Check out the YouTube station for Seattle’s performance investigators Credible Threat, who allied with Code Pink’s Stolen Beauty project have busted Nordstrom’s “social responsibility policies” wide open with a new video, published three days ago and titled, MUD IS A GRAY AREA: Talking with Nordstrom about Ahava and Occupation.

Ahava is a cosmetics line that uses mud sourced from the occupied territories in the West Bank. Nordstrom sells the line.

Many of the quotations in the video are taken from documents at the Stolen Beautywebsite, including documentation from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.

And check out “Nordstrom Cares” and “Nordstrom’s approach”(pdf’s)

We decided to narrow our focus to four key areas as they pertain to our business. We call them our “pillars”: Supporting Communities, Sustaining the Environment, Protecting Human Rights, and Caring for Our People.

……..

We’ve worked with fantastic vendors who support social and environmental initiatives, and we have empowered our employees to turn their ideas for doing great things to reduce our environmental footprint or support the community into realities. We’ve made great progress—but we know we still have much more to do.

Hmm, more than a few cracks in those pillars!

I recommend more of Credible Threat’s series, under the heading “They Really Said That.” These include Palestine for Beginners Part One, Roots of Conflict, Part Two, Occupation, Human Rights and U.S. Tax Dollars, Part Three, Issues, Obstacles, Futures. And especially Planning the Nakba, an audio performance video composed of quotes from Ilan Pappe’s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.