“It’s such an important nutrient. Fidel now sends me Moringa pills,” said Evo Morales, president of Bolivia.
Evo just visited Fidel, to help him extend his 90th birthday celebrations.
El coma-andante Fidel has been promoting the cultivation of the Moringa plant for years, promoting it as a “miraculous tree” and urging its cultivation.
Carlos had added an illustration with the benefits, and a caption,
Moringa: the cure for everything, including original sin
Google is my friend, so I found moringa on WebMD. There are some side effects (emphasis added)
Moringa is POSSIBLY SAFE when taken by mouth and used appropriately. The leaves, fruit, and seeds might be safe when eaten as food. However, it’s important to avoid eating the root and its extracts. These parts of the plant may contain a toxic substance that can cause paralysis and death. Moringa has been used safely in doses up to 6 grams daily for up to 3 weeks.
There isn’t enough information to know if moringa is safe when used in medicinal amounts.
Regarding the “Nutrition for infants . . . and pregnant and nursing mothers,”
Special Precautions & Warnings:
Pregnancy and breast-feeding: It’s LIKELY UNSAFE to use the root, bark or flowers of moringa if you are pregnant. Chemicals in the root, bark, and flowers can make the uterus contract, and this might cause a miscarriage. There is not enough information available about the safety of using other parts of moringa during pregnancy. Stay on the safe side and avoid use.
Moringa is sometimes used to increase breast milk production. Some research suggests it might do this, however, there isn’t enough information to know if it is safe for the nursing infant. Therefore, it is best to avoid moringa if you are breast-feeding.
Back in the olden days, there were similar remedies with anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory properties,
So better check WebMD before you take advice from Evo and Fidel.
The big all-over-the-world stupid story of the week: Ryan Lochte and three other swimmers got drunk and gave Brazilians an excuse to feign outrage over their country being embarrassed; I’m still waiting for the Brazilians to be embarrassed over the bodyparts washing on shore during the Olympics or over the six Brazilians a day who die at the hands of state security forces.
Meanwhile, a new word enters the lexicon, Iranophobia (emphasis added),
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will tour six Latin American countries next week to “foil the Iranophobia plots promoted by Israel,” the Islamic Republic’s semi-official state news agency Fars reported on Wednesday.
. . .
Zarif will be accompanied on his visit to Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia and Venezuela by a 60-member economic delegation.
Unlike Ali Baba, whose entourage was only forty-strong.
The Santa Cruz academy was initially inaugurated in 2011 as the “ALBA School” after the now-weakened regional alliance that includes Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Cuba.
Morales’s invitation to that event of then-Iranian defense minister Ahmad Vahidi provoked an uproar in neighboring Argentina, where judicial authorities have accused Vahidi of a role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center that killed 85 people.
Brazil summoned Uruguay’s ambassador on Tuesday after the neighboring country’s foreign minister accused Brazil of trying to “buy” its vote to block Venezuela from taking the rotating presidency of the Mercosur trade bloc.
In comments to lawmakers last week that were made public on Tuesday, Uruguayan Foreign Minister Rodolfo Nin Novoa said his government was “angry” with Brazil’s attempt to prevent Caracas from leading the regional group that also includes Argentina and Paraguay.
. . .
Since Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff was suspended in May, her replacement Michel Temer has moved the country away from leftist allies such as Venezuela and toward traditional allies the United States and Europe.
Argentina and Paraguay, once close allies to Caracas, have also moved to undermine Venezuela as the OPEC nation’s socialist government struggles with economic and political crises.
Ricardo Pierdant, a Miami-based businessman, in 2013 paid close to $30,000 in property taxes on behalf of first lady Angélica Rivera for an apartment she owns in Miami, according to tax records seen by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Pierdant is a close friend of Mexico´s first family, according to Mr. Peña Nieto´s office.
The first lady purchased her apartment in the wealthy island enclave of Key Biscayne in 2005.
Mr. Pierdant subsequently purchased another apartment directly above Ms. Rivera’s, according to Miami property records.
Earlier this week, socialist Maduro accused Paraguay of being part of “an extreme right wing alliance” aimed at blocking Venezuela from assuming its role as head of Mercosur as scheduled during the second half of the year.
The RNC and the DNC had their conventions in two consecutive weeks, and after their monopolizing media attention, we’re glad they are over.
Almost unnoticed, however, was the story of the Syrian terrorist released from Guantanamo to Uruguay, who supposedly needs crutches to get around, was missing for several weeks, to eventually turn up some 4,600 miles away from Montevideo (a little under the distance from New York to Moscow), in Venezuela, of all places, just so he can petition the Uruguayan consulate – which he could do in Montevideo – to “ask for assistance to fly to Turkey or some other country to be reunited with his family.” Which gave him plenty of time to do all sorts of things.
Stelberto Soares, a municipal engineer who has worked on Rio sanitation issues for decades, said that the government’s efforts to clean the waters were superficial at best.
“They can try to block big items like sofas and dead bodies, but these rivers are pure sludge,” he said, “so the bacteria and viruses are going to just pass through.”
Nicaragua’s top electoral authority decimated the country’s political opposition on Friday by unseating practically all of its remaining lawmakers in congress as President Daniel Ortega prepares to seek a third term.
The Supreme Electoral Council ousted 16 opposition legislators from the Liberal Independent Party and its ally the Sandinista Renovation Movement Friday for not recognizing their officially sanctioned leader. That leader, Pedro Reyes, had recently been given that authority by the Supreme Court, which removed the opposition party’s previous leader following a long-running political dispute. Reyes is seen by some within his own party as a tool of Ortega.
The commonwealth and its agencies owe about $346 million in bond payments on Aug. 1, most of which goes toward repaying sales-tax supported debt. The deadline follows the island’s July 1 default on nearly $1 billion of principal and interest, the largest such payment failure in the history of the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market.
Colonia Dignidad’s documents spelling out the torture and other abuses that happened in the cult are important in investigating crimes of the Chilean military dictatorship, the National Monuments Council said while announcing its decision to preserve the archive.
The closed, cult-like community was set up in 1961 by former Nazi and convicted pedophile Paul Schäfer, ushering his decades-long rule over hundreds of mostly German expats. Schäfer and other cult members molested children and prevented adults from leaving the estate in central Chile.
After General Augusto Pinochet took power in Chile in 1973, the cult leadership started cooperating with the regime and offering their premises as a torture camp and a warehouse for weapons and poison gas.
Chile returned to democracy with Pinochet stepping down in 1990, leading to a public shift on the status of the German enclave. Schäfer was forced to flee the country in 1997, but was arrested in 2005 and died in prison in 2010.
Russia and Nicaragua have agreed a deal for an electronic spy base
Moscow will also give Nicaragua 50 tanks as part of the deal
In the 1980s Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime was a sworn enemy of US
Russia has also announced plans to deploy missiles in Kaliningrad enclave
The reform, aimed at strengthening organized labor in the South American country, was initially passed by the Senate in March after a bruising battle that opened divisions within the governing Nueva Mayoria coalition.
But Chile’s Constitutional Tribunal in April rejected a provision of the bill that said companies could only negotiate with legally designated unions during collective wage talks.
It also struck part of a measure that prohibited companies from extending many benefits to non-unionized employees.
Jamaica’s economic reform programme supported by the fund’s Extended Fund Facility has made major strides in restoring macroeconomic stability, pursuing fiscal consolidation, reducing public debt and undertaking significant tax policy reforms, building financial sector resilience, and tackling structural issues.
A judge in Peru has banned First Lady Nadine Heredia from leaving the country while she’s investigated for allegedly hiding undeclared campaign contributions. The order handed down Thursday night prevents Heredia from travelling [sic] abroad for four months, as her husband, centrist President Ollanta Humala, leaves office in July.
Heredia has been dogged for years by accusations that she hid large contributions from socialist Venezuela that funded her husband’s 2006 and 2011 campaigns.
“The basic details behind the scandal have been confirmed by President Morales himself. In 2007 or shortly before, the President had a relationship with Gabriela Zapata, resulting in a child who died shortly after birth. Zapata went on obtain a university education and alaw degree, and in 2013 was contracted by the Chinese company CAMC Engineering which won an estimated $580 millionin work from the Bolivian state, of which,$366 million was awarded after Ms. Zapata was hired to represent the company.”
As it turns out, Evo’s child is eight years old (link in Spanish), but Evo not only claims the child is dead, he threw in the clink Zapata’s aunt for asserting that the child is alive, which is one heck of a way to avoid a paternity suit.
First and foremost, I apologize to all involved (including Evo) for assuming that child was his.
I should have waited for the DNA test results.
No word as to whether any DNA tests were performed.
Now that that’s out of the way, it turns out that Evo’s former girlfriend Gabriela Zapata borrowed the boy from his natural parents, Victor Carlos Vega and Isela Chávez, for five years. Claudio Rivera Guzmán (the son of Pilar Guzmán, Zapata’s “spiritual” aunt – whatever that means) and another family member, Juan Garrido Espinoza, plus Zapata’s lawyers, William Sánchez Peña and Wálter Zuleta, were also found to be involved illegally in the hoax, so now all of them are in the clink.
You can’t make this up if you try.
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We talked about this and other topics in last night’s podcast,
Wednesday June 15: Latin America news coverage and other stories……click to listen……. https://t.co/rWMipZ9IXA
A very big deal we haven’t been paying attention to: