Because People Matter

Fighting the Flu with Vitamin D

by Lauren Ayers

Your family deserves this powerful, natural protection

New Research

New research shows that vitamin D helps prevent flu.¹ Bureaucracies change slowly, however, so it will be years before California and federal public health agencies, such as the CDC, alert the public. You don’t have to wait!

Emory University scientists recently examined D studies and concluded that D not only prevents but treats flu.² The Harvard Heart Letter (November 2009) reports, “Having enough D in circulation can help the body fight off the flu, tuberculosis, and infections of the upper respiratory tract.”³ A newly discovered immune system, different from the immunity we get from vaccines, requires ample vitamin D to function, according to University of Oregon researchers.⁴

Individual Mandate: Step in the Wrong Direction

By Roger White
 
If the Democrats are able to pass their version of health care reform this winter it will include an individual mandate that every US citizen buy private health insurance except for a small percentage of people who qualified for a hardship exemption.  For decades the American right developed a deserved reputation for being eager to legislate morality in sexual, personal and family affairs. Today the liberal left rivals conservatives in their desire to use state power to regulate, prohibit and control what only recently used to be considered private matters.  Due to technological advances and the slow but steady erosion of the Fourth Amendment at the hands of the war on terror and drugs, the very concept of privacy has become quaint. Cameras on every street corner are no longer some Orwellian nightmare; they’re just a normal part of America’s domestic security and safety architecture.

Why California Students do not understand Chicano/Latino history

By Duane Campbell

The following is the text of a presentation which Campbell gave to students at California State University, Sacramento, sponsored by the Serna Center on Nov.30,2009.

Textbooks for  California schools are selected by the State Board of Education based upon recommendations of their Curriculum Committees and the state frameworks and standards.  It is urgent that the History-Social Science Framework be revised to provide an accurate history of the contributions of Mexicans, Mexican Americans, Latinos and Asians to the history of the state and of the nation. The current Framework reflects the historiography of the 1950’s. It was written in 1986 by senior scholars, they in turn were educated in the early 1970’s or before. It is substantially out of date.

Free Trade

Sent to The Sacramento Bee on 4/20/08, by Murray Cohen, and not published:

Daniel Weintraub says  (Bee: April 20, 2008) that “the best argument for free trade is a moral one… It’s a matter of free will.”   He’s angry at Pelosi for opposing a free trade agreement with Colombia, whose government routinely hires mercenaries to murder union activists.  Weintraub doesn’t like unions either…      Free trade agreements, however, are negotiated by representatives of global corporations to enhance the wealth and power of their chief investors, and are increasingly opposed to the interests of the majority of American workers, whose salaries, health care, pensions, and very way of life have been subverted by these very corporations.  Americans have been pitted in a freefall competition with the victims of an older, cruder imperialism, now dubbed “neo-liberalism/free trade/globalism”. Corporations are not individuals democratically exercising their “free will.” They are  instutionalized tyrannies of the rich.  As workers, we are not citizens but subjects of the owners of these institutions.

Weintraub should know these self-evident truths, but maybe he’s even better  informed about which side of his journalistic bread the butter’s on. …Or,  perhaps, like the rest  us, he’s been  politically and morally dumbed down  by  the vast, decades old, corporate and billionaire-funded  think tank campaigns to make us think like our worst enemies. 

Jesus the Palestinian

By Jack D. Forbes

I thought it might be helpful to recall that Yehoshu’a (Jesus ) was a Palestinian.

The district of western Asia long known as Palestine has a history which needs to be understood as we try to sort out the conflicting claims of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in the present day.

Anciently the name “Canaan” (Kanaan) was applied to roughly the same region, except that the Canaanitish dialects or languages were spoken as far north as Beirut, Lebanon. The northern-most Kanaan people came to be called Phoenicians (Funi) by the Greeks, but they also were part of ancient Canaanitish civilization.