Opinion: Amazon’s takeover of the Inland Empire is a textbook case of corporate manipulation

 Opinion: Amazon’s takeover of the Inland Empire is a textbook case of corporate manipulation

A leaked memo from within Amazon details the company’s public relations efforts to sway decisions in the region to serve its own interests. The plan for 2024 included strategic donations, currying favor with local politicians, methods of cultivating allies and placing of “Amazonians” within community groups and local boards like sleeper spies. Together, these are intended to overcome vocal community opposition to Amazon’s labor exploitation and union-busting tactics and the environmental harms of warehouse proliferation.

The memo puts into words what environmental justice advocates have known all along: what we have traced through political donation patterns, what is facilitated by legal loopholes. The memo gives shape to invisible protagonists who have tilted city council loyalties toward outside developers instead of residents. These tactics are not illegal for the most part. But Amazon’s memo is a stark representation of the kind of manipulation that has systematically eroded community voices in places like the Inland Empire.

Todays Thought

The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. 

-Steve Biko, anti-apartheid activist (18 Dec 1946-1977)

Todays Thought

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: “It might have been!” 

-John Greenleaf Whittier, poet (17 Dec 1807-1892)

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Todays Word

 

lexiphanic

PRONUNCIATION:

(lek-si-FAN-ik) 

MEANING:

adjective: Using pretentious words and language.

ETYMOLOGY:

After Lexiphanes, a bombastic speaker, in the satire of the same name by Lucian (2nd century CE). From Greek lexis (speech, diction, word) + phainein (to show). Earliest documented use: 1767.

NOTES:

Lexiphanes, the title character of the satire, likes to use pretentious words and convoluted sentences in the belief that it shows his intellect. His friend Lycinus is concerned and has a doctor treat him. The doctor prescribes an emetic to purge Lexiphanes of his vocal clogging.

With Lexiphanes’s system cleaned, the doctor leaves him in his friend’s care. Lycinus prescribes reading great poets, orators, and philosophers, saying “We do not like even poetry to read like the dictionary.”

Lexiphanes is also a genus of leaf beetles. It’s not known what these beetles talk about when they use their fancy long words.

USAGE:

“Someone who reads dictionaries for fun. ... Been totally lexiphanic and proud of the fact.”
Debra Adelaide; The Household Guide to Dying; HarperCollins; 2009.

Todays Thought

In its original literal sense, "moral relativism" is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts. But in recent years, conservatives bent on reinstating an essentially religious vocabulary of absolute good and evil as the only legitimate framework for discussing social values have redefined "relative" as "arbitrary". 

-Ellen Jane Willis, writer (14 Dec 1941-2006)

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