Protect Your Health and Starve the Beast: Monsanto GMO Brands

Protect your health and starve the beast by avoiding products distributed by Monsanto and their subsidiaries. Included in the list is the amount that the company (and its subsidiaries) donated to defeat California Proposition 37 which would have required GMO labeling.  Unfortunately, it appears as if they control it all, so good luck avoiding financially supporting this evil company that is poisoning the planet with Genetically Modified Organisms, but try your best. 

 Food:

Aunt Jemima
Aurora Foods
Betty Crocker
Banquet
Bisquick
Cadbury
Campbells
Capri Sun
Carnation
Chef Boyardee
Coca Cola donated $1,164,400.00 to defeat CA Prop-37
ConAgra donated $1,076,700.00 to defeat CA Prop-37
Dean Foods donated $253,950.00 to defeat CA Prop-37
Duncan Heinz
Famous Amos
Frito Ley
General Mills donated $908,200.00 to defeat CA Prop-37
Green Giant
Healthy Choice
Heinz/Hains Celestial donated $500,000.00 to defeat CA Prop-37(Hains is actually owned by Heinz, Phillip Morris, Monsanto, Citigroup, Exxon-Mobil, Wal-Mart and Lockheed Martin)
Hellman’s Mayo
Hershey’s Nestle
Hormel
Hungry Jack
Hunts
KC Masterpiece
Kellogg's donated $632,500.00 to defeat CA Prop-37
Kid Cuisine
Knor
Kool Aid
Kraft donated $551,148.25 to defeat CA Prop-37
Lean Cuisine
Lipton
Loma Linda
Marie Callenders
Minute Maid
Morning Star
Ms. Butterworth
Nabisco
Nestle donated $1,169,400.00 to defeat CA Prop-37
Nature Valley
Ocean Spray
Ore-Ida
Orville Redinbacher
Pepperidge Farm
Pepsi
Pillsbury
Post
Power Bar
Prego
Pringles
Proctor and Gamble
Quaker
Ragu
Rice-a-roni/Pasta-roni
Stouffers
Tombstone Pizza
Tostinos
Uncle Ben's
Unilever – donated $467,000 to defeat CA Prop-37
V-8

Agricultural Seed Brands

Asgrow
Channel
DEKALB
Deltapine
Fielder’s Choice Direct
Fortanelle
Gold Country Seed
Heritage Seeds
Hubner Seed
Kruger Seeds
Lewis Hybrids
REA Hybrids
Specialty Hybrids
Stewart Seeds
Stone Seed Group
Trelay Seeds
West Bred

Traits and Technologies

Acceleron Seed Treatment Products
Genuity Traits
Prescriptive Ag Solutions

Vegetable Seed Brands

De Ruiter Seeds
Seminis

Weed Control Brands

AquaMaster Herbicide
Bullet Herbicide
Certainty Turf Herbicide
Degree Xtra Herbicide
Harness
Intrro
Lariat
Maverick
Micro-Tech
OutRider
QuikPro
Roundup Power Max
Roundup Pro Concentrate
Roundup Pro Max
Roundup Redy Plus
Roundup Weater Max
RT3 Herbicide
TripleFlex Herbicide
Warrant Herbicide

Links:

NON-GMO food brands

The Real Monsanto Protection Act: How The GMO Giant Corrupts Regulators And Consolidates Its Power

GMO feed turns pig stomachs to mush! Shocking photos reveal severe damage caused by GM soy and corn

GMO Wheat Lawsuit: Idaho Wheat Farmers Sue Monsanto

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The US Chamber of Commerce Is Our Enemy.

The White House has taken on the US Chamber of Commerce and with very good reason; it's an enemy of the United States of America and everything this country stands. The Chamber is the biggest lobbying operation in the US, spending billions of dollars to ensure the rights of big business and huge corporations over the rights of individuals and small business. At a time when unemployment rates are at an all time high, we can't afford to allow this monstrosity to continue to work against the interests of the American people and small business, the engine that drives job creation.

Under Chamber President Tom Donohue,

"the chamber transformed. Its annual budget quadrupled in a few years to $200 million today. And it became more aggressive politically, developing such a fearsome reputation that Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff, told a reporter in 2006 that the group worried him more than the Republican Party did."

Currently, the Chamber is spending more than $100 million to defeat initiatives to protect the environment and provide affordable health care to everyone.

Not only that, the Chamber has deliberately lied, and portrayed the Washington Post as backing a candidate in the North Virginia race for governor, when, in fact, The Post skewered this candidate's "plan, both in that editorial and in a half-dozen others since then, as a sham whose torrent of words tries to mask the fact that it would produce little new money for roads -- this as the state's spending on secondary and urban roads in Northern Virginia is fast approaching zero."

"So not only is the Chamber of Commerce indifferent to the truth; it's also hostile to the business community in the most populous and economically dynamic part of the state. In positioning itself as an arm for the Republican Party, the Chamber has cast doubt on its own credibility."

Links:

Stop the Chamber

"Preaching Principle, Enabling Excess: How Tom Donohue Compromised the Credibility of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce."

Read more...

Online Coupons, Bargains and Deals for Holiday Shopping.

The Bargainist - shoppers can sign up to receive text-message alerts about the latest deals so they can make a break for them whether they're at home or out shopping.

Cheap Stingy Bargains - scours the Internet for the very best deals perusing sales, close-outs, clearances, rebates, and exclusive coupons not generally offered to visitors of the vendor sites.

Deal Catcher - find online coupons, products, sales, reviews, and rebates.

Deals Globe - find special offers, deals, coupons, promotions, rebates etc.

Deal Hack - find specials, coupons, rebates, buyer's guides, etc.

Dealzmodo - Gizmodo deal of the day.

Deal Taker - coupons

e-Bay Gift Certificates - Purchase gift certificates from eBay

Free Shipping - Free shipping coupons, coupon codes to over 850 stores

Free Shipping On - Find free shipping on more than 500 stores.

Fat Wallet - share deals with almost a million shoppers.

mpire - offers the broadest selection of both new and used items, from the Web's best shopping sites such as eBay, Amazon, Overstock, Yahoo, Shopping.com, and Craigslist

Restaurant.com - is an online network of thousands of restaurants across the United States. When you find restaurants you'd like to visit, you can buy Gift Certificates for a fraction of the actual value. Some restaurants also offer online reservations and/or online take-out/delivery ordering.

Retail Me Not - an easy way to find online coupon codes

Swap a Gift - buying, selling, and swapping gift cards. Pay bills or exchange gift cards you don’t use or buy gift cards at a discount.

This Next - is the social shopping site where people explore, discover and rave about the hottest products.

Wrapables - provides distinctive, creative and modern home decor items at affordable prices.

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Internet is Slowly Changing Current Ownership Culture

"Ownership" implies control, and our Founding fathers conceived of an "ownership society" "We the People" could easily participate, enabling us to maintain a certain amount of control over our own lives. Back then, society was primarily agrarian, and owning land not only provided shelter but also offered, if one was willing to work hard, a source of income.

Today, owning land does not carry the same weight as it once did, making it much harder to maintain control over one's life, therefore making it impossible to preserve the Founding father's idea of what an "ownership society" looks like. In order to maintain their vision we must revise the outdated model based on agrarian culture and update it to an "ownership society" based on the technological society we currently have.

The birth of the Internet offers the potential of to forge a new type of "ownership society", once again giving everyone a chance to participate. Ecommerce or using the Internet as part of your business model allows us to participate as we have not been able to do for a long time considering a very small number of large bureaucratic corporations make it impossible to compete on our own, forcing most of us to submit to them where everything is on their terms. Web based services such as Ashop Commerce make it simple by providing shopping cart software anyone can customize in an attempt a start-up business of their own.

Of course, "We the People" have a long way to go before we can honestly say we own our own lives again because it is clear we do not, however, the Internet is one option available to all of us that can free us from the corporatization of society.

Read more...

Not All Brands Are Created Equal

Apple, Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Starbucks seem to dominate the results from Interbrand's Brand channel 2008 Brandjunkie Survey:

What brand would you most like to sit next to at a dinner party?
Top answers:

Apple Virgin Google Coca-Cola Nike

Chanel Victoria's Secret Microsoft Nokia Absolut

ARMANI Diesel innocent BMW adidas

Disney PRADA Starbucks None Louis Vuitton

What brand, if sent back 100 years would have the biggest impact on the course of history?
Top answers:

Apple Microsoft Google Coca-Cola Ford

IBM McDonald's Virgin Nokia Nike

None Sony Greenpeace Toyota Durex

Boeing Intel USA GE Starbucks

What brand that no longer exists would you resurrect?
Top answers:

None Pan Am ATARI TWA Cingular

Oldsmobile Marathon Compaq IBM MG

Polaroid Baniff Eaton's Studebaker Netscape

Ansett Fresca Amena Plymouth TAB

Which brand do you want to argue with?
Top answers:

Microsoft Apple None Coca-Cola McDonald's

Wal-Mart Starbucks Nike Sony Google

General Motors Dell Pepsi AT&T BP

USA Ford Yahoo! Levi's Shell

Brandchannel If you were to describe yourself as being a brand, what brand would you be?
Top answers:

Apple Nike Coca-Cola Virgin BMW

Audi Target Toyota None Google

Sony adidas Mercedes Chanel Pepsi

Volkswagon Puma MINI Starbucks Disney

Which brand inspires you the most?
Top answers:

Apple Nike Coca-Cola Google Starbucks

Virgin BMW None Target Nokia

Innocent adidas Dove Barack Obama Mercedes

Disney Chanel Toyota Sony IKEA

If you could rebrand any brand, what brand would it be?
Top answers:

Microsoft USA Ford Coca-Cola Pepsi

General Motors None Gap Starbucks Sony

BMW Nike Apple Reebok McDonald's

Wal-Mart Levi's Mercedes Avon Sears

What brand can you not live without?
Top answers:

Apple None Coca-Cola Google Starbucks

Nokia Microsoft Pepsi Nike Sony

McDonald's Colgate Nestlé Blackerry adidas

Intel Procter & Gamble Dell BBC Target

What brand is most likely to revolutionize the branding industry in the next five years?
Top answers:

Apple Google Doesn't exist yet Facebook Nike

Nokia Virgin Microsoft YouTube Barack Obama

Sony Toyota Coca-Cola Interbrand Starbucks

Target Second Life China Samsung innocent

What brand do you think is truly (going) "green"?
Top answers:

None Toyota BP The Body Shop Honda

General Electric Virgin Patagonia Greenpeace Whole Foods Market

Marks & Spencer Apple Wal-Mart Starbucks Innocent

Shell BMW Seventh Generation Aveda Clorox

2007 Best Global Brands

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Why People Find It Hard to Understand Economics.

I finally understand why economics is so hard for many people to grasp.

It's not because of complexity. The rules of supply and demand aren't inherently more difficult to fathom than those that apply to, say, politics, or cooking, or sports.

Yet while most people have no trouble wrapping their brains around these subjects - indeed, millions will be eagerly absorbing their finer points this weekend - (What are you watching: Meet the Press, celebrity chefs or college football?) - few have a similar appetite for economics.

And now I know why, thanks to Alan Fiske.

Fiske, a professor of anthropology at UCLA who previously taught at Penn and Bryn Mawr, has devoted decades of research to disentangling human relationships. He's studied communities all over the world, comparing cultures in West Africa with those in Europe and America.

His conclusion: Just as every human language is composed of the same grammatical elements (subjects, verbs, etc.), all relationships are built from exactly four kinds of interactions.

Fiske labels these communal sharing, equality matching, authority ranking and market pricing. Here's what he means:

Communal sharing is how you treat your immediate family: All for one and one for all. Or as Marx put it: From each according to ability, to each according to need.

Equality matching, by contrast, means we all take turns. From kindergarten to the town meeting, it's all about fair shares, reciprocity, doing your part.

Authority ranking is how tribes function, not to mention armies, corporations and governments. Know your place, obey orders, and hail to the chief.

Market pricing, of course, is the basis of economics. It's what we do whenever we weigh costs and benefits, trade up (or down), save or invest.

Don't get Fiske wrong: He's not saying that each relationship in your life fits into one of these four slots. Rather, these are paradigms - mental models - that we use to help make sense of our interactions.

When there are conflicts, moreover, Fiske maintains it's often because we aren't all using the same model.

For example, you might see housework as a communal-sharing function, while your spouse approaches it as equality-matching. Neither is wrong, yet you still end up angry or guilty when the laundry isn't done.

The same problem can afflict whole societies, as Fiske described to me recently. "The Danes pride themselves on being fair," he said. "They can't understand why they don't get along with their Middle Eastern immigrants."

But Fiske does: "The immigrants expect authority ranking. The Danes expect strict equality matching. Each side sees people constantly violating the models."

To call this a far-reaching theory is probably a gross understatement. The more I think about it, the more it seems to fit and explain.

Does the boss have a leadership problem? Maybe it's because she has a communal-sharing model in her head, while the troops are mainly into authority-ranking. Or vice versa.

But what is particularly interesting is the role of market pricing, which Fiske speculates might have been the last to evolve in our prehistoric ancestors' brains.

It makes sense. For hunter-gatherers in small bands, sharing, matching and ranking were probably as fundamental to survival as eating and breeding. But market pricing involves complex choices based on mathematical ratios.

"It's the difference between addition and subtraction on one hand, multiplication and division on the other," Fiske says.

Commerce and global trade, of course, require a finely honed version of the market-pricing model. But if humans developed this model relatively late, it might well be less than universal, even today.

In other words, to have an intuitive grasp of economics, you might just need to take a step or two up the evolutionary ladder.

Read more...