Saturday, January 31, 2009

Obama And Keeping the Republicans Out Of The Kitchen

Well mom just made your favorite dessert and it is sitting on the counter cooling.

If you dare reach over and try to touch it you will be chided into waiting till later.

Well as the republicans have had their way with things for the last 8 or so years, we realize that the cake of peace and international progress lay in the restraints of the diplomacy of international support.

We can not let that be disturbed.

Hopefully there will be no time when it will:
when the fruition of it gives way to a planetary peace.

An international tribunal elected democratically would disallow ANY extrajudicial killing as in war or international espionage. This will require an international police organization and much restaint on behalf of all nations.

It would be the end the attacks of the predator aircraft, unilateral attacks from one country to another and restraint on all sides.

Essentially this framework has been in place in the United Nations and the Geneva convention. It will take leadership to maintain this bulwark of civilization that has been compromised by this last U.S. administration.

Can we, in the United States, revive the planetary good will in favor of a planetary peace?

Yes we can.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Fetus Worship Definition

The act of biologic replication is worshipped in lieu of understanding the physiological consequences of a rapist's stem cells affecting the mother for the rest of her life.

The article below shows:

4 days after pregnancy stem cells invade the brain and create neurons

See the science here:
http://brainethics.wordpress.com/2006/07/20/on-a-mothers-mind/

Friday, January 23, 2009

Money for Tortured Postpartum Depression?

Original post: (deleted from progressohio)

http://www.progressohio.org/page/community/post/averagejane/C2Vp/commentary#comments

Money for Tortured Postpartum Depression? Reply
By NationOfGandhis Jan 21st 2009 at 11:15 pm EST (Updated Jan 21st 2009 at 11:15 pm EST)
The problem with continuing pregnancies beyond the mother's desire could lead to post partum depression. I am not a doctor but the money incentive is not a real psychological solice.

To wit:
There is conclusive evidence that stem cells produced during pregnancy remain with and affect the mother for years if not decades.

Stem cells are not innocuous, we know that. If they come from a relation that is resented as in rape, then the psychological indications must be taken into account.

No one is "for" abortion, we just want fairness and justice. For rape, justice is termination of the fetus.

Fetus worship is just that, when the science is completely ignored and ignorance prevails.

Sounds harsh and cold but faith does not cure reality. Science and religion can agree when they work in harmony and take ALL facts into consideration including the woman's psyche. This is one of those times.

"This is just what a team of researchers from Singapore have found and published in the journal Stem Cells. It’s well known in this literature that fetal cells can enter the blood of circulation during pregnancy and remain there for many years after birth."

"These cells can, just as regular stem cells, develop into different kinds of tissue, including bone marrow, liver an spleen cells. But whether these cells can cross the blood-brain barrier has been less certain.

see the story here:
http://brainethics.wordpress.com/2006/07/20/on-a-mothers-mind/

On a mother’s mind

motherbrain1.jpgHaving a baby has a large impact on how we live our lives (trust me). But whereas men may react with amazement, wonder, even jealousy of being left aside, little actually happens to our bodies after birth. The changes that happen in women are far more obvious, not only during pregnancy but after birth also. The production of milk, and the possibility of conditional learning of milk production to the child’s crying is just one example of how body, brain and mind get tuned into caretaking.
Furthermore, studies of oxytocin, a mammalian hormone that acts as a neurotransmitter in the brain, has been implicated in the bonding of the mother-infant attachment bond. Oxytocin is present in both sexes and is thought to be involved in social bonding, stress-reduction and orgasm, just to mention some. but the hormone seems to play a specific role in how mothers react to their newborns, and the establishment of a sound dyadic attachment. In this way, the brains of mothers change, both as a result of hormonal expression (loads of additional oxytocin) and the social interaction with the infant.
But did you know that some of the neurons in mothers’ brains actually stem from their babies? In other words: some of a mother’s brain cells are actually from the offspring.
This is just what a team of researchers from Singapore have found and published in the journal Stem Cells. It’s well known in this literature that fetal cells can enter the blood of circulation during pregnancy and remain there for many years after birth. These cells can, just as regular stem cells, develop into different kinds of tissue, including bone marrow, liver an spleen cells. But whether these cells can cross the blood-brain barrier has been less certain.
stemcell.jpg
The expression of fetal stem cells in the mother’s cortex at 4 months after birth. Figure 1-H from the article.
This is exactly what the researchers found. By labelling fetal stem cells they discovered that these cells had indeed crossed the blood-brain barrier and moved into the brain. Furthermore, at measurement four days after pregnancy these cells had developed into neurons, astrocytes, oligodendrocytes or macrophage-like cells. In other words, they developed just as any other stem cell.
So babies gets into their mothers’ minds in more than through hormonal and psychological mechanisms.
However, what is actually the function of these neurons is more unclear. Does the workings of fetal neurons have any significance for their relationship, or any particular mental function in mothers? This is indeed an opening field, and an eye-opener to many people (including myself when I first read it). No results have been reported in either direction as of yet.
What has been studied, however, is how these fetal stem cells can actually play a supporting role in the mother’s brain in the case of pathology. In addition to documenting that fetal stem cells enter the mother’s brain, the researchers added a condition involving brain lesion of the mother’s brain. What they found was just as surprising: after a lesion to the brain, more fetal cells were found in the lesioned region. So the baby’s cells seem tuned into helping the mother regain herself in the case of injury.
Mind-blowing as this finding may be, little is still known about this phenomenon. The development, mechanism, function and evolution of this process is just beginning to be explored. But it already raises a whole range of questions: can we measure a difference between mother’s and “non-mother’s” brains, both structurally and functionally? Does this “fetomaternal microchimerism” lead to any advantages (i.e. survival) in mothers? What is the range of variation in this kind of expression: are there “good” and “bad” fetuses? Are mothers of many children better off in any respect of those with fewer children? Or is this process just a question of striking the energy balance, the child “paying back” what it deprived the mother of during pregnagcy?
So a portion of yourself resides somewhere in your mother’s brain (and body). Children are indeed the result of their parents, but now it seems that children pay back, too.
-Thomas

About the author of brain ethics article:
ramsoy.jpgThomas Zoëga Ramsøy (b. 1973 in Oslo, Norway) is a PhD in cognitive neuroscience / neuroimaging, originally trained in clinical and theoretical neuropsychology. His current work is at the Copenhagen Business School and Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance in Copenhagen, Denmark. His work focuses on a range of different topics, including:
  • neuroeconomics — preferences and decision making
  • imaging genetics
  • development and ageing
  • consciousness
  • modularity
  • visual cognition
  • evolution
The resulting interest in neuroethics stems from a speculation about the findings from these areas. Concerns about practical issues and especially ethical, folk-psychological and philosophical consequences of brain imaging have given rise to this interest. Together with Martin Skov he writes on a book (in Danish) on neuroethics.
TZR is also the managing editor of the Science & Consciousness Review, an online forum/journal reviewing the scientific study of the mind.
You can find out more about TZR on his homepage, on the CBS homepage and on the DRCMR homepage. You can also send him an email at thomasr AT drcmr DOT dk.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Ohio Agriculture, Chickens OR Pot? Bob and Harvey on Point!

It's tough times people, we have to make a choice.

Where is the Ohio department of Agriculture when
something REALLY needs to get done?

Either we gamble and encourage immorality or we
produce something that can and will improve our
econmic situation and help the environment.

Stop the gambling on our future and start producing!

The chicken farms in Union County get all (err some of) the press yet the thing that would help Ohio farmers and the local economic collapse would be the cultivation of industrial and medical cannibis.

There would be no impact on the environment like the chicken farms would produce, no flys, no watershed pollution, no pesticides, no hormones or antibiotics.

The slippery slope argument by those who would spread fear of this environmentally friendly indigenous crop falls on it's face in respect to the human acknowlegement that herbs have their respective places.

NO ONE has studied the environmental impact of it's eradication and the degradation of it's unknown eco-systems.

Obama's Marijuana Prohibition Acid Test

by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
January 14, 2009

The parallels between the 1933 coming of Franklin Roosevelt and the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama must include the issue of Prohibition: alcohol in 1933, and marijuana today. As FDR did back then, Obama must now help end an utterly failed, socially destructive, reactionary crusade.

Marijuana prohibition is a core cause of many of the nation's economic problems. It now costs the U.S. tens of billions per year to track, arrest, try, defend and imprison marijuana consumers who pose little, if any, harm to society. The social toll soars even higher when we account for social violence, lost work, ruined careers and damaged families. In 2007, 775,137 people were arrested
in the U.S. for mere possession of this ancient crop, according to the FBI's uniform crime report.

Like the Prohibition on alcohol that plagued the nation from 1920 to 1933, marijuana prohibition (which essentially began in 1937) feeds organized crime and a socially useless prison-industrial complex that includes judges, lawyers, police, guards, prison contractors, and more.

A dozen states have now passed public referenda confirming medical uses for marijuana based on voluminous research dating back 5,000 years. Confirmed medicinal uses for marijuana include treatment for glaucoma, hypertension, arthritis, pain relief, nausea relief, reducing muscle spasticity from spinal cord injuries and multiple sclerosis, and diminishing tremors in multiple sclerosis patients. Medical reports also prove smoked marijuana provides relief from migraine headaches, depression, seizures, and insomnia, according to NORML. In recent years its use has become critical to thousands of cancer and AIDS sufferers who need to it to maintain their appetite while undergoing chemotherapy.

The U.S. ban on marijuana extends to include hemp, one of the most widely used agricultural products in human history. Unlike many other industrial crops, hemp is powerful and prolific in a natural state, requiring no pesticides, herbicides, extraordinary fertilizing or inappropriate irrigation. Its core products include paper, cloth, sails, rope, cosmetics, fuel, supplements and food. Its seeds are a potentially significant source of bio-diesel fuel, and its leaves and stems an obvious choice for cellulosic ethanol, both critically important for a conversion to a Solartopian renewable energy supply.

Hemp was grown in large quantities by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and many more of the nation's founders, most of whom would likely be dumbfounded to hear it is illegal (based on entries in Washington's agricultural diaries, referring to the separation of male and female plants, it's likely he and his cohorts also raised an earlier form of "medicinal" marijuana).

Hemp growing was mandatory in some circumstances in early America, and again during World War II, when virtually the entire state of Kansas was planted in it. The current ban on industrial hemp costs the U.S. billiions of dollars in lost production and revenue from a plant that can produce superior paper, clothing, fuel and other critical materials at a fraction the financial cost and environmental damage imposed by less worthy sources.

On January 16, 1919, fundamentalist crusaders help pass the 18th Amendment, making the sale of alcohol illegal. The ensuing Prohibition was by all accounts a ludicrous failure epitomized by gang violence and lethal "amateur" product that added to the death toll. Its only real winner was organized crime and the prison-industrial complex.

In 1933, FDR helped pass the 21st Amendment repealing Prohibition, which ended a costly era of gratuitous social repression and gave the American economy---and psyche---a tangible boost.

Marijuana prohibition was escalated with Richard Nixon's 1970 declaration of the War on Drugs. There was a brief reprieve when Steve Ford, the son of President Gerald Ford appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone barefoot and claiming that the best place to smoke pot was in the White House. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter's last year in office, 338,664 were arrested for marijuana possession.

Ronald Reagan renewed the War on Drugs and declared his "Zero Tolerance" policy, despite his daughter Patti Davis' claim the Gipper smoked weed with a major donor. Following Reagan, President George Herbert Walker Bush recorded a low of 260,390 marijuana possession arrests, but the numbers climbed again under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both of whom are reported to have smoked it themselves (though Clinton claims not to have inhaled).

On a percentage basis, at least as many American high school students smoke pot than students in Holland, where it is legal. In the midst of the drug war, U.S. students report virtually unlimited access to a wide range of allegedly controlled substances, including pot. Because so many Americans use it, and it is so readily available, the war on marijuana can only be seen as a virtually universal assault on the basic liberties of our citizenry.

In a 2005 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services survey, more than 97 million Americans admitted to having tried marijuana at least once. President-elect Obama makes it clear in his book Dreams From My Father that he has smoked---and inhaled---marijuana (he is also apparently addicted to a far more dangerous drug, tobacco). His administration should tax marijuana rather than trying to repress it. Like alcohol and tobacco, a minimum age for legal access should be set at 21.

As a whole, the violent, repressive War on Drugs has been forty years of legal, cultural and economic catastrophe. Like FDR, Obama must end our modern-day Prohibition, and with it the health-killing crusade against this ancient, powerful medicinal herb.

--
Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman have co-authored four books on election protection, available at http://freepress.org, along with Bob's FITRAKIS FILES. Harvey's SOLARTOPIA! is at http://harveywasserman.com. This article was first published by http://freepress.org.

Original post:
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/8/2009/3343

R.D. Laing

R.D. Laing
Speaking on Autonomy