ellenrr
ellenrr's JournalHappy Halloween: Beware These 10 Popular Chocolate Brands that Exploit Child Slaves
Worker ages range from 11-16 (sometimes younger). They are trapped in isolated farms, where they work 80 to 100 hours a week. The film Slavery: A Global Investigation spoke with freed children who reported that they were often beaten with fists and belts and whips.
“The beatings were a part of my life,” Aly Diabate, a freed slave, told reporters. “Anytime they loaded you with bags (of cocoa beans) and you fell while carrying them, nobody helped you. Instead they beat you and beat you until you picked it up again.”
To help you avoid supporting slavery this Halloween, Here’s are ten chocolate companies that benefit from child slave labor:
Hershey
Mars
Nestle
ADM Cocoa
Guittard Chocolate Company
Godiva
Chocolates by Bernard Callebaut
Fowler’s Chocolate
Kraft
See’s Candies
http://usuncut.com/news/beware-of-these-10-popular-chocolate-brands-that-exploit-child-slaves/
Meditation works very well for me, for extreme depression and stress..
Has anyone tried this and found it helps?
would be interested to know others' experiences.
also SAM-e works for me for depression.
Oh, DO listen to Democracy Now this morning--
she will have an evangelical minister who changed his mind - now is campaigning against guns, criss-crossing country along with the mother of Jordan Davis who was killed in 2012 by a white guy over loud rap music.
and an expose my Mother Jones about cops in classrooms who punch, tase, even kill students.
www.democracynow.org
Ancient permafrost quickly transforms to carbon dioxide upon thaw
Huge stores of organic carbon in permafrost soils -- frozen for hundreds to tens of thousands of years across high northern latitudes worldwide -- are currently isolated from the modern day carbon cycle. However, if thawed by changing climate conditions, wildfire, or other disturbances, this massive carbon reservoir could decompose and be emitted as the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane, or be carried as dissolved organic carbon to streams and rivers.
"Many scientists worldwide are now investigating the complicated potential end results of thawing permafrost," said Rob Striegl, USGS scientist and study co-author. "There are critical questions to consider, such as: How much of the stored permafrost carbon might thaw in a future climate? Where will it go? And, what are the consequences for our climate and our aquatic ecosystems?"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151026171407.htm
Why Black Lives Matter Activists Are Showing Up for a Palestinian Woman Threatened With Deportatio
Solidarity forever.
" Solidarity between black and Palestinian activists challenging state violence is growing. Just look at the campaign to support Rasmea Odeh.
Earlier this month, a group of organizations including Black Youth Project and the Dream Defenders—both leaders in the movement for black lives—released a video that seeks to highlight similarities between black Americans’ and Palestinians’ struggles against state violence. “When I see them, I see us,” various Palestinian and black activists and artists say as still images of people who have been killed at the hands of police or other armed forces fill the screen. “We are not statistics. We are not collateral damage. We have names and faces.”
In explaining the intent of the video, one of the its creators told Al Jazeera America, “Here were two groups of people dealing with completely different historical trajectories, but both which resulted in a process of dehumanization that criminalized them and that subject their bodies as expendable.” Another person behind the video’s production said that Israel and the United States “strengthen their state power by convincing much of the public that uprisings in Ferguson and Gaza are signs of pathological criminality, as opposed to critical actions of resistance against state powers that actively engage in historical genocide.”
http://www.thenation.com/article/why-black-lives-matter-activists-are-showing-up-for-a-palestinian-woman-threatened-with-deportation/
go to link to see a beautiful picture."When I see them I see us."
I don't know if there is an 'arts/music' group, so am posting here too.
Bec. I figure there are people on DU who like/love folk and blues:
The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Features 17,000 Blues & Folk Recordings
including:
Mississippi Prison Recordings 1947 and 1948
"The Lomaxes and other collectors of their time (and also decades later) found some of the most powerful vernacular music of the American South in the region’s oppressive and violent prison system."
http://www.openculture.com/2012/03/the_alan_lomax_music_archive_now_online.html
Interested in folk, blues? This is a treasure.
The Alan Lomax Sound Archive Now Online: Features 17,000 Blues & Folk Recordings
among the 17,000 recordings:
Mississippi Prison Recordings 1947 and 1948
"The Lomaxes and other collectors of their time (and also decades later) found some of the most powerful vernacular music of the American South in the region’s oppressive and violent prison system."
http://www.openculture.com/2012/03/the_alan_lomax_music_archive_now_online.html
article: " No wonder Oprah is buying into weight loss: corporations profit from our flesh"
It’s much easier to lecture individuals about their eating habits than it is to take on the food giants that work against our efforts toward health
First, the terrible prejudice faced by overweight and obese people. Second, the ways in which corporations are responsible for the obesity crisis in many western societies. These companies, both those that sell us overprocessed and sugary foods and those making huge amounts of money out of people trying to lose weight, are literally making a profit on our flesh.
A recent study published in the journal Obesity Research & Clinical Practice brought startling new findings to light. In 2006, a person who ate a given daily number of calories and expended a given number of daily calories through exercise was likely to have a body mass index 2.3 points higher than someone taking in and expending the same number of calories in 1988.
a recent article in the Atlantic speculates that three separate factors may be at play: an increase in our exposure to chemicals, such as flame retardants, that may cause weight gain; the growing prescription of pills such as antidepressants, which may have the same effect; and, most intriguingly, a change in the number or type of “microbiomes” present in our guts. It is possible, posits Professor Jennifer Kuk in the Atlantic article, that this last item might be traced back to what food itself consumes: “hormones and antibiotics to promote growth” most obviously in the case of the US.
Huge power rests with the multinational corporations that produce our food, medicine and consumer goods. But increasingly, I fear that western governments find it easier to lecture individual citizens about their eating habits than to take on a food industry, and its lobbying power, that works against our efforts towards health every step of the way.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/23/oprah-weight-watchers-corporations-profit-flesh-food-giants?CMP=ema_565a
"Permafrost warming in parts of Alaska is 'unbelievable'"
One of the world's leading experts on permafrost has told BBC News that the recent rate of warming of this frozen layer of earth is "unbelievable".
Researchers worry that methane frozen within the permafrost will be released, exacerbating climate change.
Prof Romanovsky says that the current evidence indicates that in parts of Alaska, around Prudhoe Bay on the North Slope, the permafrost will not just warm up but will thaw in about 50 years.
"Even if we stopped all emissions today, the Arctic has momentum where there is going to be more warming, more permafrost degradation and some carbon coming out already - we have started the ball rolling in some senses."
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34540414
There are some disturbing pics at site:
one of a house whose collapse may be due to permafrost melt.
and one of something called a "drunken forest" - trees pulled up and laying every which way. 
as a result of permafrost melt.
what happened to the $100 millions Zuckerberg gave to Newark schools?
This books looks at where the money went.
The Prize: Who's in Charge of America's Schools?
by Dale Russakoff.
The author is on Democracy Now today.
You can imagine, that the money mostly went to charter schools.
"Dale Russakoff managed to get amazing access to the inside story of Mark Zuckerberg’s giant gift to Newark’s schools. And she shows how it all fell apart, derailed and compromised by arrogant reformers, ambitious politicians, and short-sighted special interests. An essential history of the modern education-reform movement, both infuriating and inspiring."
