Tuesday, February 6th, 2018
VICTORIA ALLEN, Science Correspondent - Daily Mail (U.K.)
Stephan: Yet another reason not to drink anything out of a plastic bottle. My own view is that one of the most important things you can do for yourself and your family is to drastically lower the poison/toxin burden in your immediate environment. No air fresheners. no garden or yard poisons, no laundry additives. Find an organic substitute.
Once you start to clean up your environment you'll be amazed how many chemicals, toxins, and poisons you have in your household. Get rid of all of them, and your family's health will improve.
Dangerous: Bisphenol A (BPA) is found in plastic containers and water bottles, on the inside of food cans and in till receipts
Credit: Mike Flippo/Shutterstock
Almost 90 per cent of teenagers have gender-bending chemicals from plastic in their bodies, according to a study.
Bisphenol A (BPA) is found in plastic containers and water bottles, on the inside of food cans and in till receipts.
The chemical, used since the 1960s to make certain types of plastic, mimics the female sex hormone oestrogen, and has been linked to low sperm counts and infertility in men, as well as breast and prostate cancer.
A study by the University of Exeter, whose researchers tested urine samples from 94 teenagers, found 86 per cent had traces of BPA in their body.
Experts fear it is all but impossible to avoid the chemical, given the widespread use of plastic packaging for food.
The study’s co-author Professor Lorna Harries, from the university’s medical school, said: ‘Most people are exposed to BPA on a daily basis. In this study, our student […]
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Tuesday, February 6th, 2018
NOOR AL-SIBAI, - Raw Story
Stephan: Roy Moore and now Art Jones, the Republican Party is putting forward its best. Welcome to America.
An image of a neo-Nazi giving the “Sieg Heil” salute (left, via Creative Commons) and Illinois Congressional candidate Art Jones (right, via campaign website)
A known Holocaust denier and former Nazi leader is the only Republican running for the GOP nomination for Illinois’ 3rd Congressional District.
The Chicago Sun-Timesdescribed candidate and retired insurance agent Arthur Jones as “an outspoken Holocaust denier, activist anti-Semite and white supremacist.” He admitted to the newspaper that he was a former leader of the American Nazi Party and that his current group, America First Committee, bars Jewish people from joining.
Jones’ campaign website, ArtJonesForCongressman.com, includes a section titled “Holocaust?” that features photocopied pages for typewritten fliers that describe “the Holocaust racket” as “the biggest, blackest, lie [sic] in history.” He suggests that “a few professional concentration camp survivors” promote the conspiracy, an idea which appears to predate the modern concept of “crisis actors” paid to enact “false flag” attacks that trick the public into believing atrocities have happened.
When asked by the Sun-Times about his views, the candidate explained that he’s “running for Congress not the chancellor of […]
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Tuesday, February 6th, 2018
Liz Posner , Managing Editor - Alternet
Stephan: Over the years in my lab, expeditions, and various businesses I have always as a matter of course paid men and women equally for equal jobs. To be honest it never occurred to me to do otherwise and I was in my late thirties before I realized this was not the usual practice.
Apparently, however, it is the American norm to pay men and women differently for the same type of job and the U.S., as this report spells out, is not even in the top 10 countries for gender neutral pay, we're actually 49th. I think that is outrageous.
Credit: Shutterstock
Economists estimate that at the current rate of progress, American men and women will earn equal income in another 200 years. Considering the past century has already hosted three separate feminist movements that successfully granted women the right to vote, passed Roe v. Wade and established women’s right to work, today’s feminists will demand we work a little quicker than that. It’s hard to fathom waiting another two centuries for equal pay. Dozens of other countries are already beating us in the global race to financial equity, so it certainly is possible. The U.S. has crucial lessons to learn from these nations.
The gender pay gap is not just a problem in the U.S., where women make 76 cents to a man’s dollar (the pay gap is even wider for women of color). Globally, the problem is dire. As World Economic Forum writes, “At the current rate of change, and given the continued widening of the economic gender gap already observed last year, it will now not be closed for another 217 years.”
In […]
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Monday, February 5th, 2018
Amy B. Wang, Reporter - Chicago Tribune/The Washington Post
Stephan: Every single person in the United States is either an immigrant or the descendent of immigrants. Everyone. No exceptions. Our strength as a country has been that when you came to America you signed up up for the idea of democracy independent of ethnicity or race. At least it was until Donald Trump. All that has been replaced by the coarsest most vulgar form of fascist racism. So now we have this, dragging people out of their homes, restaurants, and places of work. Does it remind you of the German authorities after Hitler came to power pulling Jews out of their homes, restaurants and places of work? It does me, and I am both ashamed and very angry.
This is a trend which should offend every American, but it does not and Trump's approval rating is going up.
Syed Ahmed Jamal and his three children.
Credit: Courtesy Jamal family
On a recent Wednesday morning, Syed Ahmed Jamal was getting ready to take his daughter to school when he was stopped outside his home in Lawrence, Kansas.
Officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement were on his front lawn. Before Jamal, 55, could say goodbye to his wife and three children, the ICE agents detained him and led him away in handcuffs.
The arrest of a “beloved Lawrence family man, scientist and community leader” came as a shock to Jamal’s friends and neighbors in the Kansas City area, where he has lived since arriving in the United States on a student visa from Bangladesh more than 30 years ago. He would go on to also attain graduate degrees in molecular biosciences and pharmaceutical engineering, then settle in Lawrence to raise a family.
Along the way, he switched from student visas to an H-1B visa for highly skilled workers, then back to a student visa when he enrolled in a doctoral program, his family said. At the time […]
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Monday, February 5th, 2018
Stephan: About 10 years ago I could see from the social outcome data that the United States was breaking into two countries; I called it The Great Schism Trend. One country was exclusionist, religiously conservative, not fact-based, fearful, racist, with values principally focused on every person for themselves. The other was inclusionist, spiritual but not religious, socially progressive, fact-based optimistic with values principally focused on wellbeing for all as a social goal. In the years since this trend has only become ever more more pronounced. Although it is usually discussed in the context of partisan politics, I believe that the primary source of this is much deeper than that; it has to do with fear. Politics is just the way it usually gets talked about.
Here is a snapshot that makes the difference very clear.
Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity.
Credit: Andrew Lipovsky/NBC/NBCU
Credit Bank and Bennett Raglin/WireImage
On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow was literally laughing. Over on Fox News, Sean Hannity put up his dukes.
At 9 last night, you could just flip between the two and see an encapsulation of our two Americas — total dismissal of the memo’s import, vs. the assertion that it’s “only about 15 percent of what’s coming.”
So, Rachel, how was your day?
- “This thing?! This was two weeks of: This memo is going to end everything. This memo, have you heard about the memo? Hashtag: Release the memo! This memo will make Donald Trump innocent. This memo will put Robert Mueller in jail. It will abolish the FBI. The Justice Department will have to rename itself the Donald J. Trump & Family Private Security Task Force.”
- “I mean, I can’t believe this is it.”
- “I don’t really believe in the whole Cable News Wars idea. I know people who work across the street at the Fox News Channel. I’ve got friends that […]
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