A real nation would not let this happen

A great opinion piece from last year when election campaign in Canada was all the noise (& news) in the media.

We Canadians like to think that we are all one nation & we care for each other. Non-Canadians come to visit Canada & see the urban, down-town real estate developments & enjoy the urban amenities, & consider Canada a great place to be. Canadian cities are regularly rated to be great place to live & work by international organizations.

But all that happens because nobody takes a peek behind the curtain to see how Canadian Aboriginals are faring on the forgotten reserves & even in the urban areas. Nobody, including politicians, wants to hear / see their plight. That's the same case everywhere around the world. Be it Aboriginals of US or Australia, or even poorest of the poor people, forgotten in the back country, of countries on African, Asian, & European continents.

Although, blaming the developing countries for forgetting the poorest of the poor might not be justifiable, since their urban (so-called, "middle-class") populations also struggle to make ends meet, but it is inexcusable when developed countries put millions, if not billions, in the outstretched hands of the rich suburbanites because they are a few dollars short for their new home renovations, new electronics, vacation trips, night life shenanigans etc.

The author is correct to say that although we think we are one nation; be it Canadians in Canada, Americans in America, Australians in Australia, Pakistanis in Pakistan, Indians in India, South Africans in South Africa & so on & so forth, when it comes down to our selfish interests, it is me against everyone else. We always want more. We always have less. Why?

Because we forget to look at people who are below us in our society. Perhaps, then, we can satisfy our constant hunger for more. We forget that, as a democratic nation, it is the responsibility of the general populace to reject the latest handout in the elections & annual budgets, & compel our politicians to take care of the least unfortunate & needy among us. After taking care of the humanity on the national level, all of us, as humans, are obligated to tell our politicians & international organizations to take care of the least unfortunate among us on an international level. Heck, a lot of animals (wolves & lots of grazing animals, for instance) take care of the whole herd, instead of taking care of their own little family. Are we humans worse than animals?

Michael Moore, the documentary film maker, said in one of his documentaries (if I may recall correctly, it was on the American healthcare system) that a nation is judged by how it takes care of the sick, old & needy.

Perhaps, we are eligible to call ourselves humans, only when, we take care of the whole humanity; be it in our own backyards, on our streets, in our cities, in our provinces / states, in our countries, on our continents, & in the world.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/a-real-nation-would-not-let-this-happen/

If it’s a typical eight weeks in Canada, then 1,425 Aboriginal kids dropped out of school, a rate three times the national average. Since the campaign began, 45 Aboriginal children died in infancy; they would have lived longer if they’d been born in Sri Lanka. As Canadian politicians bickered on the evening news, 1,074 Aboriginal children & 6,265 Aboriginal women were sexually assaulted. Since the writ dropped, 33,534 Aboriginals were violently victimized. Another 182 committed suicide, roughly eight times the national rate. And, if the last two months were anything like the last decade, 11 were murdered, at a rate almost seven times higher than the national average.
...

Politicians are pushing each other out of the way as they scramble to give the hard-pressed suburban middle class the help they need. Meanwhile, other Canadians living on reserves & in the inner city are disappearing, assaulting & killing each other & themselves, at a rate typically only seen in countries that have been torn apart by war.
...

The party leaders build their campaigns on ... isolated, focused announcements. Small promises for small men & women, them & us—because this strategy only works if we respond. And we do.

We respond because we are nothing more than a collection of special interest groups. We are dairy farmers or oil workers, urban or rural, francophone or anglophone, Manitobans or Nova Scotians. But we are not a people, not a nation, not really. If we were, we would not be able to ignore each other, ignore other Canadians, the way we ignore the Aboriginal community. We would not allow our politicians to reduce us to Pavlovian demographics, salivating at the sight of a specially crafted handout. We would be unleashing a full-throated cry of anger & dismay, that so many fellow Canadians are growing up alone & lost, that so many of us are living in abject poverty & then dying miserably.

We would shout down every stump speech about the “struggling” middle class & demand more for the least fortunate among us. We would scream in frustration as yet another young Aboriginal is found hanging, unnamed & unmourned.

But we don’t. We just stand there, heads down, hands out.

I don’t know who to be more ashamed of, our politicians or us.

Paranoia (movie line 1)

IMDB          RottenTomatoes          Wikipedia

Especially true for our "modern" age of smartphones & social media.

Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers

An extra long feature from NYTimes, but a good one. Bringing into light the problems with cosmetics & makeup women slather on themselves all around the world & then complain of several health problems. Plus, all the workers who are working in these cosmetics industry, like nail salon workers, who breath the toxic fumes of nail-related products on a daily basis.

When I used to work for the accounting department of Revlon Canada, & being the only guy in a group of about 10 women, the talk of manicures & pedicures was a daily routine (no, I wasn't involved in those deep discussions but I used to overhear them). Women feel good, or at least try to feel good, with a visit to a spa or a nail salon. What they don't realize that they are putting the workers who are beautifying their nails in very serious health risk.

Those women customers also don't realize that by colouring their nails & using all these other nail-related products, they are also putting themselves & their families at great danger, since, their nails, with those carcinogenic & other chemicals slathered on them, are going into food (if they are preparing meals for their families). So these cosmetics act like second-hand smoke for their families.

Keep in mind that these harmful chemicals are in the nail products, being used & sold, in North America, Europe, & Australia. These developed countries, except North America, took steps to ban or warn users, of these products, from their harmful qualities.

What happens to nail / cosmetics products being sold & used in all the developing countries in South America, Asia & Africa?

Those users have no idea what poison they are inhaling or ingesting themselves & by their families. Heck, as the article points out, that European Union & Australia have banned harmful chemicals being used in the production of these cosmetics. Companies like Estee Lauder, Revlon, Mary Kay etc. can continue making nail products with the harmful chemicals but they can sell them in developing countries. The adverse consequences of using nail products must be happening in all these developing countries, but, without any research, nobody can say how much worse the situation is there.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/11/nyregion/nail-salon-workers-in-nyc-face-hazardous-chemicals.html

Each time a customer pulled open the glass door at the nail shop in Ridgewood, Queens, where Nancy Otavalo worked, a cheerful chorus would ring out from where she sat with her fellow manicurists against the wall: “Pick a color!”

Ms. Otavalo, a 39-year-old Ecuadorean immigrant, was usually stationed at the first table. She trimmed & buffed & chatted about her quick-witted toddler, or her strapping 9-year-old boy. But she never spoke of another dreamed-for child, the one lost last year in a miscarriage that began while she was giving a customer a shoulder massage.
 
At the second table was Monica A. Rocano, 30, who sometimes brought a daughter to visit. But clients had never met her 3-year-old son, Matthew Ramon. People thought Matthew was shy, but in fact he has barely learned how to speak & can walk only with great difficulty.
 
A chair down from Ms. Rocano was another, quieter manicurist. In her idle moments, she surfed the Internet on her phone, seeking something that might explain the miscarriage she had last year. Or the four others that came before.
 
Similar stories of illness & tragedy abound at nail salons across the country, of children born slow or “special,” of miscarriages & cancers, of coughs that will not go away & painful skin afflictions. The stories have become so common that older manicurists warn women of child-bearing age away from the business, with its potent brew of polishes, solvents, hardeners & glues that nail workers handle daily.
 
A growing body of medical research shows a link between the chemicals that make nail & beauty products useful — the ingredients that make them chip-resistant & pliable, quick to dry & brightly colored, for example — & serious health problems.
 
Whatever the threat the typical customer enjoying her weekly French tips might face, it is a different order of magnitude, advocates say, for manicurists who handle the chemicals & breathe their fumes for hours on end, day after day.
 
The prevalence of respiratory & skin ailments among nail salon workers is widely acknowledged. More uncertain, however, is their risk for direr medical issues. Some of the chemicals in nail products are known to cause cancer; others have been linked to abnormal fetal development, miscarriages & other harm to reproductive health.
 
A number of studies have also found that cosmetologists — a group that includes manicurists, as well as hairdressers & makeup artists — have elevated rates of death from Hodgkin’s disease, of low birth-weight babies & of multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.
 
But firm conclusions are elusive, partly because the research is so limited. Very few studies have focused on nail salon workers specifically. Little is known about the true extent to which they are exposed to hazardous chemicals, what the accumulated effect is over time & whether a connection can actually be drawn to their health.
 
The federal law that regulates cosmetics safety, which is more than 75 years old, does not require companies to share safety information with the Food & Drug Administration. The law bans ingredients harmful to users, but it contains no provisions for the agency to evaluate the effects of the chemicals before they are put on shelves. Industry lobbyists have fought tougher monitoring requirements.
 
Industry officials say their products contain minuscule amounts of the chemicals identified as potentially hazardous & pose no threat.

“What I hear are insinuations based on ‘linked to,’” said Doug Schoon, co-chairman of the Professional Beauty Association’s Nail Manufacturers Council on Safety. “When we talk about nail polish, there’s no evidence of harm.”

Health advocates & officials disagree, pointing to the accumulated evidence.

“We know that a lot of the chemicals are very dangerous,” said David Michaels, the assistant labor secretary who heads the federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration, which oversees workplace safety. “We don’t need to see the effect in nail salon workers to know that they are dangerous to the workers.”

So many health complaints were cropping up among the mostly Vietnamese manicurists in Oakland, Calif., that workers at Asian Health Services, a community organization there, decided on their own to investigate about a decade ago.

“It was like, ‘Oh wow, what’s happening in this community?’” said Julia Liou, who is now the health center’s director of program planning & development & a co-founder of the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative. “We are seeing this epidemic of people who are sick.”

The organization helped form a coalition in California that pushed for restrictions on chemicals used in nail salons, but the cosmetics industry succeeded in blocking a ban.
 
In recent years, in the face of growing health concerns, some polish companies have said that they have removed certain controversial chemicals from their products. But random testing of some of these products by government agencies showed the chemicals were still present.
 
Some states & municipalities recommend workers wear gloves & other protection, but salon owners usually discourage them from donning such unsightly gear. And even though officials overseeing workplace safety concede that federal standards on levels of chemicals that these workers can be exposed to need revision, nothing has been done.
 
So manicurists continue to paint fingertips, swipe off polish and file down false nails, while absorbing chemicals that are potentially hazardous to their health.

“There are so many stories but no one that dares to tell them; no one dares to tell them because they have no one to tell,” Ms. Otavalo said in an interview ... . “There are thousands of women who are working in this, but no one asking: ‘What’s happening to you? How do you feel?’ We just work & work.”
 
‘They Cannot Breathe’

The walls of Dr. Charles Hwu’s second-story office in Flushing, Queens, are decorated with Chinese calligraphy, gifts from patients he has cared for from cradle to adulthood. Over his decades as an internist in this predominantly Asian enclave, Dr. Hwu has repeatedly encountered a particular set of conditions affecting otherwise healthy women.

“They come in usually with breathing problems, some symptoms similar to an allergy, & also asthma symptoms — they cannot breathe,” he said during a break between patients this winter. “Judging from the symptoms with these women, it seems that they are either smokers, secondhand smokers or asthma patients, but they are none of the above. They work for nail salons.”

In interviews with over 125 nail salon workers, airway ailments like those in Dr. Hwu’s office were ubiquitous. Many have learned to simply laugh them off — the nose that constantly bleeds, the throat that has ached every day since the manicurist started working.
 
In the nail salon she owned in Mill Basin, Brooklyn, Eugenia Colon spent years molding sometimes 30 sets of talonlike nails a day in a haze of acrylic powder, ignoring a persistent cough that grew more pronounced over time. She was found to have sarcoidosis, an inflammatory disease, in her lungs. In scans, they appeared as if covered with granules of sand, streaked by tiny scars.
 
The doctor who diagnosed her condition asked Ms. Colon what she did for a living. When she told him, he was frank: As she beautified other women, she inhaled clouds of acrylic & other dust, tiny particles that gouged the soft tissue of her lungs.

“We made money off it, but was it worth it?” Ms. Colon, 52, now an aesthetician in a Manhattan spa. “It came with a price.”

Of the 20 common nail product ingredients listed as causing health problems in the appendix of a safety brochure put out by the Environmental Protection Agency, 17 are hazardous to the respiratory tract, according to the agency. Overexposure to each of them induces symptoms such as burning throat or lungs, labored breathing or shortness of breath.
 
A 2006 study published in the Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine that included more than 500 Colorado manicurists found about 20% of them had a cough most days & nights. The same examination showed those who worked with artificial nails were about three times as likely to get asthma on the job as someone not in the industry.
 
Skin disorders are also omnipresent among nail salon workers. Many of the chemicals in nail salon products are classified by government agencies as skin sensitizers, capable of provoking painful reactions.
 
Some veteran manicurists say they can recognize one another on the street: They have the same coffee-colored stains on their cheeks. Certain cosmetic color additives — particularly a type of brilliant red — have been shown by researchers to cause such skin discoloration.
 
When Ki Ok Chung, a manicurist who worked in salons for almost two decades, had her fingerprints taken in the early 2000s for her US citizenship, she made an upsetting discovery: Her prints were almost nonexistent. They had to be taken 7 times. She says constant work with files, solvents & emollients is responsible.

“I realized my fingerprints had been disappearing,” she said.
 
Today, she cannot touch hot or cold dishes without searing pain.
 
Even as the weather warmed into spring last year, Zoila Calle, a manicurist, then 22, who worked in Harlem, wore wool gloves indoors & out. Underneath were black pustules so painful she could not grasp a polish bottle or text on her phone. It was the second time her hands had erupted in the warts, a common occurrence for nail salon workers. While customers often fret about salon hygiene, it is manicurists who appear truly at risk, suffering through endless fungal infections & other skin diseases from the blur of hands & feet they touch every day.

“It’s a beautiful industry, it makes people feel better,” Ms. Colon, who owned the salon in Mill Basin, said in an interview ... . “But if a lot of people knew the truth behind it, it wouldn’t happen. They wouldn’t go.”

Miscarriages & Warnings
 
In a way, Ms. Rocano, one of the manicurists in the Ridgewood salon, felt herself lucky. Her colleagues seated on either side of her had each lost a pregnancy last year ... .
 
She, however, has her toddler, Matthew.
 
A dark-haired bundle with amber skin when he was born, Matthew was an infant laden with his mother’s hopes. Holding him in her arms, she was reminded of the daughter she had left behind in Ecuador & still has not seen in more than 6 years. This time, she felt, she could do right by her child.
 
Yet as he grew, something seemed off. His legs were weak; they buckled when he tried to stand. By age 3 he still could not say his name. In visits to her pediatrician, she learned that Matthew was delayed on almost every measure, both physically & cognitively.
 
At one point, his doctor asked her what she did for a living. When she told him, he asked how long she had worked in the nail salon while pregnant. Six months, she responded.
 
The doctor told her, “When babies are forming in your womb, they absorb everything, & if they are exposed to anything, it can cause them harm,” she recalled.
 
On a day 5 years ago, a doctor gave a similar warning to the manicurist who works at the table to Ms. Rocano’s right, as she sat in the obstetrics unit at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn. There she learned she had miscarried a third time.

“I went to the hospital, & I told him, ‘I’m a manicurist,’” said the woman, who declined to give her name because she wanted her medical history to remain private. Her doctor urged her to change jobs. “The chemicals are not healthy for your lungs, your liver, & sometimes they begin cancer,” she recalled. “I was laughing. I said, ‘Who is going to pay my bills?’” She has since miscarried twice more.
 
In scientific circles, the three chemicals in nail products that are associated with the most serious health issues are dibutyl phthalate, toluene & formaldehyde. They are known as the “toxic trio” among worker advocates.
 
Dibutyl phthalate, called DBP for short, makes nail polish & other products pliable. In Australia, it is listed as a reproductive toxicant & must be labeled with the phrases “may cause harm to the unborn child” & “possible risk of impaired fertility.” Starting in June, the chemical will be prohibited from cosmetics in that country. It is one of over 1,300 chemicals banned from use in cosmetics in the European Union. But in the US, where fewer than a dozen chemicals are prohibited in such products, there are no restrictions on DBP.
 
Toluene, a type of solvent, helps polish glide on smoothly. But the E.P.A. says in a fact sheet that it can impair cognitive & kidney function. In addition, repeated exposure during pregnancy can “adversely affect the developing fetus,” according to the agency.
 
Formaldehyde, best known for its use in embalming, is a hardening agent in nail products. In 2011, the National Toxicology Program, part of the US Department of Health & Human Services, labeled it a human carcinogen. By 2016, it will be banned from cosmetics in the European Union.
 
Cosmetics industry officials say linking the chemicals to manicurists’ health complaints amounts to faulty science.
 
Dibutyl phthalate, toluene & formaldehyde “have been found to be safe under current conditions of use in the US,” said Lisa Powers, a spokeswoman for the Personal Care Products Council, the main trade association & lobbying group for the cosmetics industry.

“The safe & historical use of these ingredients is not questioned by F.D.A.,” she continued.
 
In reality, the responsibility for evaluating the safety of the chemicals as they are used in cosmetics is left with the companies themselves.
 
Even while insisting they are safe, some polish companies have voluntarily begun to remove certain chemicals from formulations. By 2006, several prominent brands had announced their products would no longer contain any of the three. The new products were labeled “3-free” or “5-free,” referring to the number of chemicals that are ostensibly no longer in them.
 
But a 2010 study by the F.D.A. & another in 2012 by the California Environmental Protection Agency’s Department of Toxic Substance Control found in random tests that some products, even ones labeled “3-free” or “5-free,” in fact contained those very chemicals.
 
It was from routine community outreach trips to local nail salons in Oakland that Ms. Liou & her colleagues from Asian Health Services, as well as Thu Quach, a research scientist, became alarmed: Almost all of the manicurists interviewed had health complaints; some were terribly ill.
 
Dr. Quach, with the Cancer Prevention Institute of California, set out to conduct a health survey of nail salon workers in Alameda County, which includes Oakland.
 
The stories poured in.
 
Le Thi Lam, a Vietnamese immigrant who came to the US in 1988 ... was among the first. She had started out in a Sacramento nail salon, becoming proficient in acrylic nails, sculpting them all day long from a slurry of solvent & plastic polymers.
 
In 1991, she learned she had a thyroid condition. She had also developed asthma. She quit, too sickened to work & concerned about the chemicals she was handling. But she soon returned, unable to find another job with her limited English. 10 years later, she had breast cancer.

“I know that manicurists like me are also going through the same things & having major health problems,” she said, seated in a conference room at Asian Health Services last summer ... . “But they still hang on to their jobs to earn their living.”

Dr. Quach kept going with her research, undertaking several other studies. One found manicurists had an increased risk for gestational diabetes & for having undersize babies. Another, looking at cancer, found no correlation. Both studies were hampered by data limitations. Mostly, they point to the need for further study.

“What we know is what’s reported by the women again & again: that there is something here,” Dr. Quach said. “Those chemicals they are dealing with are chemicals that we know people react to, & we are hearing the stories from these workers that they are reacting to them. It’s all there.”
 
‘Fox Guarding the Henhouse’

The regulation of chemicals in nail products is dictated by the Federal Food, Drug & Cosmetic Act of 1938. The part of the law that deals with cosmetics totals just 591 words.
 
The Food & Drug Administration explains the limitations it faces under the law on its website: “Cosmetic products & ingredients do not need F.D.A. premarket approval, with the exception of color additives.” It continues, “Neither the law nor F.D.A. regulations require specific tests to demonstrate the safety of individual products or ingredients.” In addition, “The law also does not require cosmetic companies to share their safety information with F.D.A.”

In 1976, the cosmetics industry itself established the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, a panel that is supposed to “review & assess the safety of ingredients used in cosmetics in an open, unbiased & expert manner,” according to its website. But the panel is financed entirely by the Personal Care Products Council, the industry lobbying group. The panel’s offices are also in the same building in Washington as the products council.
 
Even so, Ms. Powers said the panel was independent. She is the official spokeswoman for the industry lobby, but all questions to the review panel were handled by her.
 
Since its founding, the panel has reviewed only a small fraction of the substances in use in cosmetics today. Among them were dibutyl phthalate & toluene; the panel determined that they are safe the way they are used in nail products — on nails, not skin.

“It’s a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse,” says Janet Nudelman, the director of program & policy at the Breast Cancer Fund, which has argued for more stringent regulation. “You’ve got an industry-funded review panel that’s assessing the safety for the very industry that’s funding the review panel.”

There have been efforts in recent years to overhaul the 1938 law & more strictly regulate cosmetic chemicals, but none made headway in the face of industry resistance. Since 2013, the products council, just one of several industry trade groups, has poured nearly $2 million on its own into lobbying Congress.
 
After talks between the cosmetics industry & the F.D.A. broke down last year, Michael R. Taylor, the agency’s deputy commissioner for foods & veterinary medicine, rebuked the industry in an unusual open letter for pushing a measure that would have declared a wide range of potentially dangerous chemicals safe “without a credible scientific basis” & others safe that are known to pose “real & substantial risks to consumers.”

Ms. Powers said the letter mischaracterized the industry’s stance. “The law was created or passed in 1938,” she said. “Nobody is saying that we shouldn’t look at that now & say: ‘Is it a contemporary approach? Does it need to bring us into the 21st century?’ We all agree to that. But that doesn’t make for a sexy headline.”

The council, in fact, said it supported a bipartisan bill introduced in April by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, & Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, that would broaden F.D.A. oversight of cosmetics, including giving the agency recall ability. But some health advocates said the bill would continue to permit the industry to largely regulate itself; it would also pre-empt states’ abilities to create stronger rules.
 
The Occupational Safety & Health Administration is the federal agency that sets chemical exposure limits in workplaces. The studies that have examined the chemical exposure levels for manicurists have found them to be well below these standards. Health advocates say the safety administration’s standards are badly out of date & flawed.
 
Even Dr. Michaels, the head of the safety administration, said his agency’s standards needed revision. Currently, he said, workers “can be exposed to levels that are legal according to OSHA but are still dangerous.”

The agency makes illustrated pamphlets warning manicurists about the chemical hazards they face & urges them to wear gloves & ventilate their shops. These steps & others become mandatory when exposure limits are exceeded. But in practical terms, with the standards set so high, salons are free to do nothing. Dr. Michaels said the agency was hamstrung by its own cumbersome rule-making process.

“Every worker has the right to come home safely at the end of every day,” Dr. Michaels said. “They shouldn’t be coming home & getting sick.”

The debate over the chemicals has also unfolded at the state level. In 2005, lawmakers in California proposed banning DBP from cosmetic products sold or manufactured in the state. Industry lobbyists flooded the State Capitol (some bearing gift baskets of lipstick & nail polish), spending over a half-million dollars fighting the ban, according to state records. Some of the country’s best-known cosmetics companies — Estée Lauder, Mary Kay & OPI, among others — weighed in against it. The bill ultimately failed. A much more limited measure passed — over the industry’s objections — that required cosmetics companies to disclose certain hazardous chemicals to the California Department of Public Health.
 
Blocked by an industry with deep pockets, the California advocates say they had to scale back their goals. They introduced a grass-roots program that officially recognizes “healthy nail salons,” those that carry “greener” products & that ventilate. The New York City Council held a hearing this month on a measure that would establish a similar voluntary program.
 
Today, out of several thousand salons in California, however, there are just 55 salons in the program.
 
One of them is Lulu Nail Spa, a tiny salon ... in Burlingame, Calif. The shop earned the designation in May by switching certain products, using gloves & opening the doors to sweep out fumes. The owner, Hai Thi Le, a Vietnamese immigrant, said she hoped the new decal she placed on her window would draw green-minded customers.
 
But she did not make the changes just for business. As a young woman working in her brother’s nail shop, Ms. Le said she breathed in so much acrylic powder that when she kissed her husband after work, he complained her breath smelled of solvent & plastic dust.

Australia to probe foreign labour

There have been stories of "slave-labour" being used in American agriculture sector. There have been stories of migrant workers being used as slaves in the European agriculture sector (fruits & vegetables grown on Spanish & Portuguese farms were being sold in British supermarkets). Then, we also have stories of slaves working in Thai's fishing industry, which ultimately supplies seafood products all over North America & Europe. Now, we have "slave labour" on Australian farms.

Who says slavery is no more in this "modern" world?

Is it surprising that slavery still exists? (not to me, at least). Heck, that's why, immigration exists.

On one end, we have big supermarkets like WalMart, Costco, Aldi, Lidl etc which demand low-cost supplies of produce from their suppliers, because after all, they need to sell those at a low cost, too, to their customers (who are themselves are earning meagre wages, thanks to automation of their jobs).

Anyway, so, if the suppliers need to reduce their costs, then, after automating whatever processes they can automate, they will start hiring migrants & using them as "slave labour", which only means long hours of work at meagre wages with no benefits, whatsoever.

So, you can decide for yourself, where's the problem lies in this whole supply chain?
- Customers are always looking for the cheapest produce they can get their hands on.
- Retailers are looking for cheapest produce they can get their hands on.
- Distributors are looking for cheapest produce they can get their hands on.
- Producer is pressured to produce at as low a cost as possible.

Problem actually lies at the top; the business persons & owners of companies who are always looking to cut costs, & the biggest component of their costs, is always going to be their labour costs. It also includes all those shareholders / stockholders, esp. the large institutional ones, who pressure companies to lower their costs (to maximize their profits & ultimately, dividends to shareholders).

Companies have only one way to reduce labour costs, by automating whatever they can automate & reduce the workforce to as few a people as they can, to the point that the labour public has a choice to either accept working at meagre wages with no benefits or no job at all. So, that public will obviously go for the cheapest produce it can find in the supermarket, because, after all, that labour public needs to eat.

So, can we really blame the agriculture producer / farmer to hire migrant workers & use them like a "slave labour" when owners, like, Sam Walton's family (WalMart owners) are becoming billionaires?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-32586779

Allegations of unethical treatment & underpayment will be investigated by the state government of Victoria.
 
Victoria will also push for a national inquiry into what it has described as "a national shame".
 
Claims Australia has an underclass of foreign workers treated like "slave labour" were made by ABC TV ... .
 
The report by ABC's Four Corners programme detailed widespread abuses of Australia's 417 visa.
 
The visa is for people aged 18 to 30 years of age who want a working holiday of up to 12 months in Australia.
 
The investigation uncovered abuses of the popular visa, including what were described as "slave-like conditions" at farms & factories across Australia.
 
"No employee should ever be exploited, harassed or deprived of their basic liberties", said Victoria's Minister for Industrial Relations Natalie Hutchins.
 
"This is not just about the underpayment of wages; this is about creating an underclass of foreign workers," said Ms Hutchins in a statement.
 
Foreign underclass
 
"It's clear that Victoria needs a better system in place when it comes to regulating labour hire practices," she said.
 
The food being picked & processed by exploited workers was reportedly sold to consumers across the country by major supermarket chains & fast food outlets.
 
Queensland MP Keith Pitt last month called for an investigation of exploitation of foreign workers in the horticultural sector.
 
He said many farmers were at risk of prosecution because they were using labour hire companies that underpaid backpacker workers.
 
Migrant workers are essential to Australia's agriculture sector, according to the National Farmers' Federation (NFF).
 
"Without them, there would be a chronic labour shortage at peak harvest times of the year," said NFF President Brent Finlay.
 
But he said all farmers had a responsibility to adopt employment practices & use labour contractors that did not exploit workers.
 
"And it's not just farmers, this is a whole of supply chain issue," he said.

Air Pollution costs Europe $1.6 Trillion a year in early deaths & disease, say WHO

Unfortunately, that day is not far when people will be buying portable personal oxygen tanks & breathers for themselves & their families. Going outside of their homes would require a little breather just like shoes & shirts are worn before getting outside of homes.

With the European countries pledging to end their dependence on fossil fuels in the next 85 years (by 2100), these oxygen tanks & breathers will be required in the next 25-40 years, especially with the way, the air pollution is spreading in large, metropolitan cities, from Shanghai to Delhi to London to Los Angeles.

We will be seeing "Lorax" being played in real-life around the world.

However, who will lose most adversely with these air pollution & climate change problems? The poor. The rich will buy their way out of these problems, but the poor, which are the general masses, won't be able to escape these problems all around the world. They can't relocate themselves or won't be able to buy loads & loads of oxygen tanks or breathers for themselves.

So, although, ONLY about half-a-million people prematurely died in Europe (only continent which is supposed to be leading the fight against climate change & pollution) due to air pollution, we will be seeing these tragedies played out in much larger numbers all over the world.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/apr/28/air-pollution-costs-europe-16tn-a-year-in-early-deaths-and-disease-say-who

The financial cost of air pollution in Europe stands at more than $1.6tn (£1.5tn) a year, a study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) has found, equating to about a tenth of the GDP of the continent.
 
The costs come in the form of 600,000 premature deaths each year, & the sickness caused to hundreds of thousands of other people from preventable causes, such as pollution from small particles that come from the exhausts of diesel vehicles, & nitrogen dioxide, a gas that can inhibit breathing in vulnerable people.
 
The figures are from 2010, the latest year for which full data is available, & cover the whole of the European region, including non-EU states such as Norway & Switzerland, & are compiled by the WHO Regional Office for Europe & the Organisation for Economic Co-operation & Development (OECD).
 
Zsuzsanna Jakab, regional director for Europe at the WHO, said: “Curbing the health effects of air pollution pays dividends. The evidence we have provides decision-makers across the whole of government with a compelling reason to act.”

In many east European countries, the WHO data shows, the economic costs of dirty air are more than 10% of their GDP. On absolute economic costs, the top 10 list is dominated by major economies including the UK, Germany & Italy.
 
In the UK, air pollution has become so bad in London that the European Union is to levy fines on local government, reflecting years in which the extent of pollution has been in excess of EU standards. The Supreme Court is expected to issue judgment ... on a case brought against the UK government for its breach of EU pollution limits.
 
The WHO report found that air pollution was the single biggest environmental health risk in Europe, with the damage from outdoor risks such as diesel exhaust pollution accounting for 482,000 deaths in 2012 from heart & respiratory diseases alone. The deaths or sickness of at least 1 in 4 Europeans can be traced to environmental pollution, according to the organisation.
 
In March, the European Environment Agency warned that hundreds of thousands of people would die prematurely over the next 2 decades from air pollution because of governments’ failure to act.

The woman who created Mother's Day died despising it

Now, here's a tragic but true story. A lot of these kinds of women; be it the mother's day inventor or the pink ribbon inventor for breast cancer, despised the commercialization of what they believed in so much.

Love for a mother can never be repaid through a few flowers & chocolates or cards. If this would've been true, then nursing homes wouldn't be filled with old moms crying that their kids put them there (many by coercion) & have forgotten them completely.

Last week or so, I put a blog post here how there are inheritance wars are going on in Canada & US. The article showed how kids (Baby Boomers) despise their parents to be still alive & not sharing their wealth with them. It's not the story of one or a few families, but many families. Those Baby Boomers also showered their moms with chocolates & flowers on Mother's Day, because that's easy to do. The harder part is taking care of an old, fragile, a shell of a woman. But that's tough to do, so let's ship mom off to nursing home & divide up the bounties of her wealth.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2015/05/10/the-woman-who-created-mothers-day-died-despising-it.html

If you think the spirit of Mother’s Day has been spoiled by the commercialism of cards, flowers & once-a-year sincerity, you stand united with the woman credited with giving us the annual event.

West Virginian Anna Jarvis was so horrified by the monster she helped create in 1914, she spent most of her later years campaigning to have the second Sunday in May removed from the calendar as the day to honour your mother.

In the end, Jarvis lost the fight. The woman, who was never a mother herself, exhausted her financial resources & ruined her mental health, dying alone in 1948 in an asylum at the age of 84.

“She simply wanted a day to honour & remember mothers, but in her mind it didn’t turn out that way,” says William Pollard, an archivist at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Va., where Jarvis bequeathed her letters & other writings.

In 1914, Jarvis spearheaded a campaign to help persuade US president Woodrow Wilson to set aside May’s second Sunday as a national day for recognition. She orchestrated a letter-writing campaign to Wilson, lobbied influential politicians & clergymen & distributed brochures arguing about the importance of a national day for mothers.

Jarvis’ cause came from admiration for her recently deceased mother, Anna Maria & others like her, who had been an inspiration.

But by the early 1920s, she was sickened by the commercial circus she had helped create. She felt the day had nothing to do with celebrating the real achievements of women.

Jarvis spent her days crashing floral company conventions to protest & urging card companies to give the money they made from Mother’s Day to the poor. At one Mother’s Day convention where flowers were being sold she was arrested for disturbing the peace. She even launched a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s day festival from being held.

Her story didn’t end happily. Jarvis, who didn’t marry, died in 1948 alone & penniless in a hospital near Philadelphia from a illness brought on in part by her ceaseless campaign.

Just before her death Jarvis told a local reporter: “I devoted my entire life to Mother’s Day & the racketeers & grafters have taken it over.”

Danish politicians want Charlie Hebdo taught in schools

So, while we are at it, how about Danish schools become fair & balanced, & also teach about holocaust (not just the "official" version as dictated by the Israeli organizations), Spanish Inquisition, Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands, & there are so many other topics (slavery & looting of African resources by Europeans, killings & gross violation of Natives' human rights by Europeans, brutal invasion & occupation of Americas & Australasia by Europeans etc.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“The cartoon crisis, the Charlie Hebdo killings & the latest terrorist attack in Copenhagen on February 14 are such an important part of history they should have a permanent place on the school curriculum,” Conservative People’s Party spokeswoman Mai Mercado wrote in the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

 

Another opposition party, the Danish People’s Party (DF), which has 19.6% of voter support, according to a recent poll, also supported the idea of ‘Mohammed cartoons lessons.’ Party members say that studying the Charlie Hebdo related crisis & its aftermath should be mandatory in all the country’s schools.

“If you live in Denmark you should also be able to tolerate seeing the drawings,” party spokesman Alex Ahrendtsen told the daily Berlingske daily newspaper.

 

While the Conservatives want the cartoons to be taught in history class, the Danish People’s Party say it should be done in religious studies.

 

"One of our time's great challenges is the threat from Islamism & the pressure on freedom rights that have built up over many years,” said Martin Henriksen, the DF immigration spokesperson.

 

John Rydahl, president of the Danish Association, thinks the cartoons should be reprinted in students’ textbooks.

 

"The Muhammad crisis is an obvious topic for R.E. [religious education] teaching, & I'm surprised that so far no textbook has reprinted the cartoons. That should happen - & sooner rather than later," Rydahl told DR News.

 

However, Dennis Hornhave Jacobsen, president of the Danish Association of History & Social Studies Teachers, says a Mohammed cartoons class is a bad idea as “it could end any real discussion about the nature of freedom of expression, because there are children in schools who believe the Muhammad cartoons are objectionable & the discussion will stop there.”

 

Reportedly, many Danish schools already teach the Mohammed crisis in grade 9, but it’s not compulsory.

 

http://rt.com/news/238621-denmark-mohammed-cartoons-schools/

"Peace Goal" by Bruce Plante

"Peace Goal" - Bruce Plante, Tulsa World, Tulsa, OK, US

Thailand's crackdown on 'wombs for rent'

As I previously blogged that how everything of ours, tangible or intangible, is up for sale, this story fits right in. Everything of ours has been commoditized & ready to be sold. These women are not doing it for the fun of it, but these Thai, Vietnamese, & even Indian (not in this story) women are put into such a dire position, financially, that they are ready to lease out their wombs.
 
Now, women, most likely from developed countries, who can't conceive child due to health reasons, or won't conceive child due to vanity (don't want to "destroy" their figure or can't take the pain of childbirth) can outsource this function to a poor woman in a developing country. It seems nothing is sacred enough to not outsource.
 
Similar to how outsourcing of manufacturing & clerical jobs to developing countries raised multiple ethical issues in regards to working conditions in those developing countries, this "womb-for-rent" program also raised several complicated & ethical issues.
 
Can a country effectively control this process & make it better through laws & regulations or simply shut it down? I think not. The process was already sort of running underground with some people abusing this program. Now, the laws will essentially further make this go underground & more women will be abused more severely, & the abusers will most likely won't be punished.
 
Why this process can't be improved through laws? Because, these poor women are especially sought out for these tasks & since, they need money desperately, they will be willing to do anything at any cost.
 
Also, this process won't grow much love & won't grow the bond stronger between a mother & her child. Why? Because, it's simply unnatural. The love between a child & a mother starts & grows stronger during those 9 months of pregnancy. Any mother will testify to it. Heck, the women in this story had a hard time giving those kids, for whom they were merely surrogates, to their biological parents. How can a mother who didn't endure those 9 months of pregnancy hardships can ever truly love a child, who is still her own flesh & blood, like a mother who goes through the pregnancy & has a spiritual, & flesh & blood link with that little fetus in her womb?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
When a surrogate baby scandal erupted in Thailand last year, many in the country did not know what to expect next.
 
First there was the young boy, apparently abandoned by the Australian couple who had commissioned a Thai surrogate mother to carry him.
 
The boy had Down's syndrome, but the couple had taken his twin sister back to Australia with them.
 
Then there were the 12 babies found living in a single apartment with nannies, all fathered by the same, mysterious young Japanese man.
 
Many more babies had already been spirited out of Thailand.
Today the Australian boy - named Gammy - lives with the woman who was paid to give birth to him, seemingly a loved member of his adopted family.
 
"I don't regret anything about the surrogacy", Pattaramon Chanbua told me. "I don't blame anyone. To me, Gammy is a blessing."
 
Mitsutoki Shigeta, the mystery Japanese man, is still fighting to get custody of the 12 babies he sired through various Thai surrogates.
 
Now, 5 years after it was first drafted, the Thai parliament has passed a law which it hopes will shut down the "wombs-for-rent" business for good.
 
Foreigners are banned from seeking surrogates in Thailand. Thai couples can find surrogate parents, but not through agents, or on any kind of commercial basis.
 
At the heart of the business are hard-up Thai women, who see 9 months carrying someone else's child as a relatively easy way to make good money.
 
Daeng, a factory worker living outside Bangkok, is another. A single mother in her 30s, she agreed to carry twins for Mr. Shigeta.
 
When the time came to hand them over, she admitted it was hard.
 
"I carried them for 9 months, & I loved them," she said. But she went through with the contract, & "would do it again - so would anybody - because of the money".
 
Daeng says she was paid the equivalent of 10 years' salary.
 
Other women have had unhappier surrogacy experiences.
4 years ago, 15 Vietnamese women were found in a Bangkok apartment, seven of them pregnant.
 
Some of them said they had been lured there with the promise of well-paid jobs; 2 said they had been raped.
 
A Taiwanese company called Babe-101 was accused by anti-trafficking groups of being behind the operation, but the police never pressed charges, & the doctor who supervised the conceptions & the births is still practising at a well-known Bangkok hospital.
 
Like much of Thailand's medical industry, the surrogacy business is profit-driven & poorly regulated.
 
The surrogate business in Thailand has often been a shadowy, unaccountable one. Now the practice has been more or less outlawed, there are justified fears that, with so much money on offer, it will simply be driven underground.
 
"We have no law enforcement", admits Dr Somsak Lolekha of the Thai Medical Council. "Just like drinking & driving. We have the law. But they never enforce it."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-31556597

"Hate for Hate" - Gary Varvel

"Hate for Hate" - Gary Varvel, Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis, IN, US

Criminal Minds, S1E2 (Quote)

How the West was stolen

A good summary article to highlight what American settlers did to the Natives. It didn't happen in the dark ages but after the European enlightenment period (after all, settlers were from the old continent). Atrocities conducted by "enlightened" settlers or even what American soldiers did during 20th-century wars are actively censored from traditional media so we may still falsely believe that we are the "civilized" world.

On top of that, as Dr. Saunt also says that the terminology is being changed now to effectively erase this history, by modern descendants of settlers now (Caucasian Americans) being called as "indigenous".

Now, these Natives are confined to reserves, with living standards, which are so far below a 3rd-world country's living standards that it's horrifying. Many reserves don't even have basic plumbing for running water & sanitation; forget the systems in place for education & jobs (that's why, Natives are far behind in education & employment in US & Canada).

North American NGOs pour millions of $$$ & actively work in Africa & Asia but ignore the abysmal conditions most of these Natives' reserves are in their own backyards. Why? because it makes far good PR from both NGOs & respective governments' perspectives to export the good deeds instead of help improve the living conditions of Natives.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Between 1776 and 1887, white conquerors razed across 1.5 billion acres of occupied land, claiming it for their own. By 1800, Native Americans only accounted for 15% of the nation, compared to the settlers' 85. A survey taken in 1900 showed the Indians to make up just 0.5% of the US population.
 
It is a history that many claim to be ignored by the majority of non-indigenous Americans, who focus on the lives lost during the Civil War & European atrocities of the 19th century.
 
Dr Saunt explains the 'rapid & murderous' sweep by quoting California's first governor John Sutter:
 
'That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between races, until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected,' Sutter said in 1851.
 
In the 21st century, the canvas is being stretched for a change of perspective.
 
Now, more than 1% of Americans identify as indigenous - 'an increase,' Dr Saunt writes, 'that reflects not a substantive demographic shift but a newfound willingness & desire to identify as indigenous.'
 
He concludes: 'A history that glosses over the conquest of the continent is partial, in both senses of the word. It misleads people about the past & misinforms their debates about the present. In charting a course for the future, Americans would do well to put the dispossession of native peoples back on the map.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2902380/Story-Native-American-dispossession-told-unforgettable-new-visualizations.html

Police Everywhere, Justice Nowhere

Speak Up against Injustice

 

People & Government

The Words (Quote)

IMDB          RottenTomatoes          Wikipedia

George Carlin on Governments & Citizens

Cloud Atlas (Quote # 1)