No confíe : pregunte a la prensa

When media gives you the answers, you need to ask more questions


URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31003

Turn on the television today, and you will undoubtedly hear the voice of mainstream newscasters reassuring you that the safety and security of you and your loved ones is being taken care of by your government, so much so that they are preparing to go to war on your behalf. Don't worry, they'll tell you, the military will eliminate the "threats" before they can even become threats! Just go about your daily life, spend your money (credit gladly accepted), and trust that your tax dollars are where they need to be -- protecting you from bogeymen, the ones who so selfishly refuse to bend to this so-called Western-style "democracy".
No matter how many times we're sold the line that war is the only way to peace, the fundamental paradox in this statement can never be masked, not with all the corporate dollars thrown into creating mainstream media spin, nor by the best PR campaigns waged so smoothly by political lobbyists.
The truth, as David Swanson points out in no uncertain terms, is the following:
"The majority of Americans want the wars ended and the military spending cut. And the more they learn, the more they agree. The message of peace is one that you can expect people to agree with even if they don't at first... So, never believe your television. Never doubt the popular demand for peace. Never stop spreading the word. Never accept that mass murder has been civilized. Know your own strength." (See "Ending the Mindset That Gets Us into War")
This may seem easier said than done, but engaged citizens across the globe are proving that we will not acquiesce quietly to the militarized media machine. Ever increasingly, people are waking up to the fact that tyranny, repression and exploitation are not and should never be the norm. Another way is possible.
In Chicago, protesters have been risking arrest to demonstrate against this past weekend's NATO summit. To the north, Quebec is seeing the largest mass protest in North America this year... and perhaps ever, with the way people have been taking to the streets by the hundreds of thousands.
More and more, people are asking themselves and each other the same question that Dr. Paul Craig Roberts challenges us to consider:
"How do we rescue America from its government and from the corrupt media that serves as a Ministry of Truth for a corrupt government? (See "'The Global War on Terrorism': Are Americans Catching On, Waking Up, Unplugging?")
Together, worldwide, we are seeing the alternatives, and Global Research is at the forefront of the battle against media lies. And unlike mainstream media, we don't just give you the answers; instead, we help you ask the right questions. What kind of world do you want to live in? What kind of future do you picture for coming generations? Please support us in this challenge. Our independence exists wholly due to your donations and memberships. Scroll down to learn how you can help us fight the tide of media disinformation.

Los tiempos duros en EEUU

AMERICA: Desperate Times Demand Revolutionary Measures

Towards Sociopolitical-environmental Collapse


By Prof. Peter Phillips

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30844

“Don't waste any more time or energy on the presidential election than it takes to get to your polling station and pull a lever for a third-party candidate-—just enough to register your obstruction and defiance—and then get back out onto the street. That is where the question of real power is being decided.” Chris Hedges, May 2012
Runway capitalism is moving unrelentingly towards sociopolitical-environmental collapse—cheered on by a two-headed single party machine known as US Congress. Activists, who see the coming disasters as catastrophic, are seeking revolutionary change through non-cooperation, and occupy disruptions. Yet, many are the still delusional hopefuls desperately fumbling with traditional responses; including "Kum ba yah" marches, and the futile support for progressive left-leaning candidates seeking positions of influence inside the Washington beltway.
Do we understand that habeas corpus is no longer a legal protection in the US or that the US president can torture and kill American citizens, let along anyone in the world? How can we ignore the inconvenient truths of warrentless wire taps and electronic monitoring for everyone? Why do we tolerate that US-NATO forces killing people in over one hundred countries in the world using special service operatives, private assassins and drones—a million civilians deaths in Iraq alone? How can we be so blind as not to see our corporate media is a propaganda fog machine for the one percent? These questions, reflecting the reality of America today, are so far from the values of our traditions that accepting any aspect of authority from Washington DC is a sacrilege to our honor. We are in desperate times.
In Congress, wealth begets membership, and wealth is the reward for correct action. The members in the House and Senate have a collective net worth of $2.04 billion, up from $1.65 billion, in 2008. While at the same time, Americans' household net worth has continued to declined and the number of people living in poverty has risen for the fifth year in a row.

The American Congress is in reality an artificial organization serving as cheerleader to the transnational corporate class of the world. Congress offers its members little more than a transitional path into the good life of corporate affluence as long as the members remain loyal to party discipline. Our legitimate electoral process has been completely usurped by the Supreme Court ruling that a corporation’s free speech rights allow unlimited campaign spending, and congressional lobbying knows no bounds. Any candidate willing to serve in the Democrat or Republican parties in the US congress today, even as a gadfly of resistance, is stepping beyond the pale of constitutional government.

La habénula: posibles funciones

The habenula: from stress evasion to value-based decision-making


by Okihide Hikosaka


Abstract: La supervivencia en un mundo pleno de amenazas y oportunidades requiere adoptar las conductas necesarias a las circunstancias. Hallazgos recientes sugieren que la habénula puede tomar una parte importante en ello a través de sus sistemas de neuromodulación, en particular los que involucran neurotransmisores dopaminérgicos y serotoninérgicos. La habénula puede tener que ver con las respuestas al dolor, al estrés, la ansiedad, el sueño, y conductas compensatorias. También su disfunción puede llevar a la depresión, esquizofrenia, y la psicosis asociada a drogas. La habénula es una estructura bien conservada y evolutivamente constante.

Surviving in a world with hidden rewards and dangers requires choosing the appropriate behaviours. Recent discoveries indicate that the habenula plays a prominent part in such behavioural choice through its effects on neuromodulator systems, in particular the dopamine and serotonin systems. By inhibiting dopamine-releasing neurons, habenula activation leads to the suppression of motor behaviour when an animal fails to obtain a reward or anticipates an aversive outcome. Moreover, the habenula is involved in behavioural responses to pain, stress, anxiety, sleep and reward, and its dysfunction is associated with depression, schizophrenia and drug-induced psychosis. As a highly conserved structure in the brain, the habenula provides a fundamental mechanism for both survival and decision-making. (Artículo completo en Nature).

Armas para Siria

US Officially Arming Extremists in Syria
Denied no longer, US officials admit US-Saudi cash & logistical support arming terrorists in Syria.


By Tony Cartalucci




URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30891

Recently reported in "Brookings Announces Next Move in Syria: War," it was stated that "by the US policy think-tank Brookings Institution's own admission, the Kofi Annan six-point peace plan in Syria was merely a ploy to buy time to reorganize NATO's ineffective terrorist proxies and provide them the pretext necessary for establishing NATO protected safe havens from which to carry out their terrorism from." It was also examined in detail, how in 2007, US, Saudi, and Israeli officials admitted they were creating a militant front of extremists for the sole purpose of causing the destabilization of Syria we see today, and ultimately overthrowing the Syrian government. It was noted how these extremist militants had direct ties to Al Qaeda.


Now it is fully admitted that weapons, cash, and logistical support is indeed being provided to terrorist forces in Syria by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Gulf States. This, despite a current UN ceasefire the West has continuously berated the Syrian government for violating, indicates that indeed reorganizing, rearming, and redeploying NATO's terrorist proxies is complete, and another round of destructive violence has begun.
In the Washington Post's article, "Syrian rebels get influx of arms with gulf neighbors’ money, U.S. coordination," not only is this admitted, but claims made by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have been confirmed that Syria's historically violent Muslim Brotherhood, stated in 2007 by Seymour Hersh as being a direct proxy of US-Saudi-Israeli funding and support, is also directly arming and funding contingents of extremists committing acts of terror across Syria.


Areas across Syria that have until now been portrayed as centers for "pro-democracy" protests, racked by violence depicted as "repression" by Syrian troops, are now admitted by the Washington Post to be areas where "material is being stockpiled." This includes the flashpoint city of Idlib on the Turkish-Syrian border, in the suburbs of Damascus, and along Syria's border with Lebanon. And again, in 2007, Seymour Hersh revealed that the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia had planned to array extremists along Syria's border to commit the very violence now being admitted by the Post today.


The Washington Post openly admits that these weapons, supplies, cash and support, provided by the US and Saudi Arabia are directly responsible for the increased violence in Syria, in the midst of a ceasefire the West has attempted to disingenuously use to defame the Syrian government, hamper its ability to restore order, and indeed, rearm, reorganize, and redeploy their terrorist proxies to begin another attempt at violent foreign-backed regime change:

La encefalopatía crónica traumática:enfermedad de guerra.

Traumatic Brain Injury Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy in Blast-Exposed Military Veterans and a Blast Neurotrauma Mouse Model

La revista "Science" da cuenta de una extensa investigación realizada por numerosos estudiosos estadounidenses adscritos a diferentes centros, arroja luz sobre la encefalopatía crónica traumática que hasta ahora se había circunscrito a atletas como boxeadores y jugadores de ruby, pero que en la actualidad se cree que puede afectar a militares expuestos a explosiones. Los investigadores desarrollaron un modelo de la enfermedad en ratones para desentrañar los daños estruturales y cambios dentro del cerebro.

Abstract

Back to TopBlast exposure is associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI), neuropsychiatric symptoms, and long-term cognitive disability. We examined a case series of postmortem brains from U.S. military veterans exposed to blast and/or concussive injury. We found evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a tau protein–linked neurodegenerative disease, that was similar to the CTE neuropathology observed in young amateur American football players and a professional wrestler with histories of concussive injuries. We developed a blast neurotrauma mouse model that recapitulated CTE-linked neuropathology in wild-type C57BL/6 mice 2 weeks after exposure to a single blast. Blast-exposed mice demonstrated phosphorylated tauopathy, myelinated axonopathy, microvasculopathy, chronic neuroinflammation, and neurodegeneration in the absence of macroscopic tissue damage or hemorrhage. Blast exposure induced persistent hippocampal-dependent learning and memory deficits that persisted for at least 1 month and correlated with impaired axonal conduction and defective activity-dependent long-term potentiation of synaptic transmission. Intracerebral pressure recordings demonstrated that shock waves traversed the mouse brain with minimal change and without thoracic contributions. Kinematic analysis revealed blast-induced head oscillation at accelerations sufficient to cause brain injury. Head immobilization during blast exposure prevented blast-induced learning and memory deficits. The contribution of blast wind to injurious head acceleration may be a primary injury mechanism leading to blast-related TBI and CTE. These results identify common pathogenic determinants leading to CTE in blast-exposed military veterans and head-injured athletes and additionally provide mechanistic evidence linking blast exposure to persistent impairments in neurophysiological function, learning, and memory.

Copyright © 2012, American Association for the Advancement of Science