ll bring some fence-sitters over to our way of thinking or, better yet, help some certified tea baggers see the error of their ways.
The trouble is, we’re not going to win anyone over if what we post merely sounds good but upon examination doesn’t represent truth. If it’s not truth, it’s a lie.
A protest in Utah against Walmart. Photo by Joey CaputoToday I ran across an old article, originally posted in 2010, 16 Facts About Walmart That Will Blow Your Mind by Ujala Sehgal on Business Insider. Actually, the piece was more slide show than article, but it succinctly explained some rather scary facts about this giant retailer. I thought I’d take this opportunity to go over some of the facts laid out in the article, with my own observations thrown in for good measure.
1. Walmart has more full-time employees — 2.1 million — than seven times the population of Iceland.
My first thought when I read this was about the irony of comparing any aspect of Iceland with Walmart.
Iceland was hit hard by the so-called “great recession” of 2007–2008. Prices on their local stock market dropped by 90 percent, inflation rose 18%, while unemployment increased by a factor of nine. Oh, at the same time all of the country’s biggest banks failed. However, Iceland has recovered nicely, not by bailing out the banks and leaving their private citizens to sink or swim. Instead, they concentrated their efforts on helping people get out from under crippling mortgages and prosecuted the bankers.
Guess what? It worked. According to Bloomberg their economy is now a shining example for the rest of us:
Back when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s we knew about pollution, we just didn’t yet understand how pervasive it was. In those days, it was thought that the only thing needed to escape the ravages of industrial pollution was to get out into the countryside, away from bad city air and water. Smog and polluted water were seen as urban problems that didn’t exist in the country. Soil pollution wasn’t even on the radar yet for most of us.
httpv://youtu.be/Rj6UlN6nhYQ
We now know that there is no place to go to get away from chemical pollutants. Even arctic ice thousands of miles away from any source of pollution is infused with man-made chemicals. There are new types of pollution, as well. Yesterday we published a link to a very scary video on biological pollutants, crops that have had their genetics artificially “enhanced” by companies like Monsanto, and that are now cross pollinating with non GMO crops, threatening to wipe out whole varieties of plants that have been on this planet for as long as their have been humans.
Julian Assange at New Media Days 09 in Copenhagen. Courtesy New Media DaysAssange now has help, but seemingly not enough.
He’s surrounded by hostile Brits and a government threatening to storm the Ecuadoran embassy where he’s holed up. Ecuador’s government has granted him political asylum and is calling the Brits’ bluff, pointedly reminding them they’re not a colony and haven’t been for quite a long time.
If he does manage to escape and get his feet safely planted on Ecuadoran soil, he has a good chance of being able to eventually return home to Australia, where he has a strong support base.
For now, the Brits are unlikely to follow through on their threatened raid; that would set a dangerous precident. Ernest A. Canning, writing as a guest on The Brad Blog, explained the danger the threat exposes:
When the feds enlisted the help of New Zealand authorities to arrest Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, I figured there was evidence. I’d forgotten that this is the new USA, where the concept that proof is vital in criminal proceedings seems to have died long ago. This is a fact the New Zealand courts are now realizing, as they delve into the matter of their police’s involvement in the fiasco.
They’re also discovering that New Zealand law enforcement was acting on information that could come out of any cold war spy movie from the sixties. Our feds thought Dotcom had a suicide device, a way to instantly destroy the evidence and escape their justice. New Zealand Herald‘s David Fisher quotes testamony from Detective Inspector Grant Wormald, in charge of the New Zealand raid on Dotcom’s home:
The way I see it, we’re preaching to the choir. If you’re reading this, then you most likely somewhat agree with us, or you are at least tolerant of the our viewpoint. Unless you’re a trolling teabagger, then you’re here because you want to go slack jawed and slap yourself, so you can go on Facebook and post a link to our site and tell everyone how laughable we are.
If you’re the latter, you’re going to be disappointed. You’ll not find much fodder for your amazement here. The way I figure it, we’re all voting for Obama and Mitt Romney’s full of it. There’s no reason to belittle that point and keep repeating what a scumbag hypocrite he is. It just pisses off the right, and makes us feel smug enough that we risk forgetting that we have work to do. We need to be figuring out what it is we really want.
Today is the Fourth of July, the day when we in the U.S. celebrate whatever we perceive to be the vision of our founding families. This would seem to be a good time to wonder what the framers of our constitution would think about the way we’ve been applying, or not applying, due process to the Internet.
There are two cases in the news these days that are quite disturbing. For starters, there’s Megaupload.
The only things that Kim Dotcom, aka Kim Schmitz, appears to have done wrong was to start Megaupload, a hugely successful file hosting service. The feds see it differently. They’re convinced, mainly by circumstantial evidence, that’s his website has made him the biggest pirate of movies and music online, an allegation he denies.
I can’t try to play to the middle anymore, because the middle is downright confused. All I can do is tell the truth as I see it; I can assure you that will usually be far from the middle.
Or will it?
Do we really see the middle? Most of the people I know think a lot like me, we share a wavelength even though we’re on different channels. We support Obama, kind-of-sort-of. We believe in offering our neighbors a helping hand when they need it, and think that would be good policy for our governments as well. So maybe I’m not so far away from the center as I think, it just seems that way because that’s what I hear. The Occupy movement has taught me there are still many people, young and old, who share my wavelength, so it’s not just that I’ve surrounded myself by like minded people.
Ever since the laissez-faire capitalist all but completely took over our economy, we’ve been told that we have absolutely no right to regulate business. If the Enrons of the world want to keep their houses of cards propped-up by breaking the back of Californians, we’re supposed to be perfectly fine with that – after all, it’s a free country and they should be allowed to do whatever they want. Likewise, if Walmart wants to employ practices that force their suppliers to move their factories overseas in order to stay in business, who are we to complain? After all, what’s the lifeblood of American towns and cites compared to the Walton’s or the Koch clan’s right to do whatever they like?
The web site Natural News.com is reporting this afternoon that in a surprise attack, alternative medicine is being threatened by the Republican dominated state legislature in Raleigh, North Carolina. The attack comes in the form of SB31, which is supposedly meant to clarify the penalties for the “unauthorized practice of medicine.” In fact, the bill will criminalize all unlicensed practices, which would include the work of most naturopaths, homeopaths, herbalists, aromatherapists and some midwives in North Carolina.
Although proponents claim that the bill’s objective is to fix a loophole that makes felons out of doctors from other states who practice in North Carolina without being licensed in-state, the wording would make felons out of all alternative practitioners, since in-state licensing isn’t available for complementary medical practitioners in NC.
