SPP and Nafta and Partnershp for Prosperity and Security in the Caribbean

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partnership_for_Prosperity_and_Security_in_the_Caribbean
Excerpt:
The major principles covered under the agreement are:
Trade, Development, Finance, the Environment, Justice and Security

As part of agreement the heads agree to pledge their confidence and support in the establishment of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and adhering to the goals of World Trade Organization (WTO) as well as the multi-lateral agenda of security in the Caribbean region.
The agreement sets out a basis for helping the Caribbean countries combat the HIV/AIDS epidemic and for trans-regional illegal-drug interdiction cooperation with the United States.

Bono on the Daily Show w/Jon Stewart  (ROFLMAO)  Jon, u done good!  ...cal
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-november-30-2011/bono

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cause_marketing
Excerpt:
Launched in early 2006, Product Red^[13] is an example of one the largest cause-related marketing campaigns to date given the number of companies and organizations involved as participants as well as its reach worldwide. It is also an example of a cause marketing campaign that is also a brand on its own. Product Red was created to support The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria (aka "The Global Fund") and includes companies such as Apple Computer, Motorola, Giorgio Armani, and The Gap as participants.

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun2006/tc20060629_008337.htm
Excerpt:JUNE 29, 2006
Byte of the AppleBy Arik Hesseldahl

Fixing Apple's "Sweatshop" Woes Apple is probing conditions at a contract iPod plant in China. What it should do is build its own factory and set an example to the world.
Otto von Bismarck, the first chancellor of the German empire, once smartly compared laws to sausages, observing that anyone fond of either should never see them being made. The same might be said for many consumer products such as clothing. Fancy new clothes may look nice, but if you were to drop in unannounced at the factory where they're made, more often than not you would be hard pressed to describe the working conditions as pleasant.

Sweatshops (PSA)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGm3ZL6vKhA
show more

Uploaded by theraccoonkid218 on Apr 14, 2008

A 30-second public service announcement
giving brief insight on Sweatshops
and how people know very little of them.

The PSA is 30 seconds,
but the video is 1:30 because I tried
YTgarbage's method of uploading high quality videos

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Motorola#Human_Rights
Excerpt:

Human Rights

A 2008 study demonstrated that Motorola, as well as several other major manufacturers of mobile phones, including Nokia, LG, and Samsung use cobalt mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the production of their mobile phones, thereby running the risk of supporting unfair labor practices in the mines and serious related human rights abuses.^[13] Despite the companies former claims that they could not trace the origins of cobalt and other minerals used in the production of their mobile handsets, the report demonstrates that supply chains are identifiable and notes that despite this information, none of the mobile phone companies have taken action to insure that their cobalt suppliers comply with their Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives.^[14]

Environment

Consumer Protection and Product Safety

"In Cellular Telephone Russian Roulette, author Robert Kane, a former top Motorola engineer, traces the history of cell phone development (in which he was involved) and analyzes the cell phone radiation bioeffects research base from 1950 to 1996. Despite industry’s claim to safety, Kane’s report shows that there was much more information available indicating safety concerns than the industry has ever acknowledged."^[15]
Another interesting book written by corporate insider is Dr. George Carlo's book, Cell Phones: Invisible Hazards in the Wireless Age: An Insider's Alarming Discoveries About Cancer and Genetic Damage (Carroll and Graf, 2001).

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_48/b4011001.htm
Excerpt:
The situation in China is hard to keep in perspective. For all the shortcomings in factory conditions and oversight, even some critics say that workers' circumstances are improving overall. However compromised, pressure from multinationals has curbed some of the most egregious abuses by outside suppliers. Factories owned directly by such corporations as Motorola Inc (MOT ). and General Electric Co. (GE ) generally haven't been accused of mistreating their employees. And a booming economy and tightening labor supply in China have emboldened workers in some areas to demand better wages, frequently with success. Even so, many Chinese laborers, especially migrants from poor rural regions, still seek to work as many hours as possible, regardless of whether they are properly paid.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/08/gap-next-marks-spencer-sweatshops
Excerpt:

Gap, Next and M&S in new sweatshop scandal

Indian workers are paid just 25p an hour and forced to work overtime in factories used by some of Britain's best-known high street stores

Gethin Chamberlain

• The Observer, Saturday 7 August 2010
• Article history

Gap, Next and Marks & Spencer have all launched their own inquiries into abuses of working regulations at their Indian suppliers, which have resulted in children such as six-year-old Bubli being left alone while her parents work. Photograph: Gethin Chamberlain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discredited_AIDS_origins_theories  (Please be patient as you read this)  ...cal
Excerpt:
Various conspiracy theories and other such hypotheses have arisen to speculate about the origins of HIV and AIDS. These alternative ideas range from suggestions that AIDS was the inadvertent result of experiments in the development of vaccines, to claims that human immunodeficiency virus was developed by scientists working for the U.S. government. While a few reputable mainstream scientists once investigated some of these theories as reasonable hypotheses, this is no longer the case, as continuing research has invalidated the alternative ideas. The current scientific consensus is that AIDS originated in Africa in the mid 1930s from the closely related Simian Immunodeficiency Virus.

Contents  [hide]  1 Man-made or iatrogenic origins of AIDS 2 Alternative ideas regarding causation, origin or treatment 3 See also 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Man-made or iatrogenic origins of AIDS

• Nobel Peace Prize laureate and environmental activist Wangari Maathai was asked by a Time magazine interviewer if she stood by a previous alleged claim that "AIDS is a biological weapon manufactured by the developed world to wipe out the black race". Maathai responded, "I have no idea who created AIDS and whether it is a biological agent or not. But I do know things like that don't come from the moon. (...) I guess there is some truth that must not be too exposed."^[1] Maathai subsequently issued a written statement in December 2004: "I neither say nor believe that the virus was developed by white people or white powers in order to destroy the African people. Such views are wicked and destructive."^[2]

• Jakob Segal, a former biology professor at Humboldt University in then-East Germany, proposed that HIV was engineered at a U.S. military laboratory at Fort Detrick, by splicing together two other viruses, Visna and HTLV-1. According to his theory, the new virus, created between 1977 and 1978, was tested on prison inmates who had volunteered for the experiment in exchange for early release. He further suggested that it was through these prisoners that the virus was spread to the population at large. He has been accused, however, by KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin of disseminating disinformation on behalf of the Soviet Union,^[3] and the disease is known today to have existed in humans since at least 1959.

• Alan Cantwell, in self-published books entitled AIDS and the Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic and Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot, says that HIV is a genetically modified organism developed by U.S. Government scientists and that it was introduced into the population through Hepatitis B experiments performed on gay and bisexual men between 1978–1981 in major U.S. cities. Cantwell claims that these experiments were directed by Wolf Szmuness, and that there was an ongoing government cover-up of the origins of the AIDS epidemic. Similar theories have been advanced by Robert B. Strecker, Matilde Krim and Milton William Cooper.

• Leonard G. Horowitz, author of the self-published works Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola. Nature, Accident or Intentional? and Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare, advances the theory that the AIDS virus was engineered by such U.S. Government defense contractors as Litton Bionetics for the purposes of bio-warfare and "population control."

• Smallpox vaccine theory

In 1987 there was some consideration given to the possibility that the "Aids epidemic may have been triggered by the mass vaccination campaign which eradicated smallpox". An article^[4] in the Times suggested this, quoting an unnamed "adviser to WHO" with "I believe the smallpox vaccine theory is the explanation to the explosion of Aids". It is now thought that the smallpox vaccine causes serious complications for people who already have impaired immune systems, and the Times article described the case of a military recruit with "dormant HIV" who died within months of receiving it. But no citation was provided regarding people who did not previously have HIV. (HIV is now considered to be a contraindication for the smallpox vaccine - both for an infected person and their sexual partners and household members.^[5][6]) Some conspiracy theorists propose an expanded hypothesis in which the smallpox vaccine was deliberately 'laced' with HIV.^[7]

In contrast, a research article was published in 2010 suggesting that it might have been the actual eradication of smallpox and the subsequent ending of the mass vaccination campaign that contributed to the sudden emergence of HIV, due to the possibility that immunization against smallpox "might play a role in providing an individual with some degree of protection to subsequent HIV infection and/or disease progression".^[8][9] Regardless of the effects of the smallpox vaccine itself, its use in practice in Africa is one of the categories of un-sterile injection that may have contributed to the spread and mutation of the immunodeficiency viruses.^[10]

• The OPV AIDS hypothesis asserts that the oral polio vaccine was developed in chimpanzee tissues contaminated with a strain of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), and that an experimental mass vaccination program introduced the virus into the human population. The oral polio vaccine was not developed using chimpanzee tissue.^[11] A large trial of an oral polio vaccine took place near Kisangani in the late 1950s, but the strain of SIV present in local chimpanzees is phylogenetically distinct from all strains of HIV.^[12] HIV has been present in human populations since before the oral polio vaccine was developed, most likely since the 1930s.^[13][14][15]

[edit] Alternative ideas regarding causation, origin or treatment

See also: AIDS denialism

See also: AIDS in Africa

• The Duesberg hypothesis promoted by biologist Peter Duesberg argues that AIDS is not caused by HIV, but rather that HIV is a harmless passenger virus, and that AIDS is caused by non-infectious agents like illegal drug usage.^[16] The scientific consensus is that the Duesberg hypothesis has been discredited.^[17]

• Thabo Mbeki, former President of South Africa, along with other prominent members of the ruling African National Congress party, has argued that AIDS is the result of poverty, chronic disease, malnutrition and other environmental factors.^[18] Mbeki based his views on the discredited beliefs of AIDS denialists, especially Peter Duesberg. It has been suggested that the ANC leadership adopted this position as a political expedient, intended to deflect criticism that the ANC had not done enough to fight AIDS in South Africa.^[19] In 2000, two statements by government spokespeople, (one later retracted), placed the financial cost of treating pregnant HIV positive women and the subsequent cost to the state of raising the child as central in the decision of whether to provide anti-retroviral drug treatment.^[20] Also in 2000, the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian reported that in a leaked text for a speech Mbeki was to give to an ANC caucus, Mbeki claimed that the CIA and Western drug companies were secretly promoting the view that HIV causes AIDS in order to increase sales of anti-HIV drugs.