HAVE YOU NOTICED?

Have you ever noticed that advertising supported news sites rarely carry negative stories about major advertisers?

• Look at today's page in which Pepsi and Coke are identified.  In one link it is reported that the pair, along with other bottlers, basically blackmailed the state of California into backing off a tax that would slow down consumption of their sugar filled and artificially sweetened drinks, to help fight obesity and other health problems in California citizens.  Basically hurt our sales and we will undermine your roads, bridges, town services so we can fatten up you and your kids to make a buck. Exact a citizen tax on them. Stop buying their products and drink water.
  
  
• In the other link, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation's investigative unit, a public broadcaster, reported on soft drink bottlers like Coke using tactics the tobacco companies used to keep people smoking forever, to keep selling their products. The NCBI cited article "The Perils of Ignoring History: Big Tobacco Played Dirty and Millions Died.  How Similar is Big Food?" discusses the risks of such conduct by corporations like Coke, pushing products that damage health. They are not alone in their concern.  These tactics can be unearthed, along with simple observation (you just have to learn to trust your lying eyes.)
  
  
• On the face of it, that is only one small part of the story.  Both of these firms fund lobbying firms to create laws that prevent their bad behavior from being regulated and both will use data analytics to design advertising to keep people hooked on using their products.  Historically its been called advertising and public relations, but, when properly driven by data, its far more than that. It is a way to control and manipulate behavior. Why not simply call it putting a leash on people, just like dogs.
  

Have you ever noticed that people who do terrible things, like the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, are jailed and in some cases executed when they are caught, but we limit our punishment for these atrocities to individuals, not corporations.

• Tobacco companies deliberately and willfully sold products that poisoned and slowly murdered people for years.  They knew exactly what they were doing, lied continuously about it, and made a spectacularly successful business out of it. Is that not serial killing of the worst and premeditated kind?
  
  
  • What would the outrage be if an individual in charge of a city's water supply systematically and deliberately over a period of many years introduced a toxic agent into the water supply that gave a large number of residents cancer that killed them?
    
    
  • What about if the person was a Muslim?
    
    
  • Even better yet, what if that person was a member of a Communist party?  What a bonanza for the military!
    
    
  • What difference does it make who does it? Or are we so swayed by the worship of money that it blinds our eyes to murder by corporation but not murder by individual? There is not a corporation in the world that can sit on a toilet, its brain cells and body are entirely human, so there is simply no possibility of losing blame in a stack of papers somewhere.
  
  
• Or, does allowing time to pass make the crime acceptable?  If that's the case let all of the killers out of jail and wait a couple of years and time will have sanitized them. Or maybe they should start companies and give us jobs, then that will make them good guys, right?

• And here is a link to an investigative story by the Intercept about the damage to the environment, the poisons and toxins in our water systems, and the hundreds of people that got cancer from the toxins Dupont exposed them to, just to make a buck.  Call it time-delayed serial killing by corporations.
  

Have you ever noticed how calm those responsible for the death and destruction of others can be.  And even more interesting is how making a profit off of it seems to relieve any responsibility or remorse for doing so.  That's just the way it is right? Except for the victims, their families, their children that no longer have a parent, and society, who are left to clean up after them.

• The very calm Dahmer interview in which he matter of factly discusses his state of mind when he "raped, murdered, and dismembered 17 men and boys from 1978 to 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts — typically all or part of the skeleton."
  
  
• Look up some interviews with tobacco company executives, or Dow, or the Koch brothers manipulating environmental laws to allow their businesses to pollute and make a buck, and you will see the same matter of fact calmness.  Of course in a lot of cases the victims are calm too, BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL DEAD.
  

• Here is one of the best cases of "serial killing by entity other than person." Above is the picture of George Bush speaking at the Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner making a joke about not finding any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
  
  
• The administration's lies caused the violent deaths of more than 1 million people. I am certain you all will want to celebrate and laugh along with Bush, since Halliburton and our oil companies made so much money off a million people being murdered for their oil.  Let's all get in on the fun, here it is.
  

So if we are going to talk about journalistic reporting and integrity, when do we draw the line between behavior for a buck, our own self interest, and getting to the bottom of things no matter how unpleasant or unpopular they are, if we have a chance to make the world a better place to live in.

• And that statement is absolutely NOT any kind of indictment about capitalism, which is better than a dictatorship or state ownership for sure, to me its just a matter of trying things out to figure out the best balance between capitalism with character and integrity, and capitalism as if it is terrorism for profit.