WORKER UNIONS - Amazon vs Unionization

"A look into Amazon’s employee conditions as the company pushes back against unionization" PBS NewsHour 3/29/2021

Typical corporate greed butting company profits first and not wanting employees having any say on safety, pay and benefits.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  For almost two months, Amazon workers have been voting on whether to unionize at one of the company's major warehouses in Alabama.  The voting concludes today.  Since Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the country, the stakes are high and the battle is being closely watched.  Paul Solman reports.

AMAZON - Prime Risk

"Amazon doesn’t report its warehouse injury rates — but we have an inside look" PBS NewsHour 11/27/2019

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Black Friday kicks off peak shopping season for Amazon.  This year, the company is offering its Prime members even faster service: instead of two-day shipping, some packages will arrive at customers’ doors in only one.  But many Amazon staffers say the focus on speed puts warehouse workers at great risk of injury.  Will Evans of Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has the story.

AMAZON - HQ 2.0?

"Has Amazon selected its next headquarters?" PBS NewsHour 11/8/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  For over a year, cities across North America have competed to lure Amazon's next headquarters, which the company said would bring up to 50,000 jobs to the chosen site.  But as Paul Solman explains, new reports indicate the company may choose two smaller locations instead of one.  John Yang speaks to the University of Toronto's Richard Florida, who has been critical of the bid process, for analysis.

ACLU - Amazon Rekognition and the Secret Surveillance State

Imagine attending a protest, and the police automatically identify and label you as suspicious from a photo of the crowd.  Or you start a new life in this country, and ICE watches you in real time.  You may not be suspected of criminal activity, but the government tracks your whereabouts – and the whereabouts of anyone they want.

This disturbing surveillance state is exactly what Amazon is powering with its facial recognition technology, Rekognition.

Amazon's own marketing materials tout Rekognition's alarming tracking capabilities, and documents that the ACLU recently obtained demonstrate just how eager Amazon is to hand this product over to the government.  Amazon isn't just actively selling to law enforcement, it's partnering with them to ensure that authorities can fully utilize Rekognition's capabilities.

Amazon's Rekognition WEB page (link above):

Amazon Rekognition makes it easy to add image and video analysis to your applications.  You just provide an image or video to the Rekognition API, and the service can identify the objects, people, text, scenes, and activities, as well as detect any inappropriate content.  Amazon Rekognition also provides highly accurate facial analysis and facial recognition.  You can detect, analyze, and compare faces for a wide variety of user verification, cataloging, people counting, and public safety use cases.

Amazon Rekognition is based on the same proven, highly scalable, deep learning technology developed by Amazon’s computer vision scientists to analyze billions of images and videos daily, and requires no machine learning expertise to use.  Amazon Rekognition is a simple and easy to use API that can quickly analyze any image or video file stored in Amazon S3.  Amazon Rekognition is always learning from new data, and we are continually adding new labels and facial recognition features to the service.

ACLU Petition:

AMAZON: GET OUT OF THE SURVEILLANCE BUSINESS.

Amazon has entered the surveillance business, and they're selling to the government.

Amazon's product, Rekognition has the power to identify people in real time, in photos of large groups of people, and in crowded events and public places.  At a time when we're joining public protests at unprecedented levels, and discriminatory policing continues to terrorize communities of color, handing this surveillance technology over to the government threatens our civil rights and liberties.

Facial recognition is not a neutral technology, no matter how Amazon spins this.  It automates mass surveillance, threatens people's freedom to live their private lives outside the government's gaze, and is primed to amplify bias and inequality in the criminal justice system.

Amazon has no business allowing governments to use Rekognition – and powering a surveillance state.

Already, Rekognition is in use in Florida and Oregon.  Government agencies in California and Arizona have sought information about it, too.  And Amazon didn't just sell Rekognition to law enforcement, it's actively partnering with them to ensure that authorities can fully utilize Rekognition's capabilities.

Amazon has branded itself as customer-centric, opposed secret government surveillance, and has a CEO who publicly supported First Amendment freedoms and spoke out against the discriminatory Muslim Ban.  Yet, Amazon is powering dangerous surveillance that poses a grave threat to customers and communities already unjustly targeted in the current political climate.

We must make it clear to Amazon that we won't stand by and let it pad its bottom line by selling out our civil rights.

TRUMP AGENDA - Mexico/Amazon/Putin/Syria

#OurFakePresident

"Analyzing Trump’s statements on Mexico, Amazon, and Putin" PBS NewsHour 4/3/2018

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SUMMARY:  The U.S. military may soon be guarding the nation's border with Mexico.  That's according to President Trump, who also warned he could tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement if the Mexican government doesn't cooperate.  Lisa Desjardins joins Judy Woodruff to discuss revelations and questions that came out of the President’s news conference.

"Trump, top U.S. general strike different tones on stabilizing post-ISIS Syria" PBS NewsHour 4/3/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  President Trump said Tuesday that the end is in sight for the U.S. military mission in Syria, yet military leaders have said the U.S. should remain until the Islamic State is wiped out.  American reinforcements have arrived in Manbij in recent days, a sign that they will remain a counterweight in the conflict.  John Yang talks to former USAID official Mona Yacoubian, and Amberin Zaman of Al Monitor.

NEWSPAPERS - Can New Owner Save 'The Washington Post'

"Can Amazon's Founder Help Washington Post Turn Page Towards Profit?" PBS Newshour 8/5/2013

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SUMMARY:  The Washington Post Co. announced the sale of their flagship newspaper for $250 million to Jeffrey Bezos, Amazon.com founder and one of the richest men in the world.  Ray Suarez sits down with Tom Rosenstiel of the American Press Institute to get his take on the sale and the challenges for print media companies to be profitable.

PERU - Peruvian Gold Rush Threatens Amazon Rain Forest

"Gold Lures Illegal Miners to Peru's Rainforests" PBS Newshour 11/7/2011

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STEVE SAPIENZA, special correspondent: In southeastern Peru, where the Andes Mountains meet the Amazon lies one of the world's richest ecosystems.

Roughly the size of California, the Madre de Dios region not only attracts tourists, but also those trying to cash in on this region's abundant natural resources. Rampant illegal gold mining has authorities here scrambling to protect the Amazon's last untouched tracts of rain forest. At stake are countless rare plant and animal species and the sanctity of indigenous tribes, some still living in self-imposed isolation.

Rising gold prices and the near-complete Brazil-Peru Interoceanic Highway have combined to propel fortune hunters deeper and deeper into the Amazon. A few hundred miners first settled along the new highway in 2007. Now dozens of ramshackle mining towns line the road, catering to every need and desire of the miners. Close to 30,000 people tied to mining activity now call the region home, with more arriving daily.

In the region's capital, Puerto Maldonado, recent efforts by local officials to halt illegal mining have been met with violence.

POLITICS - Fed Up With Deadlock? You're Not the Only One

Note that the very big mistake of linking the federal budget to Debt Ceiling is in the following discussion.

Fact; the Debt Ceiling has absolutely NOTHING to do with the federal budget. Raising the Debt Ceiling IS about heaving enough money in the "bank" to PAY TODAY'S BILLS. The bills that are law today.

Budgets are spending PLANS for the future. Also, budgets do NOT actually spend money. Federal dollars get spent, allocated, by Appropriation Bills that are passed separately.



"From Ohio to Nevada, Voters Fed Up With Debt Ceiling Deadlock"
PBS Newshour 7/28/2011

ECONOMY - Borders Books Liquidates, End of an Era

"Borders Closes the Book as Decisions Come Back to Haunt Chain" PBS Newshour Transcript 7/21/2011

Excerpts

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): For Borders, it is, yes, the end of the story. In February, the book chain filed for bankruptcy, hoping to reorganize and stay in business. But, today, its representatives were in court with a plan to liquidate its remaining 399 stores beginning as early as tomorrow. More than 10,000 employees will lose their jobs as a result.
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JEFFREY BROWN: From humble beginnings -- the first Borders, a used bookstore, opened in Ann Arbor, Mich., in 1971 -- the company became a pioneer of the big-box bookseller concept.

At its peak in 2003, Borders had more than 1,200 stores around the country, each with thousands of new titles. The company says a host of factors led to its demise, including the turbulent economy, the move away from brick-and-mortar stores to online retailers, and the rise of e-readers, like Amazon's Kindle, Apple's iPad, and the Nook of rival Barnes & Noble.
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JEFFREY BROWN: Now, part of this is, of course, about larger trends of the Internet's impact on the book business. But Borders also made its own mistakes, I guess, along the way, right?

ANNIE LOWREY, Slate.com: Absolutely.

JEFFREY BROWN: What happened?

ANNIE LOWREY: It's not an easy climate for any retail business. It's not an easy climate for anybody who is selling books, obviously.

But Borders made some strategic mistakes. First and foremost, they had a very, very tenuous relationship with the Internet. They actually outsourced the sale of a lot of their books online from 2001 to 2008 to Amazon. And on top of that, they were very slow to come around to e-readers.

That, combined with some other strategic mistakes, having too many stores, having those stores be too expensive, ended up really hurting their business.

JEFFREY BROWN: All right, so take that apart a little bit, first the online sales.

ANNIE LOWREY: Yes.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, that's clearly where a lot of the business has gone, right, in the book business?

ANNIE LOWREY: Yes, absolutely. It's increasingly migrated on to the Web.

And so what you had was these big-box stores which they always sold themselves as a place that you could come and find any book. All of a sudden, when you could go to Amazon or any of a dozen sites and get a much bigger selection of books, you didn't need those big-box stores as much, and so they became places where you could go, you could sit, you could sip and -- sit and have a cup of coffee.

But Borders also made some strategic mistakes there. They lost a Starbucks contract to Barnes & Noble, for instance, and the company just ended up being mismanaged.

JEFFREY BROWN: But people do go to those -- to the real stores to look at the real books, but increasingly then they leave and order online.

ANNIE LOWREY: Exactly. Exactly. It's very, very hard to compete unless you are offering a very boutique experience.

And Barnes & Noble has done pretty well to take advantage of e-readers and e-books and also to make sure that its stores are places that people want to go and congregate.

JEFFREY BROWN: Now, talk a little bit more about the e-readers. You mentioned Barnes & Noble with the Nook, of course, Amazon with the Kindle. This was an area where Borders fell way behind.

ANNIE LOWREY: Absolutely.

So the Nook is not as big as the Kindle, but it sells really quite well. And more so, every time that somebody buys a Nook, Barnes & Noble not only benefits from selling the Nook, but also then gets to sell e-books to that reader, so they develop a relationship over time. That reader comes back to them. And so it generates a lot of repeat business for Barnes & Noble. And that really helps them.

JEFFREY BROWN: Where are we in the e-reader and physical book situation? Now, the e-readers have grown and grown and grown. But is there any sense of reaching an equilibrium as to the number of books that will still be sold?

ANNIE LOWREY: Well, I don't think that you will ever see the physical book die out as a form. I think that 50 years from now, physical books will still exist and I think people will still be buying them in bookstores.

But you're going to see this migration towards e-readers and e-books, especially since there is a lot of competition in the market. Prices are going to come down. And so for consumers, it is going to make more and more sense. If you have an e-reader and you can get a book within -- any book, almost, in seconds, basically, you know, in your lap, yes, that's pretty powerful. And that's a good thing for consumers.

I was a Borders shopper in the past. Go in to buy books, Movie DVDs, Music CDs, and have a Cappuccino. So I'm sad that Borders did not survive.

Also, just recently (since I installed WiFi at home) got Amazon's Kindle. The experience is just like reading a paperback book, including the soft-white screen (even when it's off), but advantages like adjusting text size. I use my Kindle for mostly non-fiction books like "A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea" (my first purchase) an excellent book about the Gulf Oil Disaster, BUT I still buy fiction books (hardcover), mostly Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy, I've been a member of the Science Fiction Book Club since the '60s.