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We were in one of the gigantic Costco stores the other day and stocked up on compact fluorescent bulbs and I walked out feeling virtuous.

I was looking forward to getting home and swapping out a lot of old-style incandescent bulbs for these things and then enjoying the fact that I was getting just as much light for way less money and being good for the environment as well.

I’d opened and installed four before my wife came to me and pointed out the packaging they were in. I’m so used to buying things that come in those hard clear plastic moulded packages that you have to get strong scissors to even get into that I hadn’t noticed what the packaging was in my excitment to get into them and put the new bulbs up.` And, the truth is I hate the kind of non-recycleable 10,000 years packaging in the dump to delivery a product that will last at best a few years and at worse days or weeks.

– But this was particularly outrageous as the product being delivered was and is being touted as a way to help preserve the planet. Unbelievable. My bulbs will last three to five years – maybe ten at the outside. Their packaging may still be here in the year 12,007. That’s easily twice all of human history. That’s (at 20 years per generation) 500 generations of human beings. That’s a damn long time. No one will remember my name after a few generations but the memory of my purchase will lie in a hole some where for all of that time – because why?

Well, interestingly, as I was searching for an image of a CF Bulb still in its hard plastic packaging, I chanced across a website called Landing the Deal which was discussing here why these bulbs are so hard to sell. Their theory about the hard plastic packaging was that it was to protect people from the small amount of Mercury inside which would be released if the bulb were broken.

That sound good – so long as you don’t actually try to think about it. Consider that these bulbs, after a hard and dangerous wrestle with sharp edged scissors, are going to come out of their packaging in the middle of your family (the ones who are being protected, remember) and the bulbs are going to be placed in the very areas where your family lives for a long time. And we’ll all just have to hope there are no accidents. And there the bulbs will be day after day without their protective plastic covering. Oh my gosh, am I missing something? No, but I think the people behind this theory might be.

Just for grins, never ever having done this before, I Googled “campaign against hard plastic packaging” and immediatly turned up a slew of strong hits. People are on this problem. Are they doing any good – I don’t know but they are on it. I also discovered that there’s a specific name for this kind of packaging – it’s called ‘clamshell packaging’. I like that better than Eternal amoured razor shark tooth packaging, I think, but it’s close.

Without having done the research, my two cents on why manufacturers prefer this packaging all goes back to the capitalistic corporate maximization of profit above all things motive.

If the plastic packaging is reasonably cheap to employ, then it’s a natural winner because it protects the product in transit so there are less damaged returns, it can be shaped to stack efficiently to lowe shipping costs, it can be designed so that it stands up as its own display without requiring a lot of external display apparatus, and it reduces shop lifting. All of those add to the item’s profitability. Once money changes hands and the product leaves the retail outlet, any problems with packaging trash disposal becomes someone elses.

Ugly, ugly ugly.

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Grim and stern as an old friend would say. The People’s Daily online just carried a story announcing that Zheng Xiaoyu, former director of China’s State Food and Drug Administration (see here for story on his crimes) ), was executed this morning. I thought Zheng’s appeal of the death sentence handed down on May 29th was still pending but the story also noted that it had been rejected on June 22nd. I guess that it still seemed likely he would receive some sort of last minute reprieve, given how senior he was and the fact that his deputy was just given a suspended death sentence, which usually means effective life imprisonment. I don’t know why I was even a little surprised, though. As we observed earlier, Zheng’s timing was awful if he was hoping for a pardon. With the current international hullabaloo about safety regulation in China there was no way he was going to be let off the hook. Will his execution make a difference? Hard to say. Certainly it’s got to have some impact in the short term, but memories fade and the allure of stacks of those crisp, roseblush 100 renminbi bills is strong.

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– Before China learns that there has to be a resonable balance between profits and people, a lot of bad stuff is going to happen.

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This morning, I heard the news that half of Beijing’s bottled water is counterfeit. I was horrified. It seems that illegal factories fill the used plastic bottles from the tap or with perfunctorily filtered water. The bottle tops and tape that they use to seal the bottle look identical to the genuine ones. The bottles aren’t sterilized and the number of mold fungi and e. coli bacteria that have been found in such water can easily make drinkers sick. An industry report quoted by Beijing Times calculates that more than 100 million bottles of such water were sold last year. The profit derived from these illegal sales exceeded 1 billion RMB, or about $12 million.

As a Chinese, I am used to reading about dangerous fakes. But this case really enraged me. This is water that many of us drink every day, after all. And the whole reason people pay extra for bottled water is for the quality—and safety. The Beijing Times did a story a couple of days ago that revealed the illegal business has been going on for five years. One unlicensed water bottler told the newspaper: “I filter the tap water before filling the bottle because I am a moral person and I don’t want to get people sick.”

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– I know a lot of people still have strong doubts about claims that corporations have become so powerful in America that they are deeply influencing how this country is run. Here’s an article about how one company is using its financial clout and connections to protect its interests – to the detriment of the American people.

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The following article is by the lawyers representing the families of four American contractors who worked for Blackwater and were killed in Fallujah. After Blackwater refused to share information about why they were killed, the families were told they would have to sue Blackwater to find out. Now Blackwater is trying to sue them for $10 million to keep them quiet.

Raleigh, NC — The families of four American security contractors who were burned, beaten, dragged through the streets of Fallujah and their decapitated bodies hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River on March 31, 2004, are reaching out to the American public to help protect themselves against the very company their loved ones were serving when killed, Blackwater Security Consulting. After Blackwater lost a series of appeals all the away to the U.S. Supreme Court, Blackwater has now changed its tactics and is suing the dead men’s estates for $10 million to silence the families and keep them out of court.

Following these gruesome deaths which were broadcast on worldwide television, the surviving family members looked to Blackwater for answers as to how and why their loved ones died. Blackwater not only refused to give the grieving families any information, but also callously stated that they would need to sue Blackwater to get it. Left with no alternative, in January 2005, the families filed suit against Blackwater, which is owned by the wealthy and politically-connected Erik Prince.

Blackwater quickly adapted its battlefield tactics to the courtroom. It initially hired Fred F. Fielding, who is currently counsel to the President of the United States. It then hired Joseph E. Schmitz as its in-house counsel, who was formerly the Inspector General at the Pentagon. More recently, Blackwater employed Kenneth Starr, famed prosecutor in the Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky scandal, to oppose the families. To add additional muscle, Blackwater hired Cofer Black, who was the Director of the CIA Counter- Terrorist Center.

After filing its suit against the dead men’s estates, Blackwater demanded that its claim and the families’ existing lawsuit be handled in a private arbitration. By suing the families in arbitration, Blackwater has attempted to move the examination of their wrongful conduct outside of the eye of the public and away from a jury. This comes at the same time when Congress is investigating Blackwater.

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– To me, it’s irrelevant that these gangs are Chinese.   What’s relevant is that this is such a strong and clear case of what’s wrong when anyone; be it individual, gang, corporation or nation puts profits above people.   Until we mature to see that all of humanity is a ‘we’ and not an ‘us against them’ scenario, we will use and abuse each other this way.  We’re a pretty sad case so far.

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Trans-national ethnic Chinese gangs are behind the growing trade in counterfeit anti-malarial drugs in South East Asia, the BBC has been told.

John Newton, a senior investigator with Interpol, said counterfeits are now starting to appear in Africa too.

He said the gangs involved organised criminals working across national boundaries and faking the drugs on an industrial scale.

He described them as businessmen with a sophisticated network of conspirators.

In some cases, fake drugs operations are run alongside trade in fake credit cards, weapons and narcotics, he said.

Sophisticated fakes

The gangs are close-knit and hard to penetrate.

“The common denominator is that they are ethnic Chinese,” said Mr Newton, a senior investigator and specialist in counterfeiting with the international police force.

“By that, what I mean is that they may be Malaysians, they may be from the People’s Republic of China or Myanmar, the former Burma.

“Because they know each other, they’re very difficult to infiltrate. They have established networks in the various countries. They’re able to exchange and distribute the product. And that makes it very difficult for us to counter,” he said.

The fakes are increasingly sophisticated. That, plus the scale of production, suggests a large investment by the criminals.

International health officials warn that anti-malarial drugs are just the tip of the iceberg. There is also growing concern about fake antibiotics and fake anti-retrovirals used to treat HIV/Aids, and even fake versions of the drugs used to treat avian flu.

The profits are huge.

The UN said that within a few years, global sales of fake drugs could be worth $75bn a year.

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