h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Moderated due to condoning illegal activity ..? As if anyone is going to read that post then go out and do it!

Well.

The list of Nestle products posted by me has been moderated. I posted it towards the end of one 'string' of 20 posting, where any people seemed to miss it. In the
next set of 20 postings Zagreb specifically asked for such a list and, specifically stating why I was double posting, I reposted the list.

They've both gone.

Of course I'm a bit miffed by this, as I had hoped the context was made ***abundantly*** clear and it was a damn sight easier than trying to post a link, or asking
people to click back and forth.

I have tried to contest the moderation, but my email's playing up and as a result I may have sent the email multiple times - oh the irony!

So: I have created an entry with *the same* content - get it now while you can!

A905195

I'm a stickler for providing sources for information, so each time I have posted this product list, I have aso given the URL of the source page on the Baby Milk
Action website, which means that even if this list is pulled again, I cannot tell you where to look for the original, because I will be repeating content once more! Can
anybody advise?

A somewhat frustrated

Have you had your moderation e-mail yet? You should get one about the posting that has been removed, but not the referred one, unless of course that gets removed status as well

I suppose if push comes to shove, you could always advice folk to use this link http://www.nestle.com/in_your_life/index.html and plough through the self promotional guff that Nestle have written.

I still feel no moral outrage towards this whatsoever...I mean, the products they produce are hardly essentials. You could live without them. It's hardly a great sacrifice to boycott the company. And if they are so great and evil, go and get yourself elected and bring the issue up in parliament...

I really feel nothing but boredom for the whole thing. Don't know why. Perhaps I am more concerned with the problems going in this country and the whole war thing... *ponders*

GreyDesk - I've had the emails, and replied contesting the decision - I'll let you know what happens.

Saturnine - I (for one) *am* politically involved and *have* been involved - as one of many - in getting Fairtrade brands of coffee and tea adopted for everyday use in a certain part of this country's Parliamentary organisation

As you say, boycotting Nestle is not that difficult for people who do feel strongly about this issue - all the more reason for those of us who are concerned to take action. And it's possible to boyoctt Nestle and be concerned about the threat of war at the same time.

I'm upset at the idea of 4000 babies a day dying through babymilk-related illnesses, and I don't care what nationality those babies are. Maybe there's overpopulation in this world, but there are better ways of dealing with it.

Everybody has the right and the freedom to act on the issues that concern them. I've fought, harder than I ever have on anything else, to keep my baby on breastmilk rather than formula. I'm aware that if I lived elsewhere companies like Nestle might have made that a lot more difficult, and I resent that . Something like that does affect your priorities, but each to his own...

I've just skimmed the backlog, and I stand to be corrected, but I didn't see any mention of the 40 or so governments and businesses who are making similar claims from the Ethiopians. Nestle is being singled out, probably because of their history.

It seems to me that we are being dragged around by the nose to further someone's specific agenda. And I won't play that game.

I think I know what happened to your list Cloviscat...

U114627



Welcome to the club

I didn't say you *couldn't* be concerned about anything else. I was just saying that I am more concerned about my fundamental safety than this whole Nestle-Ethiopia thing. It's apathetic I know, or maybe unethical, but if I don't care about it right now, I can't do much about it. More can be done to improve everyone's state of life...but problems like this are always going to exist. It's the way of the world...someone has to be better than you, and someone has to be worse off...that's how we all manage to exist - someone to slag off and someone to help out...gives us peace of mind.

Life is nasty brutish and short, you mean Sat? And so are people. It is a rare individual that is more concerned for another, whom they don't even know, than themselves. I genuinely feel, that perhaps life would be better and easier, if we simply applied the might is right principle- let the weak go to the wall, and the strong shall survive. I have yet to hear an arguement that can show me *why* that princple is wrong. I wish I had.

*thinks about it*

Not exactly. I don't believe in *picking on* the weak...just simply not letting the weak get away with mistakes just because they are weak. It's the same with the little c**ts that get away with murder in the criminal system. Just because they have *bad backgrounds* it doesn't mean to say they have a right to go out and ruin everyone else's lives.

I don't want to come across like I think it doesn't matter that people are dying of poverty. But then, I don't believe that Nestle is to blame for this one. It should be by choice that you help people, not by moral obligation.

Does this make sense? I know what I mean anyway

Woo.

Geoff T/Sat - My personal boycott started because of the baby milk thing, and would be happening despite this Ethiopian debt thing - I don't feel I know enough about International economics to make tobig a decision on that one.

And Saturnine, you're quite right that you should do things by choice, and not by moral oblig. This just happens to be my Big Issue, at the mo'. Of course I knew about it years ago, but it never struck me as much as it does now - other things did when I was a bright young undergrad, and so on.

Whisky - I've been wondering about that during today. I'm not certain if it's to do with this issue, or another on site/off site discussion Hoo and I have had: the timing, however is impeccable. Alas, Hoo has done his exit without giving me chance to query, unless I chase him up off site, and I doubt he wants that.

Funny old

At a Nestle AGM last year, the CEO of Nestle, Peter Brabeck gave the following comment on the subject of ethics:-

"I decided to eliminate the word ethical from Nestlé because it's a word which divides people as opposed to uniting them. Ethics, if you look into dictionaries, are a set of moral standards within a very specific unit of society, and ethical standards in Britain, Switzerland, Chile and China vary to a large extent. And because this word is more likely to divide than to unite we don't talk about ethics at Nestlé. We talk about responsibility. Our responsibility to our shareholders, our employees, and all other stakeholders."

Now, to me, this is ultimately laying down the gauntlet. This is unapologetically stating that Nestle's primary motivation is to make money, whatever the human cost.

At this point, it's entirely a matter of conscience. You may feel, as an earlier poster does, that the weak and ignorant can be expected to go down to the strong and powerful. You may feel, as I do, that you can make Nestle a little less powerful by boycotting them.

There should be no illusions however, that Nestle are less than knowingly culpable.

"...Our responsibility to our shareholders, our employees, and all other stakeholders."

Now, to me, this is ultimately laying down the gauntlet. This is unapologetically stating that Nestle's primary motivation is to make money, whatever the human cost..."

Maybe you've got a different dictionary to me, but I read "stakeholders" as being other people with a stake in the company, apart from employees and shareholders. In my business textbooks, stakeholders included customers, suppliers, legislators and lobby groups. Even if you define "all other stakeholders" as less than the textbooks say, this statement is no way a proclamation of Nestle's profit motive.

This is EXACTLY the kind of smokescreen BS that has been offending me recently. Don't people think that their correspondants can read and research for themselves? I WILL not be knee-jerked by some half-baked emotional blackmail. I've got enough reasons to dislike Nestle without people feeding me propaganda.

"This is EXACTLY the kind of smokescreen BS that has been offending me recently. Don't people think that their correspondants can read and research for themselves? I WILL not be knee-jerked by some half-baked emotional blackmail. I've got enough reasons to dislike Nestle without people feeding me propaganda."

Who, me?

I wasn't trying to feed you anything that wasn't entirely wholesome, unlike......well, you know what I'm going to say.

I quoted a comment made by the CEO of Nestle. I told you what it meant for me. I see it as very dark. My opinion, half-baked possibly, but I'm I'm rather happy with it. I leave you to jerk your own knee.

And yes, I would expect stakeholders to include customers. Seems TO ME that they take their responsiblilty to some customers rather lightly.

Well. I can't speak for Cleo...

Before I took up the Nescafe Boycott, I did my reading and I did my researching. My professional job involves providing factual and objective information on many emotive political subjects, so I'm rather used to cutting through the BS.

I got stuff from UNICEF, and the World Health Organisation... oh and from Nestle too. I looked at examples of their marketing across the world.

And *then* I started boycotting Nestle.

It's not guaranteed kneejerk emotional blackmail, you know...

simulpost!

*ponders*

Has anyone noticed that the companies that are branded *unethical* are the one's that produce non-essential foods? McDonalds, Nestle...

I still don't agree wholeheartedly with the anti-Nestle stance. I feel very uneasy that you seem to think that a large group of people can just afford to throw away money...when they have personal obligations to fill. Some have families, medical costs to pay, kids to feed. It is very easy to brand a bunch of anonymous people *c**ts* but when it comes down to life, everyone is just trying to do the best for themselves. And that is NO crime...

OK, sorry.
There has been quite a bit of supericial "get-Nestle-they're-bad" stuff flying around in the last few days, which has p****d me off no end.

I was wrong to lump the recent post by Cleo into that category.


However, the superficial stuff really does the anti-Nestle brigade a disservice, and I stand by that assertion.

I'm just applying my criticism to the wrong people.

Sat: I don't get your stance of business before ethics: how can performing business in such a way that wrecks peoples' lives be the way to go?

I think those that are branded unethical are those that have aggressive profit making policies. Some would say that oil was an essential: yet Royal Dutch Shell has been branded unethical by the Ogoni/Saro Wiwa affair in the Niger Basin.