International News

U.S. troops have been secretly deployed to Somalia since 2007. About 120 American soldiers are on the ground inside Somalia. U.S. officials admitted this week in statements to the Reuters news agency. The Pentagon had publicized a small deployment of advisers to Somalia in October of 2013, but the presence of the larger force (there since 2007 was still being kept secret). By January of 2014, AFRICOM (or the U.S. Africa Command) admitted the presence of U.S. troops in Somalia, but claimed that the number was lower than five. BBC International correspondent Mark Doyle wrote in an article this week that he personally saw heavily armed and “clearly operational” U.S. troops during a recent visit to Somalia. Reuters made the U.S. presence public. This was admitted in the wake of a speech by an U.S. government official (not as a result of investigative journalism or a leak from someone critical of the secret, illegal U.S. military deployment). The U.S. government official who admitted this is named Wendy Sherman (or the undersecretary of state for political affairs). She publicly declared that a “small contingent of US military personnel” including special operations forces had been present in parts of Somalia for several years. The news agency then contacted other US officials to get the actual number of troops involved. None of the mainstream American television networks have reported on the direct involvement of U.S. forces in Somalia. Newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post have repeatedly sent correspondents to Somalia over the past seven years without ever reporting the presence of a significance force of US military personnel. The Post actually published an extensive profile of US military operations in Africa, largely involving Special Forces, that made no mention of the Somalia force. The deployment of a significant number of trainers and advisers like Special Forces soldiers for years without any massive public disclosure does cause questions to come up. People want to know if other deployments have existed in the past decade. How many new secret wars will the president and his top appointees decide to launch during the next year? This reality exposes the fallibility of bourgeois democracy in America. There is an emerging autocrat system found in the executive branch (and all levels of government). It is wrong to have deployments made in secret and never be revealed until years after the fact. The executive branch claims for itself and exercises the right to deploy military and intelligence forces anywhere on the planet, admitting no check on this authority. We know that many Western forces are fighting the Al-Sabaab terrorist militia group. This group came from the ICU or the Islamic Courts Union. U.S. Special Forces mounted a raid against the Al Shabaab in the stronghold city of Barawe. The U.S. officials said that the U.S. army will prepare more engagement with the Somalia National Army or the SNA. At least $170 million in U.S. military aid came about in this situation. US forces are already involved in training and equipping armies from Uganda and Burundi affiliated with AMISOM, the African Union’s military mission in Somalia. Somalia is found in the Horn of Africa and U.S. imperialism wants to dominate Somalia. Somalia is near sea lanes and huge oil resources flow in the region daily. The EU is training local armies in Somalia too. The CIA has a new base in its capital city of Mogadishu according to reports. The imperialists blame Al-Shabaab for the situation in Somalia, but the country has suffered by coups, interventions, and other issues long before Al-Shabaab existed. The U.S. in 1993 sent 30,000 troops in Somalia and they left after the Battle of Mogadishu (and hundreds of Somalis were killed). The U.S. backed an Ethiopian led invasion of Somalia back in 2006. This caused a war between the TFG or the Transitional Federal Government and the ICU that killed at least 16,700 civilians and displaced 1.9 million more.


There is the human cost of the FIFA World Cup. People are protesting the costs and the human rights violations being committed by the police and security forces as a means for them to protect this corporate investment. Working people in Brazil are against the high public cost of the World Cup, which is estimated at $14 billion. When compared to spending on social services, the cost of the World Cup is equivalent of 61% of funding for education, or 30% of the funding for healthcare. Private companies, including those in the services and construction industries, will be the main beneficiaries of this public money. This cost is made worse by the forced evictions of the poor living in fevalas (or slums) and the dispossession of the indigenous people from their lands, so the corporate elite in Brazil to build stadiums and parking lots. Over 1 million people in Brazil have protested the costs of the World Cup. The cutbacks to social services have increased the costs of social services, it has caused forced evictions, and it has caused other human rights violations. The state security services have cracked down harshly on all anti-FIFA demonstrations across Brazil. There have been at least a dozen or more people killed and hundreds have been arrested. Even on the first day of World Cup, 47 people were arrested. The police also shot rubber bullets at medics helping the wounded. These same state security services have been accused of killing the poor and the homeless including children (as a means for them to get rid of favelas before the start of the World Cup). Brazil has pushed to pass legislation that will criminalize all anti-FIFA protests and terrorism (with 12 to 30 year prison sentences for those convicted). This is fascism. The state have used Israeli drones, 200,000+ troops, German anti-aircraft tanks, rooftop missile defense systems, etc. to protect the World Cup from protesters. It is alleged that the former mercenary company previously known as Blackwater years ago is helping with security for the World Cup. The cost was huge for the 2012 London Olympics too. During the London 2012 Olympics, 10,000 police officers and 13,000 troops, more than all British forces in Afghanistan, along with ships in the Thames, fighter jets, and surface to air missile defense systems, were deployed to protect the $11 billion event. At a time when 2 million are unemployed, 27% of children live in poverty, and austerity budgets are being forced on working people, $11 billion came at a significant cost to working people. Even the Sochi Winter Olympics cost a huge $51 billion when 18 million Russians live in poverty and migrant workers are paid less than 2 dollars an hour to build the necessary infrastructure. In 2022, Qatar will host the FIFA World Cup. Now, hundreds of migrant workers have died working on the World Cup infrastructure. Over 400 Nepalese and 700 Indian workers have been have are already among the casualties. The conditions migrant workers are forced to work in have been compared to slavery. Robert Booth for the Guardian explains: “Workers described forced labour in 50C (122F) heat, employers who retain salaries for several months and passports making it impossible for them to leave and being denied free drinking water. The investigation found sickness is endemic among workers living in overcrowded and insanitary conditions and hunger has been reported. Thirty Nepalese construction workers took refuge in their country’s embassy and subsequently left the country, after they claimed they received no pay.” The International Trade Union Confederate has estimated that 12 workers will die each week and about 4,000 will have died before the event starts. Working people worldwide have fought against the financial and social costs of these international corporate events. We witness millions of people being forced into unemployment and denied their basic needs. We see democracy being eroded, the environment destroyed, and the threat of more war increasing, but we have hope. We will continue to fight for a better future and use hope and action.  


ISIS is having a lot of influence in the civil war found in Iraq. ISIS stands for the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. ISIS wants a caliphate to grow and spread all over the Middle East not just in Syria and Iraq. “The legality of all emirates, groups, states and organizations becomes null by the expansion of the caliph’s authority and the arrival of its troops to their areas,” said Abu Mohamed al-Adnani, spokesman for the fighters formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. “Listen to your caliph and obey him. Support your state, which grows every day.” Al-Qaeda has criticized ISIS as going too far. Al-Qaeda was nurtured by Arabic monarchies and western intelligence agencies (which have funded many extremists before). Some believe that ISIS is independent and others believe that it is not. Regardless, the U.S. strategy for showing its imperial power in the region via armed Islamic fundamentalist surrogates has been complicated. Back in 2011, the West used terrorist surrogates as a means to fight in Libya, Syria, and Iraq. Now, we see more instability in the region. Even the Saudis have to make a decision about the terrorists that they have funded. The Saudis ruled Saudi Arabia via monopolizing wealth and executing human rights violations. ISIS has aspirations of forming an Islamic state with reactionary fervor. When the puppet Mubarak was gone from power via an Arab Spring, more chaos came into Egypt. In Egypt, there is the neoliberal agent Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. H has killed over 2,500 to gain power and then he jailed about 200,000 human beings. Wealthy people from Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia have funded ISIS. ISIS has captured U.S. military equipment too from Humvees, rockets, artillery pieces, and Stinger missiles. Iraqi Prime Minister Nur al-Maliki is a Shiite. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is a Sunni and he is the self-proclaimed leaders of ISIL. ISIS has been demolishing sacred sites such as shrines and mosques around the historic northern city of Mosul in Nineveh province. At least four shrines to Sunni Arab or Sufi figures have been destroyed by the bulldozers, according to AFP. The structures had been built around graves of Muslim saints. Six Shiite mosques have also been destroyed using explosives. So, we should learn about the full truth on ISIS (and how the NIC intelligent report back in 2004 predicted a possible caliphate developing by 2020 via extremists).


There has been war crimes and atrocities committed by Ukraine’s Armed Forces and its National Guard. There are Nazi emblems of the Azov brigade of the Ukraine National Guard, which operates under the auspices of the Ministry of Interior. There is a video that shows the atrocities committed in Eastern Ukraine including the indiscriminate killing of unarmed civilians. This video was put together by the communities in Eastern Ukraine which are the object of the attacks. The mainstream media is silent on the issue. Many of such videos have been censored. We know that the Ukrainian National Guard is supported and financed by the West, which is controlled by Neo-Nazis with Nazi emblems. The Ukrainian Army and the Ukrainian National Guard has committed war crimes. In the media’s coverage of unfolding atrocities directed against civilians in Eastern Ukraine, the words Nazi, Fascist or Neo-Nazi are a taboo. They have been eliminated from the anthology of investigative reporting. The mainstream media by denying the very existence of these crimes against humanity committed by Neo-Nazi military and paramilitary formations on the orders of the Kiev government, which is complicit under the Nuremberg Principles of “crimes against peace.” We are in solidarity with the people of Eastern Ukraine not the puppet, pro-NATO regime in Kiev. We still have the Kiev regime warmongers and fascists on the ground killing innocent civilians. The YouTube video entitled, “Ukraine: Atrocities committed by the US-Supported Ukrainian National Guard” has documented this reality. There was the July 2nd airstrike on Staraya Kondrashovka. It was at first blamed on the rebels by the Ukrainian mainstream media who don’t even have an aircraft. On the 3rd of July, a deputy commander of the Public Relations of the Azov Battalion admitted that the cause of fire was pilot “error.” All of the war crimes committed by Ukrainian government and their punitive battalions are blamed on the rebels. Most of the rebels are local citizens not mercenaries. The Ukrainian military have used provocative military forays in Eastern Ukraine. There are US/EU sanctions against Russia. There is also the continued US/NATO military presence in the Baltics and in Eastern European nations too. Crimea via self-determination has declared with its independence and is reunited with Russia. Crimea is majority ethnically Russian. Eastern Ukraine is more ethnically diverse. There is a high degree of intermarriage of Russians and Ukrainians, with many people having both Russian and Ukrainian heritage. For example, according to one survey, in Donetsk province only 39 percent of the population considers itself Russian but a full 93 percent is Russian speaking; in Luhansk, the numbers are 55 percent and 89 percent, respectively. Ukraine is wrong in an attempt to ban Russian and impose the Ukrainian language. That is why protesters rightfully stood up in Donetsk, Luhansk, and other eastern cities. Anti-Russian fascists are in the current Ukrainian government. I don’t agree with Vladimir Putin on all issues, but I reject reactionary neo-con foreign policies too. People in America are fighting against restrictions on when people can vote. People are fighting restrictions on the type of IDs people can use. People are fighting for economic justice (which people have a God given right to do. Demanding changing is never about whining. That is being strong). When people exercise their democratic rights in a real way, then that should be allowed to happen. Parts of the Voting Rights Act allowing preclearance to be gone is a shame. People ought to be politically independent (I reject following a left/right paradigm. I believe in following truth & sacrosanct wisdom) and realize that we need the general welfare to be protected and defended.


We know that water pollution, air pollution, and soil pollution can create more toxicity within the human body. Unhealthy junk foods and drinks can cause many serious physical and mental issues. Toxins in the body can cause fatigue and weakness, digestive problems, headaches, skin issues, muscle and joint pain, infections, cancers, and other diseases. There are 6 important foods that can detox people and improve human health overall. There is nothing wrong with detoxification at all. Detoxification protects you from diseases caused by the toxins and it improves overall health. We can have a balance in our lives by exercising regularly, quitting smoking (including quitting excessive drinking), and eating healthier foods. One important food deals with an avocado. Avocados have antioxidants including gluthathione (which detoxes the body by transporting the harmful chemicals and toxins outside of it). It has great fiber content, which means that one medium avocado contains about 10g, which helps in detoxification. Garlic can detoxify the body. There is a lot of sulfur in garlic, which can detox food. Sulfur promotes detoxification by increasing production of glutathione, which helps filter toxins and harmful chemical outside from the digestive system (and some other foods with rich sulfur are including eggs, beverages, onions, and nuts). Garlic is a mineral helps fight harmful bacteria and yeast in the intestines as well. Cabbage can detox people. It has sulfur too including glucosinolates (which can break up harmful chemical and toxins including clean them up from our bodies). Cabbage is a great vegetable that provides rich fiber to aid in the digestion process and regulates bowel movements, which helps the human body to get rid of the toxins. Green tea is considered the least processed tea. It has the antioxidant polyphenols, notably a substance called epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), which can help the body get rid of free radicals effectively. And the antioxidants improve liver functions too, which is essential for detoxification. Broccoli is the super cruciferous vegetable contains more calcium than a glass of milk. It has more vitamin C than an orange. It has minerals and vitamins. It is full of antioxidants, which can cleanse the human body. These antioxidants work with the enzymes in your liver to turn toxins into something your body can eliminate easily. Broccoli has a higher level of nutrients and better health value. Raw broccoli is great as well without microwaving it (as it may destroy it detox potential). Beets can boost the body’s cellular intake of oxygen and they are enriched in betaine and pectin, which can protect the human digestive system (and the liver to cleanse the body).


By Timothy