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What will they demand next, bathroom breaks?

I don't know how true this is, but that has been alleged:

No relief for poultry workers

Oxfam interviewed dozens of Tyson workers across six states, almost all of whom reported being denied bathroom breaks outright or having to wait an unreasonably long time to use the bathroom—up to an hour or more. Hanson, a worker at a Tyson plant in Arkansas, had the uncomfortable experience of seeing his own mother urinate on the line; she now wears diapers to work to avoid it happening again. Tyson workers also report being fined if they are late returning from the bathroom. Jean, a worker from a Tyson Foods plant in Virginia, says, “You go to the bathroom one minute late, they have you disciplined. The supervisor will have you sign a discipline paper I don’t drink any water so I won’t have to go.”

We can indeed stop driving gas-powered cars, and power them and your house from carbon-neutral energy sources. Talk about defeatism...

Yeah, how do you plan on selecting which, oh, 5 billion or so of the 7 billion people living on this planet who will get to starve to death to fulfill your pie-in-the-sky dreams of "carbon-neutral energy sources"?

Because growing and distributing food takes a lot of energy - so much so that the US mandating the use of ethanol in fuels has had a measurable impact on worldwide food prices, and a negative impact on the nutrition poor people around the world can afford. Per Oxfam (hardly a right-wing burn-down-the-environment group...):

Biofuel programs such as the RFS encourage the diversion of large amounts of US corn into biofuels. About 85% of the renewable fuel in the US is corn ethanol and currently about 40 percent of the US corn crop goes to ethanol production. This has resulted in a 15% reduction in global corn supplies, a major factor in driving corn prices to near historic highs, along with the price of other grains influenced by the supply and demand of corn.

This has been injurious for the world’s poor, who spend up to 80% of their household income on food. A joint study by Tufts University and ActionAid estimated between the years of 2005/6 and 2010/11, the US expansion of corn ethanol cost people in developing countries $6.6 billion in higher corn prices....

Get out of your mommy's basement, move back to planet Earth, and recognize that your rose-colored schemes HURT PEOPLE.

Talk about delusional.

I read an article some time ago which outlined a very low-tech way to help purify water in countries with high incidences of Malaria, Dysentery, etc. By painting the surface of huts/housing flat black and placing clear plastic water bottles on them for a few hours. The sun & UV help to kill off most parasites and biological pathogens quite effectively and at a price much cheaper than other filtration solutions. Nice low-tech solution which is cheap, effective, and requires no special equipment.

Several years ago I read an article online about how some group was purifying water will ceramic, clay, pots. Water would be put into the pots then it would slowly seep through, when it did contaminants were removed. I just did a quick Google of purify water ceramic OR clay pots to see if I could find TFA and the first result was Oxfam on the border: Where the crisis in Darfur meets Chad and Central Africa with a paragraph on how pots with sand in them are used to purify water. Those making the pots are able to create an income in making them.

So the big question is, who's right, Oxfam or Starbucks. Surprisingly enough, Oxfam hasn't simply pulled this all out of their collective ass: they've thought through the relevant legal and economic arguments, including directly addressing issues such as the relative value of trademarks and geographic certifications. See this for details.

Furthermore, the guy conveniently omits that "Starbucks intervened in the USPTO decision by prompting the National Coffee Association of USA, Inc. (NCA), of which it is a leading member, to oppose the approval of the trademarks." (see here) Why would Starbucks actively oppose the Ethiopian trademark application if they really wanted to help Ethiopian farmers?

All the talk about "we want the farmers to succeed, we built schools, we pay over commodity prices", while making up 90% of the video, is bullshit and completely besides the point. They don't care about that charity crap, they want hard and cold trademark agreements.

Strangely, Oxfam and Starbucks had been working together on Fair Trade up until October of 2004 - see : http://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/pr ess_releases/archive2002/art3007.html

There's even some allegation that Oxfam stopped working with Starbucks due to political pressure ( see http://society.guardian.co.uk/charitymanagement/st ory/0,,1430638,00.html )

Missed the link to Oxfam America - sorry. :)

Look here for *tons* of places in California.