The need for medical marijuana may be a daily need like any other medication and physical or mental withdrawal symptoms may occur when it is not available just like many other medication.
There can be genetic reasons that someone may need an external source of phospholipids or cannabinoids from food sources throughout their lives for best health or the need may arise during an illness or later in life due to changes associated with aging. The cannabinoid system is involved with many other functions of the body so symptoms can be diverse when there is a lack and cravings for something may occur which may be interpreted incorrectly and other substances may be overused in addictive ways. Overeating food, use of alcohol, nicotine and heroin/opiates products may all be problems that occur with an underlying dysfunction in the person’s ability to make cannabinoids internally the way people of normal physiology are capable. I discuss this topic in more detail and include some legal food sources that are naturally better sources of cannabinoids or phospholipids in an section I wrote for my newer website https://effectivecare.info/addiction-or-starvation%3F
which is also copied onto this site with a few additional details about the salad recipe: Is it Addiction or Starvation?
While I am past the age of having babies, and entered grand parent age the need to reschedule marijuana for the purpose of research may be important for the fertility of younger women and men. The cannabinoid system is essential for both female and male fertility, in a U-shape need – too little or too much can be problems. Overuse of medical or recreational marijuana could interfere with fertility but an underlying deficiency could also be a cause of infertility in either gender.
Infertility problems can be caused by a problem with cannabinoid receptors or an excess or inadequate supply of cannabinoids. Research in the cannabinoid system and its effects on physiology beyond toxicity and addiction are limited due to the federal listing of the cannabis/marijuana plant as a Schedule 1 substance, something considered to have no medical value. However the listing is in error and a number of medical officials and organizations have recommended changing the federal listing. An overview of the research that is available on the cannabinoid system’s role in female and male fertility and reproduction is available here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4034092/
The system is involved in the fertilized egg successfully implanting in the woman’s uterus and the cannabinoid system is involved in the male reproductive system in a few ways including the motility of the sperm – are they able to effectively get to where they need to go? A variety of cannabinoids exist and some also have effects on hormonal controls that occur within the brain that effect male reproductive health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4651943/
The balance of cannabinoids is critical and too much use of an external source such as medical marijuana is linked to male infertility, however again a U shape need exists. Some is necessary, too much or too little is a problem.
Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes.
It turns out that there is a greatly increased amount of autoimmune disease in women than in men and the timing suggests that it is associated with pregnancy and possibly even with an exchange of bodily fluids. After learning more about the risks I decided celibacy was a good idea as my own autoimmune disease worsened and I had to start avoiding a wider number of foods and food groups. Eating enough variety for health became a problem for me as animal based meats and eggs were causing severe rashes. Skin is better than a lack, and health is more valuable than you realize until you don’t have it.
In other areas of social or culture some believe that procreation within a marital bond is the only reason to have sexual relations -that is not my belief as sexual relations can have mood and pain relief benefits and regular, three times per week, has been associated with increased lifespan, but it might be healthier for women to maintain a long-term bond with one person, as the familiarity of a longer term relationship seems to be associated with less allergy-like intolerance to male or infant DNA. It also would help reduce risk of autoimmune disease developing if both the man and woman are also adequately nourished. Research into autoimmune rates in homosexual relationships is generally not discussed in the medical research that I have seen. One study was performed which found no overall increased rate of autoimmune disease in same sex couples of either gender except for autoimmune thyroid disease. Low hypothyroid problems were more prevalent in lesbians and autoimmune hyperthyroidism was more frequently seen in homosexual men as was psoriasis in homosexual men who also had HIV/AIDS. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-013-9869-9
Speculation would lead me straight to the idea that sufficient iodine prenatally and/or less halides prenatally would have been associated with an increased rate of heterosexual adults who didn’t have an increased rate of autoimmune thyroid problems, but that would be speculative. Zinc deficiency can also be a cause of reduced sexual drive or ED in adult men or hypogonadism. https://www.healthline.com/health/erectile-dysfunction/zinc Congenital hypothyroidism can occur in infants born to women with inadequate iodine and diagnosis and early treatment is recommended to prevent a reduced IQ. Asexuality is more associated with congenital hypothyroidism than homosexuality so the prevalence of thyroid disorders later in life may be unrelated to the prenatal environment. Early treatment with the thyroid hormone and/or iodine is recommended to prevent worsening of the infant’s mental and physical health. http://www.slhd.nsw.gov.au/rpa/neonatal/content/pdf/guidelines/thyroid.pdf
I have found little research available on long term health of infants born with congenital hypothyroidism or on the affects of iodine deficiency on sexuality.
However the allergic response immune system is similar in both genders. I would encourage consenting adults to have adequate vitamin D3 and/or avoid glyphosate prior to attempting the experience of sharing bodily fluids as autoimmune disease can be very unpleasant. Having adequate iodine and not too much halides is healthy for everyone of any gender and any age, it just would be particularly helpful prenatally as it also helps protect the infant from congenital hypothyroidism and may help protect against later risk of the child developing autism.
An unhealthy man can give a woman autoimmune antibodies which may also increase risk of a miscarriage or reduce likelihood that she conceives/gets pregnant. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3337181 Whether sperm antibodies also can cause autoimmune disease in a woman doesn’t seem to be a search engine result, suggesting that getting women pregnant is a larger medical concern currently than helping women stay healthy. The search engine did turn up an alternative article which mentions that antisperm antibodies can be present in the man or woman. In men the antisperm antibodies were more often found in men who had a vasectomy (suggesting that a vasectomy might be less of an ideal birth control method than it seemed prior to learning that – if it gives mom and dad autoimmune disease than a condom is sounding better for the future child – healthy parents may be happier and more productive on average). In men the antisperm antibodies were associated with infertility if they were present on the sperm cell surface but not if only found in sera/fluid. In women they were associated with infertility and an association with antiphospholipid antibodies was also mentioned without mentioning gender: http://www.whitelotusclinic.ca/blog/dr-fiona-nd/natural-treatments-for-autoimmune-infertility-concerns/
Antiphospholipid antibodies are also associated with spontaneous abortion.
Spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) is associated with autoimmune antibodies against the endogenous cannabinoid system “antiphospholipid antibody (APA)” and thought to be affected by a woman’s lack of the immune tolerance needed to accept the presence of the foreign DNA of the baby. The dendritic cell immune tolerance system is affected by the vitamin D receptor system, and is referred to as “maternofetal immunological tolerance” in the following paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11684-010-0101-y?no-access=true
Providing levothyroxine to women with anti-thyroid autoimmune antibodies has been found to help reduce risk of spontaneous abortion to closer to the average rate for all pregnancies – an overview article of the area of research: https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jtr/2011/841949/
Good news, the rate of teen births has dropped since 2007 after an increase between 2005-2007. The reason is unclear but the article suggests that the downturn in the economy led to fewer unplanned pregnancies in teens – that could be the reason, common sense could have increased on average in teens even while birth control became less available. See page 5-6: Teenage Pregnancy Prevention: Statistics and Programs
by Carmen Solomon-Fears, Congressional Research Service,
January 15, 2016 https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS20301.pdf
Sialic acid is not something you can just eat more of. It is an electrically active sugar that we have to make internally. It is combined with proteins in compounds known as glycoproteins and they are found on cell and membrane surfaces. The negative electric charge helps repel the cell surface from colliding into the membrane surfaces, an example would be like red blood cells in a blood vessel – the sialic acid is the bumpers on the bumper cars and the plastic cushion on the wall of the bumper car ring at a carnival. In order to make the special sugar and glycoproteins we need to be healthy and well nourished in a variety of ways in order to produce adequate sialic acid. A series of enzymes is involved which would suggest adequate protein and trace minerals are important to be able to produce sialic acid and adequate surface glycoproteins. The series of enzymes includes many of the CYP family of enzymes which may be inhibited by glyphosate which returns us to an earlier point that avoiding glyphosate might be important for supporting fertility. https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/genefamily/cytochromep450
An abortion may not be helpful to protect a woman’s health either. Childbirth has been believed to be more of a risk of death than having an abortion but a large study (half a million women) linking medical and death records found that psychological risks may be greater for a woman after abortion, as an increased risk of death was found to be associated with having a history of having had an abortion within a year or thirty year time period. A 180 day time period was also tracked but was not associated with increased mortality rate so a direct medical link to having an abortion was considered unlikely. http://afterabortion.org/2012/higher-death-rates-after-abortion-found-in-u-s-finland-and-denmark/
Individuals are all different but having worked with many women my personal impression was that having an abortion was very difficult psychologically for some women compared to giving a child up for adoption. The easily confounding factor that was mentioned in the article or in one of the comments by a site author (El) would be that women who have little support or health or substance abuse issues may be also more likely to have an abortion so it is a correlation rather than a causative link. The comments also include the citation for the academic paper: Reardon DC, Coleman PK. Short and long term mortality rates associated with first pregnancy outcome: Population register based study for Denmark 1980-2004. Med Sci Monit 2012;18(9):PH 71 – 76.
/Disclosure: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./
I care about others and that is why I worked in a very demanding job for a reasonable but not large salary for my profession and credentials, and why I shared health information online after resigning my demanding job. Good news I thought, about health being obtainable with some attention to neglected nutrients, however it was met with more difficulty than I expected or could ever have imagined, but also with an outpouring of love and support, that was more than I could ever have imagined. I realized that we are a very divided nation, and so I’ve continued to try to share the good news that health can be obtained – with a lot of effort and a very restricted diet in the current food climate.
Whether standard or “health” foods our modern food supply has too many negative chemicals and not as many nutrients as food would have contained prior to about 1950-1985. Modern humans are no longer built out of the same ingredients that we once were. Toxins have been found in most people and types of body fluids that have been sampled in some areas/some research. Many things are not tested for however and that lack of testing is not shared.
Today 12% of women aged 15-44 (the range considered of childbearing age) have sought fertility services – 7.3 million women. Of the 15-44 year old group of women 6.7% are considered infertile and 12.1% are considered to have impaired fecundity (–> dictionary “fecundity” ~ the ability of females to produce great numbers of offspring – or ideas – or for the planet’s level of fruitfulness and fertility). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/infertility.htm
The average rate of childbirth has dropped fairly rapidly and in most areas of the U.S.. Other nations are also seeing a reduction in childbirth rates and have had some success with changes in policy to be more supportive of childbearing but even those have had limited success in increasing average rate of childbirth. https://medium.com/migration-issues/the-great-baby-bust-of-2017-2f63907402fc
Pesticide residue in produce has been linked to a reduced likelihood of becoming pregnant when using fertility treatments and a 26% lower liklihood of delivering a live birth. The study compared women who ate 2 to 6 servings of commercially grown produce with low pesticide residue produce. Increased risk was associated with increasing number of servings of the commercially grown produce. Organic produce may be a safer source of nutrients for prenatal health. https://www.medpagetoday.com/endocrinology/infertility/68977
An overview of a theory regarding glyphosate, is available here: https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/environmental-toxins/glyphosate-in-collagen/. Glyphosate is an artificially produced amino acid analogue that is being used as an herbicide on many crops. It is chemically so similar to the amino acid glycine that it may be incorporated directly into protein structures in plants, animals and humans.
I share information because I’m concerned about individual and planetary fecundity. As a health professional I trusted that my recommendations were based on adequate research, however once I resigned and I had more time to look into the background information I was very dismayed to find out that much of the nutrient guidelines are based on very old research or research that seems skewed by corporate or political goals or lack of common sense. Medical research in the for-profit industry is skewed towards finding a way to hijack a step in physiology and substitute a pharmaceutical medication that modifies a symptom or lab test slightly more than a placebo.
The worse news is that the placebo isn’t necessarily no treatment but may be a comparison of the ingredients of the test substance that are considered inert/inactive, however they may not be safe either. A better comparison would be the test substance or treatment compared to no treatment or just whatever dietary and lifestyle recommendations that are part of the standard treatment for the experimental condition.
Roundup is an herbicide that contains glyphosate but it also contains other ingredients that are considered inactive/inert and safety tests are primarily only done and only required to have been performed on the glyphosate. Studies have not been required to continue for an entire animal’s lifespan in the U.S. or for a few generations. I recently learned that generational research was performed elsewhere.
The rate of infertility and spontaneous abortions has increased in a variety of animal species in the wild and raised domestically for the food industry. A new infectious pathogen has also been identified that is more prevalent in animals raised with more Roundup Ready GMO foods in their diet. “The pathogen is also found in the fungal causative agent of SDS (Fusarium solani fsp glycines).” http://farmandranchfreedom.org/letter-dr-huber-roundup-animal-miscarriage-infertility/ However that research claim has not been followed up by more substantiated work in peer reviewed journals. He mentions a specific pathogen that includes the word glycines – more recent research suggests a risk that glyphosate is being incorporated into proteins in place of glycine. That is a wild card scenario that nature never experienced in such quantity. We as humans are unlikely to have any idea what differences might occur in a pathogen that is formed with glyphosate in the place of glycine within proteins.
Tests to detect the DNA of a pathogen based on it containing glycine might not detect the pathogen if it is present but made with glyphosate in the place of glycine. The following article discusses testing for the presence of the Fusarium solani fsp glycines pathogen and failing to do so when preliminary tests suggesting that it would be found were positive. See the discussion section regarding the PCR assay that was developed for the study: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-3059.2003.00797.x/full
Prions are an infectious protein that does not contain DNA or RNA but which can infect humans and animals and be replicated by the infected cells. Brain damage can be a long term result that causes physical symptoms of loss of muscle control. An active section of the prion does contain several molecules of glycine. https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/recent-research-advances-in-the-glycinexxxglycine-motif-of-mammalian-prion-proteins-2167-0501.1000e151.php?aid=24132 So in an environment/food supply where glycine was in limited supply and glyphosate was prevalent it is possible that prions might occur that are different in structure and activity because they were built with the similarly shaped molecules of glyphosate instead of glycine.
If pathogens exist that are actually other types of pathogens but which were formed with glyphosate instead of glycine, we don’t know what they might be capable of doing because they would be brand new. Canadian research suggested there is an increased risk for Fusarium infection in glyphosate crops. https://www.organicconsumers.org/old_articles/ge/monsanto121503.php
If we impair the base of the food chain than all species who eat those smaller species will also be at risk of lack of food if not also being at risk of impaired health and fecundity due to the toxins in the environment. If we raise our domesticated animals who are used directly for human food on crops that contain increased amounts of a toxin than we are also increasing our own intake of the potential toxin.
Humans are intelligent but are we also wise?
/Guidance that might be helpful to avoid negative effects of glyphosate – supplemental vitamin D3, coQ10, and trace minerals may help and bathing or soaking in magnesium sulfate salt (Epsom salt) for about 20 minutes every few days. The skin’s ability to make bioactive sulfate and vitamin D may be impaired by glyphosate. To avoid the glyphosate itself – choose as much organically grown ingredients as you can afford. Organic foods used in dietary change research has shown a reduction in the body’s load of toxins before the dietary switch was made. – a summary, use at your own risk as the standard recommendation is that standard food is fine for promoting health for everyone.
/Disclosure: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./
During the Blitzkreig bombing of the United Kingdom between 1940-1941 over 30000 tons of explosives were dropped on sixteen cities from German airplanes. The bombs included chemicals designed to increase risk of long burning fires. Over 40000 people lost their lives and many buildings were destroyed.
Our current and previous administration in the United States have been responsible for drone bombing in seven countries. In just the first seven months of 2017 the current administration has increased the amount of drone bombing from the previous years.
Airwaves is an independent group that has been tracking the number of bombs dropped by the US and the number they provide is a larger number than the official count released by the U.S.. Almost 11000 in the first three months of 2017 with an increased percentage of civilian deaths. The number of deaths is lower than during the Blitzkreig however we aren’t officially at war either. http://www.mintpressnews.com/us-coalition-dropped-nearly-11000-munition-on-iraq-syria-last-month/226995/
My concern for history and the future is linked because if we don’t learn from the past we are more likely to repeat mistakes and bombing civilians and countries that we aren’t even at war with is a big one, and costly. The Department of Defense has misplaced where $6.5 trillion was spent in the Army budget alone over the last couple of decades. Other money was spent to produce top-secret fake Al Queda propaganda and fake news stories designed to seem like Arabic television to make the group seem more negative than it was – at the time. Between 2006 and 2011 $660 million was paid to a publicity firm in the U.K. to produce the top-secret film footage. Fake atrocities – paid for by U.S. taxpayers to scare U.S. taxpayers and the rest of the world – just who are the terrorists in that story?
Eight other news stories that didn’t get much press attention are highlighted in an end of year summary by an organization that fights censorship by looking for the stories that were suppressed. Free speech isn’t just about what journalists are allowed to say but also about what they aren’t allowed to say. The Nazi’s burned books and controlled the media. I’ve been following alternative news sources and was aware there was suspicion that news was being faked about atrocities. I was not aware of the lack of audits in the military or missing $6.5 trillion from the Army budget. The other eight stories I was familiar with though – pay attention online and it is amazing what you can learn.
A synopsis:
Lead is poisoning children in Flint but is also an infrastructure and soil contaminant in many many urban areas.
The missing $6.5 Trillion from the Army budget and lack of audit, or expectation that the military be audited in the same way that other government agencies are expected (been there, done that – inventories are an annual task.)
The fake news about Al Queda and fake Arabic TV for $660 million.
Voter suppression during the 2016 election occurred in many places by making it more difficult for people to register to vote or to have been taken off the list of registered voters.\
Micro-targeting of voters during the 2016 election was performed for the Trump campaign with the help of modern social media advertising techniques, with assistance from social media staff. News of this has surfaced only recently.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria are gaining ground on human’s ability to create new more effective antibiotics – we may be unable to cure pneumonia or other diseases as easily as we were over the last few decades. Microbes evolve quickly. We have only been using antibiotics since the 1928 (Fleming, penicillin).
The U.S. Navy is killing or injuring large numbers of marine wildlife due to torpedoes, Sonar testing and other underwater devices and air to surface missiles.
The U.S. is the only developed nation in the world with an increasing rate of maternal mortality – more women are dying from childbirth or pregnancy than in previous years. Inadequate rural care and an increased rate of African American women dying is thought to be driving the increase. African American women are 3 to 4 times more likely to die from pregnancy related causes than white women. (Pre-eclampsia isn’t mentioned but it can be life threatening and is more of a risk for African American women than for other racial or ethnic groups. Differences in the average shape of the pelvis bone and less intra-abdominal space within an African American woman may be involved. Magnesium foods may help reduce the risk and spending time daily during the last few months in a knee-chest position that helps relieve intra-abdominal pressure may help reduce risk. Treating people individually instead of as a total group average might help – if individualizing health care based on individual differences seems racist then I don’t understand the word. Why would anyone want health care recommendations that were developed to help someone with a completely different body structure or different type of metabolism from their own? The best health recommendations for one person might not help another or might harm them. The kidneys of African Americans seems to be better at conserving calcium, which also wastes more magnesium. Magnesium deficiency can increase risk of hypertension and diabetes and pre-eclampsia and many other conditions.)
The DNC political party was sued regarding apparent rigging of the primaries in favor of one candidate and the lawyers representing the DNC argued that neutrality is not required by the charter. The group could feasibly just pick a candidate and not have a primary at all according to the legal argument.
The internet was shutdown due to hacking or political intervention more in 2016 than ever before. Internet slowdowns were found to be associated with atrocities and political events as possibly a national attempt to quell protest or limit communication during sensitive times.
Knowledge is painful but being uninformed may be life threatening.
Palestine lost World War II and the rest of the world is losing this current non-war. Every bomb is adding to global pollution and adding to the risk of birth defects in humans and animals. In some areas of the Middle East the rate of birth defects at some places and at some points of time reached 50%. Is that something the Nazi’s did to the United Kingdom with the Blitzkreig bombs? No. Whatever chemicals that were used to promote more fire risk didn’t add a nuclear radiation signature to the soil and air quality.
U.S. bombing is going to kill in slower ways than the Blitzkreig bombs, and likely will affect birth defect rates for a long time. My suggestion was help clean up and repair the soil and people with healing plants.
I’ve written about Zionism and the difference from anti-Zionism and have been called a Nazi for it, but Albert Einstein was a Jew at a time when Palestine was still a free country and he was an anti-Zionist. I am happy to stand with Albert Einstein. My children are 1/4 Jewish, I have nothing against Jewish individuals or groups. However I am very much against segregation and apartheid like laws. Diversity is beautiful and natural and Zionism isn’t diverse – it is about special treatment for one group at the expense of many other groups. The Middle East and Europe are disrupted and terror groups have been increasing in the Philippines and Bangladesh.
When will enough land for one group of people be enough?
Many people were anti-Zionists at the time preceding and during WWII. Taking another nation to give to a different group of people is not fair to the people who farmed the land for a thousand years – in some cases. If the European Jews had lived in the area of Palestine it had been over 1000 years prior, not in recent history.
Being for fair treatment of all groups is not racist or anti-Semitic. The current and past treatment of Arabs, Christians and Semitic Jews (non-European Jews who were living in the area of Palestine) has not been very equal compared to the way the European Jews were and are treated in modern day Israel.
It was wrong to treat black South Africans differently than white South Africans and it is wrong for Israel to be 90% segregated – that may be the wrong word but if 90% of the citizens are all the same religion or ethnicity than it seems applicable.
Persecution and humiliation tactics are commonly used against minorities or groups that are in a minority in that area. The technique may promote a feeling of pleasure in those participating as it may increase levels of dopamine but so would gratitude and friendliness. The humiliation tactic may increase risk of retaliation though in observers of the persecution of someone who they may feel similar to.
Other research supports the premise that humiliation tactics may increase violence if not against the oppressor than possibly it may take the form of increased domestic violence or violence against some other person who is in vulnerable position compared to the oppressor or the persecuted person: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233332514_Humiliation_Self-Esteem_and_Violence
Even worse than laws that segregate or give limited supplies of water or energy to some areas are the unspoken policies by the U.S. and Israel to support radical groups sometimes on both opposing sides in the hopes that the two forces would keep each other in check. Arming two opposing radical groups leaves civilians unprotected in the middle.
And a more recent overview of the U.S. and Israeli involvement in the buildup of terrorist groups and actions; includes many links to other articles, and a graphic by Occupy London showing the number of countries Iran has attacked since WWII, zero, and those attacked in some manner by US/Israeli forces – 36 nations, plus I know of at least one more since the last date on the image (Yemen – 2016, see list at the end of this post). Will attacking 37 countries in 72 years ever be considered a problem? Ten of the countries were attacked multiple times over the timespan. See: https://politicalvelcraft.org/2017/08/16/americas-cia-israels-mossad-created-al-qaeda-and-the-isis-terror-group/ – The short answer, from the overview article, for ending terrorism would be to support wind and solar power and help get the U.S. out of the oil business altogether, and the long answer would be to stop funding the military-industrial bomb and gun and missile sales business. We supply the world with things like Hellfire missiles. Wouldn’t it be nice to make windmills and solar panels instead?
A first hand account of what Zionists believe today is available in the form an a journalist’s interview of average Israeli citizens or visitors – the theme revealed by the interviews was disturbing to the reporter and to me – ethnic cleansing.
What would you think if Albert Einstein was quoted as saying carpet bombing the Middle East would be okay because he had a spiritual link to the ancient history of the land and he wanted to move in once the dust settled?
In my opinion Jewish people should be able to marry an Arab person if they both want to – and carpet bombing civilians is never okay – nor is random violence. Suggesting that violence against civilians is okay by some people but not others is discrimination, in addition to being violence, and we have seen increasing violence and increasing numbers of displaced people as a result of tension in the Middle East. Apartheid was wrong in South Africa and is wrong in Israel too. Persecution of others can lead to an increased risk of retaliation rather than supporting a goal of peace or communication.
Peace has to start somewhere and accepting and valuing each other’s differences may be the place to start. Not dropping over 20000 bombs is also probably a good place to start or threatening a country that has offered to negotiate if peace was being offered.
That number is enormous and is an escalation from 2016 but the number of bombs dropped in 2016 was also large: 26,171 bombs dropped over seven countries according to some record keepers. Even as an estimate that number makes me want to cry, and beg forgiveness, or to start planting sunflowers. (https://twitter.com/TravisRuger/status/917214035585781760) *Update, July 2018, U.S. averaging 121 bombs dropped per day. (see the Newsclick link)
We could also be planting sunflowers in low income urban areas where soil is contaminated with lead. Any areas that had a lot of automobile or other lead gasoline vehicles in the decades prior to its ban are likely to have soil that is dangerous for children to play. The recommendation for contaminated soil is to remove and replace it with uncontaminated soil or to cover over the area with some type of surface that would prevent the lead containing dust from getting in the air or on hands where it can then get into children’s mouths. Old damaged lead paint is best to paint over without dry sanding because dust in the air then may carry the lead elsewhere. Lead remediation specialists use a wet sanding method if they need to more thoroughly prepare a surface that had lead paint in some of the layers.
So as a citizen and former tax payer of the United States which just bombed seven countries with over 20,650 bombs in six months – if you want to call me a Nazi – I’m a citizen of the U.S. – it may be the word to describe us all, until we stop bombing the world in the name of peace or a so-called War on Terror. I’m terrified, please can we stop yet?
Disclaimer: Opinions are my own and the information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes.
My transcribing of the graphic condenses the information to single entries for each country, rather than the consecutive time line used in the graphic and I may have transcribed a few dates inaccurately or the graphic may have contained errors – consider it an estimate that could be verified if desired.
“Of the seven countries expected to be named in Trump’s executive order [travel ban], the US is currently bombing five of them: Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. In 2016 alone, the country dropped an estimated 26,172 bombs in seven countries, (including Pakistan and Afghanistan), according to the Council of Foreign Relations. This estimate is thought to be on the low-end as each single “strike” can involve multiple bombs, according to the Pentagon’s definition. In Barack Obama’s last year in office, the US dropped 3,028 more bombs than in 2015.” https://qz.com/895516/which-countries-is-the-us-currently-bombing/
