Stuart Jeanne Bramhall's Blog: The Most Revolutionary Act , page 1155
August 16, 2017
Racist Beauty Standards Lead Women of Color to Use More Toxic Products
By Katherine Ellen Foley
Racist beauty standards do a lot of damage to non-white women. The immense global pressure to conform to a white European ideal—including light skin, straight hair, and a slim figure—means that women of color are particularly susceptible to developing psychological problems ranging from eating disorders to depression and generalized self-hatred.
Now research suggests that racist beauty standards put minority women at higher risk of physical health problems, too. In a commentary published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, researchers from George Washington University and Occidental College argue that women of color are exposed to higher levels of toxins than white women. That’s because they use, on average, more cosmetic products in an effort to comply with European beauty standards.
“Racial discrimination based on European beauty norms can lead to internalized racism, body shame, and skin tone dissatisfaction, factors that can influence product use to achieve straighter hair or lighter skin,” the authors write. “Thus, beauty product use may be 1 [sic] way that structural discrimination becomes biologically embedded.”
The unregulated industry
In the US, cosmetics are largely unregulated by the Food and Drug Administration. Unlike drugs and medical devices, they don’t have go through multiple clinical trials to be considered safe for consumer use.
However, the FDA does have a website where people can post complaints about various products when they experience adverse health outcomes. Between 2015 and 2016, the number of these complaints more than doubled, suggesting that some users think these products—especially hair-care products—are making them sick.
via Racist beauty standards are leading women of color to use more toxic products — Quartz
The Reality of Third World Exploitation
One Cube
Pramod Dev (2016)
Film Review
This short documentary examines the brutally exhausting lives of three Indian women forced into formal employment by deteriorating economic conditions.
The first is a young woman who gets up at 4 am to work at a call center; the second is a married mother of two who works in a textile factory all night, does all the housework and sleeps five hours while her kids are at school; the third is a middle aged woman who gets up at 2 am to go door-to-door selling fish.
Most striking about the documentary is the absence of a narrator. Except for the women’s own commentary about their horrendous lives, it’s left to the viewer to decide whether these women are better or worse off by being forced into wage slavery.
According to the film, India has 900,000 young people working at call centers. Forty-five percent are women. The BPOS (Business Productivity Online Services), as they are called, serve 66 countries in 35 languages.
According to manager interviewed by filmmakers, BPOs hire women in preference to men. By this point, most Americans and Europeans are aware they’re talking to someone in India when they call a toll free number for technical support, to change their airline reservation or to place a classified ad in their local newspaper.* Most are more receptive to talking to a female than a male.
*Here in New Plymouth, the call is put through to India when we place a classified ad in the Midweek.
August 15, 2017
‘Iran 1st country to sanction US over terror support’
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Iran approves economic sanctions against the US for its support of terrorist acts in the Middle East.
A political expert says Iran is the first country to have imposed sanctions on the United States for sponsoring terrorism.
Source: PressTV-‘Iran 1st country to sanction US over terror support’
Aug 14, 2017
The US Congress’s latest anti-Iran embargos prompted a counter-measure by Iranian legislators. They overwhelmingly approved a motion denying visas to American military and intelligence forces as well as freezing their bank accounts. The Iranian parliamentarians also voted to increase spending on the national missile program as well as the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps’s defense mechanism. Press TV has asked Jim W. Dean, managing editor of the Veterans Today from Atlanta, and Michael Lane, founder of the American Institute for Foreign Policy from Washington, to give their thoughts on Iran’s response to American sanctions.
Jim Dean said the Islamic Republic of Iran is the first state, which has targeted the United States over its involvement in terrorist…
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Pesticides Can Block Colony Formation in Bumblebees, Could Lead to Extinction: Study
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While an increasing number of countries, particularly in Europe, have become properly aware and have taken action against neonicotinoids, the U.S. stubbornly clings to their widespread use. This is happening even as the bumblebee has been put on the endangered species list in the U.S. for the first time.
By Jason Erickson, Natural Blaze
Regular readers of Natural Blaze are probably well aware of the threat that neonics present to the ecosystem. For this reason, it is essential that we continue to focus on each new study that reinforces what the alternative media seems willing to cover, but the mainstream not so much.
The plight of the pollinator continues to be documented by studies linking neonicotinoid pesticides to a range of negative effects upon bees and their colonies. Neonics have been implicated in tens of millions of bees instantly dropping dead at a single honey farm after nearby spraying of GMO crops. One type of neonic has even been shown to negatively affect social behavior within the hive itself, causing bees to abandon their responsibilities with protective care and foraging.
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Amnesty International – Weaponizing Hypocrisy for the US and NATO
Tortilla con Sal | Telesur | August 12, 2017
Over the last year, in Latin America, Amnesty International have taken their collusion in support of NATO government foreign policy down to new depths of falsehood and bad faith attacking Venezuela and, most recently, Nicaragua. The multi-million dollar Western NGO claims, “We are independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion”. That claim is extremely dishonest. Many of Amnesty International’s board and most of the senior staff in its Secretariat, which produces the organization’s reports, are individuals with a deeply ideologically committed background in corporate dominated NGO’s like Purpose, Open Society Institute, Human Rights Watch, and many others.
Mexico has over 36000 people disappeared and abuses by the security forces are constant. Colombia has over 4 million internally displaced people with over 53 community activists murdered just in 2017. Amnesty International generally puts that horrific reality in context by including criticism of forces challenging those countries’ authorities. By contrast, its reporting on Venezuela and Nicaragua, like those of other similar Western NGOs, reproduces the false claims of those countries’ minority political opposition forces, all supported one way or another by NATO country governments.
In Venezuela and Nicaragua, Western human rights organizations exaggerate alleged government violations while minimizing abuses and provocations by the opposition. This screenshot of Amnesty International’s three main news items on Venezuela from August 9th gives a fair idea of the organization’s heavily politicized, bad faith coverage of recent events.
This is identical false coverage to that of Western mainstream corporate media and most Western alternative media outlets too. Amnesty International’s coverage minimizes opposition murders of ordinary Venezuelans, setting many people on fire, violent attacks on hospitals, universities and even preschools and innumerable acts of intimidation of the general population. That headline “Venezuela: Lethal violence, a state policy to strangle dissent” is a pernicious lie. President Nicolas Maduro explicitly banned the use of lethal force against opposition demonstrations from the start of the latest phase of the opposition’s long drawn out attempted coup back in early April this year. . .
Source: Amnesty International – weaponizing hypocrisy for the US and NATO
August 14, 2017
Batteries Super Charge Wind Industry
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Tesla and wind farm developer Deepwater Wind are teaming up to create the largest project in the world that combines an offshore wind farm with large-scale electricity storage
Climate Denial Crock of the Week
Tesla and wind farm developer Deepwater Wind are planning to team up to create the largest project in the world that combines an offshore wind farm with large-scale electricity storage, the companies announced Tuesday.
The project, called the Revolution Wind Farm, would generate electricity about 12 miles off the shore of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and store some of it in large batteries built by Tesla. The project would have the capacity to generate 144 megawatts of wind power, or enough electricity to power 80,000 homes, according to Deepwater Wind.
If approved by the state, the wind farm would begin operating in 2023. It is expected to be built next to another wind farm proposed by Deepwater Wind called the South Fork Wind Project. That project would serve Long Island, N.Y.
The companies proposed Revolution Wind as part of a call in Massachusetts for new sources of renewable energy…
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Made in China Clothes May Actually Come from North Korea
We trust the tags on our clothes to truthfully identify where the clothing was made. But they don’t always tell the whole story.
Reuters reports that it is becoming increasingly common for Chinese textile firms to take orders from international fashion brands and then send fabrics and other raw materials to North Korean factories just across the border, where worker wages are much lower, to be sewn into the finished clothes. The clothes are sent back to Chinese ports and exported globally, bearing “Made in China” tags.
A concern for fashion brands and Western shoppers is that in addition to their reportedly harsh working conditions, North Korea’s state-owned factories help support the North Korean regime. Money from exports can even be funneled (paywall) back into the country’s weapons program.
Brands may or may not know it’s happening. “We will ask the Chinese suppliers who work with us if they plan on being open with their client—sometimes the final buyer won’t realize their clothes are being made in North Korea,” one Korean-Chinese businessman told Reuters. Like many of the news outlet’s sources, he works in the Chinese border city of Dandong, where much of the trade between the two countries passes through, and where numerous clothing agents serve as middlemen between Chinese manufacturers and international brands. . .
via Your “made in China” clothes may actually have been made in North Korea — Quartz
The Federal Campaign Against Local Healthy Food
Farmageddon
Directed by Kristin Canty (2011)
Film Review
Farmageddon (unrelated to the book Farmageddon) tells the story of a deliberate campaign by federal and state regulatory agencies to harass small family farmers and buying cooperatives.
Kanty begins by briefly outlining the major food safety problem which has accompanied the boom in industrial farming and agrobusiness in the US. Instead of addressing the unhygienic conditions factory farmed animals are raised in (with animals being confined in small cages and pens with their own feces , Congress has imposed an array of useless regulations on all food production and processing.
These regulations allow the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct warrantless raids on small family farms and private coops. The film tells the story of various families who have been raided at gunpoint by federal and state SWAT teams – often where no or only minor infractions have occurred. Most face confiscation of their animals, product and equipment, as well as destruction of their livelihood.
Many of the raids relate to raw milk production. The latter has proven health benefits in asthma, eczema and allergic rhinitis – due to to beneficial bacteria and enzymes that are destroyed when milk is pasteurized.
The laws regulating raw milk vary from state to state – in California you can buy it at supermarkets but can’t sell yogurt or cheese made from raw milk. In some states you can only buy it at the farm gate. In others it’s illegal to sell it at all. Although it’s legal in all states for farmers and farm cooperatives to produce raw milk for their own consumption, the film depicts SWAT teams shutting down several farms and coops for doing so.
In no instance, were any of the confiscated products found to be contaminated by pathogenic bacteria. This is the implicit guarantee you get from sourcing food locally from farmers you know and trust: no farmer selling milk that makes people sick will stay in business. The source of supermarket food, in contrast, is extremely difficult to trace.
The message that comes across loud and clear in this film in this film is that food regulations created by the FDA and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) are written by agrobusiness. The latter are clearly threatened by growing consumer demand for locally produced, unprocesssed, organic food. These regulations clearly serve the interests of Food Inc rather than the public.
August 13, 2017
Charlottesville Police Called Off When Violence Began: “We’re Leaving, It’s Too Dangerous”
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Charlottesville riot escalates when police ordered to stand down.
Content originally published atiBankCoin.com
Fox News reporter Doug McKelway was in attendance during yesterday’s deadly events in Charlottesville, VA, where he reported that the police were called off as soon as things started turning violent.
“But when the tear gas started to fly, thrown by protesters, the police themselves began to evacuate then. I asked the guy who was in charge, “Where you going?” He said, “We’re leaving. It’s too dangerous.”They had a chance to nip this thing in the bud and they chose not to.“
People were throwing soda cans filled with cement…
VA Police Spox Corinne Geller to @dougmckelway on @ANHQDC: describes the earlier violence, people throwing ” soda cans with cement in them” http://pic.twitter.com/C00uwnyGLi
— Pat Ward (@WardDPatrick) August 12, 2017
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Of note, “Unite the right”held a rally which waslegally organized with a permitfrom the city, aswas their…
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Wikileaks: US Government Planned To “Retaliate & Cause Pain” On Countries Refusing GMOs
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Previously classified documents exist show how the Bush administration developed ways to retaliate against countries that were refusing to use GM seeds.
Rangitikei Enviromental Health Watch
From Realities Watch
By Arjun Walia
(Collective-Evolution) “Studies that link Genetically Modified (GM) food to multiple human health ailments are not the only thing that has millions of people questioning the production of GM food. There is fact that previously classified secret government documents exist which show how the Bush administration developed ways to retaliate against countries that were refusing to use GM seeds, for example. If information about our food needs to be concealed from the public domain, then something has gone seriously wrong with the food industry. It’s great to have an organization like WikiLeaks shed some light into the world that’s been hidden from us for so many years…”
Targeting Certain Countries
“The cables reveal that the State Department was lobbying all over the world for Monsanto and other major biotech corporations. They reveal that American diplomats requested funding to send lobbyists for the biotech industry to meet…
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