The difficulties of researching gaming disorder and addiction
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-04-10-the-difficulties-of-researching-gaming-disorder-and-addict
Dr Pete Etchells says there is an endemic problem with psychological research, as confirmation bias shapes the literature
Gaming disorder diagnosis puts industry at risk - ESA
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2019-02-12-gaming-disorder-diagnosis-puts-industry-at-risk-esa
Acting president Stanley Pierre-Louis discusses World Health Organization’s gaming addiction concern, loot boxes, unions, and more
Neurocapitalism | openDemocracy
▻https://www.opendemocracy.net/ewa-hess-hennric-jokeit/neurocapitalism
There is good reason to assert the existence, or at least the emergence, of a new type of capitalism: neurocapitalism. After all, the capitalist economy, as the foundation of modern liberal societies, has shown itself to be not only exceptionally adaptable and crisis-resistant, but also, in every phase of its dominance, capable of producing the scientific and technological wherewithal to analyse and mitigate the self-generated “malfunctioning” to which its constituent subjects are prone. In doing so – and this too is one of capitalism’s algorithms – it involves them in the inexorably effective cycle of supply and demand.
Just as globalisation is a consequence of optimising the means of production and paths of communication (as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels predicted), so the brain, as the command centre of the modern human being, finally appears to be within reach of the humanities, a field closely associated with capitalism. It may seem uncanny just how closely the narrow path to scientific supremacy over the brain runs to the broad highway along which capitalism has been speeding for over 150 years. The relationship remains dynamic, yet what links capitalism with neuroscience is not so much strict regulation as a complex syndrome of systemic flaws.
At this point, if not before, the unequal duo of capitalism and neuroscience was joined by a third partner. From now on, the blossoming pharmaceutical industry was to function as a kind of transmission belt connecting the two wheels and making them turn faster. In the first half of the twentieth century, mental disorders were treated mainly with sedative barbiturates, electric shock therapy and psychosurgery. But by the 1930s, neuro-psychopharmacology was already winning the day, as Freud had predicted it would.
Is it a paradox, or one of those things that are so obvious they remain unobserved, that the success of Freud’s psychoanalysis and that of modern neuroscience are based on similar premises? Psychoanalysis was successful because it wove together medically relevant disciplines like psychiatry and psychology with art, culture, education, economics and politics, allowing it to penetrate important areas of social life. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the neurosciences seem to be in a position to take on a comparable role in the future.
The ten top-selling psychotropic substances in the USA include anti-depressants, neuroleptics (antipsychotics), stimulants and drugs for treating dementia. In 2007 one hundred million prescriptions were issued for these drugs with sales worth more than sixteen billion dollars. These figures illustrate how, in an environment that is regulated but difficult to control, supply and subjectively perceived need can create a market turning over billions of dollars. What is more, it is a market that is likely to expand into those areas in which a performance-driven society confronts the post-postmodern self with its own shortcomings: in others words in schools and further education, at work, in relationships, and in old age. Among the best-selling neuro-psychotropic drugs are those that modulate the way people experience emotions and those that improve their capacity to pay attention and to concentrate, in most cases regardless of whether there is a clinically definable impairment of these functions.
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Neurocapitalism
Ewa Hess and Hennric Jokeit 3 March 2010
Despite the immense costs for healthcare systems, the fear of depression, dementia and attention deficit disorder legitimises the boom in neuro-psychotropic drugs. In a performance-driven society that confronts the self with its own shortcomings, neuroscience serves an expanding market
Today, the phenomenology of the mind is stepping indignantly aside for a host of hyphenated disciplines such as neuro-anthropology, neuro-pedagogy, neuro-theology, neuro-aesthetics and neuro-economics. Their self-assurance reveals the neurosciences’ usurpatory tendency to become not only the humanities of science, but the leading science of the twenty-first century. The legitimacy, impetus and promise of this claim derive from the maxim that all human behaviour is determined by the laws governing neuronal activity and the way it is organised in the brain.
Whether or not one accepts the universal validity of this maxim, it is fair to assume that a science that aggressively seeks to establish hermeneutic supremacy will change everyday capitalist reality via its discoveries and products. Or, to put it more cautiously, that its triumph is legitimated, if not enabled, by a significant shift in the capitalist world order.
There is good reason to assert the existence, or at least the emergence, of a new type of capitalism: neurocapitalism. After all, the capitalist economy, as the foundation of modern liberal societies, has shown itself to be not only exceptionally adaptable and crisis-resistant, but also, in every phase of its dominance, capable of producing the scientific and technological wherewithal to analyse and mitigate the self-generated “malfunctioning” to which its constituent subjects are prone. In doing so – and this too is one of capitalism’s algorithms – it involves them in the inexorably effective cycle of supply and demand.
Just as globalisation is a consequence of optimising the means of production and paths of communication (as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels predicted), so the brain, as the command centre of the modern human being, finally appears to be within reach of the humanities, a field closely associated with capitalism. It may seem uncanny just how closely the narrow path to scientific supremacy over the brain runs to the broad highway along which capitalism has been speeding for over 150 years. The relationship remains dynamic, yet what links capitalism with neuroscience is not so much strict regulation as a complex syndrome of systemic flaws.
Repressive late nineteenth-century capitalism, with its exploitative moral dictates, proscriptions and social injustices, was a breeding ground for the neurosis diagnosed by scientists in the early twentieth century as a spiritual epidemic. This mysterious scourge of the bourgeoisie, a class which according to Marx, “through the rapid improvement of all instruments of production [...] draws all, even the most barbarian nations, into civilisation”, expressed the silent rebellion of the abused creature in human beings. It was, in other words, the expression of resistance – as defiant as it was futile – of people’s inner “barbarian nation” to forceful modernisation and civilisation.
To introduce here the inventor of psychoanalysis and neurosis researcher Sigmund Freud as the first neurocapitalist practitioner and thinker might be thought to be overstepping the mark. Yet people tend to forget that Freud was a neuro-anatomist and neurologist by training, and saw himself primarily as a neuroscientist. What distinguished him from his colleagues was that he was more aware of the limitations of the methods available for studying the brain at the end of the nineteenth century. Having identified neurosis as an acquired pathology of the nervous system for which there was no known treatment or way to localise, he decided instead to take an indirect route. The means he invented in order both to research and to cure this mysterious illness was psychoanalysis. Fellow researchers like Oskar Vogt, who continued to search for the key to psychopathology and genius in the anatomy of the brain, were doomed to fail. From then on, psychology served the requirements of everyday life in a constantly changing capitalist reality. As a method based on communication, psychoanalysis penetrated all spheres of social interaction, from the intimate and private to the economic and cultural. In doing so, it created new markets: a repair market for mental illness and a coaching market for those seeking to optimise capitalist production and reproduction.
Delayed by the Second World War, the repressive capitalism of the nineteenth century was eventually replaced by libertarian, affluent capitalism. Conformity, discipline and feelings of guilt – the symptoms of failure to cope with a system of moral dictates and proscriptions – gave way to the new imperative of self-realisation. The psychic ideal of the successful individual was characterised by dynamically renewable readiness for self-expansion, which for the subject meant having a capacity for self-motivation that could be activated at any time and that was immune to frustration. Failure now meant not being able to exhaust the full potential of one’s options. This development brought a diametric change in the character of mental illness. Neurosis, a disorder born of guilt, powerlessness and lack of discipline, lost its significance. Attention shifted to the self’s failure to realise itself. Depression, the syndrome described by Alain Ehrenberg in The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age, began its triumphal march.
Depression, however, was also the first widespread mental illness for which modern neuroscience promptly found a remedy. Depression and anxiety were located in the gaps between the synapses, which is precisely where they were treated. Where previously there had only been reflexive psychotherapy, an interface had now been identified where suffering induced by the self and the world could now be alleviated directly and pre-reflexively.
At this point, if not before, the unequal duo of capitalism and neuroscience was joined by a third partner. From now on, the blossoming pharmaceutical industry was to function as a kind of transmission belt connecting the two wheels and making them turn faster. In the first half of the twentieth century, mental disorders were treated mainly with sedative barbiturates, electric shock therapy and psychosurgery. But by the 1930s, neuro-psychopharmacology was already winning the day, as Freud had predicted it would.
Is it a paradox, or one of those things that are so obvious they remain unobserved, that the success of Freud’s psychoanalysis and that of modern neuroscience are based on similar premises? Psychoanalysis was successful because it wove together medically relevant disciplines like psychiatry and psychology with art, culture, education, economics and politics, allowing it to penetrate important areas of social life. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the neurosciences seem to be in a position to take on a comparable role in the future.
What cannot be overlooked is that the methodological anchoring of the neurosciences in pure science, combined with the ethical legitimacy ascribed to them as a branch of medicine, gives them a privileged position similar to that enjoyed by psychoanalysis in the early twentieth century. Unlike the latter, however, the neurosciences are extremely well funded by the state and even more so by private investment from the pharmaceutical industry. Their prominent status can be explained both by the number and significance of the problems they are attempting to solve, as well as the broad public recognition of these problems, and by the respectable profits to be made should they succeed. In other words, they are driven by economic and epistemic forces that emanate from the capitalism of today, and that will shape the capitalism of tomorrow – whatever that might look like.
II
In Germany, the USA and many western European countries, it is neither painkillers nor cardiovascular drugs that now put the greatest strain on health budgets, but rather neuro-psychotropic drugs. The huge market for this group of drugs will grow rapidly as life expectancy continues to rise, since age is the biggest risk factor for neurological and psychiatric illness. All over the world, whole armies of neuroscientists are engaged in research in universities, in projects often funded by the pharmaceuticals industry, and to an even greater extent in the industry’s own facilities, to find more effective and more profitable drugs to bring onto the market. The engine driving the huge advances being made in the neurosciences is capital, while the market seems both to unleash and to constrain the potential of this development.
Depression, anxiety or attention deficit disorders are now regarded by researchers and clinical practitioners alike as products of neuro-chemical dysregulation in interconnected systems of neurotransmitters. They are therefore treated with substances that intervene either directly or indirectly in the regulation of neurotransmitters. Given that the body’s neuro-chemical systems are highly sensitive and inter-reactive, the art of successful treatment resides in a process of fine-tuning. New and more expensive drugs are able to do this increasingly effectively and selectively, thus reducing undesirable side effects. Despite the immense costs for healthcare systems, the high incidence of mental disorders and the fear of anxiety, depression and dementia make the development of ever better neuro-psychotropic drugs desirable and legitimate.
However, the development and approval of drugs designed to alleviate the symptoms of mental disorders also open the gates to substances that can be used to deliberately alter non-pathological brain functions or mental states. The rigid ethical conventions in the USA and the European Union – today the most profitable markets for neuro-psychotropic drugs – mean that drug development, whether funded by the state or by the pharmaceuticals industry, is strictly geared towards the prevention and treatment of illness. Few pharmaceutical companies are therefore willing to make public their interest in studying and developing substances designed to increase the cognitive performance or psychological wellbeing of healthy people. The reason is simple: there is no legal market for these so-called “neuro-enhancers”. Taking such drugs to perform better in examinations, for example, is a punishable offence in the USA. Yet sales figures for certain neuro-psychotropic drugs are considerably higher than the incidence of the illnesses for which they are indicated would lead one to expect. This apparent paradox applies above all to neuropsychotropic drugs that have neuro-enhancement properties. The most likely explanation is that neuro-enhancers are currently undergoing millions of self-trials, including in universities – albeit probably not in their laboratories.
The ten top-selling psychotropic substances in the USA include anti-depressants, neuroleptics (antipsychotics), stimulants and drugs for treating dementia. In 2007 one hundred million prescriptions were issued for these drugs with sales worth more than sixteen billion dollars. These figures illustrate how, in an environment that is regulated but difficult to control, supply and subjectively perceived need can create a market turning over billions of dollars. What is more, it is a market that is likely to expand into those areas in which a performance-driven society confronts the post-postmodern self with its own shortcomings: in others words in schools and further education, at work, in relationships, and in old age. Among the best-selling neuro-psychotropic drugs are those that modulate the way people experience emotions and those that improve their capacity to pay attention and to concentrate, in most cases regardless of whether there is a clinically definable impairment of these functions.
Attempts to offset naturally occurring, non-pathological deviations from the norm are referred to as “compensatory” or “moderate enhancement” – in the same way that glasses are worn to correct the eyes’ decreasing ability to focus. The term describes a gradual improvement in function to a degree that is still physiologically natural. By contrast, “progressive” or “radical enhancement” denotes a qualitative improvement in function that exceeds natural boundaries. To return to the optical metaphor, we could say that the difference between these forms of performance enhancement is like that between wearing spectacles and night-vision glasses.
In all ages and cultures, producers and purveyors of drugs and potions purported to enhance the individual’s cognitive state have been able to do a tidy trade, as the many references to magic potions and fountains of youth in literature and the fine arts testify. Nowadays, one substance with this kind of mythical status is ginkgo. Billions of dollars worth of ginkgo-biloba preparations are sold in the USA every year; and if ginkgo really did have any significant effect on cognition or memory, it would be a classic case of the widespread, unchecked use of a compensatory neuro-enhancer. As it is, however, the myth and commercial success of ginkgo are more a testament to the perhaps universal human need for a better attention span, memory and mental powers, and to the willingness to pay good money to preserve and enhance them.
For the attainment of happiness as the aim of a good life, Aristotle recommended cultivating a virtuous mind and virtuous character. This is precisely what some neuro-psychotropic drugs are designed to do. The virtues of the mind are generally understood to be instrumental traits like memory and attention span. The extent to which these traits are innate or acquired varies from person to person. After adolescence, their efficiency gradually goes into decline at individually varying rates. Inequality and the threat of loss are strong motivations for action. The current consensus on the ethics of neuro-enhancement seems to be that as long as the fundamental medical principles of self-determination, non-harm (nil nocere) and benefit (salus aegroti) are adhered to, rejecting pharmacological intervention in the instrumental traits of the brain would be at odds with a liberal understanding of democracy.
A more complex ethical problem would seem to be the improvement of so-called character virtues, which we shall refer to here as socio-affective traits. Unlike instrumental traits such as attention span and memory, traits like temperament, self-confidence, trust, willingness to take risks, authenticity and so on are considered to be crucial to the personality. Pharmacological intervention that alters these traits therefore affects a person’s psychological integrity. While such interventions may facilitate and accelerate self-discovery and self-realisation (see the large body of literature on experience with Prozac, e.g. Peter D. Kramer, Listening to Prozac: Psychiatrist Explores Antidepressant Drugs and the Remaking of the Self , they may also do the exact opposite. We will never be able to predict with any certainty how altering instrumental and socio-affective traits will ultimately affect the reflexively structured human personality as a whole. Today’s tacit assumption that neuro-psychotropic interventions are reversible is leading individuals to experiment on themselves. Yet even if certain mental states are indeed reversible, the memory of them may not be.
The barriers to neuro-enhancement actually fell some time ago, albeit in ways that for a long time went unnoticed. Jet-lag-free short breaks to Bali, working for global companies with a twenty-four hour information flow from headquarters in Tokyo, Brussels and San Francisco, exams and assessments, medical emergency services – in all of these situations it has become routine for people with no medical knowledge to use chemical substances to influence their ability to pay attention. The technologies that have sped up our lives in the era of globalisation – the Internet, mobile phones, aeroplanes – are already a daily reality for large numbers of people and are interfering with their biologically and culturally determined cycles of activity and rest.
That is not to say that the popularisation of these findings has had no effect at all. Reconceptualising joy as dopamine activity in the brain’s reward centres, melancholy as serotonin deficiency, attention as the noradrenalin-induced modulation of stimulus-processing, and, not least, love as a consequence of the secretion of centrally acting bonding hormones, changes not only our perspective on emotional and mental states, but also our subjective experience of self. That does not mean that we experience the physiological side of feelings like love or guilt any differently, but it does make us think about them differently. This, in turn, changes the way we perceive, interpret and order them, and hence the effect they have on our behaviour. By viewing emotions in general terms rather than as singular events taking place in a unique temporal and spatial context, the neurosciences have created a rational justification for trying to influence them in ways other than by individual and mutual care.
The possibility of pharmacological intervention thus expands the subjective autonomy of people to act in their own best interests or to their own detriment. This in turn is accompanied by a new form of self-reflection, which encompasses both structural images of the brain and the ability to imagine the neuro-chemical activity that goes on there. What is alarming is that many of the neuroscientific findings that have triggered a transformation in our perception of ourselves are linked with commercial interests.
It is already clear that global capitalism will make excessive demands on our material, and even more so on our human-mental resources. This is evident from the oft-used term “information society”, since information can only function as a commodity if it changes human behaviour, and it can only do this if we accord it our attention and engage with it emotionally.
How does estrogen affect auto-immune conditions ?
▻https://massivesci.com/articles/estrogen-immune-conditions
A new study might finally explain why women are more likely to develop the disorders
WHO expert defends gaming disorder listing: “This moral panic lives its own life”
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-06-26-who-expert-defend-gaming-disorder-listing-this-moral-panic
GamesIndustry.biz speaks with the World Health Organisation and its critics on the subject of gaming disorder
Ukie: WHO gaming disorder diagnosis is based on “highly contested evidence”
▻https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-06-20-ukie-gaming-disorder-who
Ukie CEO Dr Jo Twist OBE on the risks posed by the World Health Organisation’s proposed definition, and the “irresponsible” reaction of mainstream media
How to Hack Your #sleep Cycles Through Hypnosis
▻https://hackernoon.com/how-to-hack-your-sleep-cycles-through-hypnosis-b41d522910fb?source=rss--
Like many conditions, common underlying causes for insomnia often lie in our diet, exercise habits (or lack thereof), and stress. Even other mental health diagnoses may present symptoms that affect our ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. For some, sleeping medication is a reliable treatment, but the mysteries around the human sleep cycle make medication not an option for everyone. Side effects like potential dependence, memory issues, and ironically, drowsiness. Lucky there are other treatments, and many in development, for those suffering with sleep disorders, other than medication.Because of the sensitive and highly individualized nature of sleep, therapeutic and personal approaches to sleep disorders have been looking towards sleep hypnosis methods. Much more than just a (...)
WHO: “There is increasing and well-documented evidence of gaming disorder”
▻http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-01-09-who-there-is-increasing-and-well-documented-evidence-of-ga
Recent listing is “only a clinical description” for diagnoses, not prevention or treatment
Can PTSD Be Good for You? - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/can-ptsd-be-good-for-you
There’s no way to be sure what will traumatize someone, and not everyone exposed to “trauma” develops PTSD.WikicommonsYou might think it insensitive or even offensive to ask whether PTSD could be good for someone. Who wants a disorder, let alone one caused by “post-traumatic stress”? Yet when Nautilus posed this question to Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and the director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City—where she’s worked with war veterans, Holocaust survivors, and other trauma victims—she said, “I don’t know.”That ambivalence partly stems from the fuzzy concept of “trauma.” There’s no way to be sure what will traumatize someone, and not everyone exposed to “trauma” develops PTSD. “We’re now having a (...)
Mulberry leaf extract could reduce the risk of type 2 #diabetes
▻https://theconversation.com/mulberry-leaf-extract-could-reduce-the-risk-of-type-2-diabetes-7331
Mulberry leaves have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for several millennia and its use was first recorded in around 500AD. In the Grand Materia Medica, it states that “if the juice (of the herb) is decocted and used as a tea substitute it can stop wasting and thirsting disorder”. Wasting (weight loss) and excessive thirst along with increased urination and tiredness are symptoms associated with diabetes. We aimed to investigate the effects of mulberry extract on blood glucose and insulin responses in healthy volunteers with a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial – the gold standard for a clinical trial.
New color-coding tool sheds light on blood disorders, cancers by tracking clonal stem cells
News Medical Life Sciences
▻http://www.news-medical.net/news/20161122/New-color-coding-tool-sheds-light-on-blood-disorders-cancers-by-tracki
A new color-coding tool is enabling scientists to better track live blood stem cells over time, a key part of understanding how blood disorders and cancers like leukemia arise, report researchers in Boston Children’s Hospital’s Stem Cell Research Program.
In Nature Cell Biology they describe the use of their tool in zebrafish to track blood stem cells the fish are born with, the clones (copies) these cells make of themselves and the types of specialized blood cells they give rise to (red cells, white cells and platelets). Leonard Zon, MD, director of the Stem Cell Research Program and a senior author on the paper, believes the tool has many implications for hematology and cancer medicine since zebrafish are surprisingly similar to humans genetically.
[...]
“It’s like an RGB television set, where red, blue and green give you the whole spectrum of colors,” explains Zon. “In our system, the enzyme cuts out different parts —blue, for example, or green and blue — so the stem cell will end up a different shade of color. In this way, we were able to mark each stem cell being born with a different color, and then follow the colors through development and see how many stem cells of each color were present in the adult fish.”
Other scientists have developed tracking systems based on genetic “barcodes.” But these require dissecting the cells, so cannot analyze living, circulating cell populations.
Welcome to the Post-Hobbesian Dystopia: A War of Everyone Against Themselves
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/welcome-to-the-posthobbesian-dystopia-a-war-of-everyone-against-them
What greater indictment of a system could there be than an epidemic of mental illness? Yet plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social phobia, eating disorders, self-harm and loneliness...
Stanford researchers ‘stunned’ by stem cell experiment that helped stroke patient walk
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/06/02/stanford-researchers-stunned-by-stem-cell-experiment-that-helped-str
Des #cellules_souches de la moelle osseuse dont le mode d’action ne se fait pas via leur transformation en tissu nerveux.
While the research involved only 18 patients and was designed primarily to look at the safety of such a procedure and not its effectiveness, it is creating significant buzz in the neuroscience community because the results appear to contradict a core belief about brain damage — that it is permanent and irreversible.
The results, published in the journal Stroke, could have implications for our understanding of an array of disorders including traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury and Alzheimer’s if confirmed in larger-scale testing.
The work involved patients who had passed the critical six-month mark when recoveries generally plateau and there are rarely further improvements. [...]
The one-time therapy involved surgeons drilling a hole into the study participants’ skulls and injecting stem cells in several locations around the area damaged by the stroke. These stem cells were harvested from the bone marrow of adult donors. While the procedure sounds dramatic, it is considered relatively simple as far as brain surgery goes. The patients were conscious the whole time and went home the same day.
[...]
“Their recovery was not just a minimal recovery like someone who couldn’t move a thumb now being able to wiggle it. It was much more meaningful. One 71-year-old wheelchair-bound patient was walking again,” said [Gary] Steinberg [the study’s lead author and chair of neurosurgery at Stanford] who personally performed most of the surgeries.
[...]
Steinberg said that the study does not support the idea that the injected stem cells become neurons, as has been previously thought. Instead, it suggests that they seem to trigger some kind of biochemical process that enhances the brain’s ability to repair itself.
“A theory is that they turn the adult brain into the neonatal brain that recovers well,” he explained.
[...]
Nicholas Boulis, a neurosurgeon and researcher at Emory University, said the study appears to support the idea that there may be latent pathways in the brain that can be reactivated — a theory that has been “working its way to the surface” over the past few years.
#AVC
Crisis in Brazil
Perry Anderson
▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n08/perry-anderson/crisis-in-brazil
Popular mobilisation to stop the ouster of Dilma [...] is fettered by the legacy of PT rule. The party is in a weak position to call on its beneficiaries to defend it, for at least three reasons. The first is simply that, if corruption lost it the middle-class sympathy it once enjoyed, austerity has alienated the much larger lower-class base it acquired. The demonstrations it has so far been able to mount against impeachment have been much less imposing than those calling for it. Marchers have been mustered mainly from public sector workers and unions: the poor are conspicuous by their absence. The PT’s rural bailiwicks in the north-east are anyway socially dispersed, as the big cities of the centre-south that are the strongholds of the new right are not. Then there has been the inevitable demoralisation as successive scandals have engulfed the party, a diffuse sense of guilt, however suppressed, weakening any fighting spirit. Lastly, and fundamentally, by the time Lula won power the party had become essentially an electoral machine, financed overwhelmingly by corporate donations rather than – as at the beginning – by members’ dues, contenting itself with passive adhesion to the name of its leader, lacking any will to foster collective action among its voters. The active mobilisation that brought it into being in the manufacturing centres of Brazil became a distant memory as the party gained support in zones of the country and layers of the population untouched by industry, with deep-rooted traditions of submission to authority and fear of disorder. This was a political culture Lula understood, and did not seriously attempt to unsettle. In his vision of things, the potential cost was too high. To help the masses, he sought harmony with the elites, for whom any vigorous polarisation was taboo. In 2002 he finally won the presidency, at his fourth attempt, on a slogan of ‘peace and love’. In 2016, faced with political lynching, he was still uttering the same two words to crowds expecting something more combative.
[...]
The Workers’ Party believed, after a time, that it could use the established order in Brazil to benefit the poor, without harm – indeed with help – to the rich. It did benefit the poor, as it set out to do. But once it accepted the price of entry into a diseased political system, the door closed behind it. The party itself withered, becoming an enclave in the state, without self-awareness or strategic direction, so blind that it ostracised André Singer, its best thinker, for a mess of spin-doctors and pollsters, so insensible it took lucre, wherever it came from, as the condition of power. Its achievements will remain. Whether the party will itself do so is an open question. In South America, a cycle is coming to an end. For a decade and a half, relieved of attention by the US, buoyed by the commodities boom, and drawing on deep reserves of popular tradition, the continent was the only part of the world where rebellious social movements coexisted with heterodox governments. In the wake of 2008, there are now plenty of the former elsewhere. But none so far of the latter. A global exception is closing, with no relay yet in sight.
ISW Les campagnes de l’EI en mars 2016 au niveau régional et à l’étranger
ISIS’s Regional Campaign: March 2016 | Institute for the Study of War
▻http://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/isiss-regional-campaign-march-2016
ISIS continued to pursue ongoing campaigns both regionally and further abroad throughout March. The group carried out a spectacular, sophisticated terror attack in Brussels on March 22. The attack, which was unprecedented in Belgium, is part of ISIS’s ongoing campaign to attack and polarize the West, sowing disorder to make way for future expansion to a global Caliphate. The group also continued to demonstrate its intent to remain and expand in North Africa by establishing lines of communication between the group’s Libyan stronghold and ISIS-linked groups in Tunisia and Algeria. ISIS also showed expanded operational capability in the Sinai, with a pair of increasingly sophisticated explosive attacks, and in the Caucasus with an accelerated set of explosive attacks. ISIS has shown resiliency by persisting in these campaigns in the near and far abroad despite losses inside of Iraq and Syria, such as the loss of Palmyra to pro-regime forces on March 27.
PDF : ▻http://understandingwar.org/sites/default/files/ISIS%27s%20Regional%20Campaign%20MAR2016.pdf
#EI #Daesh #ISW
Many Prostitutes Suffer Combat Disorder, Study Finds - NYTimes.com
▻http://www.nytimes.com/1998/08/18/science/many-prostitutes-suffer-combat-disorder-study-finds.html
In a study to be presented today at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco, researchers interviewed almost 500 prostitutes from around the world and discovered that two-thirds suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. In contrast, the condition is found in less than 5 percent of the general population. Studies of veterans of combat in the Vietnam War have found that the disorder may be diagnosed in 20 percent to 30 percent, about half of whom have long-term psychiatric problems.
Exploiting Disorder: al-Qaeda and the Islamic State - International Crisis Group
▻http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/regions/global/exploiting-disorder-al-qaeda-and-the-islamic-state.aspx
The Islamic State (IS), al-Qaeda-linked groups, Boko Haram and other extremist movements are protagonists in today’s deadliest crises, complicating efforts to end them. They have exploited wars, state collapse and geopolitical upheaval in the Middle East, gained new footholds in Africa and pose an evolving threat elsewhere. Reversing their gains requires avoiding the mistakes that enabled their rise. This means distinguishing between groups with different goals; using force more judiciously; ousting militants only with a viable plan for what comes next; and looking to open lines of communication, even with hardliners. Vital, too, is to de-escalate the crises they feed off and prevent others erupting, by nudging leaders toward dialogue, inclusion and reform and reacting sensibly to terrorist attacks. Most important is that action against “violent extremism” not distract from or deepen graver threats, notably escalating major- and regional-power rivalries.
No Alcohol for Sexually Active Women Without Birth Control, #C.D.C. Recommends
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/04/health/no-alcohol-for-sexually-active-women-without-birth-control-cdc-recommends.h
La photo qui accompagne l’article est étrange...
Sexually active women who are not on birth control should refrain from alcohol to avoid the risk of giving birth to babies with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, even if those women are not yet known to be pregnant, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended.
The C.D.C. report, released on Tuesday, estimated that 3.3 million women between the ages of 15 and 44 who drink alcohol risk exposing their infants to the disorders, which can stunt children’s growth and cause lifelong disabilities. The report, which appeared to refer exclusively to heterosexual sex, also said that three in four women who intend to get pregnant do not stop drinking alcohol when they stop using birth control.
“The risk is real. Why take the chance?” Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the C.D.C., said in a statement.
Ingenious: Rachel Yehuda - Issue 31: Stress
▻http://nautil.us/issue/31/stress/ingenious-rachel-yehuda
Although post-traumatic stress disorder is an established diagnosis in psychology, and stressed combat veterans are a cliché in Hollywood, it wasn’t long ago when PTSD wasn’t well understood at all. “There was a time when our lack of knowledge about post-traumatic stress disorder was really harmful and resulted in the fact that a lot of people did not get treated or treated properly by the healthcare system,” says Rachel Yehuda. In the past 25 years, Yehuda has done as much as any scientist to understand the debilitating disorder. Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience, is the director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. She has worked with war veterans, Holocaust survivors, and other trauma victims to gather insights (...)
These Three Maps Show How Drugs Move Around the World - Bloomberg Business
▻http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-26/these-three-maps-show-how-drugs-move-around-the-world
In 2013, 246 million people worldwide—one of every 20 people between the ages of 15 and 64—used an illegal drug. Some 27 million of those are problem drug users suffering from addiction, dependence, or other disorders.
Lubkivsky says SBU informed on Communists’ plans to stage disorders on May 1-2
▻http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/lubkivsky-says-sbu-informed-on-communists-plans-to-stage-disorders-on-may-
The Security Service of Ukraine has said it is well-informed on the plans of the Communists to organize provocations on May 1-2, SBU chief advisor Markiyan Lubkivsky said.
Commémorer le massacre d’Odessa le 2 mai relève évidemment de la provocation.
Lors des bagarres du 14 octobre devant le parlement de Kiev l’un des « activistes » maniait une chaîne (mais pas que…, il est facilement repérable avec son sweat-shirt vert, on le voit avec pavé, fronde vers les policiers et les journalistes,…) aurait été arrêté.
C’est le fils d’un candidat à la députation pour Svoboda
D’après Oleh Tyahnybok, le leader de Svoboda, le pauvre garçon (âgé d’un peu moins de 16 ans) est quasi aveugle, souffre d’ostéochondrite le contraignant à se déplacer avec un corset.
The court arrested « the blind teenager with osteochondrosis », beating a chain of militiamen under Rada
▻https://news.pn/en/criminal/116718
The court arrested for two months the son of a mazhoritarshchik on 65-му to the district from IN “Freedom” of Victor Zakharchuk who during disorders under the Verkhovna Rada last Tuesday swung a chain and I put mutilations to militiamen.
The leader IN «Freedoms» Oleh Tyahnybok on TV commented on this arrest so:
“Child this patient. It is osteochondrosis children’s. And it blind. Has a poor eyesight, goes in a corset.”
On le voit à de nombreuses reprises sur cette vidéo.
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfegbqwsZOY
On voit également à plusieurs reprises une courageuse femme s’interposant entre la horde des « activistes » et les policiers.
Boris Johnson to buy three water cannon for Metropolitan police
▻http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/jun/10/boris-johnson-london-mayor-water-cannon-metropolitan-police
London mayor justifies the speed of the £218,000 purchase by saying the machines are needed in case of disorder this summer
Five of six largest police forces do not want water cannon
▻http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/04/police-forces-opposed-to-water-cannon
Five of the six largest forces in England and Wales said they were against deploying water cannon on their streets, with one police chief dismissing them as being “as much use as a chocolate teapot” for quelling disorder.
The Metropolitan police and the London mayor, Boris Johnson, are pressing the case for water cannon to be deployed in the capital as soon as summer, amid warnings that austerity could fuel disorder.
But the views of the other forces leave the Met in isolation, weeks before it is expected to ask the home secretary for formal approval. The police and crime commissioners (PCCs) for the forces in Greater Manchester, West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Merseyside and Thames Valley have all rejected the idea and suggested they would be unwilling to share the cost.
Are We Prepared for the Hard Choices That Prenatal Genetic Tests Could Force on Expectant Parents? | MIT Technology Review
▻http://www.technologyreview.com/review/522661/too-much-information
The catch, though, is that as the accuracy of these tests continues to improve, they will be able to detect a greater range of genetic variations, including some with murkier implications. For example, rather than indicating something with certainty, they could reveal elevated risks for certain diseases or disorders. These advances could collide with the politics of abortion and raise the ugly specter of eugenics. When, if ever, should parents terminate pregnancies on the basis of genetic results? Do we have the wisdom to direct our own evolution? And perhaps most important, are there limits to how much data parents should have—or want to have—about their children before birth?
Nevertheless, that information is coming, and parents will have to figure out what they want to know and how to interpret the choices they’re offered. It is critical, then, that the informed–consent process for testing be exceptionally good, says Greely. Ideally, parents should meet with a genetic counselor to discuss what exactly testing might reveal and what wrenching decisions might follow. If formal genetic counseling isn’t available, obstetricians should step in with extended, thorough conversations that take into account the parents’ values, desire for data, and tolerance for uncertainty. Genetic testing, as Greely puts it, should be made distinct from other forms of prenatal care; it should never be “just one more tube of blood” taken in the course of another whirlwind visit to the doctor.