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Meanwhile, there is a growing body of research documenting the impact of racism on our health, implying that there may be a much more nuanced and systemic answer to the question of why second-generation Mexican-Americans have higher rates of high blood pressure and diabetes than their parents. These possible explanations could include everything from the stress that results from experiencing racism to the ways in which racism affects health care. A recent survey of women who gave birth in the United States, noted, “About one in five black and Hispanic women report poor treatment from hospital staff due to race, ethnicity, cultural background, or language. Compared with 8% of white mothers, 21% of black mothers and 19% of Hispanic mothers perceived such poor treatment while hospitalized to give birth.”
The New York Times article only once hints at how racism may play a factor in immigrants’ health care—in a description about how immigrants in one town stopped walking for exercise because they were afraid of being perceived as undocumented:This isn’t a question of “lifestyle”—it’s about the lived reality of racism. A white person would likely have no such fears of walking around their neighborhood or to a local business, or fears of being profiled or singled out as undocumented. This is just one example of many that we could likely point to to demonstrate the effects of racism on the health of immigrants and other people of color.
These systemic analyses of health disparities are crucial if we’re ever going to get to the root causes of health disparities. There is even a new movement to shift away from “cultural competency” and toward “structural competency” for medical providers to improve health-care delivery for individuals affected by these disparities.

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In the 1960's Rex Newnham, Ph.D., D.O., N.D, developed arthritis. At that time he was a soil and plant scientist in Perth, Western Australia. Conventional drugs did not help, so he looked for the cause into the chemistry of plants. He realized that plants in that area were rather mineral deficient. Knowing that boron aids calcium metabolism in plants he decided to try it. He started taking 30 mg of borax a day, and in three weeks all pain, swelling and stiffness had disappeared.He told public health and medical school authorities about his discovery but they were not interested. However, some people with arthritis were delighted as they improved. Others were scared to take something with a poison label on the container and meant to kill cockroaches and ants. Eventually he had tablets made with a safe and effective quantity of borax. Within five years and only by word of mouth he sold 10,000 bottles a month. He could no longer cope and asked a drug company to market it. That was a major mistake. They indicated that this would replace more expensive drugs and reduce their profits. It so happened that they had representatives on government health committees and arranged that in 1981 Australia instituted a regulation that declared boron and its compounds to be poisons in any concentration. He was fined $1000 for selling a poison, and this successfully stopped his arthritis cure from spreading in Australia. (2)Subsequently he published several scientific papers on borax and arthritis. One was a double-blind trial in the mid 1980's at the Royal Melbourne Hospital which showed that 70% of those who completed the trial were greatly improved. Only 12% improved when on placebo. There were no negative side-effects, but some reported that their heart ailment had also improved, and there was better general health and less tiredness. (3)

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On May 14, a financial analyst and former head trader at the Royal Bank of Scotland spoke on the Hagmann and Hagmann Report regarding the current state of the global economy. Known in the public sphere under the pseudonym of 'V', and labeling himself the Guerrilla Economist, this high level insider stated that not only is the entire economic system hanging on the precipice, much worse than in 2007, but that one of the largest banks in the Euro Zone, Deutsche Bank, is far gone into the danger zone and will very soon go belly up.

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V: Deutsche Bank. Big bank. Biggest bank in Germany, and one of the biggest banks in the Euro Zone... they're going to go belly up. Watch it. Watch it, I said it, it's going to happen.
They are in such a danger zone, they don't know what to do. Deutsche Bank's derivative debt is greater than the global economy. That is one bank. $72 trillion in derivative exposure. The entire global economy, all the countries in the world is only $66 trillion GDP. - V, Hagmann and Hagmann Report, May 14

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One wonders if the West is going to wake up to the new world we have entered, or adhere to immigration policies dating to a liberal era long since dead.

It was in 1965, halcyon hour of the Great Society, that Ted Kennedy led Congress into abolishing a policy that had restricted immigration for 40 years, while we absorbed and Americanized the millions who had come over between 1890 and 1920.

The “national origins” feature of that 1924 law mandated that ships arriving at U.S. ports carry immigrants from countries that had provided our immigrants in the past. We liked who we were.

Immigration policy was written to reinforce the Western orientation and roots of America, 90 percent of whose population could by 1960 trace its ancestry to the Old Continent.

But since 1965, immigration policy has been run by people who detest that America and wanted a new nation that looked less like Europe and more like a continental replica of the U.N. General Assembly.

They wanted to end America’s history as the largest and greatest of Western nations and make her a nation of nations, a new society and a new people, more racially, ethnically, religiously and culturally diverse than any nation on the face of the earth.

Behind this vision lies an ideology, an idee fixe, that America is not a normal nation of blood and soil, history and heroes, but a nation erected upon an idea, the idea that anyone and everyone who comes here, raises his hand, and swears allegiance to the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights becomes, de facto, not just a legal citizen but an American.

But that is no more true than to say that someone who arrives in Paris from Africa or the Middle East and raises his hand to declare allegiance to the Rights of Man thereby becomes a Frenchman.

What is the peril into which America and the West are drifting?

Ties of race, religion, ethnicity and culture are the prevailing winds among mankind and are tearing apart countries and continents. And as we bring in people from all over the world, they are not leaving all of their old allegiances and animosities behind.

Many carry them, if at times dormant, within their hearts.

And if we bring into America — afflicted by her polarized politics, hateful rhetoric and culture wars — peoples on all sides of every conflict roiling mankind, how do we think this experiment is going to end?

The immigration bill moving through the Senate, with an amnesty for 11 to 12 million illegals already here, and millions of their relatives back home, may write an end to more than just the Republican Party.

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WASHINGTON DC - Twelve years after the "war on terror" began, President Barack Obama wants to pull the United States back from some of the most controversial aspects of its global fight against Islamist militants.

In a major policy speech on Thursday, Obama narrowed the scope of the targeted-killing drone campaign against al Qaeda and its allies and took steps toward closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba.

He acknowledged the past use of "torture" in U.S. interrogations; expressed remorse over civilian casualties from drone strikes; and said that the Guantanamo detention facility "has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law."

After launching costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is tiring of conflict. While combating terrorism is still a high priority for the White House, polls show by large margins that Americans' main concerns are the economy and domestic concerns such as healthcare.

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WASHINGTON DC — The Internal Revenue Service official who led the unit that targeted tea party groups and publicly disclosed the activity has been replaced, making her the third top IRS official moved aside since the episode was revealed two weeks ago.

Lois Lerner was put on administrative leave on Thursday, said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and two congressional aides.

Without naming Lerner, new Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel emailed employees that 27-year IRS veteran Ken Corbin would become acting head of the exempt organizations division — a move the Obama administration was hoping would help ease the controversy.

Grassley said Lerner rejected a request by Werfel to resign. One congressional aide said Lerner, a career civil servant, will be on paid leave. The congressional aides spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a personnel matter.

A day earlier, Lerner proclaimed her innocence of any wrongdoing to a House committee, then invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and refused to answer questions… more

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Lerner oversaw the IRS unit that in early 2010 started subjecting conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status to long-lasting, tough reviews, according to a report by a Treasury inspector general.

That report said Lerner learned of the activity in June 2011. Higher-ranking IRS officials say they didn't learn of the problem until nearly a year later.

Lerner revealed the wrongdoing May 10 in response to a question at a legal conference that IRS officials later conceded they planted in an attempt to get the news out before the inspector general's report was released.

Steven Miller was forced out this week as acting IRS commissioner. Joseph Grant, one of Miller's top deputies, announced last week that he will retire June 3… more

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Students in North Carolina raised a Southern flag (which combined the North Carolina and Confederate symbols) over their high school this past weekend in a display of defiant Southern identity. The US media’s reaction to the action has been entirely typical. Article after article has been written in which US media personnel express ‘dismay’ and ‘distress.’ UPI’s coverage of the article strangely enough ran with a picture of a Klansman holding both a US and Confederate flag (though in the caption it mentions the Confederate flag). The real kicker to the bizarre choice of pictures for the UPI article is that the Klansman’s picture was taken in New York, not North Carolina. Is the New York Klan in any way related to the simple act of defiance by students in North Carolina?

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