As Report Reveals Toxic Ingredients in Baby Shampoo, Johnson & Johnson Goes Public with Plans to Clean Up Products

Amy Westervelt reports for Forbes:

Less than a month after Johnson & Johnson ranked as the most trusted brand in America in Forbes‘ survey comes a report that could give consumers pause, calling the company out for removing chemicals of concern in its iconic baby shampoo in some countries, but not others. The product currently on shelves in the United States, Canada, and China still contains known carcinogens. In recent years, J&J baby shampoo has become the poster child for the need for chemical reform in the United States; nothing says we need tighter chemical regulation than toxic baby shampoo.

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics came out with the news two years ago that Johnson & Johnson’s iconic baby shampoo contained the formaldehyde-releasing preservative quaternium-15, as well as the chemical byproduct 1,4-dioxane. Formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane are known carcinogens. The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has reported that “the presence of 1,4-dioxane, even as a trace contaminant, is cause for concern,” and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services added formaldehyde to its list of known human carcinogens in June 2011.

In 2009, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, along with 40 other organizations (including American Nurses Association, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners) sent a letter to J&J outlining their concerns with the company’s products, particularly its baby shampoo. The American Nurses Association and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics have since met several times with Johnson & Johnson executives to discuss the matter. The content of those discussions is confidential, but it seems as though if progress were being made, the organization would not have been sending around its latest report, under embargo, yesterday.

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US says compromise on Zimbabwe diamond sales was necessary

According to Reuters -
...The United States agreed to a compromise allowing Zimbabwe to export diamonds that human rights groups say are tainted by abuses, to prevent the paralysis of the global system for stopping trade in "blood diamonds," the State Department said on Wednesday.

The United States, Canada and the European Union dropped their objections and agreed to allow Zimbabwe to sell diamonds from its Marange field after verification by a Kimberley Process monitoring team, the World Diamond Council announced on Tuesday.

The Kimberly Process is an international government certification scheme set up in 2003 to prevent the trade in diamonds that fund conflicts.

The decision by the United States, Canada and the EU was strongly condemned by human rights groups who maintain that the Marange diamonds are tainted by abuses tied to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government...


Zimbabwe: Rampant Abuses in Marange Diamond Fields
Shooting defenseless miners and unleashing dogs against them is inhuman, degrading and barbaric. The diamonds from the Marange fields are tainted with abuse.
Tiseke Kasambala, senior Africa researcher.

Carte Blanche: Zim Diamonds (Part 1)
The discovery of diamonds at Marange, east of Zimbabwe, has been called the biggest find of the past hundred years.

Counter-propaganda:

Justice and Diamonds in Zimbabwe: Saving Kimberley from Itself
Andrew Jillions joins us again to discuss the Kimberly Process of diamond certification in the context Zimbabwe. As Andrew explains, the case of Zimbabwe risks undermining a process which, for all its faults, remains the best way to prevent the use of diamonds to fuel conflict and human rights abuses.

New Report follows the money trail behind deregulation

Flashback from Democracy NOW!



"Sold Out": New Report Follows Lobbying Money Trail Behind Deregulation that Helped Cause Financial Crisis

In a new report, Robert Weissman of Multinational Monitor points to twelve deregulatory steps that led to the financial meltdown. It also does an analysis of the amount of money Wall Street poured into Washington in campaign contributions and lobbying over the last ten years. Their answer? A staggering $5.1 billion over the past decade.

Transcript

Lies Behind Lies Behind the "Humanitarian War" in Libya

http://www.facebook.com/pages/La-Guerre-Humanitaire-The-Humanitarian-War/2907...

This document makes it possible to understand how international law and justice works, but mostly how its basic principles can be bypassed. The resolutions passed against Lybia are based on various allegations : notably on the statement claiming that Gaddafi had lead jet attacks on his own people and engaged in a violent repression against uprising, killing more than 6000 civilians. These allegations were spread before they could have been verified. Eventhough it was on the basis of this claim that the Lybian Jamahiriya governement was suspended from the United Nations Human Rights Council, before being referred to the United Nations Security Council.
One of the main sources for the claim that Gaddafi was killing his own people is the Libyan League for Human Rights, an organisation linked to the International Federation of Human Rights (the FIDH). On the 21st of February 2011, the General-Secretary of the LLHR, Dr. Soliman Bouchuiguir, initiated a petition in collaboration with the organisation UN Watch and the National Endowment for Democracy. This petition was signed by more than 70 NGOs. Then a few days later, on the 25th of February, Dr. Soliman Bouchuiguir went to U.N. Human Rights Council in order to expose the allegations concerning the crimes of Gaddafi's government. In July 2011 we went to Geneva to interview Dr. Soliman Bouchuiguir.
Soliman Bouchuguir is an unheard of figure for most, but he has authored a doctoral thesis that has been widely quoted and used in strategic circles in the United States. This thesis was published in 1979 as a book, The Use of Oil as a Political Weapon: A Case Study of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. The thesis is about the use of oil as an economic weapon by Arabs, but can easily be applied to the Russians, the Iranians, the Venezuelans, and others. It examines economic development and economic warfare and can also be applied to vast regions, including all of Africa.
Bouchuguir's analytical thesis reflects an important line of thinking in Washington, as well as London and Tel Aviv. It is both the embodiment of a pre-existing mentality, which includes U.S. National Security Advisor George F. Kennan's arguments for maintaining a position of disparity through a constant multi-faced war between the U.S. and its allies on one hand and the rest of the world on the other hand. The thesis can be drawn on for preventing the Arabs, or others, from becoming economic powers or threats. In strategic terms, rival economies are pinned as threats and as "weapons." This has serious connotations.
Soliman Bouchuiguir, former president of the Libyan League for Human Rights with symbiotic ties to the National Transitional Council, generated the pack of lies that justified NATO's war allegedly to protect the Libyan population. He is currently the new Libyan ambassador to Switzerland.

In-depth analysis: "Lybia: Human rights impostors used to spawn NATO's fraudulent war" by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
http://www.voltairenet.org/Lybia-Human-rights-impostors-used

Occupy Tulsa: 'Freedom has no business hours'

Eminem - Till I Collapse Dubstep Remix


Photo: LARGE group of #OccupyOakland protesters still Heading towards the Port of Oakland. #ows


Oakland General Strike Protesters Hit By Car


Occupy Tulsa Arrests and Pepper Spraying RAW Video!

http://www.emmettlollis.com
http://profiles.google.com/emmettlollis
"Note: Pepper Spray section starts at 5:40!
In the early morning hours of November 2nd police raided Tulsa's Occupy Wall Street protest. According to Occupy Tulsa Organizers, the Tulsa police chief arranged a bargain with Occupy Tulsa earlier in the day where the volunteers would have a sit in arrest, they were to be carried off without the use of pepper spray.

In the video you can see that several protesters were pepper sprayed while sitting down on the ground, they were clearly not posing any sort of threat. They were sprayed directly in the eyes at close range. If there isn't a legal question here there certainly should be an ethical question. Is it right to use excessive force and torture just to prove you can do it? If the police chief were actually interested in discouraging arrests it would make more sense for him to let them know pepper spray would be used in the situation.

I decided to present the raw footage from the time police moved in throughout the entire arrest proceeding to eliminate accusations of deceptive edits. There is a small 5 second break in the middle of the video due to file size limits on my DSLR where I had to restart the video portion."