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to Unions in South America. Mostly because it wasn't wasn't that long ago...

Hey take it easy, Coke is changing. They want what's best for you.

If you will concede the point, believing it or not, that a group of people producing a commodity is being exploited, one would ask what has been done in the past over this? What has been done is primarily workers organizing into unions, and perhaps secondarily into political parties representing their interests. Some other things such as co-op movements can come into peripheral play as well.

What has not been done is people individually buying or not buying a commodity due to perceived exploitation. What does that do? Nothing. The closest thing to that coming from these other movements is the boycott. Even that is a weak tactic, and is used sparingly - people are boycotting Coca-Cola because they are killing their workers who are trying to organize unions in Colombia, sometimes even right in the factories. Or they boycotted grapes during the UFW strike. These boycotts are almost always adjunct to the primary campaign, which is almost always a union organizing campaign.

It is difficult to look at a commodity and tell what the history of its production is. Is a diamond a "blood diamond" or was it mined centuries ago? How was an apple in the supermarket picked, or a pair of pants, or so forth? Atomized individuals deciding this do nothing, it's a waste of time.

If you really want to do something, work to get US military bases out of places like Kyrgyzstan, Guantanamo Bay and so forth. The US has been funding the Honduran military, who threw out the elected leader a few years ago, then had another "election" where opposing candidates were killed, as were opposing campaign workers. Being picky about buying electronics makes little sense politically, and why stop at electronics, you have to look at clothes, food - everything. Not that it makes sense to begin with.

I guess it just goes back to the old phrase, 'if it quacks like a duck'. I've become very practical minded these last few years. Ideals piss me off. People ignore the way things really happen when they don't mesh with their ideals. However else we want the world to be, copyrights are just as much a salable asset as land. Hell, if Apple computer was sold today, wouldn't their copyrights be a big part of their value.

Basically I'm a socialist. I got this way because I saw how much power large corporations wield, and I realized the only thing that had any hope of standing up to an international corporation was a strong centralized government. This is where my hatred of ideals comes into play. People are terrified of strong central governments. Their ideals tell them that strong central gov'ts are bad. But from a practical stand point, what the hell difference does it make if I'm being oppressed by my gov't or if I'm being oppressed by a corporation. Do you think the union reps murdered by Coke somehow care that they were killed out of profit motive instead of broad political ideals? And honestly, if you strip away the rhetoric ever single dictatorship that's ever been has always been about money. Ghaddafi wasn't ousted because he was brutal (he was, but that's a coincidence). He was ousted because he kept too much of the oil profits for himself. Slavery in Southern America? It had nothing to do with that State's rights clap trap, and everything to do with wealthy slave owners with a lot of money invested in slaves and a desire to use the slaves as a social buffer to keep poor white people in their place. I guess the point is, at least with the gov't I've got a fighting chance.

It's only a matter of time until the corporate-government corruption begins passing some tipping points (like here, for example).

Right, but from that Wikipedia article it also seems that he owns a large chunk of Coca-Cola, which employs death squads against union activists in Latin America.

It's very hard to be that wealthy and not have blood on your hands in this world. Giving his money away is the very least he should be doing, although it is heartening to see that he accepts the idea of redistributive tax.

Okay. Please cite an example of this where a corporation committed murder & was not punished by the law.

Here you go: http://killercoke.org/

I'm sure you can find many, many examples of US-based corporations doing horrible things to people, mostly to factory workers in third world countries.

Since you're only thinking about what corporations do in the US (which has a strong government with laws to protect its citizens from corporations), you come to the incorrect conclusion that governments are violent and corporations are not.

Have corporations ever mass-exterminated that many people?

Could governments have committed the violence they did (and continue to do) without help from private industry? Weapons are manufactured by the private sector.

"Personally, I'd prefer to see a social and economic reevaluation,"

When that happens americans scream communism or socialism as they were brainwashed to.

Truth is whenever that happens anywhere else america gets involved and tries to install puppets or dictators. Corporations love their cheap slave labor and america is corporately ruled.

See Coca cola killings.

http://killercoke.org/

"but that won't sell me on using a file system named after a murderer"

Named after?! He wasn't a murderer when it was written and named dumbass, it was named *before* he became a murderer by *years*.

I suppose you never buy anything made by any subsidery of coke, put money into banks... you say you wanna switch another filesystem like JFS? From IBM? After their involvement with the Nazis?!!!!

Get real!

That's interesting. It's too bad you fail to point to the law that prohibits "broadcasting terrorist media". Oh, and you said he was only receiving these broadcasts, which is not the same as broadcasting. Oh wait, you don't even provide a link to this story that you obviously "read recently" and I totally can't make this up guys.

More importantly, define "terrorist". The words terrorist and terrorism have lost much of their meaning, most especially in the US. Obviously, there are people and groups who use tactics that fit the definition of terrorism. However, these words have come to be used to describe a large, systematic group of extreme, fundamentalist Muslims, who are at any moment now going to strike anywhere in the "free" world.

But this usage destroys the real meaning of these words. Hate groups like the KKK use terror tactics. Coca-Cola has hired death squads to assassinate union organizers in Colombia. Is this not also terrorism? I believe it is, so (by your logic) Coke commercials should be illegal to broadcast in the US.

I doubt that most of the white, western professionals who read Slashdot will care much about this, some probably will like Coke more than ever considering the kind of talk so many listen to on talk radio and Fox News, but a few will, and I am posting this to inform those few. Working class people tend to be more sympathetic to these things.

Here is an example of what's supposed to happen to your fingerprints. I live in NY, where state law states that fingerprint records shouldn't be kept for those not convicted of a misdemeanor or felony.

Now, there's plenty of reasons why I don't want my DNA recorded in a central database. They include:
- Police suppression of political activists, even those engaging in completely legal actions, is distressingly common. Google "surveillance colorado quakers" for an example. Wouldn't it be convenient if they could take a swab and know the identity of everyone who showed up at a meeting?

- It is notoriously easy for a P.I. to get a fingerprint search run. What if I'm organizing a boycott that's causing trouble for, say, Coca-Cola? Do I want them to have access to the power of the state? They have it in Colombia, and look what happened there.

It's not just the leftists who need to be concerned - by making these searches possible, you're enabling the work of anyone who can pay $500 to a P.I.. That includes the mob, abusive spouses, anyone.

Like you, I've been arrested - fortunately, my fingerprints have been destroyed each time. Thank goodness for that. Sadly, none of my examples (except the mob) are abstract cases to me and those I care about.

Coca-Cola comes to mind here also. There is a large, worldwide campaign against their actions going on in Columbia currently.

Pretty much what happens is that Coke's workers in Columbia try to unionize and try to get some fair labor laws and living wages put into place.

Now these unionizers all turn up dead shortly after... coincidence? This has been going on since 1989. The murderers/tortureers get their information from the Coca-Cola plant management.

This and with the parent's DeBeers example it is not hard for me to fathom Exxon (a company who's record is spotty at best already) doing things like that.

The notion is not "a cop out", it's good business.

There's always been a tradeoff between time-to-market, cost-to-develop, and security-stability. Microsoft key competitive advantage that let them "win" was that they were the first company who recognised that the sweet spot of that curve rested far far away from the security-stability side.

It's not just the software industry too. Decisions of software vendors on whether or not to provide a safe workplace or a deliberately unsafe workplace rest on the same ballance of cost vs. safety, etc.