Category: civil rights

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Nakba Day (The Catastrophe), fifteenth of May, 1948

On Nakba Day (The Catastrophe), the fifteenth of May, 1948, there were 700,000 Palestinians expelled from Palestine. I’ve always wondered why did Palestine lose WWII? Why didn’t Germany get divided up into a concentration camp of Germans and a free Jewish population that was then allowed to restrict the other Germans travel and commerce — for decades — why didn’t that happen? And why is it still okay for Palestinians to be penned up and have their lives restricted or ended? Because Hitler fooled the German population therefore the Palestinian population should be treated like prisoners for decades? It’s not logical or fair or just or humane, in my opinion.

The following video mentions that on the fourteenth of May, 1948, paperwork was signed that declared Palestinians no longer owned their homeland.

And a discussion of the “Right of Return” concept is included in the following video with Miko Peled, the son of an Israeli general, who has written about the plight of the Palestinian people in the book “The General’s Son- Journey of An Israeli In Palestine.”  If Israeli’s have a right to return to an ancient homeland then why don’t Palestinians have a right to return to their more recently owned homes and land?

The estimates on the number of people who were killed during the Nazi Holocaust vary some but include:

  • 130,000 – 1,500,000 Roma (Gypsies)
  • 200,000 – 250,000 Handicapped People
  • 5000-15,000 Homosexual Men may have spent time in concentration camps, but death statistics are not available.
  • 1000-2000 Roman Catholic clergy, approximately 1000 Jehovah Witnesses and an unknown number of Freemasons died in Nazi prisons and concentration camps. Black people suffered atrocities that “ranged from isolation to persecution, sterilization, medical experimentation, incarceration, brutality, and murder.”[229] During the Nazi era Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, and trade union leaders were victims of Nazi persecution.“
  • “Yad Vashem estimates over 500,000 [Serbs were] murdered, 250,000 expelled and 200,000 forcibly converted to Catholicism.[231
  • 3.1 million Prisoners of War, including 2.6-3 million Soviet prisoners of war
  • “The Cambridge History of Russia puts overall civilian deaths in the Nazi-occupied USSR at 13.7 million persons including 2 million Jews.” (So why didn’t Russia get given a country too?)
  • All of these statistics and quotes are from Wikipedia, World War II Casualties: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Non-Jews_persecuted_and_killed_by_the_Nazis]

Why did Palestine lose WWII? Why didn’t we give away other countries to the other victims who suffered atrocities at the hands of Nazis? And would we be as supportive of Roma, or Handicapped, or black people, or clergy or Serbs treating a new host country the way Israel has been treating Palestine — for decades? The Nazis harmed other people from approximately 1933 to 1945, twelve years of atrocity. Israel has been limiting Palestinian’s freedom and their pursuit of life, liberty and happiness since 1948. This is 2016. This will be the 68th year that the world has allowed Israel to keep another nation penned up in what is basically a concentration camp. Hitler was bad, indeed, but is a 68 year concentration camp any better, any more noble, or more right and just, — just because it is Jewish people who are doing the penning? A 68 year concentration camp is wrong whoever is doing the penning and whoever is ignoring the penning, in my opinion at least. The U.S. gave Israel $3.1 billion in 2015 or $10.2 million per day – more than to any individual state or any other foreign nation. The aid is equivalent to one fifth of all aid given to foreign nations by the U.S. — it is a large world and yet each Israeli citizen receives  the equivalent of $500 per year in foreign aid from the U.S.. Why?

“as of the end of 1995, Israel—with a population less than that of Hong Kong—had received $62.5 billion in foreign aid, almost exactly the amount received by all of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa and of Latin America and the Caribbean combined.”

Perhaps equally astonishing is that Israel, which has received $14,692 per capita from the U.S. and $5,345 per capita from Germany for a combined total of $20,037 per capita, is not a poor country. In 1995 its per capita gross domestic product was $15,800. That put it below Britain at $19,500 and Italy at $18,700 and just above Ireland at $15,400 and Spain at $14,300.

All of these countries have contributed a very large share of immigrants to the U.S., yet none has ever tried to put together an ethnic bloc to lobby for U.S. foreign aid, which none of these countries has collected since the days of post-war reconstruction. Rather, all have proudly contributed funds and volunteers to economic development and emergency relief work in many less fortunate parts of the world.[https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t19469/]

An article about Nakba Day from Israel’s perspective, (tl:dr ~ there will be refugees in a War of Independence and therefore Nakba Day isn’t Israel’s fault because they were fighting for their independence and therefore all’s fair in love and war or something like that but with thinking like that then Hitler was justified in protecting the Aryan Nation from everybody else – Right? Wrong.): [http://www.virtualjerusalem.com/news.php?Itemid=3566]

An article about how celebrating Nakba Day has been prohibited by Israel and a description of the investigation of the deaths/murder of two Palestinian children that occurred on Nakba Day, 2014: [http://mondoweiss.net/2015/03/the-nakba-day-denial/]

Nazi Germany didn’t leave any other countries with a 50% birth defect rate. We have already made the sand glow in many areas of the Middle East.

Only North Korean’s have to believe North Korean propaganda and only U.S. citizens have to believe U.S. propaganda and only Israeli citizens have to believe Israeli propaganda — or we all have to pretend to believe it but the rest of the world can look on and snicker or cringe in horror.

The families of the volunteers and civilians who were killed by U.S. bombs “accidentally” falling on a hospital in Afghanistan every fifteen minutes for an hour are going to be reimbursed $6000 for each dead person or $3000 for each wounded person. We are so noble. [http://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2016/feb/27/afghan-clinic-payments-assailed-2016022/?f=news]

Update, Great Britain and France are also really noble (and/or like oil rich regions):  ( — this is the propaganda version of events, see the book Against Our Better Judgement for a condensed version of what may be the truer history of Why did Palestine lose WWII? See this post for a link: Speaking out against Israel’s occupation of Palestine – may be dangerous to careers, )

In 1920/1921 state borders were drawn in the Middle East largely by Great Britain and France. Before then nomadic tribes wandered throughout the region without recognizing national or state borders and there had always been a mix of ethnic groups and religions throughout the region.

The new states were not peaceful:

“From the beginning, these newly created states were engulfed by riots, revolts, and even civil war.”

Palestine was created as partially a Jewish and Arab state at that time:

“In the new state of Transjordan (which later became Jordan), the British installed the son of a Saudi ruler to preside over the Bedouin population; and in Palestine, it promised the Jews a homeland and their own fledgling state within a state under the Balfour Declaration while promising only civil and religious rights to the Palestinian Arabs who made up the overwhelming majority of inhabitants.”

Protecting oil interests in the region seemed to be involved:

“At San Remo in 1920, the British got the territory that in 1921 they divided into Palestine and Transjordan and all of what became Iraq. (France gave up northern Iraq in exchange for 25 percent of oil revenues.)

-quotes by John B. Judis, June 26, 2014, from the article: “The Middle East That France and Britain Drew is Finally Unravelling; and there’s very little the U.S. can do to stop it.” [https://newrepublic.com/article/118409/mideast-unravelling-and-theres-not-much-us-can-do]

/Disclosure: Opinions are my own and 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./

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Presidents have constituents, Celebrities have fans

Public servants serve the public, and they serve all of the public without discrimination due to a person’s race, color, religion, sex, place of national origin, age, or level of ability, or at least they are supposed to. As a government employee in a small agency I frequently performed all of the roles for a daily clinic, including clerical duties and measuring patients in addition to the nutrition assessment and counseling duties that would have been my only role in a large clinic. And in our borrowed offsite spaces I might have had to mop or shovel snow or perform some other cleaning tasks too. Administrative duties such as updating policy manuals and writing monthly reports was squeezed in as time allowed.

So I’m aware that updating policy manuals can be easy to put off.  It’s been said that you should “Hire a thief to catch a thief.”  So it might also be a good idea to “Hire a bullsh!tter to detect bullsh!t.” Jokes are funny when they contain a kernel of truth — A Bachelor of Science (BS) degree is sometimes jokingly called a “BullSh!t” degree, and the Masters (MS) degree is “More Sh!t” and the PhD is “Piled Higher and Deeper“. A person who made it through college might chuckle because they know how many classes and papers and essay tests they had to complete somehow, whether the answers they gave were good, bad, or really bad.

If elected as President I had suggested that one area I wanted to focus on was reviewing old policies and working to eliminate or revise obsolete programs or policies. Out of date programs could be eliminated or updated while more important programs like anticorrosion additives for water pipelines could be highlighted as critically important for all communities to provide consistently. I couldn’t possibly be able to read or understand all of the policies and procedures involved though; I would ask the workers doing the daily work what aspects of their jobs they felt were most important and which they felt were just busy work and then I would go read the policy books to see if the things the workers had mentioned matched what the administrators had written — and other strategies like that — spend time in the trenches where the really important stuff gets done each day.

The government has many roles and many workers doing crucially important things everyday — it is not like a business that can just be closed for a few days whenever politicians want to prove that they can.

A public servant and a politician may be two different species. I’m not sure, I haven’t worked with any politicians on a daily basis.  I worked with public servants and we served the public without discrimination. The clients were not fans though seeking entertainment, they were constituents seeking assistance with public services — two different species — two different types of goals. Entertainment may amuse but government agencies provide food and housing and health assistance and without discrimination.

/Disclosure: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. While I am a lactation educator and Registered Dietitian this information is not intended to provide individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./

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Healthier groups may also be more peaceful groups

Research into group and individual behavior suggests that the rate of infectious disease in a group is significantly associated with the rate of violent and property crime and with the rate of violent crime against strangers. [1]

“Disease threat activates responses that function to guard against the threat, such as out-group avoidance and in-group preference. When these responses are widespread among many individuals—for example, in places where infection risk is chronically elevated—they foster xenophobia [“fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners,” 2] and produce a fragmented social structure that increases the potential for out-group aggression (Letendre et al., 2010). We found that infection rates explained a substantial proportion of the variance in violent and property crimes, and in most cases was a stronger predictor than established crime covariates. Interestingly, the homicide results showed that the aggression was directed primarily at out-group members, with pathogens predicting stranger homicides more strongly than any of the control variables.”

“Only diseases with over 20,000 new cases in at least one of the five years examined (1995–1999) were used. This criterion left us with eight diseases: AIDS, Chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, Hepatitis A, salmonellosis, shigellosis, and tuberculosis. These eight diseases accounted for over 90% of all the infection counts reported in this system over these years; the incidence of the other diseases (e.g., cholera, malaria) tended to be very low.”

– I. Shrira, A. Wisman, G. D. Webster, [1, “Guns, Germs, and Stealing: Exploring the Link between Infectious Disease and Crime,” 2013]

Historically a condition known as amok was first described in 1893 where an individual suddenly acted violently and then would forget the manic episode. Descriptions of the disorder were recorded by the British medical superintendent of the Government Asylum in Singapore. Increases in cases of amok were more associated with “times of social tension or impending disaster.” The use of the term has become more commonly associated in modern times with the phrase “running amok” which is not a medical term but more of a slang phrase.  [Infectious Madness, by Harriet A. Washington, page 163, 3] Gun violence in modern times has involved racist xenophobia in many cases and in a few cases may have involved a shooter who claimed to have amnesia of the event afterwards. [4, 5]

To have healthier groups we may need less stress overall and more jobs and stability in our local and global economies. Working together to help achieve healthier groups may require us first to recognize our subtle tendencies to distrust others during times of increased rates of illness.

/Disclaimer: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. Information is not a substitute for individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./

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A research study proposal; for clarity

To clarify a point from my last post, the cancer research I would like to see completed would be on the use of a vegan diet with ginger as a preventative or as a cancer treatment. Adding fluoride or bromide to 6-shogaol was simply an example of how other natural products have been made into chemicals that could be patented in the past.

The difficulty with designing clinical research studies is the ethics involved with substituting an experimental treatment for a treatment that has evidence supporting its value. A person with cancer is more likely to be allowed into experimental trials only after they have already been through other anti-cancer treatments that were unsuccessful – but which likely left their bodies in a weakened condition. Trying an experimental treatment as a first attempt would have to be with the patient’s understanding of the possible risks of not using the standard of care treatment instead. Maybe the standard treatment for the patient’s type of cancer provides the 22.5 months of survival on average but the experimental treatment wouldn’t have any history of clinical trials to offer as a comparison. So frequently the experimental treatments are only offered to patients whose cancer has returned or that had failed to respond to standard treatments.

Prostate cancer is a very slow growing cancer that is frequently a benign problem compared to other types of cancer. It is said that more men die with prostate cancer than die from prostate cancer — and surgery in the area sometimes leaves men with worse problems so a watch and wait approach is being recommended more often. A diet based research study designed for patients in the watch and wait phase of prostate cancer treatment might be a reasonably ethical experimental design.

The experimental dietary treatment that I would propose would be based on a vegan diet, possibly with fish, and which is low in arachidonic acid rich foods and is not excessive in total calcium foods or supplements and which provides adequate amounts of CLA fats, [8, 12, 13] and with ginger powder daily, approximately a half teaspoon per day or equivalent ginger root cooked in food — or with an appropriate amount of the purified active compound, 6-shogaol. However, use of the whole root or ginger powder or mixed extract might provide other beneficial phytochemicals, from a summary I wrote years ago:

  • In humans, mice, and in petri dish studies, ginger has been found to inhibit the action of 5-LO from converting as much arachidonic acid into 5-HETE and slowing prostate cancer cell growth. [13]
  • *The cancer cells replicate human enzymes  that increase membrane breakdown and release of arachidonic acid which is then converted into a form the cancer cells can use as an energy source. The ginger extract stopped the step that would have converted the arachidonic acid into the form, 5-HETE, that could be used as a food source for the cancer cells. [13]  So adding ginger to the diet might make avoiding arachidonic acid containing foods less of an issue – but moderation is usually still a good idea. Arachidonic acid is an omega 6 fatty acid found in egg yolks,chicken, liver and animal fats. [14, 15] Arachidonic acid can also be formed out of linoleic acid which is found in seeds and nuts and most vegetable oils. [15]

Approximately a half teaspoon of ginger powder was the amount found helpful for reducing pain for arthritis patients, but I still haven’t found the exact reference link, sorry. A different study on muscle pain due to exercise found that two milligrams of ginger powder given daily prior to the episode of strenuous exercise (approximately 3/4 teaspoon, which was given in capsules) helped reduce the exercise induced muscle pain by 25%. [9, 10] Heat treatment of the ginger powder was not found to give any further reduction in muscle pain in that study however for cancer prevention heat treatment might be increasing the amount of the chemical that is active against cancer, 6-shogaol.

Clinical results that showed benefit for the men with prostate cancer in the watch-and-wait phase might than be preliminary evidence to support trying the treatment plan for men with more advanced stages of prostate cancer or for women with breast cancer — with their understanding of the potential risks of using an alternative treatment instead of the standard of care treatment.

As a nutrition focused member of a multi-disciplinary team I would count on other specialists to work out the details related to stages of cancer and assessment, etc.                  — no one works alone these days.

/Tangent: 6-shogaol and two other phytochemicals found in ginger have also been found to help promote bronchodilation in asthma patients.  [11]/

/Disclosure: This information is provided for educational purposes within the guidelines of fair use. Information is not a substitute for individual health guidance. Please see a health professional for individual health care purposes./