Walmart and Big Food pushing for GMO labeling?

Are Walmart and Big Food pushing for GMO labeling?
Tom Laskawy
25 Jan 2013
http://grist.org/food/are-walmart-and-big-food-pushing-for-gmo-labeling/

Since food companies collectively spent over $45 million to stop Prop 37, California’s GMO labeling law, it’s hard to believe that they — and Walmart in particular — would turn around and push for a federal GMO labeling standard. But a trickle of reports, aspects of which we’ve now confirmed, suggests just such a turnabout.

Playing a state-by-state game of whack-a-mole with grassroots groups trying to pass laws across the country (as is occurring in Washington state, Vermont, New Mexico, and Connecticut) may simply have become too exhausting and costly for these companies. If so, such an about-face would vindicate GMO opponents’ strategy of a direct appeal to consumers. GMO-labeling advocates may have succeeded in beginning to drive a wedge between biotechnology seed companies, like Monsanto and Syngenta, and the food companies that have to sell what’s produced with their wares.

That’s because GMOs, for all the claims made on their behalf, actually provide very little benefit to consumers — one of the strongest arguments against them. GMO innovations to date have simply allowed farmers to plant vast acreages of commodity crops like corn, soy, and cotton with less labor (but not, despite industry claims, with fewer chemicals). It’s on this basis, perhaps, that food companies felt like the fight wasn’t really theirs.

I first learned of this possible labeling sea change through an article by Ronnie Cummins, head of the Organic Consumers Association, who caught wind of news that a group of food companies went into the FDA earlier this month to “lobby for a mandatory federal GMO labeling law.”

Cummins went on to speculate the following:

Is it possible that the threat posed by the growing grassroots GMO labeling movement has prompted a number of Fortune 500 corporations to abandon Monsanto and the biotech industry, and rethink the PR and bottom-line costs of clinging to their anti-right-to-know positions? After all, it’s not as if these companies are incapable of making GMO-free products. Though many Americans don’t know it, Walmart, General Mills, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, Unilever, Kellogg’s, Starbucks — even McDonald’s — are GMO-free in Europe, thanks to strict GMO labeling laws.

I have been able to confirm through sources close to attendees that such a meeting did occur on Jan. 11. It did not take place at the FDA, however, though FDA representatives did reportedly attend. The meeting was “sponsored” by the AGree Foundation, which is a coalition of foundations active in agriculture and co-chaired by former Clinton Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman and Gary Hirshberg, CEO of Stonyfield Farm Organics.

I was also able to confirm that, as Cummins claimed, a Walmart vice president did announce that the company would no longer take a lead in opposing GMO labeling efforts. Other food company executives agreed, saying that the fight had become too expensive, especially given the prospect of more state-level initiatives. And if Walmart moves to support, or rather to no longer oppose, GMO labels, others will certainly follow. (Walmart did not respond to my requests for comment.)

Of course, supporters of GMOs will likely cluck disapprovingly at the idea that food companies might turn on Monsanto. They are, after all, forever pointing to the potential genetically modified crops have to solve the various problems we face. But to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you plant with the GMOs you have, not the GMOs you might want or wish to have. And the ones we have don’t do any of the things proponents argue that we need, such as significantly boost yields, disease resistance, or nutrition.

In fact, existing GMO seeds do little more than enable chemical-based, fossil-fueled monocrops — the kind of farming that is least sustainable and most subject to climate shocks and resource limits. Nor do the products currently in the pipeline hold much promise. The much-heralded drought-tolerant seeds Monsanto released last year aren’t particularly drought tolerant. The big new GMO seed from DuPont currently awaiting USDA approval would simply allow farmers to douse it with a super-toxic Agent Orange ingredient.

The best you can say about GMOs’ consumer benefit is that by “simplifying” commodity agriculture, they keep commodity prices lower. But food companies will tell you that commodity costs are a small part of the retail price (most of which is actually marketing costs). So why on Earth should Walmart, Cargill, and General Mills keep spending hundreds of millions fighting Monsanto’s battles?

Still, it’s unknown whether anything will come of this “secret” meeting or if an industry-supported GMO label would be a weak, sheep-in-wolf’s-clothing version. For what it’s worth, Cummins did invoke the cautionary example of Japan, which enacted industry-sponsored GMO labeling that he considers chock full of loopholes.

But it may be that food companies realize that GMO labeling is an inevitability. After all, 61 countries already require it, and the World Health Organization’s food safety standards group has official, internationally approved guidelines for any country wishing to label GMOs. We’re the laggards on this issue, not the pioneers.

If I’m hopeful, it’s also because past history suggests the FDA will regulate upon request — if the right folks ask.

For example, in March 2012, the FDA rejected a petition from the Natural Resources Defense Council to ban the use of the endocrine-disrupting chemical bipshenol-A in plastic. The agency stated at the time that it didn’t have the scientific data to support a ban (despite calls for a ban from many experts, including leading endocrinologists). This decision wasn’t entirely a surprise, however. Two years earlier, the FDA claimed it didn’t have the authority to ban bisphenol-A, even if it wanted to. Which it didn’t.

But then a funny thing happened. It turned out that the industry group the American Chemistry Council, with support from food companies — all presumably sick of the bad publicity and boycotts related to BPA — had filed its own petition to ban BPA in baby bottles and other children’s products. And while the FDA rejected the NRDC petition, in July of 2012 it accepted the industry petition for a partial ban. It was a classic case of “You say, ‘jump,’ I say, ‘how high?’”

Of course, even if the FDA doesn’t immediately start a process to label GMOs, it’s good news that food companies are ready to opt out of the political battle. With battles over GMO labeling gearing up in states across the country, we’ll soon find out if food companies will make good on this threat to biotech interests.

Advocates, meanwhile, can clearly smell Monsanto’s fear. Dave Murphy, of Food Democracy Now and one of the main architects of the GMO labeling movement, promised in an email that “come hell or high water, we will have labeling by the end of 2014.”

Labeling may come even sooner than that, however. With the prospect of final FDA approval for the first genetically modified fish designed for human consumption, AquaBounty’s AquAdvantage salmon, some states are moving quickly. Missouri has introduced a bill that would require labels for any genetically engineered meat or fish. The FDA itself may feel compelled to require a label as the “price” for approving the salmon. And once one kind of GMO food is labeled, how long can it be before others are?

Tom Laskawy is a founder and executive director of the Food & Environment Reporting Network and a contributing writer at Grist covering food and agricultural policy. His writing has also appeared in The American Prospect, Slate, The New York Times, and The New Republic.

Walmart Shifts Burden To Medicaid, Obamacare

Walmart's New Health Care Policy Shifts Burden To Medicaid, Obamacare
Alice Hines
12/01/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/01/walmart-health-care-policy-medicaid-obamacare_n_2220152.html

Walmart, the nation’s largest private employer, plans to begin denying health insurance to newly hired employees who work fewer than 30 hours a week, according to a copy of the company’s policy obtained by The Huffington Post.

Under the policy, slated to take effect in January, Walmart also reserves the right to eliminate health care coverage for certain workers if their average workweek dips below 30 hours -- something that happens with regularity and at the direction of company managers.

Walmart declined to disclose how many of its roughly 1.4 million U.S. workers are vulnerable to losing medical insurance under its new policy. In an emailed statement, company spokesman David Tovar said Walmart had “made a business decision” not to respond to questions from The Huffington Post and accused the publication of unfair coverage.

Labor and health care experts portrayed Walmart’s decision to exclude workers from its medical plans as an attempt to limit costs while taking advantage of the national health care reform known as Obamacare. Among the key features of Obamacare is an expansion of Medicaid, the taxpayer-financed health insurance program for poor people. Many of the Walmart workers who might be dropped from the company’s health care plans earn so little that they would qualify for the expanded Medicaid program, these experts said.

“Walmart is effectively shifting the costs of paying for its employees onto the federal government with this new plan, which is one of the problems with the way the law is structured,” said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

For Walmart, this latest policy represents a step back in time. Almost seven years ago, as Walmart confronted public criticism that its employees couldn't afford its benefits, the company announced with much fanfare that it would expand health coverage for part-time workers.

But last year, the company eliminated coverage for some part-time workers -- those new hires working 24 hours a week or less. Now, Walmart is going further.

“Walmart likely thought it didn’t need to offer this part-time coverage anymore with Obamacare,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “This is another example of a tremendous government subsidy to Walmart via its workers.”

In pursuing lower health care costs, Walmart is following the same course as many other large employers. But given its unrivaled scale, Walmart’s policies tend to influence American working conditions more broadly. Tom Billet, a senior consultant at Towers Watson, a professional services firm that works with large companies to develop benefit plans, said other companies are also crafting policies that will exclude some part-time workers from medical coverage.

Billet portrayed the growing corporate interest in separating out part-time workers as a reaction to another aspect of Obamacare -- the new rules that require companies with at least 50 full-time workers to offer health coverage to all employees who work 30 or more hours a week or pay penalties.

Several employers in recent months, including Darden Restaurants, owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster, and a New York-area Applebee’s franchise owner, said they are considering cutting employee hours to push more workers below the 30-hour threshold.

“In the past, firms were less careful about monitoring whether someone was full- or part-time,” Billet said, noting that some of his clients were planning to track workers’ hours more carefully. “I expect health plans like Walmart’s won’t be uncommon as firms adjust to this law.”

For Walmart employees, the new system raises the risk that they could lose their health coverage in large part because they have little control over their schedules. Walmart uses an advanced scheduling system to constantly alter workers’ shifts according to store traffic and sales figures.

The company has said the scheduling system improves flexibility and efficiency. But in recent interviews with The Huffington Post, several workers described their oft-changing schedules as a source of fear that they might earn too little to pay their bills. Many said they have begged managers to assign them additional hours only to see their shifts cut further as new workers were hired.

The new plan detailed in the 2013 "Associate’s Benefits Book" adds another element to that fear: the risk of losing health coverage. According to the plan, part-time workers hired in or after 2011 are now subject to an “Annual Benefits Eligibility Check” each August, during which managers will review the average number of hours per week that workers have logged over the past year.

If part-time workers hired after Feb. 1, 2012, fail to reach the 30-hour threshold, they will lose benefits the following January, according to the book. Part-time workers hired after Jan. 15, 2011, but before Feb. 1, 2012, must work at least 24 hours a week to retain coverage and will also be subject to an eligibility check each year. Those hired before 2011 aren’t subject to the minimum hours requirements or eligibility checks.

As for full-time workers under the plan, those who lose hours and slip to part-time at any point during the year will see their spouses’ health coverage dropped immediately. Those workers will also lose their dental and life insurance policies in the following pay period, according to the plan.

Some Walmart workers who are excluded from the company’s health care plans are likely to become eligible for Medicaid under the Obamacare expansion, which aims to replace a patchwork of standards now set by individual states with one minimum federal threshold -- income below 133 percent of the federal poverty line, which for an individual currently comes to $14,856. However, the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the decision to expand the program is voluntary for the states. At least eight states, including Texas, have said they will not expand the program, which would leave Walmart workers there with one less option.

Part-time workers who lose their Walmart insurance but earn too much to qualify for Medicaid should be able to buy insurance through the health care exchanges to be established under Obamacare -- essentially, online marketplaces offering an array of health care plans.

For workers who do qualify for health coverage under Walmart's new policy, the latest package represents an upgrade over previous plans. Walmart’s health plans began covering 100 percent of spine and heart surgeries this year at select hospitals and medical centers. They also include a smattering of preventative care services required by Obamacare.

But the company’s plans still leave many workers facing significant financial distress in the event of major illness. Under the new policy, one major offering, the so-called Health Reimbursement Account Plan, costs nonsmoking workers $34.80 a month -- a seemingly affordable sum. Yet it comes with an annual deductible of $2,750, a hefty expense given that half of Walmart’s hourly workforce earns no more than $10 an hour.

While a shifting of Walmart employees to Medicaid rolls may increase the burden on American taxpayers, it is likely to be a better deal for the workers themselves.

“The packages Walmart is providing for low-income people aren’t offering very much coverage except for catastrophes,” said Linda Blumberg, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “It’s likely they’ll be better off going with a government-sponsored plan.”

Why 'Black Friday' Has Dark Roots

ALAN GREENBLATT
November 23, 2012
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/11/21/165662876/why-black-friday-has-dark-roots

Black Friday may not yet be a bigger holiday than Thanksgiving, but it certainly has a bigger marketing budget. Retailers may have needed it to overcome the term's long and negative history.

And that's well before you get to talk of striking Walmart workers, or violence involving impatient shoppers in recent years.

Older generations may still associate "Black Friday" with the stock market crash of 1929, which triggered the Great Depression. But the connotation of financial distress dates back even further, to the collapse of the U.S. gold market on Sept. 24, 1869.

"The term Black Friday survived to be used again and again for various disasters and unfortunate events, including a 1910 incident in England where police assaulted several hundred suffragettes at a protest," notes Richard Townley in The Washington Times.

What does any of this have to do with shopping? Perhaps nothing. But even the earliest references to Black Friday as a post-Thanksgiving retail spree were negative.

The term appears to have originated about 50 years ago among police in Philadelphia inconvenienced by downtown crowds kicking off the holiday shopping season. Those crowds added to congestion from traffic in town for the Army-Navy football game, which in that era was generally played in Philly the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Black Friday "was not a happy term," department store historian Michael J. Lisicky told CBS News last year. "The stores were just too crowded, the streets were crowded, the buses and the police were just on overcall and extra duty."

Even a sales manager at the department store Gimbels in Philadelphia back in 1975 acknowledged the term's negative connotation and link to traffic headaches. "That's why the bus drivers and cab drivers call today 'Black Friday,' " she told The Associated Press, while watching a policeman struggle with a crowd of jaywalkers. "They think in terms of the headaches it gives them."

"Prior to the mid-1980s, the term 'Black Friday' was always used for some calamitous event," columnist Paul Mulshine wrote in New Jersey's Star-Ledger. "All of that negativity makes sense. 'Black Friday' has a naturally gloomy sound to it."

Of course retailers have long since embraced it, holding that the "black" in "Black Friday" is borrowed from accounting, meaning they hope to get "in the black" for the year by dint of holiday sales.

Some accounts credit this meaning to Peter Strawbridge, president of Strawbridge & Clothier, a now-defunct retailer that was based in Philadelphia.

But it doesn't seem that Strawbridge himself liked "Black Friday" much.

"It sounds like the end of the world, and we really like the day," he told The Philadelphia Inquirer back in 1984. "If anything, we should call it 'Green Friday.' "

My Thanksgiving – A Turkey Sandwich at WalMart

Alan Grayson
alangrayson@graysonforcongress.com
Sat, 24 Nov 2012

A Hug, for Courage.

I did not spend Thanksgiving evening with my wife and my five children. I spent it, instead, handing out turkey sandwiches to workers in WalMart. And showing my support for one brave soul who walked off the job in protest against exploitation.

WalMart "associates" make an average of just more than $10 an hour. That means that if they manage to get a full 40 hours a week - and many don't - they get paid $1,700 a month, before taxes. Somehow, that is supposed to pay for their food, shelter, clothing and medical care, and that of their children. Quite a trick.

In state after state, the largest group of Medicaid recipients is WalMart employees. I'm sure that the same thing is true of food stamp recipients. Each WalMart "associate" costs the taxpayers an average of more than $1,000 in public assistance.

How underpaid are WalMart employees? This underpaid: if every one of them got a 30% raise, WalMart would still be profitable.

WalMart employees in the United States are not unionized. WalMart has used every trick in the book to prevent its employees from organizing. In 2005, in Canada, WalMart closed a store that had voted to go union. Recently, in Orlando, WalMart fired an employee who had just talked about unionizing. When he came back into the store, many days afterward, to say hello to his former colleagues, they handcuffed him.

It's time to do something about this.

So on Thanksgiving, knowing that WalMart employees were missing dinner with their families, we walked into the local WalMart and handed out dinner to them. We gave them a paper bag that had three things in it: (a) a turkey sandwich, (b) a bag of chips, and (c) a letter explaining their right to organize.

There were two points to this. One was to inform the workers of their rights. And the other was to demonstrate to them, vividly, that they are not alone.

The WalMart manager had the police escort us out of the building. For handing out sandwiches. And for showing WalMart employees that they are not alone.

One brave "associate," who had had enough of this mistreatment, walked out with us. Which is her right, under the law, to protest WalMart's unfair labor practices. In fact, a while back, 200 employees walked out of a WalMart store, all at the same time. That really shook up the bosses.

By the way, she made sure that she finished serving her customer before she left. She's that kind of person. WalMart actually could use a few more like her.

I showed my support. I gave her a hug.

And so it begins. WalMart accounts for more than ten percent of all of the retail sales in the United States. It is the largest private employer in the world, with more than two million employees. And even though those employees comprise barely ten percent of its cost of doing business, WalMart exploits them mercilessly. Now WalMart employees are starting to organize, starting to fight back.

Who will win? I don't know. But I do know whose side I'm on. And I know that I'm not alone.

Courage,

Rep. Alan Grayson

Walmart of Weed in DC

Full Article:
http://yourlife.usatoday.com/health/health/story/2012-03-29/Walmart-of-weed-opening-store-in-Washington-DC/53861352/1

A company dubbed the "Walmart of Weed" is putting down roots in America's capital city, sprouting further debate on marijuana — medical or otherwise.

Just a few miles from the White House and federal buildings, a company that candidly caters to medical marijuana growers is opening up its first outlet on the East Coast. The opening of the weGrow store on Friday in Washington coincides with the first concrete step in implementing a city law allowing residents with certain medical conditions to purchase pot.

Like suppliers of picks and axes during the gold rush, weGrow sees itself providing the necessary tools to pioneers of a "green rush," which some project could reach nearly $9 billion within the next five years. Admittedly smaller than a big box store, weGrow is not unlike a typical retailer in mainstream America, with towering shelves of plant food and vitamins, ventilation and lighting systems. Along with garden products, it offers how-to classes, books and magazines on growing medical marijuana...

Awesome Corporate Food Product of the Month

Cheesy Poofs, made by Frito Lay, will be on sale this month at Walmart. First introduced to America by South Park:

"I love Cheesy Poofs
You love Cheesy Poofs
If we didn't eat Cheesy Poofs
We'd be lame!"

Walmart Goes Healthy

Over the years, The Konformist has been among the critics of Walmart and its business practices. Those criticisms remain, but credit must be given where credit is due. And Walmart must be given credit for changes being done to the quality of its food:
1. Reformulating thousands of everyday packaged food items by 2015 by reducing sodium 25 percent and added sugars 10 percent, and by removing all remaining industrially produced trans fats. The company will work with suppliers to improve the nutritional quality of national food brands and its Great Value private brand in key product categories to complete the reformulations;

2. Making healthier choices more affordable, saving customers approximately $1 billion per year on fresh fruits and vegetables through a variety of sourcing, pricing, and transportation and logistics initiatives that will drive unnecessary costs out of the supply chain. Walmart will also dramatically reduce or eliminate the price premium on key “better-for-you” items, such as reduced sodium, sugar or fat products;

3. Developing strong criteria for a simple front-of-package seal that will help consumers instantly identify truly healthier food options such as whole grain cereal, whole wheat pasta or unsweetened canned fruit;

4. Providing solutions to address food deserts by building stores in underserved communities that are in need of fresh and affordable groceries; and

5. Increasing charitable support for nutrition programs that help educate consumers about healthier food solutions and choices.


This is pretty great stuff, made even greater by the fact that Walmart, being the Goliath of the grocery chains, pretty much makes the standards of production for the entire industry...

Walmart Launches Major Initiative to Make Food Healthier and Healthier Food More Affordable
Jan. 20, 2011
http://walmartstores.com/pressroom/news/10514.aspx

Wal-Mart and the Essence of the Inhuman Corporation

http://www.alternet.org/economy/146243/hightower%3A_wal-mart_and_the_essence_of_the_inhuman_corporation

Jim Hightower
Wal-Mart and the Essence of the Inhuman Corporation
Think corporations share some of mankind's key characteristics, like compassion? Think again. As Joseph Casias' case illustrates, they're more ruthless than ever.
April 1, 2010

I'm curious about those five Supreme Court justices who recently decreed that a corporation is a "person" with human rights: Do you think they ever met Mr. Walmart?

If they had, they'd be forced to concede that corporate personhood is a sheer fantasy, for there is nothing even remotely human about the bloodless and brainless thing that is Walmart. For conclusive evidence of this entity's total lack of humanity, the learned judges should climb down from their high bench and visit with Joseph Casias, a 29-year-old former employee of a Walmart store in Battle Creek, Mich.

In fact, Casias was an excellent employee throughout his five-year tenure within the corporate person, even earning "Associate of the Year" honors in 2008.

"I always tried my best," he says. "I gave them everything. One hundred ten percent every day. Anything they asked me to do, I did. More than they asked me to do. Twelve to 14 hours a day. I thought I was part of the Walmart family."

Five months ago, however, he was coldly cast out of the family. What happened? It started with cancer -- a rare form invaded his sinuses and brain. He's getting treatment to control it, but he still suffers a severe level of chronic pain. Yet, Casias was able to keep doing his usual good job every day by using a controlled dose of marijuana that his doctor prescribed to alleviate pain -- a prescription that is perfectly legal under Michigan's medical marijuana law.

By carefully scheduling his daily dosage, Casias never came to work under the influence, and he never took the medicine on the job, so Walmart saw nothing but an employee performing well.

Until last November. In a routine drug screening by the company, Casias tested positive for pot. He showed his state medical marijuana permit to the corporate cogs, but instead of using common sense or showing a smidgeon of human compassion, the managers mindlessly clicked into Program 420g, Section 21-mj (or some such) of corporate-code -- and summarily cashiered Casias.

Oh, come on, he's no druggie -- he has a painful cancer and is using legal medicine! If he were taking Oxycontin or other harsh drugs, you wouldn't think of terminating your associate of the year.

But there is no "you" there. Walmart is a machine, a fabrication, not a sentient, reasoning person. So the machine responded to public outrage over Casias' firing by issuing an insensate legal statement: "In states, such as Michigan, where prescriptions for marijuana can be obtained, an employer can still enforce a policy that requires termination of employment following a positive drug screen. We believe our policy complies with the law, and we support decisions based on the policy."

Cancer is enough of a burden on a person without corporate callousness adding to the pain, but Walmart just kept piling on this employee. He's got no job, is facing $10,000 in unpaid medical bills and can no longer afford his cancer treatment, so what does the corporation do? It challenged Casias' eligibility for unemployment compensation.

Not that Mr. Walmart hates the guy. It's just the corporate way. For Casias, however, it's a disaster. "It's not fair," he says.

Fair? To a corporation, "fair" is a place to take your pig to try to win a blue ribbon. Corporations are literally inhuman, possessing no sense of moral responsibility or human decency.

The good news is that real people are rallying against the faux person's outrageous officiousness, and they've formed a Facebook page: "Let Joseph Casias Talk." With the corporate image taking a beating and some customers organizing a boycott, the machinery for damage control kicked in at headquarters, prompting the company to drop its ugly effort to deny unemployment payments to Casias. It adamantly refuses, however, to take the one step he most needs: rehiring. And how about apologizing?

To convey your own thoughts directly to Citizen Walmart, call (800) 963-8442. And to help reform the law to stop such corporate attacks on medical marijuana patients, contact the Marijuana Policy Project: www.mpp.org.

Jim Hightower is a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." (Wiley, March 2008) He publishes the monthly "Hightower Lowdown," co-edited by Phillip Frazer.

Walmart, Neighborhood Market...

I was driving past a Walmart yesterday and discovered it was branding itself as a "Neighborhood Market" now. I guess that's true, if by "Neighborhood Market" you mean "Evil multinational corporation that destroys local businesses with predatory practices, engages in massive labor law fraud, squashes unions, and exploits virtual slave labor in the Third World and China."

Ralph Nader, Fiction Writer

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1925576,00.html

Ralph Nader, Fiction Writer
By Tim Morrison
Wednesday, Sep. 23, 2009

Ralph Nader has been many things: lawyer, consumer-rights bulldog, political activist and perennial third-party presidential candidate. He has now added a new title to his business card: fiction writer. His latest book, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, is a 700-page populist fantasy in which a small group of billionaires and media moguls — led by Warren Buffett and including Ted Turner, George Soros, Bill Cosby, Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue — pool their massive resources to reform the U.S. With the help of a $15 billion war chest and a p.r. campaign starring a talking parrot, the group successfully unionizes Walmart, ends corporate influence on Congress, makes Warren Beatty the governor of California and legalizes industrial hemp. TIME talked to Nader about the origins of his book, its celebrity characters and the U.S.'s real-life political battles.

You say in your author's note that this book is not a novel. And yet it's not nonfiction. So what is it?

In the literary world, it's either called a work of speculation — "What if something happened?" "What if somebody did this?" — or a practical utopia. We haven't had many practical utopias. Russell Jacoby, a professor out in California, wrote a book called The End of Utopia in 1999, which argues that the idea of imagining better futures has diminished, as we wallow more and more in our desperate state of societal and governmental decay. So I tried to revive the genre, so to speak.

Was that your goal in writing the book? To create a practical utopia?

No. As you go through year after year, as many civic advocates do, being overwhelmed by the corporate lobbies and their allies in government, you say to yourself, 'If we only had more media, if we only had more money, if we only had more field organizers, if we only had better ideas and strategies.' That's what produced the book. What if we had a collection of superrich elderly, retired people who are very dismayed at the state of their beloved country, and what if they got together and really poured money in? What would happen? And what would happen is a major power collision with corporate goliaths and their government allies.

You mention your group of the superrich. How did you come up with that idea, with those characters?

First of all, the civil rights movement, contrary to popular impression, was funded in significant part by superrich people. The right-wing movement in this country is funded by people like Richard Scaife, who's put in a quarter of a billion dollars at least. I decided to pick [my characters] because they all brought something to the table: Barry Diller, media; Ted Turner, media; George Soros, the Open Society Institute and institution-building; Peter Lewis, insurance; Joe Jamail and Bill Gates Sr. on access to justice. They all brought something to it.

How does Yoko Ono fit into the group?

I wanted to have more women than I could find who were older and quite well-known. She brings moral sentiments and aesthetics. Aesthetics is a very understressed dimension of civic action: music, song, beauty, posters, logos, all these things.

Have you met all the people you based these characters on?

Oh yes. I've talked to or met a lot of them: Barry Diller, Phil Donahue, Bernard Rapoport, Leonard Riggio ...

Did you say to any of them, "I'm writing this book about you"?

Not until I finished it.

What did they say?

Well, I got through to eight of them; they were bemused, but obviously they weren't going to say much until they saw the book. But some of them were very pleased.

Did you ever consider making yourself a character in the book?

That's what Warren Beatty wants. He wants to make this a movie, but only if I'm in it.

The jumping-off point for the story is the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. Was that the genesis of the book idea for you as well?

It was one of them, yeah. Another of them was how demoralized they were, these superrich older people that I talked to. I said to them, "How could you be demoralized? You're sitting on 5, 6, 8 billion dollars. For a billion dollars, with field organizers in every congressional district, you can get a single-payer health-care system.' What's a billion dollars to these people?

The events in the book read like an unstoppable wave of progressivism. Isn't it kind of a fantasy to expect that to actually happen?

Well, I tried to unleash almost everything short of detonations [on the main characters]. I mean, the other side really unleashed about everything they had, but you see, they weren't used to being taken on by the big guys or in ways they'd never seen before. They're used to meat-and-potatoes lobbying: put the ads on, get the think tanks going, throw more money in the PACs. Very traditional.

And you think that would be their response in real life as well?

Well, if they were caught by surprise, sure.

What do you think about the current fight over health-care reform?

Well, it's going down heavily. Obama's not going to get a public option. By the time the thousand-page monstrosity of complexity and ambiguity gets to his desk, it's going to be a shred of what the majority of doctors, nurses and the people in this country want — which is full Medicare for all.

What's your take on President Obama thus far?

Weak. Waffling, wavering, ambiguous and overwhelmingly concessionary.

Is any of that enough to get you back into the political arena?

It's too early to say. One thing is, I always want the progressive agenda represented on the ballot, even in a rigged two-party tyranny. I wish other people would do it, but as far as me, it's too early to say.

Do you think third parties have a shot in the next elections?

Sure. They'll be called the Bloomberg Party. Some billionaire will come in like Perot and turn it into a three-way race. There's so many billionaires, and a few of them are quite enlightened. You don't need a right-wing billionaire because they've already got the Republican Party.

Walmart represents 'mainstreamification' of iPhone

http://blogs.computerworld.com/walmart_represents_mainstreamification_of_iphone

Seth Weintraub
Apple Ink
December 9, 2008
Walmart represents 'mainstreamification' of iPhone
TAGS:$99, 4Gb, Apple, iPhone, Walmart
IT TOPICS:Macintosh & Apple, Mobile & Wireless, Personal Technology

A lot has been made of Apple's seemingly sure move to Walmart as a point of sale for the iPhone. Whether or not Apple releases an "everyman" $99 4Gb iPhone still remains to be seen, but this isn't the main point. The macro trend, if you haven't recognized it yet, is that the iPhone has gone beyond mainstream.

And the Apple brand? Don't worry, it will be fine. Walmart sells Coke and GE products, which are by some accounts the world's most valuable brands. They aren't suffering any dilution.

Walmart also sells iPods, and has for awhile, without any backlash. Heck, they may even start selling MacBooks. Do they sell Louis Vuitton handbags? Nope. Different demographic. But they do sell Sony.

Apple is trying to push this phone beyond even the middle class. The iPhone will now be in every small town in America. Beyond even the reach of Best Buy and AT&T stores, Walmarts are, for better or for worse, where a huge swath of Americans from all income brackets do their weekly shopping. The iPhone will be in front of every face, day after day. Week after week.

Just like the iPod has been.

If there is a $99 version, this will tempt the lower income demographic a bit more, but the biggest expense – by a landslide – is the AT&T monthly fees. In fact, on a few of AT&T's plans, the $99 will be eclipsed in the first month of wireless charges alone. This, however, will sell many more phones and won't tarnish the brand.

Not everybody is as sure as I am that cheaper iPhones are a good idea.

UBS analyst Maynard Um said yesterday,"A $99 iPhone would be atypical of Apple's premium brand strategy. More likely is a scenario in which select Wal-Mart, and possibly Sam's Clubs, are simply added as further iPhone distribution points."

Really? What would a $59 iPod do to the brand?

The most upset person is likely Steve Jobs who doesn't seem like a Walmart kinda guy. But considering the 4.5 million iPhones he could sell, it isn't really a decision at all, and he's made much more painful strategic moves in the past (selling part of Apple to Microsoft) that make this pale in comparison.

Beast of the Month - August 2008

Robalini's Note: Still a little behind, but catching up...

Beast of the Month - August 2008
Hu Jintao, Chinese President

"I yam an anti-Christ..."
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of The Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK"

"One World, One Dream"
Slogan of the 2008 Summer Olympics

On August 8, the Summer Olympics will be held in Beijing. It will begin at 8PM, which will make it the eighth hour of the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year of the century. (In case you didn't know, eight is considered the luckiest number in China, and the Chinese people are particularly superstitious about it.) When it is, it will be viewed in the korporate media as the final coronation of China as one of the few world superpowers. Like it actually needs one.

It's hard to believe it's been nine years since someone from China has won BOTM, and eleven since Jiang Zemin took home the trophy. Why that's particularly hard to believe is because in the past nine years, China has not gotten weaker, but rather frighteningly stronger.

Want the proof? Just walk down the aisle of your local Best Buy, Target or (of course) WalMart. Try to avoid buying products which aren't made in the People's Republic. Good luck. Freelance writer Sara Bongiorni did that a full year in 2005 with her family. Needless to say, it often turned shopping for even everyday products into an epic journey. Her four-year-old son, despondent over the cool toys and gadgets he was unable to obtain, had this to say about the end of the boycott: "When we can buy China things again, let's never stop." Ms. Bongiorni summed up her dilemma thusly:

"The funny thing about China's ascent is that we, as a nation, could shut the whole thing down in a week. Jump-start a 'Just Say No to Chinese Products Week,' and the empire will collapse amid the chaos of overloaded cargo ships in Long Beach harbor. I doubt we could pull it off. Americans may be famously patriotic, but look closely, and you'll see who makes the flag magnets on their car bumpers. These days China delivers every major holiday, Fourth of July included."

Of course, if China was merely destroying Team USA's manufacturing sector while poisoning kids with lead-filled toys, it would be bad enough. Currently, China is the number two holder of US Treasury securities, ahead of the UK and only trailing Japan. It is number two with a bullet. What this means is that increasingly China will have a major say in the decisions of our political establishment. It's hard to ignore that in the late 80s and early 90s, for all the hysteria that was directed at the evil Japanese empire, they were nowhere near the economic threat to America that China is now, and a fellow democracy to boot as compared to a communist dictatorship. So where are the panic-stricken pop novels like Michael Crichton's Rising Sun over China?

Okay, maybe that's a little over-the-top: China, after all, is no longer a communist dictatorship, it's a capitalist dictatorship. China has a $7 trillion a year GDP when measured in purchasing power parity, second only to the USA. Since 1978, when free market reforms were implemented, it has grown at an annual rate of over 8 percent. This growth has been aided over the last decade by the reacquisition of both Hong Kong in 1997 and Macau and 1999. Hong Kong long has been the world's shining example of free market economics (Milton Friedman gushed about it in his 1980 book Free to Choose) while Macau has surpassed Las Vegas as the world's largest gambling center, and now only Dubai exceeds it as an example of 21st century capitalism on steroids. Meanwhile, China's biggest oil producer PetroChina became the first trillion dollar company in value last November, and Shanghai has become the world's largest cargo port. With all this money flowing to China, talks of reunification with Taiwan can no longer be dismissed as merely a dream.

But China is definitely still an ugly dictatorship. The crackdown on Tiananmen Square may have happened nineteen years ago, but an environment toxic to freedom still is alive and well. When Hu Jintao (The Konformist Beast of the Month) was selected to take over China's presidency in 2002 from Jiang Zemin, there was widespread hope that he would become the nation's Gorbachev, that political freedom would be unleashed by what was suspected to be a closet liberal. This was aided by his close relationship with Premier Wen Jiabao, who is about as close to a populist figure that can be found in the Chinese establishment. Nearly six years later, this has been proven to be a bogus fantasy, a fantasy exposed most blatantly by the continuing suppression of the people of Tibet. Indeed, the recent crackdown on Tibetan followers of the exiled Dalai Lama has become so intense, there has been a heavy push for nations to boycott the Olympic opening ceremonies as protest. Other noted examples of China's continued repression are the persecution of the Falun Gong religious movement, the backing of a ruthless military junta in Burma and its ties to the bloodshed in Darfur via continued support of Sudan.

Some refer to the 2008 Games as the "Genocide Olympics" thanks to these crimes against humanity, and has led to further calls for a boycott, most notably from actress and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow, actor and Tibetan activist Richard Gere, director Steven Spielberg and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu. The most in-your-face example of China's continued autocratic style is the nation's crackdown on the Internet, which is already a major hurdle for journalist attempting to cover the Olympic Games. This is despite being lied to repeatedly by China that Internet censorship would be lifted on journalists during the games. (Hard to believe a dictatorship would use deception to land an esteemed multi-billion dollar reward.) According to an International Olympic Committee commissioner: "Had the I.O.C., and those vested with the decision to award the host city contract, known seven years ago that there would be severe restrictions on people being able to enter China simply to watch the Olympics, or that live broadcasting from Tiananmen Square would essentially be banned, or that reporters would be corralled at the whim of local security, then I seriously doubt whether Beijing would have been awarded the Olympics.” The climate of persecution that pervades the Summer Games has been so vast, criticisms of Beijing's toxic smog due to intense air pollution have been almost an afterthought. It appears that for all the talk of open markets leading to freedom, it's going to take longer to achieve Chinese democracy than it has taken Axl Rose to finish his GNR album of the same name.

Over the last eight years, two camps of the GOP have been divided over whether to continue treating China as a trading partner or turning them into an adversary for a Cold War sequel. (These two camps can be referred to as the "Shopping Mall Fascists" and the "War & Oil Fascists" for those keeping score at home.) This division is illustrated in the pro-China positions of both Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch and Christian televangelist Pat Robertson, both having normally anti-Communist views apparently trumped by their desire to profit in the untapped Chinese market. (Robertson's mammon is particularly telling, as he actually has defended China's forced abortion policy to control population, a step beyond the mere "pro-choice" position of American abortion activists he regularly bashes.) The general results of this debate has led the Bush Team to continue the plunge into transferring dollars into China's coffers while getting any dig into them whenever they can, no matter how petty. One noted example: the April Fools 2001 crash between a US spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet that led to the death of PLA pilot Wang Wei. Immediately, the Bush Administration insisted the incident happened in international airspace (a dubious claim) and demanded the release of the entire crew. (It's hard to imagine that if a Chinese spy plane near US borders caused the death of an American navy pilot, Team USA would immediately release the crew and their plane without investigation.) Ten days later, when the Bush Administration gave a belated and unconvincing apology after an increasingly shrill hysteria swept through the press, China released the crew, but by then the diplomatic damage had been unnecessarily done. Cut to 2006, when a visit by Jintao to the US was littered with snubs that showed a calculated pattern. Among the greatest hits: referring to China as “the Republic of China" (the actual title for Taiwan) during the official White House greeting. Perhaps even worse was granting a Falun Gong anti-China activist press credentials to a joint Bush-Jintao press conference. The press conference was interrupted for three minutes by an angry denunciation of Jintao and China by the activist, something which would've been halted immediately if it was an attack on Bush's failed War in Iraq. Normally, the granting of a press pass is so controlled, only right-wing closet gay prostitutes who sleep at the White House overnight can evade the tight scrutiny, which indicates the Falun Gong supporter's activities were sanctioned by the Bush Administration all along.

Of course, not all battles between China and the US are so minor. Both countries have used bogus excuses to use military weaponry in space, moves that indicate a "Star Wars" may eventually explode between the two nations for control of the Earth's skies. And as PetroChina's rise clearly shows, there is a huge battle already being covertly waged between the two countries over the vast Caspian Sea oil reserves. This covert war may go deeper than most suspect: while 9/11 conspiracy theories mainly focus on the US military, Israel, Saudi Arabia or the UK as the alternative culprit, Gordon Thomas makes the case in the book Seeds of Fire that the terrorist attack was actually a Chinese operation to punish the US and strengthen ties between China and Islamic nations. In particular, the book details the close financial relationship between China and the Taliban before 9/11. (Coincidentally, the Taliban was run from power almost immediately after China was voted into the WTO in November 2001.) That being the case, perhaps the tensions between the US and China will become increasingly overt as China continues to gain power without firing a single weapon.

In any case, we salute Hu Jintao as Beast of the Month. Congratulations, and keep up the great work, Hu!!!

Sources:

Barboza, David. "Macao Surpasses Las Vegas as Gambling Center." New York Times 23 January 2007 <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/23/business/worldbusiness/23cnd-macao.html>.

Bodeen, Christopher. "Under Hu, China Tightening Media Reins." Washington Post 21 April 2006 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/21/AR2006042100951.html>.

Bongiorni, Sara. "A Year Without 'Made in China'." Christian Science Monitor 20 December 2005 <http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1220/p09s01-coop.html>.

Bongiorni, Sara. A Year Without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy. Hoboken: Wiley, 2007.

Chin, Larry. "Is the Anglo-American Empire Losing the 'Great Energy Game'?" Online Journal 8 January 2007 <http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_1612.shtml>.

"China's Hu Vows to 'Purify' Internet." Reuters 24 January 2007 <http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSPEK9570520070124>.

"Dalai Lama: China Causing 'Cultural Genocide'." CNN 17 March 2008 <http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/16/tibet.unrest>.

Eimer, David. "China Earthquake: Superstition a Potent Force." London Telegraph 24 May 2008 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/2021715/China-earthquake-Superstition-a-potent-force.html>.

"The Genocide Olympics?" Washington Post 14 December 2006.

Harnden, Toby. "Outrage as Preacher Refuses to Condemn Chinese Abortions." London Telegraph 20 July 2001 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1316790/Outrage-as-preacher-refuses-to-condemn-Chinese-abortions.html>.

Hilton, Isabel. "China's One-party Monopoly of Power Is Coming to an End." London Guardian 12 July 2007 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jul/12/comment.china>.

Kahn, Joseph. "China Confirms Test of Anti-Satellite Weapon." New York Times 23 January 2007 <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/23/world/asia/23cnd-china.html>.

Kluger, Jeffrey. "Was A Satellite Shootdown Necessary?" Time 20 February 2008 <http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1714811,00.html>.

Lou, Ying. "PetroChina's Value Tops $1 Trillion, Surpassing Exxon." Bloomberg November 2007 <http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aQyRJI72Kor8>.

Marquand, Robert. "E.U. Weighs Olympic Boycott Over Tibet." Christian Science Monitor 27 March 2008.

Mone, Gregory. "Choking at the Olympics." Popular Science August 2007.

Musil, Steven. "Internet Censorship Plagues Journalists at Olympics." CNET News 29 July 2008 <http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10002097-93.html>.

Ritter, Peter. "The New Space Race: China vs. US." Time 13 February 2008 <http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1712812,00.html>.

"Shanghai Now the World's Largest Cargo Port." Asia Times Online 7 January 2006 <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China_Business/HA07Cb02.html>.

Stelter, Brian. "Networks Fight Shorter Olympic Leash." New York Times 21 July 2008 <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/sports/olympics/21nbc.html>.

Thomas, Gordon. Seeds of Fire: China And The Story Behind The Attack On America. Tempe: Dandelion Books, 2001.

"WHO Fears Over Beijing Pollution." BBC 17 August 2007 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6950883.stm>.

The Top 25 Web Hoaxes and Pranks

http://msn.pcworld.com/article/id,131340-c,scamshoaxes/article.html

The Top 25 Web Hoaxes and Pranks
Steve Bass
PCWorld.com
Thu May 3, 2007

Whether they take the form of a comic image of a giant cat or a desperate plea from a sick child, chain e-mail messages and Internet frauds are elements of the online landscape that we've all encountered. No topic is off limits: a medical warning, a promise of free money, or a believably (or shoddily) Photoshopped image. But at the end of the day, they're just elaborate hoaxes or clever pranks--and we've collected 25 of the most infamous ones ever to have graced the Internet or our inboxes.

Though some of these deceptions originated years ago, the originals--and dozens of variants--continue to make the rounds. If you keep a patient vigil over your e-mail, you too may eventually spot a message urging you to FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!! And if you haven't had enough when you finish reading this article, take a hoax test at the Museum of Hoaxes, and then hop over to Snopes, the premier myth-dispelling site for coverage of zillions of other falsifications.

Hoaxes 1 Through 5

From the supposed last photo taken at the top of the World Trade Center to the endlessly revised request for assistance from a Nigerian functionary, here are our top five Web and e-mail hoaxes.

1. The Accidental Tourist (2001)

Quite possibly the most famous hoax picture ever, this gruesome idea of a joke traveled around the Web and made a grand tour of e-mail inboxes everywhere soon after the tragedy of September 11. It depicts a tourist standing on the observation deck of one of the World Trade Center towers, unknowingly posing for a picture as an American Airlines plane approaches in the background.

At first glance it appears to be real, but if you examine certain details, you'll see that it's a craftily modified image. For starters, the plane that struck the WTC was a wide-body Boeing 767; the one in the picture is a smaller 757. The approach of the plane in the picture is from the north, yet the building it would have hit--the North tower--didn't have an outdoor observation deck. Furthermore, the South tower's outdoor deck didn't open until 9:30 a.m. on weekdays, more than half an hour after the first plane struck the WTC. The picture is a hoax, through and through--and not a particularly amusing one, under the circumstances.

Image courtesy of Snopes.com.

2. Sick Kid Needs Your Help (1989)

This gem had its roots in reality. It all began in 1989, when nine-year-old cancer patient Craig Shergold thought of a way to achieve his dream of getting into the Guinness Book of World Records. Craig asked people to send greeting cards, and boy, did they. By 1991, 33 million greeting cards had been sent, far surpassing the prior record. Ironically, however, the Guinness World Records site doesn't contain any mention of Craig Sherwood or a "most greeting cards received" record, presumably because the fine folks at the site don't want to encourage anyone to try to break his mark. (Astonishingly, Guinness doesn't have an entry for world's stoutest person, either, but it does honor the World's Largest Tankard of Beer.)

Fortunately, doctors succeeded in removing the tumor, and Craig is now a healthy adult, but his appeal for cards has turned into the hoax that won't die. Variations on the theme include a sick girl dying of cancer, and a little boy with leukemia whose dying wish is to start an eternal chain letter. A recent iteration tells a tragic tale of a girl who supposedly was horribly burned in a fire at WalMart, and then claims that AOL will pay all of her medical bills if only if you forward this e-mail to EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!! Okay, enough already.

Image courtesy of Snopes.com.

3. Bill Gates Money Giveaway (1997)

No, it's true. I thought it was a scam, but it happened to a buddy of mine. It seems that Microsoft is testing some new program for tracing e-mail, and the company needs volunteers to help try the thing out. He forwarded me an e-mail that he received from Microsoft--and get this, from Bill Gates himself! Two weeks later, as a reward for participating, my pal received a check for thousands of dollars! Sure he did. Another version of this hoax claims that AOL's tracking service is offering a cash reward. Tell you what--when you get your check, send me 10 percent as a finder's fee, okay?

4. Five-Cent E-Mail Tax (1999)

"Dear Internet Subscriber," the e-mail starts. "The Government of the United States is quietly pushing through legislation that will affect your use of the Internet." It goes on to reveal that "Bill 602P" will authorize the U.S. Postal Service to assess a charge of five cents for every e-mail sent. Not a bad way to cut down on the number of dopey e-mail chain letters and lame jokes people let loose on the world. But credulous curse averters and connoisseurs of boffo laffs can relax: This e-mail alert, which popped up in 1999 and comes back for a visit every year or so, just isn't true. Still, it sounded plausible enough to fool Hillary Clinton during a 2000 debate when she was running for the Senate.

5. Nigerian 419 E-Mail Scam (2000)

"DEAR SIR," the e-mail starts. "FIRSTLY I MUST FIRST SOLICIT YOUR CONFIDENCE IN THIS TRANSACTION; LET ME START BY INTRODUCING MYSELF PROPERLY..." I'm sure you've received one of these--a confidential, urgent e-mail message promising you a reward of mucho dinero for helping this person convey money abroad. All you need do in return is entrust your name and bank account number to the government bureaucrat (or his uncle, aunt, or cousin, the ostensible "credit offficer with the union bank of Nigeria plc (uba) Benin branch") who needs your help.

It's the Nigerian con, also know as an Advanced Fee Fraud or 419 scam (so called because of the section number of the Nigerian criminal code that applies to it). Ancestors of these scams appeared in the 1980s, when the media of choice were letters or faxes--and they're still wildly successful at snagging people. In fact, Oprah recently featured a victim of the Nigerian scam on her show. And if you think that smart, educated folks couldn't possibly fall for it, you'll be surprised when you read "The Perfect Mark," a New Yorker magazine article profiling a Massachusetts psychotherapist who was duped--and lost a fortune.

To see how the hoax works, visit Scamorama, a fascinating site that features a progression of e-mail messages stringing along 419 scammers, sometimes for months at a time. Finally, check out the 3rd Annual Nigerian E-Mail Conference, an absolutely perfect spoof.

Hoaxes 6 Through 10

The lower half of our top 10 ranges from a kidneynapping scare to a cookie recipe worth its weight in saffron.

6. It's Kidney Harvesting Time (1996)

The subject line is laden with exclamation points: "Travelers Beware!!!" If that's not enough to get your attention, the chilling story certainly will. The message warns that an organ-harvesting crime ring is drugging tourists in New Orleans and Las Vegas, snatching their "extra" kidneys, selling the organs to non-Hippocratic hospitals, and leaving the victims to wake up in a bathtub full of ice and find a brief note that explains the situation and conveniently identifies the phone number of the nearest emergency room. Hey, maybe they'll get lucky and the hospital will have a compatible replacement kidney on hand. But travelers, fear not!!! According to the National Kidney Foundation, this scenario has never actually occurred--though it does have the makings of a great horror flick. (Freddy's Last Harvest, anyone?)

7. You've Got Virus! (1999 and on)

There's isn't a Teddy Bear virus. Nor is there a sulfnbk.exe or A Virtual Card for You ("the "WORST VIRUS EVER!!!...CNN ANNOUNCED IT. PLEASE SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!!").

The jdbgmgr.exe hoax (also known as Teddy Bear because the jdbgmgr.exe file is represented by a teddy bear icon) warned recipients of the e-mail message that they were at risk of infection from a virus sent via address books or Microsoft Messenger, and that they should delete the file immediately. But in reality there was no virus--and unfortunately, jdbgmgr.exe was a necessary Java file. The sulfnbk.exe hoax nailed even advanced users with its insistence that the file--a legit one that's used for fixing long file names--was a virus. Lots of people removed it.

Similarly, A Virtual Card for You claimed that McAfee had discovered a virus that, when opened, would destroy the hard drive on an infected system and would automatically send itself to everyone on the user's e-mail contacts list. Of course, it didn't do anything except scare people. So before you forward an e-mail virus warning to anyone (especially to me), look it up on Sophos or Vmyths to make sure it isn't a fraud.

8. Microsoft Buys Firefox (2006)

Talk about scaring the entire open-source community. In October 2006, a previously unknown Web site popped up, announcing Microsoft's acquisition of Firefox and promoting the company's new Microsoft Firefox 2007 Professional. The site talks glowingly about the browser's new features and provides a video advertisement for the product. It was a great prank, and the image of the Microsoft Firefox 2007 box was so elaborate and professional looking that the blood pressure of real Firefox users went sky-high.

9. The Really Big Kitty (2001)

There are big cats and then there are even bigger cats. This one, reportedly tipping the scales at almost 90 pounds, was enormous. The claim seemed plausible and even snookered a lot of e-mail cynics (I'm raising my hand)--until they read the accompanying copy, that is. With nonsense about the owner working at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, and more balderdash about nuclear reactors, the jig was up. Eventually, the cat's owner fessed up to a creative Photoshop session, though he claimed that he never expected anyone to believe the photo was real.

Image courtesy of Snopes.com.

10. $250 Cookie Recipe (1996)
The woman loved the cookie she had just nibbled at a Neiman Marcus cafe in Houston, so she asked her waiter for the recipe. "Two-fifty," he said, and she agreed without hesitation, instructing him to add it to her tab. But when the woman's Visa bill arrived, it read $250, instead of $2.50. Bent on revenge, she proceeded to ask you to blast the recipe to--okay, ready?--EVERYONE YOU KNOW!!! Like many hoaxes, this one predated the Internet, only to resurface in the electronic age. It appeared in a cookbook in the late 1940s as the $25 fudge cake, popped up in the 1960s as the Waldorf-Astoria red-velvet cake recipe, and re-emerged in the 1970s as the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe.

Hoaxes 11 Through 15

This group of five begins with a phoney e-mail message promising money and other prizes from Disney, and ends with the classic deaf-to-reason arguments of the Apollo moon landing deniers.

11. Free Vacation Courtesy of Disney (1998)
Dear Goofy... Forward this e-mail chain letter to everybody under the sun and, once 13,000 people have received it, Walt Disney Jr. will send five grand each to 1,300 lucky people on this list. And "the rest will recieve a free trip for two to Disney for one week during the summer of 1999." Is that Disney World, Disneyland--or Walt's house? The "Jr." after Disney, in reference to a nonexistent person, ought to have been the first clue that this was a hoax. And the misspelling of "receive" was the clincher--remember, hoaxters, "i" before "e" except after "c"). Yet people forwarded the message around the world using the time-honored e-mail chain letter adage: I'm sending it to you... just in case it's true.

12. Sunset Over Africa (2003)
Now that's a dazzling photo of Africa and Europe, taken right around sunset from the Space Shuttle Columbia. What makes the image especially amazing is that, while London remains in daylight, night has fallen in Italy (a little to the southeast) and the bright lights of Rome, Naples, and Venice are blazing. Too bad it's a digitally altered photo, most likely layered from multiple satellite images. To see an accurate, computer-generated illustration, check out the World Sunlight Map.

Image courtesy of Snopes.com.

13. Alien Autopsy at Roswell, New Mexico (1995)
Roswell, New Mexico: ground zero of UFO controversy. It's also where the movie of the Roswell alien autopsy was filmed 60 years ago. The story goes that a UFO crashed at this site, and the U.S. government performed a hush-hush autopsy on the dead alien.In the mid-1990s, unnamed individuals "discovered" the secret film and posted it for the edification of a disinformed public. Looks pretty real, right? Now fast-forward to 2006 and a conspiracy-deflating admission: The movie is a hoax created in 1995 by John Humphreys, the animator famous for Max Headroom, in his apartment in north London....Or was it???

14. Real-Time GPS Cell Phone Tracking (2007)
SunSat Satellite Solutions knows where you are.Have you heard about the Web site that can track the location of your cell phone in real time? It uses satellite GPS in combination with Google Maps, and it's amazingly accurate (not to mention a disturbing invasion of privacy). Go ahead, check it out yourself by going to the SunSat Satellite Solutions site and tracking your own cell phone's location. Select your country, type in your cell phone number, click the Start Searching button, and wait for it. (This is one of the year's best pranks. And I won't give away the ending.)

15. Apollo Moon Landing Hoax (1969)
You're aware that we never landed on the moon, right? It was all just an elaborate hoax designed to score Cold War points for the United States against the Soviet Union in a world of falling dominoes. The whole lunar landing thing? It was a video staged at movie studios and top-secret locations.

Okay, you can stop laughing now, but some sites, such as Apollo Reality and Moon Landing, still insist that the Eagle never landed. Of course, enemies of Flat Earthism will point to the Rocket and Space Technology site, which does an in-depth job of debunking the hoax. But true disbelievers should check out this terrific video spoof, complete with outtakes showing lights and cameras.

Hoaxes 16 Through 20

The world of weird eBay auction items starts off this page, which concludes with a photo hoax purporting to show a 1950s-era vision of the home computer of tomorrow.

16. Sell It on eBay! (1995)
You won't believe what people have sold on eBay--some of the items pranks, some of them for real, and some, well, it's hard to tell. For a sampling of the weird, you need look no further than a haunted tree stump and a pork chop shaped like a grizzly bear. The Internet itself once went on the market at a modest starting bid of a million bucks, as have a dozen spontaneous images of the Virgin Mary (on toast, on windows, and heaven only knows where else). Bidders have also had a shot at someone's soul, a guy's virginity, and a human kidney, with the price of this last item having reached $5.7 million before eBay pulled the plug. (Hey, guys, don't you know that what you lose in Las Vegas is supposed to stay in Las Vegas?)

But my favorite eBay offering involves a tattooed guy who, as a joke, dressed up in his ex-wife's size 12 wedding gown and put it up for auction. Only, the dress ended up selling for $3850, and the guy got five marriage proposals. Nice.

17. Chinese Newspaper Duped (2002)
Information on the Internet may want to be free--but if it's posted by a for-profit publisher, you'd better take it with a grain of salt. That's the lesson learned by China's Beijing Evening News, which was taken in by the Onion's Capitol Dome spoof. Famous for its authentic-sounding but tongue-in-cheek articles steeped in the language of the Associated Press, the Onion reported that Congress had threatened to leave Washington, D.C., and head for Memphis unless the District agreed to erect a new domed Capitol building with a retractable roof and luxury box seating. Having accepted most of the Onion article at face value, the Chinese newspaper at first stood by its source in the face of international derision and refused to back down. When it finally published a retraction, it blamed the Onion for the confusion: "Some small American newspapers frequently fabricate offbeat news to trick people into noticing them with the aim of making money." Right.

18. The Muppets Have Not Already Won (2001)
Osama and Bert: a Sesame Street connection to terrorism?In early October 2001, just prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, protesters at an anti-American rally in Bangladesh showed their support for Osama bin Laden by marching, chanting, and waving placards. One of the posters captured on film by Reuters News Agency was a photo-montage of the Al-Qaeda leader, and in one of the shots a yellow felt puppet to his right glowers furiously at the camera. It's...Bert of Sesame Street. Originally a Zelig-inspired creation of San Francisco Webmaster Dino Ignacio, the satirical Web site Bert Is Evil depicted Bert hobnobbing with the worst of the worst in history, tormenting his roommate Ernie, and generally reveling in wickedness. After Ignacio retired from active efforts to expose Bert's career of evil, others filled the Photoshop void, capturing the cone-headed miscreant with all the latest baddies-du-jour.

Evidently, the company responsible for printing the pro-Osama poster found the doctored dual portrait irresistible, although (according to the Urban Legends References Pages) its production manager claims to have produced about 2000 copies of the Osama-and-Bert poster without realizing "what they signified." Well, if you can't trust pictures you find on the Internet, what can you trust?

Image courtesy of Snopes.com.

19. Chevrolet's Not-So-Better Idea (2006)
The ad folks at Chevrolet thought they had a winner: Let site visitors create their own 30-second commercial for the company's 2007 Chevy Tahoe SUV. It'll be fun, they probably thought. We'll give them a choice of video clips and soundtracks, and let them add their own text captions. Yep, viral marketing at its best.

Unfortunately for Chevrolet, a few pranksters decided to use the opportunity to express what they thought of the SUV. One commercial said, "Like this snowy wilderness? Better get your fill of it now. Then say hello to global warming." Another lambasted the SUV as a gas guzzler: "Our planet's oil is almost gone. You don't need G.P.S. to see where this road leads."

20. Rand's 1954 Home Computer (2004)
This intriguing image of a room-size computer made the rounds of the Internet, accompanied by a breathless blurb: "This article is from an issue of 1954 'Popular Mechanics' magazine forecasting the possibility of 'home computers' in 50 years." The steering wheel in the picture is the predecessor to today's mouse, and the keyboard looks like those on teletype machines. It even comes complete with a guy right out of the Eisenhower era.

Cool stuff, and easy to believe--but it's not a 1950s Rand Corporation mockup of what a prototype home computer might look like. It's actually a shot taken of a submarine display at the Smithsonian Institution and subsequently modified for inclusion in a Fark.com image-manipulation competition.

Image courtesy of Snopes.com.

Hoaxes 21 Through 25

Our final five takes you from the ultimate instance of Microsoft hubris to an ill-conceived experiment in Internet democracy (or is that Internet anarchy?).

21. Microsoft Buys Catholic Church (1994)
More than a decade ago, an e-mail press release--from Vatican City, no less--landed in my inbox. Microsoft was announcing that it was in the process of acquiring the Roman Catholic Church in exchange for an unspecified number of shares of Microsoft common stock. The story was a prank, but it sure looked real, circulating for months and perhaps worrying residents of the Holy See.

Just think: If the press release had been true, it might have stopped the Vatican from using Linux. And no, I'm not kidding about the Linux part. Watch this video interview with the woman who helped build the Vatican's Web site.

22. Hercules, the Enormous Dog (2007)
Wow, that dog's almost as big as the horse. That's what I thought when I first looked at this e-mail. The picture depicts a couple, one walking a horse, the other holding the leash of Hercules, a 282-pound English Mastiff and "The World's Biggest Dog Ever According to Guinness World Records."

Horsepucky. Here's my analysis of the Photoshop modifications. First, take a close look at the grass under the people and the animals. The area has been subtly lightened in order to make all of the shadows match and look authentic. Next, examine the shadows and you'll notice two anomalies: First, the shadows of the dog and the man start at their feet, but the same doesn't hold true for the horse. Second, the woman's shadow is missing altogether; instead, the man's shadow extends in front of her. Oh and by the way, the Guinness World Records site doesn't have a listing for Hercules or for the world's biggest dog. Okay, okay, so the pictures of the big kitty and the big dog are both fakes--but have you seen the shot of Craig Sherwood riding the world's largest jackelope?

23. Lights-Out Gang Member Initiation (1998)
People have a tendency to believe e-mail messages that come from authority figures. In 1998, a message purportedly from a police officer working with the DARE program circulated around the Internet. It warned recipients not to flash their lights to inform oncoming cars that their headlamps were off. According to the message, a recently devised gang initiation ritual involved having new gang members drive at night with their headlights turned off until an oncoming car flashed its lights at them; then, in order to become initiated, they were to shoot everyone in that car. It's just another urban myth--and about as silly as the one claiming that gangs mark off their territory by hanging sneakers from power lines.

24. Hurricane Lili Waterspouts (2002)
It's weird, it's disturbing, and it's seemingly plausible--all of the elements necessary for a successful e-mail forward. The image shows three dark waterspouts in the distance. The subject is "here comes lili," and the e-mail began appearing in inboxes at about the same time that Hurricane Lili started battering the Louisiana coastline. But three waterspouts, all neatly lined up? According to About.com, the National Weather Service labeled the picture a hoax and said that it was a modification of a genuine photo taken in 2001 by a crew member of the Edison Chouest Offshore supply boat.

25. Pranks Shut Down Los Angeles Times Wiki (2005)
It seemed like a bright idea. The LA Times' "A Wiki for Your Thoughts" fandango asked readers to chime in on the newspaper's editorials via a Wiki. In their explanation of how it would work, the editors even acknowledged that "It sounds nutty." Yet they went ahead with it--and achieved disastrous results. The Wikitorial (the name was nearly as dumb as the scheme) brought out the best and then the worst in readers. On the first day, an editorial about the war in Iraq prompted civil and thoughtful contributions. On day two, pranksters littered the unmoderated Wiki with rude comments, pornography, and profanity. The Webmaster removed the offending entries, but only after they were available for public viewing. By the next morning, the publisher had dismantled the Wiki.

Hoaxes by Decade
E-mail, Web sites, Photoshop. The digital era has made it easier than ever to pull a fast one on a large audience.

Pre-1990 Apollo Moon Landing Hoax (1969) Sick Kid Needs Your Help (1989)1990-1999 Microsoft Buys Catholic Church (1994) Alien Autopsy at Roswell (1995) eBay Sales (1995 and on) $250 Cookie Recipe (1996) Kidney Harvesting (1996) Bill Gates Money Giveaway (1997) Disney Jr. Free Vacation (1998) Lights-Out Gang Member Initiation (1998) Five-Cent E-Mail Tax (1999) Virus Hoaxes (1999 and on)2000 and on Nigerian 419 E-Mail Scam (2000) Giant Cat Photo (2001) World Trade Center Photo (2001) Bert and Osama bin Laden (2001) Hurricane Lili Waterspouts (2002) Onion Dupes Chinese Newspaper (2002) Sunset Over Africa (2003) Rand's 1954 Home Computer (2004) Los Angeles Times Wiki (2005) User-Created Commercials for Chevy Tahoe (2006) Microsoft Buys Firefox (2006) GPS Cell Phone Tracking (2007) Hercules, the Enormous Dog (2007)