Wednesday, April 04, 2007

Et Tu, Wal-Mart?

These days you can’t buy cheap socks or toilet paper in bulk without feeling morally compromised. Bad enough that our government is illegally snooping on phone calls, e-mails and private behavior, but somehow you expect better from that temple of American shopping, Wal-Mart.

Yet over the last five years, according to The New York Times, the company has assembled “a team of former officials from the CIA, FBI and Justice Department” to conduct sometimes global investigations of employee wrongdoing, a long way to go to stop paper-clip swiping.

The Wall Street Journal interviewed one of these agents who was fired by Wal-Mart after being caught “recording and intercepting calls from a news reporter and others.” He said he felt pressured to find out who was leaking information about the company to outsiders

All of this weird stuff and more can be found on a web site called “WakeupWalmart.com” and, if you are really feeling paranoid, you may wonder why viewing it keeps being interrupted by popup ads encouraging you to shop you-know-where.

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