Tag: hypocrisy

The Glaring Hypocrisy and Embedded Deceptions of the Global Food Giants

Bryce Martinez (18) from Pennsylvania is mounting a legal challenge against major food companies, alleging that their ultra-processed foods (UPFs) led to his development of Type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease at the age of 16.

The 11 firms listed in the lawsuit are Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, Coca-Cola, Post Holdings, PepsiCo, General Mills, Nestle’s (US), WK Kellogg, Mars, Kellanova and Conagra.

UPFs have undergone multiple processing steps and often contain additives, preservatives and artificial ingredients. These UPFs have become staples in many households. Examples of UPFs are prepackaged soups, many breakfast cereals, sauces, frozen pizza, ready-to-eat meals, hot dogs, sausages, sodas, ice cream and store-bought cookies, cakes, candies and doughnuts.

Martinez’s legal team contends that the big food corporations have deliberately engineered their products to trigger addictive responses. His lawyers at Morgan & Morgan, a major US law firm, says the case is unprecedented and includes claims for conspiracy, negligence, fraudulent misrepresentation and unfair business practices.

Martinez had regularly consumed popular UPFs throughout his childhood. The lawsuit challenges the food industry’s argument that consumers have free choice in their dietary decisions. It argues that the notion of free choice is compromised by aggressive marketing tactics, especially aimed at children, and the addictive nature of these products.

UPFs are highly profitable for corporations. The same companies that dominate the UPF market are intertwined with investment firms like BlackRock and Vanguard, which also hold stakes in the pharmaceutical industry. This dual investment creates a cycle where investment firms profit from both the sale of harmful foods and the treatment of diseases associated with these products.

Furthermore, the prevailing economic system creates a paradoxical situation where workers, whose pension funds are often managed by these same investment giants, find themselves financially tethered to a cycle that undermines their own health and well-being.

There is a famous quote often attributed to farmer, poet and campaigner Wendell Berry:

People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.”

For a long time, that has served both industry’s interests very well.

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Corporate America Goes From Disowning Trump to Lavishing Him With Cash: Here’s What They Want

Donald Trump’s inauguration fund is set to top the $107 million it raised in 2017 – which was nearly double the $61 million raised by Joe Biden in 2021. Corporate America is lavishing the president-elect with cash, hoping he’ll support their interests, and let bygones be bygones regarding statements and actions against him over the past four years.

Major companies that walked lockstep with the establishment in denouncing Donald Trump after the 2020 election and the January 6, 2021 chaos at the Capitol have pulled a major about-face amid his comeback, giving generously to his inauguration fund and hoping he’ll forget their statements about the “threat to democracy” he and his supporters purportedly posed just four years ago.

Who are the biggest corporate flip-floppers, and what do they want from Trump? Here’s a breakdown:

Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: Big Pharma trade group donating $1 million (which means access to exclusive VIP events, including black tie ball and personal “candlelight dinner” with the Trumps). In 2021, PhRMA CEO Steve Ubl said the events of January 6 “violate the values of our nation” and canceled donations to Republicans rejecting the 2020 vote’s outcome.

Ford and Toyota: Ford briefly froze political donations after January 6, and promised to vet politicians supporting Trump. Now they’re giving him $1 million. Toyota, also pledging $1 million, similarly halted donations to those refusing to certify Biden’s 2020 victory.

Stanley Black & Decker: Giving Trump $1 million this time around, up from a paltry $25,000 in 2017.

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Trump spokesperson rips Dems for wanting to ‘steal the election’ after op-ed argues Congress can block him from White House

Donald Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung blasted the premise that Congress could block the incoming president from assuming power — calling it a “threat to Democracy” on Thursday.

The Hill published an op-ed with the headline, “Congress has the power to block Trump from taking office, but lawmakers must act now,” pushing that those who engaged in an insurrection against the Constitution should be banned from assuming power.

“Oh, look. Democrats want to steal the election and invalidate the will of the American people,” Cheung wrote on X in response to the op-ed.

“Threat to Democracy.”

“Here are two idiots inciting an insurrection …Remember the names: Congress has the power to block Trump from taking office, but lawmakers must act now,” Chris LaCivita, a former 2024 campaign Trump adviser, also wrote.

“You people are sick,” Trump’s middle son, Eric, chimed in.

“Such a crazy thing for them to say. Legacy media is just the propaganda arm of the radical left,” Trump ally Elon Musk wrote in response to the scion’s tweet.

The Hill article notes that the 14th Amendment in the Constitution states, “No person shall … hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” 

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Tone Deaf NY Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Grotesque Timing: Praises “Safety” of Subway on Same Day Guatemalan Migrant Allegedly Sets Sleeping Woman on Fire

The Gateway Pundit reported on a horrific incident captured on video of a man sitting on a bench and watching as a woman he lit on fire inside a New York City subway train as she burned to death.

The woman was asleep on the train as she was lit on fire by the suspect at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue subway station around 7:30 a.m. on Sunday.

According to The New York Post, A Guatemalan migrant has been arrested for the henious crime.

A Guatemalan migrant has been arrested for allegedly lighting a sleeping subway rider on fire in Brooklyn on Sunday morning — then watching as his innocent victim burned to death in what the police commissioner called “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit.”

*******

Officials said the 33-year-old suspect came to the US in 2018 from Guatemala. His legal status wasn’t immediately clear Sunday night.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D), in yet another case of tone deaf timing, took to social media the same day to brag about the safety of New York’s subway.

On Sunday morning, Hochul shared on X, “In March, I took action to make our subways safer for the millions of people who take the trains each day.   Since deploying the @NationalGuardNY to support @NYPDnews and @MTA safety efforts and adding cameras to all subway cars, crime is going down, and ridership is going up.”

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Democrats Run Disinformation Campaign Blaming Musk and Trump for Child Cancer Research Cuts — Turns Out GOP House Passed Funding Bill in March But Schumer’s Senate Stalls for 9 Months Until Exposed

Democrats and their media allies launched a coordinated disinformation campaign this week, attempting to pin the blame for stalled pediatric cancer research funding on Elon Musk and President Donald Trump. The reality, however, reveals a much different story.

For months, the GOP-controlled House has been ahead of the curve, passing a comprehensive funding bill for pediatric cancer research back in March.

But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s Democratic-controlled Senate let the legislation languish for nine months—only taking action after being exposed.

The firestorm began when a 1,500-page Democrat-Johnson continuing resolution (CR) packed with unrelated pork was shelved following public criticism from Musk and Trump, who vowed to challenge any Republican voting for the bloated measure.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wasted no time launching an unfounded attack, claiming that Musk was single-handedly responsible for blocking pediatric cancer funding.

“Republicans are marching America to a painful government shutdown that will crash the economy and hurt working class Americans because they would rather enact massive tax cuts for their billionaire donors than fund cancer research for children,” Jeffries told the press.

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Federal Judge Violates Judicial Code While Lecturing Justice Alito on Ethics in New York Times Essay, Forced to Issue Apology for Misconduct

Senior U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor of Massachusetts openly criticized Justice Samuel Alito’s ethics in a New York Times guest essay, violating the sacred trust of impartiality expected from the judiciary.

The conservative advocacy group, the Article III Project, filed a formal complaint against Ponsor, leading to a misconduct finding and a public apology from the senior judge.

The complaint, filed in May 2024, stemmed from an op-ed authored by Judge Ponsor and published in The New York Times.

The article discusses the controversy surrounding Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s display of an upside-down American flag and an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at his properties, which some media outlets tied to Trump supporters during the events of January 6, 2021. Ponsor declared the flags as symbols of partisanship and questioned Alito’s ethical judgment.

Despite lacking direct evidence of ethical violations or pending cases involving the flags, Ponsor’s essay implied that Alito’s actions warranted recusal from cases related to January 6, casting doubt on the Supreme Court justice’s impartiality.

“To me, the flag issue is much simpler. The fact is that, regardless of its legality, displaying the flag in that way, at that time, shouldn’t have happened. To put it bluntly, any judge with reasonable ethical instincts would have realized immediately that flying the flag then and in that way was improper. And dumb,” Ponsor wrote in the essay.

“The same goes for the flying of an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at Justice Alito’s vacation house along the New Jersey shore. Like the upside-down flag, this flag is viewed by a great many people as a banner of allegiance on partisan issues that are or could be before the court.”

Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit issued a scathing rebuke of Ponsor’s actions.

“The essay expressed personal opinions on controversial public issues and criticized the ethics of a sitting Supreme Court justice. Such comments diminish the public confidence in the integrity and independence of the federal judiciary in violation of Canons 1 and 2A.” said Diaz in the filed reply.

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Biden Administration Launches Task Force on Chinese Censorship, Drawing Criticism for Hypocrisy in Domestic Free Speech Policies

The Biden-Harris administration on has revealed it was setting up an action group to “monitor and address the effects” of any censorship or intimidation of Americans by China.

Signed by President Joe Biden, the memorandum addressed heads of executive departments and agencies, while the task force is to be led by the assistant to the president for National Security Affairs and the director of the National Economic Council.

This move comes after the administration spent the past four years doubling and tripling down on policies encouraging unprecedented censorship at home and being sued and investigated for colluding (through pressure via third parties) with social platforms and other tech companies to do its (unconstitutional) bidding.

Hypocrisy this may be, but that might be the least of the problems with this sudden spur of activity by an administration that is weeks away from exiting, stage left.

If we choose to forget that many of the censorship and surveillance mechanisms that permeated the soon-to-be former administration’s activities were regularly mentioned by critics as “inspired” by those used by China’s authorities, the question remains: why establish an entirely new “task force” and why now?

The departments and agencies that will be represented at assistant secretary or above level include the departments of state, defense, treasury, commerce, agriculture, education, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, the FBI, the director of National Intelligence, etc. – plus, “other agencies and offices as the President may, from time to time, designate.”

Opponents of the Chinese authorities and their notorious brand of censorship welcome the move and believe it should be endorsed by the incoming Trump administration, but also – somehow – expanded to China itself.

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Obama Just Accused Republicans of What Democrats Are Doing, and It’s Nothing Less Than Ominous

No one seems sure who first said it, maybe Joseph Goebbels, but in any case, it’s a tried-and-tested Alinskyite tactic: accuse your enemy of what you’re doing. Barack Obama is a practiced expert at this, and he gave a master class in it on Thursday at his Obama Foundation’s Orwellian-named Democracy Forum. 

With some notable and revealing difficulty in getting the words out, Obama accused the Republicans of doing everything that the Democrats have been doing for the past few years: rigging elections, weaponizing the justice system, and trying to ensure that they would remain in power on an indefinite basis. Whatever can be said of Barack Obama, the man certainly has a lot of chutzpah.

Using the fake and faintly southern-tinged accent that he often adopts when speaking about issues involving domestic politics, Obama said: “There are going to be times” — tahms — potentially when one side tries to stack the deck and lock in —” And here, Obama looked at his right-hand teleprompter and then, as if seeking relief, at his left-hand teleprompter, but finding no help there, looked down and, after an interminable, eons-long pause, began to stutter. 

The sainted hero of the left managed finally to say: “A…” And another pause. Obama finally sputtered back, saying: “A, a, a…permanent…” Another pause. “…grip on power, either by actively suppressing votes or politicizing the armed forces or using the judiciary, the criminal justice system, to go after opponents.”

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The Fake Compassion of the Left

Their masters did not love them and planned to replace them with other peoples. 
—Renaud Camus, Ørop

The verses of the medieval Persian poet Saadi Shirazi, Bani Adam, or “Children of Adam,” are sewn into a carpet with golden thread and prominently displayed at the UN headquarters in New York. A gift from the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2005 in a gesture of ineffable irony, the poem’s sentiment of unity and compassion between all human beings was meant to convey the ostensible spirit of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the concept of the Dialogue among Civilizations, and the quest for a borderless world. A loose translation of the verses reads:

Bani Adam
All of the sons of Adam are part of one single bodyThey are of the same essence.When time afflicts us with painIn one part of the bodyAll the other parts feel it too.If you fail to feel the pain of othersYou do not deserve the name of man.

The poem has been interpreted by delegates at the UN and apparatchiks in many governments to justify the acceptance of illegal migrants by the hundreds of thousands or millions, in addition to the legal importation of multitudes from Third World countries. The citizens of Europe and North America have been told repeatedly, directly or indirectly, that they must not refuse those afflicted “with pain.” If they fail to heed “the pain of others,” they are fascists, far-right, inhuman.

This interpretation has ignored the pain of those who have seen their own countries transformed by mass immigration, which has increased crime, social division, fear, and economic immiseration. Their pain, in seeing the ways and usages of their country disrespected and destroyed, does not register with those who profess such love for the “children of Adam.” 

These verses may also be challenged and adapted by conservative thinkers and politicians to defend their own citizens from the destructive and conquering effect of interlopers from abroad exploiting the resources — economic, educational, medical, and cultural — of the host nations.

In fact, the solicitude for others affected by the majority of UN delegates and state actors is plainly counterfeit, a deceptive expression of ulterior motives involving calculations of profit, surreptitious political agendas, the inflaming of ancestral hatreds, the pursuit of global hegemony, and other invidious purposes and programs such as those venerable canards climate change, pandemic preparedness, and open borders.

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PROJECTION: Obama Suddenly Concerned About Rigged Elections and Weaponizing Government Against Opponents

Obama is suddenly very concerned about what the party in power can do to rig elections and weaponize the government against perceived political enemies. What curious timing.

While speaking at the ‘Democracy Forum’ the former president talked about the dangers of extremism and polarization. Isn’t it strange how this is all just becoming a concern for him now?

Obama knows his party just got wiped out but he still doesn’t seem to understand why.

The Washington Examiner reports:

Obama scorns ‘doom loop’ of political extremism after Democrats’ election defeat

Former President Barack Obama criticized the political “doom loop” created by politicians who portray their opponents as “enemies to be vanquished” just weeks after he warned voters about now President-elect Donald Trump while campaigning for Vice President Kamala Harris.

During his keynote address Thursday about the importance of pluralism at the Obama Foundation’s third Democracy Forum in Chicago, the former president reiterated his criticism of media companies for “playing to the extremes” and politicians who adopt “a maximalist position on almost every issue.”…

“Since total victory is impossible in a country politically split down the middle, the result is a doom loop of government gridlock, even greater polarization, wilder rhetoric, and a deepening conviction among partisans that the other side is breaking the rules and has rigged the game to tip it in their favor,” Obama told the crowd Thursday…

To that end, Obama underscored that pluralism is “not about holding hands and singing Kumbaya” but “about recognizing that any democratic power comes from forging alliances and building coalitions and making room in those coalitions, not only for the woke but also for the waking.”

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