Skin-Lightener for Women’s Private Parts Sparks Controversy
April 17, 2012 by admin
Filed under News Stories
April 18, 2012
Time
By Alexandra Sifferlin
“As if people don’t have enough to be self conscious about, the company behind ‘Intimate Wash’ are pretty much telling telling women they aren’t perfect enough. Not to mention the health dangerous of using this stuff.” –KTRN
A TV commercial for the skin-lightening product, Clean and Dry “Intimate Wash,” promises Indian women protection, “fairness” and freshness down there.
The ad depicts an unsatisfied young wife concerned that her husband is more interested in his daily paper than in her, presumably — as the ad would have you believe — because her vagina is too dark. But after a quick wash with the pH-balanced skin-lightening cleanser, the couple is frolicking on the furniture with renewed lust.
Not surprisingly, the ad and the product have started a media storm both in India and in the U.S. Jezebel deemed the product “insane” and Mumbai Boss writer Deepanjana Pal noted:
It’s interesting that according to the ads we see on TV, whitening is a problem that is increasingly faced by women who are modern and independent.
Nowadays, the person who needs fair skin is the woman who wants a job, the athlete who wins a tournament, the consummate professional that stands on her own two feet. The woman in a sari, on the other hand, appears in the advertisement for a moisturiser that promises softer skin. It’s almost as though we’re so uncomfortable with the idea of a liberated, independent woman that we feel the need to slip a few insecurities into her psyche. Preferably something that reminds a woman that no matter how short her shorts are or how good she is at her job, she is ultimately an object, something that men and other women see and judge.
Tracking You in Buses?
July 23, 2010 by admin
Filed under News Stories
July 23, 2010
Gulf News
By: Habib Toumi
Parents will get a text message every time the pupil gets on or off the vehicle on the way to or from school.
Manama An Indian school in Qatar will in September implement a high-tech solution that will enable administrators and parents to monitor students’ use of the school buses. The decision was made following the tragic death of a kindergarten student in May after she was left in a locked minivan for hours.
Called Automated Child Tracking System (ACTS), the state-of-the-art monitoring system will be adopted by Birla Public School when the school reopens after the summer vacation, officials said.
“We have been working on this system for quite some time so children can be monitored to ensure their security and safety,” A K Shrivastava, the school principal, said, quoted by Qatari daily The Peninsula.
A Qatar-based IT solutions provider, iNet Middle East, will implement the automated Radio Frequency Identification (Rfid)-based student tracking system in the school’s buses. iNet uses a combination of Rfid, GPS (Global Positioning System) and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) technologies.
Rfid is an automatic identification system that enables data to be transmitted by a portable device, called tag, read by an Rfid reader and processed according to the needs of a particular application. All the buses of BPS will be equipped with Rfid readers and each student will be given an Rfid card that incorporates GPS and GPRS technologies, with all the student’s particulars printed on it, the daily said.
The parents, through the technology, will get a text message every time the student gets on or off the bus on the way to school or home. Alert messages will also be sent to the school authorities.“This technology will give peace of mind not only to the parents but also to us,” said Shrivastava, adding parents had been consulted with regard to the scheme and they had given positive feedback.
Sunil Nair, iNet manager, said the application software displays a real-time view of the location of the bus as well as the student inside the bus at any time.
The text messages would be very specific. “For instance, if a child is still inside the bus five minutes after the vehicle’s engine is turned off, a text message will be sent to the school authorities,” he said. ACTS will be introduced in a phased manner and the school will in September launch Phase 1 that covers KG I, KG II, Class I and Class II students.
Bomber Linked To CIA-Controlled Terror Group
May 6, 2010 by admin
Filed under News Stories
May 6, 2010
Prison Planet
By Paul Joseph Watson
A man arrested in Pakistan in connection with the Times Square car bombing attempt who had traveled with accused bomber Faisal Shahzad is a member of a terrorist organization that is controlled by British MI6 and the CIA.
Sheik Mohammed Rehan, who was arrested on Tuesday in Karachi, “Allegedly drove with Shahzad from Karachi to Peshawar on July 7, 2009, in a pickup truck, authorities said. They returned to Karachi July 22. It is not known why they went to Peshawar and whether they met with anyone there,” reports the L.A. Times.
Rehan is a member of the militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad, a terrorist organization that came to prominence in the mid-1990’s and has been involved in attacks in the disputed Kashmir border region between India and Pakistan. The group also helped carry out the December 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament which brought India and Pakistan to the brink of nuclear war, tensions that proved very lucrative for British and American arms manufacturers who sold weapons to both sides.
“The December 2001 terrorist attacks on the Indian parliament — which contributed to pushing India and Pakistan to the brink of war — were conducted by two Pakistan-based rebel groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad, both of which are covertly supported by Pakistan’s ISI,” writes Michel Chossudovsky. “Needless to say, these ISI-supported terrorist attacks serve the geopolitical interests of the US. They not only contribute to weakening and fracturing the Indian Union, they also create conditions which favor the outbreak of a regional war between Pakistan and India.”
Jaish-e-Muhammad, the group now emerging in connection with the Times Square incident, was founded by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the 9/11 bagman who delivered $100,000 from the United Arab Emirates to Mohammed Atta at the behest of General Mahmud Ahmed, then head of the ISI. Mahmud Ahmed, the man who ordered Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh to bankroll the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, was meeting with Republican Congressman Porter Goss and Democratic Senator Bob Graham in Washington DC on the morning of 9/11. In the days before and after the attack, Ahmed also met with CIA Head George Tenet as well as current Vice-President Joe Biden, then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In a report on Jaish-e-Muhammad’s involvement in the murder of Daniel Pearl, who was investigating the ISI, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reported that the Pakistani government, “Believe that Saeed Sheikh’s power comes not from the ISI, but from his connections with our own CIA.”
