Monday, 27 February 2012

PETA and Coca Cola following on from Anonymous discovery of Stratfor files


Following on from the large scale revenge executed by Anonymous on US private spying services, Stratfor, WikiLeaks now has about five million emails. This indicates the scale to which corporations go to spy on what they perceive as a threat to them.

One of the very large corporations that bought services from Stratfor is Coca-Cola who asked for extensive information on PETA - animal rights activists.

Coca Cola was terrified of PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals). The photograph on the left shows a PETA protester and one can only say it is very clever, indeed. And they did not spend the kind of money Coca-Cola would spend on marketing of this quality.

When asked why would they spy on PETA Coca Cola's spokesman, Petro Kacur stated that the company considers it "prudent to monitor for protest activities at any major event we sponsor, as such activities may affect our partners, customers, consumers or employees."

I was not convinced by Coca-Cola's response, so I did some research on Coca Cola and meat and found that not only is Coca Cola used for tenderizing meat but Coca-Cola published this recipe for Matchless Meat Loaf:

http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/pdf/RECIPE_matchlessmeatloaf.pdf

Thursday, 23 February 2012

Racial discrimination by General Medical Council against Fitness to Practise Panellists

General Medical Council (GMC) is a charity that regulates registered medical practitioners in UK. They have invested a lot of money into looking at themselves: racial/ethnical issues and other relevant bits are audited, researched and the results of some of these are published.
What happens after these papers exercises?
It would appear more of the same. GMC refused to investigate racists doctors when submissions were made to them contrary to Good Medical Practice which all doctors are obliged to follow. Doctors can be registered with GMC and, for example, design as many racist policies as they like in their administrative functions but GMC would defend them by passively standing by and doing nothing.
In 2011 GMC appointed about 83 new Fitness To Practice Panelists: 45 lay members (not medical doctors) and 39 medical doctors. Members of ethnic community did apply in good numbers. Lay members and doctors who are members of ethnic minorities had much reduced chances of being selected.
Lay applicants (ethnic minority) were 9% of all applicants but only 4% were selected (rounded numbers).
Doctor applicants (ethnic minority) were 35% of all applicants but only 13% were selected (rounded numbers).
Can we conclude something from these figures? I think so. Lay ethnic applicants are seen it seems as a bit less of a threat than doctors, but not enough. Although, they had a higher chance of being appointed than doctors their numbers remained below expectations.
The sad fate is not over once appointed. GMC has many tricks up their sleeve. One of these is to deny panelists the evidence on which they would be judging a doctor appearing before them. Essentially, they will be set up to fail in their duties. In the case of Dr Helen Bright FTP Review panel which had the majority ethnic members (two out of three panelists were ethnic minority members) was advised by GMCs barrister not to see the evidence of hundreds of pages previously agreed and admitted by the previous FTP review panel. This was in breach of Article 10 of European Convention on Human Rights. But money talks and panelists are paid by GMC and medical members regulated by GMC.
If interested in conceited quotes click HERE.
For more cartoons if you like the one above click on it as it comes from Directory of Social Change.