Summer 2014 Part 3

International News



We are learning more about the Nigerian situation. There is more to the violence in Nigeria than what the mainstream media is showing. I express sympathy to the mothers and fathers who are missing their precious daughters. More than 200 schoolgirls being abducted is a huge tragedy. The viral spread of the "#BringBackOurGirls" campaign has cast a spotlight on a terrible crime and horrific social conditions in a long-neglected part of the world. Now, we should not use this event as a means to support militarist actions that benefit the Nigerian ruling class and the world’s imperial powers at all. That will make the violence and injustice worse. Boko Haram is a theocratic terrorist group. The families of the victims have every right to protest in Nigeria’s capital city of Abuja at the end of April 2014. The abductions came in the northern Nigeria town of Chibok. The U.S. and British government will assist the Nigerian government in their operations against Boko Haram. The Nigerian government of President Goodluck Jonathan bears some responsibility in this affair. He has used violence in Northern Nigeria. He has delayed in responding to this tragedy. We should support the working and all other peoples of Nigeria, who struggled against tyranny. Multinational corporations and powerful government benefit from the injustice in Nigeria. Boko Haram has killed Christians and males too. Last week, the purported leader of the group, Abubakar Shekau, took responsibility for the abductions in Chibok whose age ranged as young as 9. We know that the Nigerian security forces have been killing, torturing, illegally detaining, and raping civilians according to the June 2013 Nigeria’s own National Human Rights Commission report.

Some Nigerian government forces are killing people without making a difference between militants and innocents. Africa is filled with U.S. military bases using covert and overt operations in Africa. Nigeria has big economic inequality. Many Western multinational companies have exported oil from Nigeria and caused environmental destruction too. As the Nigerian-American writer Teju Cole wrote on Twitter, "Terrorism is not a natural disaster." Nigeria's history of colonial exploitation and the plundering of the country's natural resources by multinational corporations set the stage for "[c]riminal negligence by successive Nigerian governments [that] created ideal conditions for Boko Haram," Cole wrote. Nigeria’s government policies must be challenged. The solution is for the girls to be found via non-imperialist international means. Also, grassroots people in Nigeria have the right to confront poverty wages, unemployment, government repression, and sectarian divisions. This situation in Nigeria has grown, because of poverty, economic inequality, various political policies, and other things. Boko Haram is a reactionary, theocratic group of people whose actions are reprehensible. The paradox is that also there has been corruption in the Nigerian government too and this situation is more complex than what is shown by the mainstream media. There is also market fundamentalism (or neoliberal policies) that have harmed poor Nigerians. Massive income inequality and structural violence must be addressed in Nigeria. There can be international involvement to help this crisis (as a means to rescue the missing), but we have to be careful that international help is not used to promote Western imperial interests. We know about Africom, etc. Nigerian President Goodluck has been disgraceful in how he has handled this situation. Communities in Nigeria have every right to defend themselves and protect their families from evil people. Also, in the long term, the community leaders, religious leaders, ordinary people, etc. in Nigeria should further work together in addressing the political and economic problems in Nigeria. We all want the girls and any kidnapped person returned home and this situation is not an easy situation. These human beings are our people. We share black African heritage. These kidnapped human beings certainly deserve respect and dignity.


There has been the mainstream media dealing with the release of the POW Bowe Bergdahl. Many in the corporate media have shown propaganda and the reactionary conceptions about this incident. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and his father have been vilified by reactionary forces. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was released in May 31 in Afghanistan in a prisoner exchange with Taliban members. Some want Bergdahl to be killed by a firing squad since they accuse him of desertion. The column (form the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday) quoted Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice: “Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.” Many of former members of his platoon in Afghanistan accuse Bergdahl of desertion. Many reactionary forces in the Republican Party are against him too. They include people like: Richard Grenell, a former aide to then-US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, who went on to work in 2012 for the Mitt Romney presidential campaign, has been identified as the main go-between for the former soldiers and their media publicists. Some media reports have quoted snippets of email message sent by Bergdhal to his parents. This was during the months before his capture by the Taliban. They outline his increasing disillusionment with the war in Afghanistan. There are long extracts of these emails shown in the June 21, 2012 issue of Rolling Stone. The title of the article is, “America’s Last Prisoner of War.” Bowe apparently reached the breaking point on June 25, 2009, after a young officer he knew and liked was killed by a roadside bomb. Two days later he wrote his parents,

“... I am ashamed to even be American. The horror of the self-righteous arrogance that they thrive in. It is all revolting.” “I am sorry for everything here,” he continued. “These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live.” Referring to a particularly gruesome incident he had witnessed, he added, “We don't even care when we hear each other talk about running their children down in the dirt streets with our armored trucks.”

Later, Bergdahl left his unit. He had only a knife and he apparently wanted to walk to Pakistan or China. He was soon captured by insurgents. According to the Rolling Stone account, he escaped at least once, in August or September 2011, but was recaptured. He has been smeared as being responsible for the deaths of American soldiers, because supposedly they were searching for him in eastern Afghanistan (and ran into IEDs or Taliban ambushes). Wednesday’s New York Times, however, in a front-page report citing evidence from the Afghanistan war logs leaked to WikiLeaks by Army private Chelsea Manning, acknowledged that there was no evidence of a connection between these deaths and Bergdahl. Perhaps the most apt response came from Thomas Ricks, former Washington Post reporter and author of several books on the Iraq war, who wrote on Twitter, “Re Bergdahl: If we’re trying people for causing the deaths of soldiers, I know of a lot of people more culpable than a depressed private.” Many Western political leaders are responsible for the deaths of folks in the war on terror. We see that the campaign against Bergdahl is used as a means to counter his accurate anti-war views. His views represent majority American opinion. The mainstream media continues to support the criminal and neo-colonial character of the war on terror. This situation ignores the war crimes done in our name in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries. As far as the media apologists for imperialism are concerned, a soldier who is horrified by crimes against humanity and refuses to participate in them is a criminal, while those who obediently carry out atrocities are heroes. It should be recalled that the defense of “just carrying out orders” was flatly repudiated by the Nuremberg Tribunal into the crimes of the Nazis during World War II. So, we should end this war on terror, so even greater crimes will not exist.

There is obviously a crisis in Iraq. The Sunni militia group called ISIS has overrun Mosul. Mosul is Iraq’s second largest city with a population of about 2 million human beings. ISIS is an offshoot of Al-Qaeda. They are using a massive offensive in Iraq. They took Tikrit or the hometown of the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Also, they have taken other towns on the Tigris River valley. They seek to travel into Baghdad. The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has thrown Iraqi Special Forces units along with volunteers raised form the Shia population into a defensive line north of the capital in hopes of breaking the ISIS advance. America is beginning to evacuate thousands of its military and intelligence contractors who are deployed in Iraq. There are numerous discussions about what to do about the giant U.S. embassy in Baghdad as well. It is the largest embassy on Earth. This even is a huge debacle and the entire policy of Iraq originated with the Bush administration (including far back to the early 20th century). The Obama administration has continued the Bush policy on Iraq in similar ways as well. The crisis (if not ended) could cause Iraq to go into a total sectarian civil war. We already have the bloody civil war in Syria, which has been provoked by the West and its allies. Two and a half years ago, Washington needed massive occupation and war in Iraq. The Iraq caused the deaths of one million Iraqis and thousands of Americans. The Middle East region is threatened by this new Iraqi conflict. “I don’t rule out anything,” President Barack Obama said Thursday in response to White House reporters’ question about a potential US military response to the ISIS offensive. Describing the crisis in Iraq as an “emergency situation,” the US president said that it was clear that the Iraqi regime of President Nouri Maliki is “going to need more help.”

The White House has responded that they are open to U.S. air bombardments and drone missile strikes. The White House also has pledged to send shipments (of Hellfire missiles along with millions of rounds of small arms ammunition, thousands of tank rounds, grenades, machine guns and assault rifles) to the Iraqi military. These armaments will not come until a few weeks from now. The Iraqi army has deserted in many cases after fighting ISIS. Some have even discarded their uniforms as a means to flee the Islamist radical guerillas. The U.S. military has spent 25 billion dollars and nearly a decade to train the Iraqi military. There are 2,000-3,000 ISIS fighters. Many videos show ISIS fighters having hundreds if not thousands of soldiers taken prisoner. The U.S. occupation caused the Maliki regime to exist. There is a national state of emergency in Iraq. Some ISIS forces have set up ex-Baathist officers as heads of local government in areas of Iraq. Iraq has sectarian issues. There are divisions between Sunnis and Shia. Both sides have innocent people who have been murdered. Maliki has wrongly treated all political opposition in Sunni areas as terrorism, even peaceful protests. Maliki has called the struggle against ISIS as holy war, which inflames tensions between Sunnis and Shias. The Kurdish military force, the peshmerga, has taken control of all of the city of Kirkuk in northeastern Iraq after the Iraqi military melted away there too. The city, which is a key center of Iraq’s oil industry, is divided between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen, but the Kurdish movement has always claimed it as its capital. US occupation authorities forced the peshmerga to relinquish control of Kirkuk after they took it during the 2003 invasion and afterwards opposed any joining of the city to the nearby autonomous Kurdish region. Turkey and Iran has threatened to intervene in Iraq over the actions of ISIS. Turkey doesn’t like its Turkish people kidnapped and Iran has Shia links to Iraq. Unconfirmed reports mention that Iraq has sent an unit of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force into Iraq to assist in the struggle against ISIS and has beefed up military forces on the Iraqi border. This situation is a product of the evils of imperialism. U.S. imperialists claim to support Maliki in Iraq against ISIS, but similar Al-Qaeda forces are supported by the West via proxy in Syria. ISIS is called a terrorist organization by Washington, but some of these same forces are fighting in Syria to cause regime change. The terrorism done by ISIS and Western imperialists both should be condemned. The actions of ISIS & imperialists only harm the region causing more ethnic and religious strife.

Health Part 4


It is very important to advance health in our world. The development of human health in a positive direction leads to the improvement ourselves mentally, spiritually, physically, and emotionally. In this generation, more human beings are taking exercise seriously. We all know about the benefits of exercise. Each human being is unique, so unique forms of exercise are definitely fine for people to embrace. It is important to reiterate the following information. All of us as human beings have equal value. Regardless of our phenotype or size, we are deserving of dignity and respect. The precious value found in every human ought to be greatly appreciated and those who disrespect a person unfairly in a vicious way are completely wrong. That is why health and exercise development are used to build up humanity. They should never be used to demonize a person or shame an individual. Exercise deals with love and real love transcends backgrounds and boundaries. When we help our neighbor, we help ourselves because all are enriched when one human being is blessed.

There are enumerable benefits of Vitamin D in the world. Vitamin D is necessary for the betterment of our human health in general. Giving 20 minutes twice a week of sun is fine. Yet, getting the Vitamin D that we need is complicated in life. Vitamin D is not technically a vitamin. It is a pre-hormone that is created when the human skin is exposed to sunlight. It is the only human nutrient that is created from sunlight. This action is similar to the actions of a plant using the sun to execute photosynthesis. Vitamin D is related to Nature. It is a great immune system booster. It has been found to be protective against osteoporosis, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer, and other cancers. Vitamin D can improve the human mood, fight depression, improve memory, and increase problem solving abilities. Inadequate levels may contributes to the blues many people feel in the winter. It is wild that it has been estimated that 80-90 percent adults in North America are vitamin D deficient. Wearing too much sunscreen according to expert Deane Alban can cause Vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D1 to Vitamin D5 are important. These are vitamin supplements. Also, we can get tested if we are Vitamin D deficient or not.

We know now that eating nuts can fight heart disease and lower cancer risks. Nuts are very plentiful in the world. It has been used as a snack and a regular part of the human diet. It is inexpensive and easy to pack up for traveling. Nuts are very diverse too. There is more, recent research that documents the benefits of eating nuts too. The New England Journal of Medicine published a study recently. It showed how well that nuts can protect a person’s health. People who ate just one serving of nuts each day had a significantly reduced incidence of heart disease. In fact, adding a daily dose of nuts resulted in a close to 30% lower risk of heart disease. Also, over the course of the study, those people who ate nuts on a daily basis were 20% less likely to die of any cause compared to those who did not eat nuts. Three esteemed medical institutions -- Harvard Medical School, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital -- charted the results of two studies in an effort to correlate a connection between nut consumption and increased health benefits. The Health Professionals' Follow-up Study followed 42,000 men over the course of 25 years, while the Nurses' Health Study followed 76,000 women for more than 30 years. Every few years, participants in both studies filled out surveys with questions detailing their lifestyle choices including their diets. The researchers not only found that people who ate a serving of nuts daily had a 29% reduction in the amounts of deaths from heart disease. There was also a reduction in deaths from cancer. These deaths fell about 11%. A servicing size of nuts is about the same amount that is available in a bag of nuts purchased from a vending machine. The researchers also discovered that people who often ate a serving of nuts each day also tended to be healthier than those who did not include nuts in their regular diets. They outlined that the eaters of nuts were more likely to be thinner, be nonsmokers, consumer healthy foods regularly and engage in exercise regularly than those people who did not ear nuts. There are all factors that could influence the death and disease rates of the study participants, but the researchers used statistical methods to remove the other factors. The researchers found that the type of nut did not influence the results. Participants benefited from eating nuts whether they consumed peanuts or one of the varieties of tree nuts. Tree nuts are considered to be cashews, almonds, pistachios, walnuts and pecans. Because nuts can be high in calories, the FDA recommends limiting their consumption to 1.5 ounces each day.


By Timothy