Following on from I have been slimed...



We are all still being slimed by Big Business in various ways. All certainly not good for the public or good for our health or the health of our environment.

The sliminess continues...

For just one recent ongoing example:


Tobacco giant fails to squeeze millions from Australian taxpayers

Tobacco giant Philip Morris has suffered a final defeat in its abuse of international law to fight Labor’s plain packaging on cigarettes...

“In making this assessment, the tribunal also takes into consideration the significant stakes involved in this dispute in respect of Australia’s economic, legal and political framework, and in particular the relevance of the outcome in respect of Australia’s policies in matters of public health.”

It was the final blow for Philip Morris, which exhausted every legal avenue in an attempt to overturn the Gillard government’s 2011 plain packaging on cigarettes...


Philip Morris: Tobacco giant ordered to compensate Australia

Tobacco giant Philip Morris has been ordered to pay the Australian government millions of dollars after unsuccessfully suing the nation over its world-first plain-packaging laws...

... Philip Morris had tried to force the laws to be overturned, but a court dismissed its claim in 2015...

... Since Australia's laws were introduced, similar policies have been announced in other countries including the UK.


The World’s Ugliest Color Will Have You Kicking This Deadly Habit

... Disgusted already? That’s probably a good thing. The color was selected after three months of multiple studies conducted by research agency GfK Bluemoon. Their research, funded by the Australian government, aimed to find the most repugnant color for a very specific purpose: to discourage smoking.

It was “the antithesis of what is our usual objective,” Victoria Parr, lead market researcher for GfK, said. “We didn’t want to create attractive, aspirational packaging designed to win customers … Instead our role was to help our client reduce demand, with the ultimate aim to minimize use of the product.”

Now, the new color has been placed on all tobacco packaging in Australia - along with graphic health warnings - in the hopes of suppressing national tobacco use. And so far, it seems to have worked!...


More can be done to stub out smoking...

The latest slew of changes to Singapore's anti-smoking policies comes as progress slows in the Government's drive to get more people to quit the habit.

But an expert has said that even more can be done to push more people to stop smoking. Although the number of adults smoking fell progressively from 23 per cent in 1977 to 13.3 per cent in 2013, it has been stuck at that level since...



Such is the power and arrogance of Big Business to even take on multiple governments!

Why has this example taken so many lifetimes and so many lives?...


All in our only one world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
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OK, I'm going to ask a really stupid question. With what appears to be, an obsession to remove branding, doesn't this make things, so much easier for the counterfeiters? The same counterfeiters, who put far more toxic things into the things that they 'release to the market'. All the packs look the same, so, no chance of even a copyright infringement. We all know about the fake iPhone chargers and how lethal they are and some know of the cocktail of chemicals that are sold as 'premium Vodka', yet no-one seems to be concerned about fake tobacco products, unless it involves duty or tax being evaded. More to the point, how come branding on alcohol products has not come under the spot-light....or cars (VW Group springs to mind) or any number of other products, come to that! Hell, there are many that believe that a little more death in the Human Race is needed, for the benefit of the planet.

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Don't take life too seriously, as you'll never come out of it alive!

Hell, there are many that believe that a little more death in the Human Race is needed, for the benefit of the planet.

It reduces CO2 emission. Smoking should be encouraged, made mandatory, 10 packs a day. Lots of nasty additives should be included, randomly, especially ones that don't play nice with each other. Once we get 9 out of 10 off this planet we might be able to stave off the tipping point.

Much as I hate smoking, nothing at all should be done to reduce its suicidal effects. Smokers should be shot. Hey, maybe there should be a random number of Russian roulette cigarettes out there. Have a bullet in the cigarette so when they take a drag, bang right into the mouth!

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... Much as I hate smoking, nothing at all should be done to reduce its suicidal effects. Smokers should be shot...

Wow!

Is that some dark satire?

Or is that yet another American way of The Gun for every occasion?

Smokers are as much themselves victims of the unscrupulous ways of "business-with-no-morals - profits-at-all-costs". With the added 'side effect' of people and our world be damned.


There are better ways...

All in our only one world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Much as I hate smoking, nothing at all should be done to reduce its suicidal effects. Smokers should be shot.

Hmm...
Message boards : Politics : Marijuana https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=81364

Tobacco is staying in the news:


Philip Morris waging global effort to hobble anti-smoking treaty...

Philip Morris, the multinational company best known for Marlboro cigarettes, has developed a corporate strategy to undermine a global treaty and fight tobacco regulation around the world...


Tobacco companies tighten hold on Washington under Trump

Tobacco companies have moved swiftly to strengthen their grip on Washington politics, ramping up lobbying efforts and securing significant regulatory wins in the first six months of the Trump era.

Day one of Donald Trump’s presidency started with tobacco donations...


How Big Tobacco's lobbyists get what they want from the media

... the media is bustling with people working for thinktanks which refuse to say who is paying them, making arguments that favour big business and billionaires.

Perhaps the most prominent is the Institute of Economic Affairs. Like most groups of this kind, it refuses to disclose its funding. But there's a trail of smoke. We now know that it has been taking substantial sums from British American Tobacco (BAT), Japan Tobacco International, Imperial Tobacco and Philip Morris International. BAT has funded the institute since 1963. By pure coincidence, the institute has fiercely defended the tobacco companies from efforts to regulate their products...

... a daily struggle against those who would mislead us.


Tobacco Lobby Opens a New Playbook for E-Cigarettes

... As to­bacco com­pan­ies jockey to ex­pand their e-ci­gar­ette busi­ness, they’re us­ing an up­dated lob­by­ing play­book...

... Mean­while, the Demo­crat­ic au­thors of the re­port dis­pute the no­tion that man­u­fac­tur­ers are keep­ing e-ci­gar­ettes out of minors’ hands. In­deed, one com­pany used ad­vert­ise­ments fea­tur­ing Cap’n Crunch car­toons.

“I am deeply dis­turbed that e-ci­gar­ette com­pan­ies are mim­ick­ing tac­tics that to­bacco com­pan­ies used in the past to glam­or­ize smoking for youth,” said Sen. Jay Rock­e­feller, a West Vir­gin­ia Demo­crat, in a state­ment.

... “These are people who have a suc­cess­ful his­tory and they’re go­ing to keep go­ing. From their per­spect­ive it prob­ably is the same play­book,” he said. “But the proof is in the pud­ding.”


How tobacco firms flout UK law on plain packaging

An insider in the tobacco industry has revealed some of the unscrupulous tactics it is using to avoid new restrictions governing the marketing of cigarettes...


Tobacco: a deadly business

This Guardian series is focussed on the huge damage of the tobacco epidemic, which continues to cost millions of people’s lives around the world per year, and the industry behind it



All such a nasty business...

All in our only one world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

... Much as I hate smoking, nothing at all should be done to reduce its suicidal effects. Smokers should be shot...

Wow!

Is that some dark satire?

Or is that yet another American way of The Gun for every occasion?

Smokers are as much themselves victims of the unscrupulous ways of "business-with-no-morals - profits-at-all-costs". With the added 'side effect' of people and our world be damned.


There are better ways...

All in our only one world,
Martin

Nobody that smokes today can say they weren't warned or that they had no idea of the harmful effects of tobacco smoke. I got the message loud and clear in 1968 while in my second year of college and taking a community health class. The biggest reason I hear from smokers who refuse to quit is that they don't want "big brother" telling them what they can or cannot do. Regarding other activities that we participate in that can be harmful to our health, like driving, we always assume it can't happen to me.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

Good points.

Re:

... they don't want "big brother" telling them what they can or cannot do.

Yet the public never comment on doing as Marketing tell them or for following the Marketing 'persuasions' or 'coercions' for profitable Marketing...

All due to the subversive power of Marketing-with-no-morals?...


All in our only one world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Good points.

Re:

... they don't want "big brother" telling them what they can or cannot do.

Yet the public never comment on doing as Marketing tell them or for following the Marketing 'persuasions' or 'coercions' for profitable Marketing...

All due to the subversive power of Marketing-with-no-morals?...


All in our only one world,
Martin

You really hate the advertising world, don't you. I'm not a big fan either, but like it or not most people are like sheep and generally can't be protected from predators like that. People need to take responsibility for their own actions. Nobody held a gun to that teenager's head and told him/her to take a puff.

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Bob DeWoody

My motto: Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow as it may not be required. This no longer applies in light of current events.

You really hate the advertising world...

Not really... Just the greedy malevolent Lies, Deceit, Dirty-tricks, Entrapment and Victimization parts of the world... :-(

Positive advertising for a good product works wonders. Shame about all the other negative silliness...

Can we evolve to something better?


All in our only one world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Here is quite a bitter un-sweet revelation:


Sugar is poison. My heart attack has finally opened my eyes to the truth

... Back in September 2016, the Journal of the American Medical Association published papers, discovered deep in the Harvard University archives, that demonstrated how the sugar industry has been manipulating research into heart disease for years. These papers revealed that the purveyors of this white poison – in behaviour straight out of the tobacco industry playbook – had been paying Harvard scientists throughout the 1960s to emphasise the link between fat and heart disease and ignore the connection with sugar. Since then, Coca-Cola has funded research into the link between sugar and obesity. And the confectionery industry has paid for research which “demonstrated” that children who eat sweets are thinner than those who don’t...

... As Gary Taubes explained in his remarkable book The Case Against Sugar, published last year, it has “assimilated itself into all aspects of our eating experience”. Advertisements have normalised the omnipresence of sugar as a part of a balanced diet. And my son’s brain has become accustomed to the dopamine it releases. He has become an addict. Most of us are [sugar] addicts...


Really... All just a 'game' of no morals and no consequences?

All in our only one world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

They got slimed

Yup

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All far too intensive?

The numbers themselves are scary!

And the result is:


Belgium says it knew about contaminated eggs in June

Belgium has admitted it knew in June that eggs from Dutch farms might be contaminated with an insecticide - a month before the issue became public. The information was not shared because of a fraud investigation...

Tests found the chemical fipronil, which can harm people's kidneys, liver and thyroid glands...

... One German official said up to 10 million of the contaminated eggs may have been sold in Germany. The Netherlands is Europe's largest exporter of eggs and egg products, and one of the biggest in the world. It exports an estimated 65% of the 10 billion eggs it produces every year.

About 180 poultry farms in the country have been temporarily shut while investigations are held.


All in the name of good (greedy) business?...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
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A small ruse of patents to poison us all for a long time?...


Why did we use leaded petrol for so long?

Leaded petrol was safe. Its inventor was sure of it.

Facing sceptical reporters at a press conference in October 1924, Thomas Midgley dramatically produced a container of tetraethyl lead - the additive in question - and washed his hands in it.

"I'm not taking any chance whatever," Midgley declared...

... 'The loony gas building'

None of this surprised workers elsewhere in Standard Oil's facility. They knew there was a problem with tetraethyl lead.

As Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner note in their book Deceit and Denial: The Deadly Politics of Industrial Pollution, the lab where it was developed was known as "the loony gas building". Nor should it have shocked Standard Oil, General Motors or the DuPont Corporation, the three companies involved with adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline...

About a century ago, when General Motors had first proposed adding lead to petrol - in order to improve performance - scientists were alarmed. They urged the government to investigate the public health implications. Midgley breezily assured the surgeon general that "the average street will probably be so free from lead that it will be impossible to detect it or its absorption", although he conceded that "no actual experimental data has been taken"...

... Hamilton knew that lead had been poisoning people for thousands of years. In 1678, workers who made lead white - a pigment for paint - were described as suffering ailments including "dizziness in the head, with continuous great pain in the brows, blindness, stupidity". The Romans used lead in water pipes. Lead miners often ended up mad or dead...

Ethyl alcohol had much the same effect and wouldn't mess with your head, unless you drank it. Midgley knew this, having combined petrol with practically every imaginable substance, from iodine to camphor to melted butter.

Why did the petrol companies push tetraethyl lead instead of ethyl alcohol? Researchers who have studied the decision remain puzzled. Cynics might point out that any old farmer could distil ethyl alcohol from grain. It couldn't be patented, or its distribution profitably controlled. Tetraethyl lead could...

Children's brains are especially susceptible to chronic lead poisoning. Is it possible that kids who didn't breathe leaded petrol fumes grew up to commit less violent crime?...




Very nasty stuff that has poisoned us all for the sake of 'profits'.

And more recently, we have such as Monsanto using "Genetic Modifications" to patent 'novel' foods...

What could possibly go wrong again?


All in our only one world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Midgley breezily assured the surgeon general that "the average street will probably be so free from lead that it will be impossible to detect it or its absorption", although he conceded that "no actual experimental data has been taken"...

All in our only one world,

Man is frequently sure of his reasoning when it is balderdash. Not any different than say trickle down economics or the earth being flat.

We are all still being slimed, and also our world and the invaluable creatures around us:


The case of the disappearing insect. Boffin tells Reg: We don't know why... but we must act

... "What's really frightening," he told The Register, "is that so many species have declined in number". He said the trend is probably similar elsewhere in the world...

... Other studies suggest that the likeliest would be more intensive agricultural practices – increased use of toxic pesticides and extra mowing or fertilizer affecting vegetation...

... he recommends people "reconsider" the use of landscapes, perhaps by making nature conservation sites larger, reducing agricultural practices around them or increasing vegetation such as flowers. "I don't think we have the time to sit and analyze,"...



We're now accumulating Neonicotinoids (up to 1,386 days - 3.8 years - to degrade) in the environment, and others, and we are still suffering the lingering effects of that old long lived DDT:

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT): History

... DDT is a persistent organic pollutant that is readily adsorbed to soils and sediments, which can act both as sinks and as long-term sources of exposure affecting organisms. Depending on conditions, its soil half-life can range from 22 days to 30 years...

... DDT and DDE are resistant to metabolism; in humans, their half-lives are 6 and up to 10 years, respectively. In the United States, these chemicals were detected in almost all human blood samples tested by the Centers for Disease Control in 2005, though their levels have sharply declined since most uses were banned. Estimated dietary intake has declined, although FDA food tests commonly detect it...


Big Agribusiness at its worst?...

All in our only one world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

We are all still being slimed, and also our world and the invaluable creatures around us: ...

Industriously but more significantly, ever more so by (stupidly misguided short-sighted) economics:


... pollution is deadlier than war, disaster, hunger

Environmental pollution—from filthy air to contaminated water—is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.

One out of every six premature deaths in the world in 2015—about 9 million—could be attributed to disease from toxic exposure, according to a major study released Thursday in the Lancet medical journal. The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness and welfare is equally massive, the report says, costing some $4.6 trillion in annual losses—or about 6.2 percent of the global economy...

... Soil pollution has received scant attention. And there are still plenty of potential toxins still being ignored, with less than half of the 5,000 new chemicals widely dispersed throughout the environment since 1950 having been tested for safety or toxicity.

"In the West, we got the lead out of the gasoline, so we thought lead was handled. We got rid of the burning rivers, cleaned up the worst of the toxic sites. And then all of those discussions went into the background" just as industry began booming in developing nations...

... "What people don't realize is that pollution does damage to economies. People who are sick or dead cannot contribute to the economy. They need to be looked after"—which is also costly, Fuller said. "There is this myth that finance ministers still live by, that you have to let industry pollute or else you won't develop," he said. "It just isn't true."...



All an immoral game of (misguided or corrupt) economics?... And the world be damned...

A very few may enjoy a 'get-rich-quick'. Very many others pay for that with their lives...

Can we have less corruption and more sustainable economics to save our planet and ourselves?...

All in our only one world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)