Monday, August 22, 2011

The Ideology of the Loser is Not a Winning Strategy (Obama loser)

The more that we observe our fellow man, the more obvious it becomes that humanity is unable to understand the problems that it causes for itself. If humans do not have the intellectual capacity to recognize most of their problems as being self-generated, then they are obviously incapable of correcting any of these life-threatening obstacles to the progression of mankind’s advancement, on their own. Leaving intellectually inferior beings in charge of the safety of the human race in the middle of an epochal historical confluence of multiple calamities is an existential form of negligence. The survival of the race requires that ways be found to institute a more capable decision-making process in the halls of power.

The Ideology of the Loser is Not a Winning Strategy

"The truth is: we are not telling the truth about these wars. America is not winning these wars."

No better example of our intellectual shortcomings could be found than in the recently concluded battle in Washington over raising the debt ceiling. Instead of solving the problems between the contrasting prevailing political opinions, the negotiating heads preferred to fight-out an opinion battle in the national press, proving that American government has degenerated into a “three-ring circus,” or a never-ending soap opera. Despite the threats, no real damage was done to the veterans, the elderly and the disabled, other than increasing their stress levels. The damages that have been done to our already mud-stained reputation are only helping to accelerate the global economic crisis.

The nature of the unfolding world crisis is one of an endless series of overlapping crises, with each crisis compounding the effects of previous blow-ups. An overwhelming global economic interruption is underway, but all of its negative effects are being made worse by endless military adventurism, which is heaping debt upon the center by the trillions. Before Obama got his way, most of us had never even contemplated what a “trillion dollars” actually meant. Now we toss the word around like it is really just business as usual, and not the most obvious signal that the whole thing has blown-up in their faces.

We are witnessing the outcome of a failed political system, which allows our Nation’s fate to be subjected to political considerations. By allowing government policy to be set by a dialectical see-saw, where the latest “winner takes all” politician jerks the decision-making process to either the right or the left, regardless of the fact that the correct answer would be a steady hand on the tiller, holding it like an anchor to the center.

Despite the fact that the losing party understands precisely the damage being done to our Constitutional Republic by their actions or inactions, it is usually the losing party which is the most vicious in its knee-jerk political actions. Invariably you will find, that it is the losing party which wages war upon the Republic itself as the means to correct the policies of the “treasonous” opponent. Instead of proving their wild ideas, they would prefer to hold their opponents to task, no matter what the human cost.

In this ideology of the loser, no actions taken to rectify the serious “errors” of their opponents can be considered to be as severe or as harmful as the opposition’s rhetorical attacks. It seems that terrorism is an acceptable form of battle in the war against seditious ideas. Knowledge that those entrusted to lead us attach greater importance to discrediting their opponents’ ideas than they do to validating their own (that the political battle is more important than the ideas being fought over), provides us a key to understanding the inadequacies of the human mind.

Vanity is the racial guarantor of our species’ stagnation. We have to make an effort to rise above our pride and accept new ways of thinking which make room for some sort of decision-making mechanism which relies upon intellects greater than the minds of individual men. Whether this new intellectual force is to be AI, cybernetically-enhanced human minds, or some computer-aided mechanism for tapping into the collective intellect of the greatest living minds, the human race must find some way to inject intellect into the governmental decision-making process. Stupid decisions are killing us. Individual personalities in control, like we have now, produce not just government gridlock, but the situation which we face, where every effort made to improve the situation as determined by the greatest political minds, only serves to make matters worse.

Human potential is equal to the total mass of all human “prodigies” added together, even the overlooked ones locked behind the barriers of poverty and the great class divide. Our potential to overcome our problems is limitless, if our potential were ever really tapped-into. This tells us that a true human renaissance awaits our children, in the very near future, dependent only upon us to make the changes which set their positive future into motion. The key to its unlocking it lies dormant, unused, because it has been hidden by hands which have a monetary stake in preventing a great awakening. Our civilization will either dead-end in the great ash heap of history, or we will step onto a new track to a better destination, together. The decision will either be made at the highest levels to do what is best for the American people and for the human race, or we will drink deeply of a deadly dose of apathy, but only if we lose the will to live.

Once the world of money and politics is revealed as a great parasitic infestation, that is sapping the life out of the human race, with its vapid political/military solutions to every problem that comes our way, then the popular support for tyranny will simply fade away. The time will soon come when all the emperors will stand naked before us, after they have been completely discredited the political/economic system that has nurtured them and their evil ways, overwhelming them with rivers of profits. The great injustice is that the economic tsunami which they have let loose upon the world will not focus solely upon the wave’s creators, but will dispense injustice equally to us all. Those at the top who are holding-on so tightly to the reigns of economic power (trying to squeeze every drop of profit out of the bankrupt systems in vain attempts to save themselves as well as their ill-gotten possessions) are strangling the lifelines for us all. Breaking their death grips will not spare anyone from the deluge that is coming, but it will open the supply lines that should already be flowing from a “humanitarian” government to the people, before the emergency hits, making survival easier for someone.

So you see, we are faced with two constants, which, when added together, reveal that our world is headed full speed to a great collision with the overtaking new world. It will either be the “New World Order” that many of us dread, or it will be a new world of our own making, a world that can only be discovered through experiments in collective “pulse-taking” (lessons to be learned from in place social networking), or other efforts to find the paths to democracy. When our worlds collide, visions of Empire will go up in smoke, but some new order will arise from the ashes, none the less. When the constant of the inevitability of the failure of political government is realized, then that is the moment when our greatest opportunity will arise. It will be the great moment of hope for all mankind, when genius is given the opportunity to provide the answers which human guile could never supply.

How do we steer away from the corporate New World Order, and set a course for freedom and universal human rights? Look toward our leaders and compare their words with leading thinkers–how do they compare? The recognized leaders all speak with one voice, even though they claim to be from different political parties. They project an aura of self-assurance, righteousness in the cause of justice. Yet their actions consistently contradict their words. Activists from both the right and the left spend their time trying to make the corrupted leadership eat their own words. In this ideological struggle, truth is the only weapon. He who possesses the most verifiable truth wins the war.

The truth is - we are not winning this war; we are not telling the truth about the war; we are not the good guys this time.

Social agitators, activists and other agents for change are people driven by their own vision - seeing into our negative future binds us all to a compulsory moral duty, to work for positive changes. If we see that our species, that our children will one day in their future, reach the point of losing all hope, then we would not be “fit parents,” allowing that to happen. If their last real hope was in us, that we would NOT let that happen to them and to their world, then who, or what force could stop us from throwing ourselves into the gears of the Imperial war machine? This is what makes us so dangerous to the powers that be. We who foresee the need to stand-up for something greater than ourselves, will willingly give-up our lives to stop them, once we understand the gravity of the situation. The knowledge of what has been done to America and the darkness that is still planned for us are powerful testimony of the loyalties of the people who have been running this country. It is irrefutable. Making more and more people aware of the true connection between our government and world terrorism will light political fires that no corrupted system could withstand. The power of the people will be an awesome sight to see.

Our great despair is that we are among a growing minority, those who can see where we are heading, including the unfortunate timing of our births. We have been privy to the birth pains of the coming Great Changing of humankind, aware of the great things to come, even though many of us will not be parties to the joyous event itself. The best that we can hope for in the here and now is to find all the truth that is within our grasp and then use it as the ultimate weapons available to us, in order to knock-down the walls which conceal the greatest truths from us all. The politics of money is a process of creating divisions and building walls. The impending human awakening will come when we either learn how to rise above all the walls, or acquire the means to tear them all down.

When the political path collapses before us, reducing all the walls that have been erected to enforce the man-made divisions, into great piles of rubble. The cost of recovery will be set by the amount of time required to set humanity upon a new, better path. The longer that we remain on the negative path to destruction, before turning around to begin the reconstruction, the greater the amount of limited funds that will be wasted in the fires of war—the less that will be available for the time of building.

At that time, it will become clear to all, that the true revolutionary is the man or woman who can see a better way, NOT he who is a journeyman at committing political violence. The violent radical who fancies himself a true “revolutionary,” is merely someone who is taking credit for the inevitable collapse of a failing Empire, at best, they may have helped to speed-up parts of that collapse.

It turns-out that the most revolutionary act is one of simple persuasion, trying to convince the men who have the most to lose, to turn the machinery onto the path of creativity, away from the road to our destruction. The problem with this approach is the futility of the task, the utter impossibility of convincing the ultra-wealthy to give-up the very thing that has given them all of this power. (Shoving a camel through the eye of a needle might really be easier). In order to convince lesser mortals to work towards turning humanity around, you must first persuade them to give-up hope in the great capitalist dream. The power of that dream maintains a terrible grip upon the minds of mankind, breaking it will necessarily require a series of individual awakenings, until the weight of that awakened minority is felt by the whole mass of humanity. We increase our numbers of aware individuals until we affect, or infect the whole.

This line of thinking reveals three tasks before us - giving credibility to the negative vision, giving form to the new direction, and creating the conviction of inevitability. We have already covered the first task to a great degree by covering the conspiracies that are guiding the chaos. The collapsing economy and the perpetuation of persistent conflict are both products of ineptitude and deception. Proving incompetence and that we have been lied to on a grand scale will help to convince the people that our leaders are idiots and their solutions are merely prolongations of the problems nothing more than political theater and propaganda. The second task will be a bit harder, in that it is far more difficult to bring substance to a vision out of thin air, painting an image of a better way to invest in mankind. The third task of communicating the abstract quantity of “inevitability” to a church filled with the under-educated faithful could border on the impossible.

Democracy is NOT a “two-party system.” Our glorious political system is a formula for manufacturing divisions, if not a template for outright civil war. Pushing this upon the world is a criminal act. What our “trusted” leaders have done is to strangle the American Republic to the point of near death, in an organized scheme of mass-extortion and bribery, focused on the perpetuation of power and the subjugation of an entire Nation. Pushing this arrangement upon other countries under pretense of helping is a formula for taking-over the political system of those countries.

Not being satisfied with the mass-rape and looting operations which have destroyed the American economy, these same leaders and the political factions which they represent, are mid-stream in the world’s greatest plot to seize control of the entire planet. Waist-deep in a raging economic river of their own making, our fearless leaders are also being swept away by the forces that they have helped to unleash and by those that they should have worked to contain. Instead of working to control the uncontrolled flood, they are content to roll with it, pouring endless sacks of money into the torrent, never once stopping to fill any of those same canvas bags with sand. Why build dams or levees in hopes of containing the destruction, when half of your men are busy dynamiting other levees?

The insanity of political man will continue to prevail until men and women of reason stand-up and show us a better way. The parade of idiots will continue and the dead weight of their archaic political beliefs will override common sense for as long as we let them. Until we fully realize the great genetic gifts that we have been blessed with, we will continue to follow the crooked path that leads us to the “idiot nation.” Until we utilize the greatest computer ever built by the hands of God, or at least dedicate the best computers built by man, to the task of preserving our species, we will continue to flounder on the rocks of ignorance.

What could be worse than total idiots leading the blind?

 

By Peter Chamberlin

Friday, August 19, 2011

Carta (nunca divulgada) de Jonas Savimbi aceitando os resultados das eleições de 1992

UNIÃO NACIONAL PARA A INDEPENDÊNCIA TOTAL DE ANGOLA

U.N.I.T.A.

Huambo, 17 de Novembro de 1992

Ao

Secretário-Geral Adjunto da ONU

Para a Manutenção das Operações da Paz

Senhor Marrack Goulding

Excelência,

Queiram aceitar as minhas calorosas saudações.

Informo Sua Excelência que o Comité Permanente da Comissão Política da UNITA, reunido no Huambo nos dias 15 e 16 de Novembro de 1992, chegou às seguintes conclusões:

1. A UNITA aceita os resultados das eleições legislativas de 29 e 30 de Setembro de 1992, reconhecidamente fraudulentas e irregulares, para dar seguimento ao processo de Paz acordado em Bicesse no dia 31 de Maio de 1991.

2. A UNITA considera de importância capital que as Nações Unidas (ONU) se envolvam cada vez mais no Processo de Paz e de Democracia em Angola, tomando as seguintes posições:

a) Participação efectiva na consolidação do Cessar-fogo e da manutenção da Paz através do envio dos Capacetes Azuis para Angola o mais rapidamente possível.

b) Maior envolvimento das Nações Unidas (ONU) na organização e verificação da 2.ª volta das eleições presidenciais.

c) Assegurar imediatamente que todos os Dirigentes, Quadros, Militantes e Simpatizantes da UNITA, presos em Luanda, sejam libertos como a UNITA o fez noutras Províncias.

d) Garantir a integridade física dos Dirigentes, Militantes e Simpatizantes da UNITA, bem como das suas instalações, para não se repetirem actos de puro genocídio que ocorreu em Luanda, Malange, Benguela, Lobito e Huíla.

Reitero as minhas calorosas saudações.

Com alta consideração,

Dr. Jonas Malheiro Savimbi

Presidente da UNITA

 

|||||||||||||||||||||||||||| – Perguntas –||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

Epa, sejamos realistas. Em Novembro daquele ano a guerra era ja um dado de facto, centenas de pessoas em varias provincias ja tinham perdido a vida e a UNITA ja tivera oucupado militarmente muitas zonas. E tem mais, aonde esteve a carta até hoje? Porque a UNITA nao divulgou o teor da mesma naquelas dias? Se fosse verdade que o MPLA queria a guerra, a UNITA nao fez nada ao contrario. De qualquer maneira sao muitas as perguntas que restam sem respostas. A pergunta mae: se UNITA buscava a verdadeira a paz para Angola, porque era armada ate aos dentes? Porque comprava novos armamentos durante o processo eleitoral? E' cedo para termos uma idea geral da guerra angolana, mas uma coisa é certa: a verdade esta' no meio.

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Politics News & Analysis: White House, congressional leaders reach debt-limit deal


The Washington PostMonday, August 01, 2011
newsletter header

Top Stories

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 31: Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) moves from Nancy Pelosi's office to the Senate chamber at the U.S. Capitol on June 31, 2011, in Washington, DC. With the default deadline just two days away, prospects for a debt-limit deal seemed to significantly brighten early Sunday after the White House entered intense negotiations with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday in a last-ditch bid to forge a bipartisan  agreement to raise the federal debt limit. (Photo by Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)

White House, congressional leaders reach debt-limit deal

Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane

President Obama and congressional leaders sealed a deal to raise the federal debt limit late Sunday that includes sharp spending cuts but no new taxes, breaking a partisan impasse that has driven the nation to the brink of a potentially disastrous government default.

Behind the showdown

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Monday, August 1, 2011

10 Top Facebook Pages and Why They’re Successful By Amy Porterfield

Does your business have a Facebook page? Have you ever wondered what successful Facebook page owners are doing right? Well, look no further.

This article examines 10 of the top Facebook pages from brands you’ll likely recognize. Regardless of the size of your business, you’lldiscover great ideas that will help you take your Facebook experience to the next level.

Each of these pages has incorporated unique features that have attracted hundreds of thousands (sometimes millions!) of fans and attracted the notice of major media publications. That’s a pretty big feat, considering there are thousands of new pages popping up on Facebook daily!

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, check out what others are doing and tweak these strategies to make them your own!

#1: Red Bull

The team behind the Red Bull page is extremely in tune with their target audience. This is evidenced in their custom apps and unique content throughout their page.

Red Bull knows what their audience will respond to best and they deliver it.For example, they’ve created a series of online games for their fans, aptly called the “Procrastination Station.” The games are geared toward sports and high-impact competitions.

red bull

In addition, Red Bull created a web TV program that’s highlighted on their Facebook page. There are multiple segments, many spotlighting the lives of their sponsored athletes. Not only is the web TV show a great way to align with celebrity athletes, but it is also a way to incorporate video into the page, thereby giving the audience another way to interact.

red bull

Another smart feature of Red Bull’s page is their welcome tab. When a non-fan lands on their page, he or she sees the image below. Red Bull creatively encourages fans to “Like” their page with an attention-grabbing image. Also, they only put one thing on their welcome tab, making it very clear what they want to happen. When you add too much to your welcome tab, your fans will get confused and likely not take any action. Less is more. Stick to one call to action.

red bull

Tip: One area you might want to consider spending a little money on is creative design for your page. Design, when done right, makes a great first impression for non-fans. Also, when you design your Facebook page, pay close attention to your call to action, specifically for the “Like” button. What can you do to grab the attention of your new viewer and encourage him or her to click on your “Like” button quickly? Red Bull’s creative design on their welcome tab does just that!

#2: Burt’s Bees

One of the best features on the Burt’s Bees page is their use of photos and video. They use the photos and videos to give a behind-the-scenes view of their company and products.

In the image below, notice how Burt’s Bees not only mentions the type of ingredients used, but they also suggest their ingredients are safe and they welcome all visitors into their lab. This is a great example of a way to promote your company and products, while adding value in the form of interesting details.

burts bee

Tip: We all have something unique about our products or services and Facebook is one of the best places to highlight this. How can you incorporate video or images to help you stand out from your competition?

#3: Uno Chicago Grill

Uno Chicago Grill has taken full advantage of the Facebook app FBML to highlight their menu options in an extremely appealing way. They have many tabs dedicated to specific areas of their menu and use imagery to entice their fans. In addition, on their welcome tab they link to the most important areas of their website, including locations and online ordering options. When non-fans come to their page for the first time, they get an instant snapshot of Uno’s offerings.

unos welcome tab

unos fan of the weekIn addition, Uno has incorporated a Fan of the Week conteston their Facebook page. Fans get their photo posted directly on the profile image of the restaurant’s wall.

This is great exposure for the fan, making it a fun activity to participate in.

To take it one step further, Uno does something unique with their Fan of the Week contest—they ask fans to post photos of themselves while at an Uno restaurant, thereby encouraging fans to come in and dine.

This is a great way to bring their online fans into their brick-and-mortar establishment!

uno

Tip: If you have a brick-and-mortar establishment, think of creative ways to entice your fans to visit in person. Contests, promotions and special offers are all great ways to invite new fans to come in and check things out!

#4: LiveScribe

LiveScribe has incorporated two features into their page to help them sell more products and cut back on support calls.

First, they’ve created a savvy storefront as one of their tabs. Not only can you buy directly from the Facebook page, but you can also tweet about their products and post about them on your Facebook wall. These two options help create greater exposure for LiveScribe’s products. When your friends see that you’re posting about a new product, it’s natural for them to want to know more.

livescribe store front

In addition, LiveScribe has incorporated a support desk directly into their Facebook page. As you can see below, you can ask a question, share an idea, report a problem or even give praise directly from their Facebook page. What’s even more important is that others can see these posts. Fans and potential buyers can then go to this tab to get answers or see what others are saying about the products.

It’s another great way to educate fans about your products and services. In addition, this tool can cut down service calls when executed correctly, saving your company time and money.

livescribe support

Tip: If you’re providing a product or service, consider incorporating a support feature to your page. It’s common for customers to use social media sites to post questions or complaints. If you provide a designated place for support, you’re likely to keep your customers happy and turn them into repeat buyers!

#5: Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 has done an exceptional job of making their page both fun and functional. The fun factor is expressed in their new application, Toy Creator, where you can turn yourself into an animated toy. Both kids and adults can get in on the action and thenshare their new creation on their Facebook wall (yet another viral exposure opportunity!).

toy story

To make their page functional, they’ve built a tab where you can purchase movie tickets without ever leaving Facebook. This makes ticket buying easy and fast for their fans.

toy story tickets

Tip: Keep your fans inside Facebook as much as possible. Bring your content, unique experiences and buying opportunities to them instead of making fans leave the site to interact with your business. Your chances for greater interactions and a bigger return on investment will dramatically increase the longer you keep them on your page.

#6: Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola has secured their spot at the top of many best-of-the-best Facebook page lists due to their innovative promotions and fun, interactive features.

Their latest promotion is the Summer Snapshot contest, where they encourage their fans to take photos with the summer Coca-Cola cans. Not only does this get fans involved with their page, but the contest also incorporates photos of their products with fans.

Photos are viewed more than anything else on Facebook. They go viral quickly because when a fan posts a photo, that photo is then sent out to the news feeds of all of their friends. Hundreds of thousands of potentially new fans will see these photos.

coke

Here’s an example of a photo a fan posted for the Coca-Cola contest. Notice how others can vote on the photos? This allows everyone to get in on the fun.

coke

Tip: When creating a contest, keep it simple. The less your fans need do to enter, the better. Make it easy, fun and make sure to incorporate a sharing component so your contest spreads virally.

#7: Oreo

Oreo does a fantastic job of creating unique experiences for their fans. Oreo knows that their cookies have been part of many people’s lives since childhood and they use this angle to create nostalgia with their fans. And it’s working for them because they have over 8 million fans to date!

One of their latest campaigns is their “Back to School Memories” campaign where they ask their fans to share their memories and photos directly on their Facebook page. By offering unique experiences like Oreo has done with their back to school campaign, brands create a connection to the fans, who become loyal followers and keep coming back for more.

oreo

Tip: You’ll get a much greater response when you ask your fans to share something about themselves. Ask them their thoughts, opinions and feedback and you’ll be pleasantly surprised how quickly they start talking!

#8: Jones Soda

Jones Soda does a great job of incorporating many different ways for their fans to interact with their page. Not everyone communicates the same way, so providing multiple options is a smart strategy.

jones soda

Specifically, Jones Soda does a weekly poll directly from their welcome tab. Polls are a great way to learn more about your audience as well as a fun strategy to get them to interact with your page.

jones soda

Tip: Think of different ways to get your fans to engage with you. Polls, contests, questions, iPhone apps and videos are just a few different ways to reach your fans. All fans are different; make sure to provide options.

#9: The Twilight Saga

No matter if you have seen the movies or not, you can’t deny that the Twilight Saga is hot. There are two strategies they’ve launched on their Facebook page that you can model for your own page.

First, they’ve created a “Tweet Sweeps,” where they encourage fans to tweet about the movies for a chance to win movie tickets. The best strategy with this type of contest is to tell fans specifically what to tweet so there is no confusion and they can take action quickly. Check out how they’ve done this in the image below:

twilight tweet sweeps

In addition, the Twilight Saga page has taken advantage of the “Discussion” tab where fans can post topics of discussion and all fans can join in and comment. The discussion tab creates a great sense of community and dramatically increases the engagement on the page.

twilight saga

Tip: To encourage more conversation among fans on your page, start a few discussion streams to get people talking. Once this takes off, your fans will continue to post discussion topics on their own and the page engagement will grow organically.

#10: Travel Channel

The Travel Channel has done something unique on their page that’s worth checking out. They’ve created a space for their fans to share how Facebook has played a part in their travel experiences. You can post your own story or just read what others have posted. It’s a creative way to get people with similar interests to engage with your page.

travel channel

Tip: Facebook Stories can be incorporated on your page as well. Go here to see how it works and check out the different story themes offered.

What do you think about the above Facebook pages? Have you tried any of these techniques with success? Let us know! Please leave your comments below.

 

10 Top Facebook Pages and Why They’re Successful By Amy Porterfield
http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/top-10-facebook-pages/

Monday, July 11, 2011

In Defense of Antidepressants (Could this be true?) By PETER D. KRAMER

IN terms of perception, these are hard times for antidepressants. A number of articles have suggested that the drugs are no more effective than placebos.

Last month brought an especially high-profile debunking. In an essay in The New York Review of Books, Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, favorably entertained the premise that “psychoactive drugs are useless.” Earlier, a USA Today piece about a study done by the psychologist Robert DeRubeis had the headline, “Antidepressant lift may be all in your head,” and shortly after, a Newsweek cover piece discussed research by the psychologist Irving Kirsch arguing that the drugs were no more effective than a placebo.

Could this be true? Could drugs that are ingested by one in 10 Americans each year, drugs that have changed the way that mental illness is treated, really be a hoax, a mistake or a concept gone wrong?

This supposition is worrisome. Antidepressants work — ordinarily well, on a par with other medications doctors prescribe. Yes, certain researchers have questioned their efficacy in particular areas — sometimes, I believe, on the basis of shaky data. And yet, the notion that they aren’t effective in general is influencing treatment.

For instance, not long ago, I received disturbing news: a friend had had a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body. Hoping to be of use, I searched the Web for a study I vaguely remembered. There it was: a group in France had worked with more than 100 people with the kind of stroke that affected my friend. Along with physiotherapy, half received Prozac, and half a placebo. Members of the Prozac group recovered more of their mobility. Antidepressants are good at treating post-stroke depression and good at preventing it. They also help protect memory. In stroke patients, antidepressants look like a tonic for brain health.

When I learned that my friend was not on antidepressants, I suggested he raise the issue with his neurologists. I e-mailed them the relevant articles. After further consideration, the doctors added the medicines to his regimen of physical therapy.

Surprised that my friend had not been offered a highly effective treatment, I phoned Robert G. Robinson at the University of Iowa’s department of psychiatry, a leading researcher in this field. He said, “Neurologists tell me they don’t use an antidepressant unless a patient is suffering very serious depression. They’re influenced by reports that say that’s all antidepressants are good for.”

Critics raise various concerns, but in my view the serious dispute about antidepressant efficacy has a limited focus. Do they work for the core symptoms (such as despair, low energy and feelings of worthlessness) of isolated episodes of mild or moderate depression? The claim that antidepressants do nothing for this common condition — that they are merely placebos with side effects — is based on studies that have probably received more ink than they deserve.

The most widely publicized debunking research — the basis for the Newsweek and New York Review pieces — is drawn from data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration in the late 1980s and the 1990s by companies seeking approval for new drugs. This research led to its share of scandal when a study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that the trials had been published selectively. Papers showing that antidepressants work had found their way into print; unfavorable findings had not.

In his book “The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth,” Dr. Kirsch, a psychologist at the University of Hull in England, analyzed all the data. He found that while the drugs outperformed the placebos for mild and moderate depression, the benefits were small. The problem with the Kirsch analysis — and none of the major press reports considered this shortcoming — is that the F.D.A. material is ill suited to answer questions about mild depression.

As a condition for drug approval, the F.D.A. requires drug companies to demonstrate a medicine’s efficacy in at least two trials. Trials in which neither the new drug nor an older, established drug is distinguishable from a placebo are deemed “failed” and are disregarded or weighed lightly in the evaluation. Consequently, companies rushing to get medications to market have had an incentive to run quick, sloppy trials.

Often subjects who don’t really have depression are included — and (no surprise) weeks down the road they are not depressed. People may exaggerate their symptoms to get free care or incentive payments offered in trials. Other, perfectly honest subjects participate when they are at their worst and then spontaneously return to their usual, lower, level of depression.

THIS improvement may have nothing to do with faith in dummy pills; it is an artifact of the recruitment process. Still, the recoveries are called “placebo responses,” and in the F.D.A. data they have been steadily on the rise. In some studies, 40 percent of subjects not receiving medication get better.

The problem is so big that entrepreneurs have founded businesses promising to identify genuinely ill research subjects. The companies use video links to screen patients at central locations where (contrary to the practice at centers where trials are run) reviewers have no incentives for enrolling subjects. In early comparisons, off-site raters rejected about 40 percent of subjects who had been accepted locally — on the ground that those subjects did not have severe enough symptoms to qualify for treatment. If this result is typical, many subjects labeled mildly depressed in the F.D.A. data don’t have depression and might well respond to placebos as readily as to antidepressants.

Nonetheless, the F.D.A. mostly gets it right. To simplify a complex matter: there are two sorts of studies that are done on drugs: broad trials and narrow trials. Broad trials, like those done to evaluate new drugs, can be difficult these days, because many antidepressants are available as generics. Who volunteers to take an untested remedy? Research subjects are likely to be an odd bunch.

Narrow studies, done on those with specific disorders, tend to be more reliable. Recruitment of subjects is straightforward; no one’s walking off the street to enter a trial for stroke patients. Narrow studies have identified many specific indications for antidepressants, such as depression in neurological disorders, including multiple sclerosis andepilepsy; depression caused by interferon, a medication used to treat hepatitis and melanoma; and anxiety disorders in children.

New ones regularly emerge. The June issue of Surgery Today features a study in which elderly female cardiac patients who had had emergency operations and were given antidepressants experienced less depression, shorter hospital stays and fewer deaths in the hospital.

Broad studies tend to be most trustworthy when they look at patients with sustained illness. A reliable finding is that antidepressants work for chronic and recurrent mild depression, the condition called dysthymia. More than half of patients on medicine get better, compared to less than a third taking a placebo. (This level of efficacy — far from ideal — is typical across a range of conditions in which antidepressants outperform placebos.) Similarly, even the analyses that doubt the usefulness of antidepressants find that they help with severe depression.

In fact, antidepressants appear to have effects across the depressive spectrum. Scattered studies suggest that antidepressants bolster confidence or diminish emotional vulnerability — for people with depression but also for healthy people. In the depressed, the decrease in what is called neuroticism seems to protect against further episodes. Because neuroticism is not a core symptom of depression, most outcome trials don’t measure this change, but we can see why patients and doctors might consider it beneficial.

Similarly, in rodent and primate trials, antidepressants have broad effects on both healthy animals and animals with conditions that resemble mood disruptions in humans.

One reason the F.D.A. manages to identify useful medicines is that it looks at a range of evidence. It encourages companies to submit “maintenance studies.” In these trials, researchers take patients who are doing well on medication and switch some to dummy pills. If the drugs are acting as placebos, switching should do nothing. In an analysis that looked at maintenance studies for 4,410 patients with a range of severity levels, antidepressants cut the odds of relapse by 70 percent. These results, rarely referenced in the antidepressant-as-placebo literature, hardly suggest that the usefulness of the drugs is all in patients’ heads.

The other round of media articles questioning antidepressants came in response to a seemingly minor study engineered to highlight placebo responses. One effort to mute the placebo effect in drug trials involves using a “washout period” during which all subjects get a dummy pill for up to two weeks. Those who report prompt relief are dropped; the study proceeds with those who remain symptomatic, with half getting the active medication. In light of subject recruitment problems, this approach has obvious appeal.

Dr. DeRubeis, an authority on cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, has argued that the washout method plays down the placebo effect. Last year, Dr. DeRubeis and his colleagues published a highly specific statistical analysis. From a large body of research, they discarded trials that used washouts, as well as those that focused on dysthymia or subtypes of depression. The team deemed only six studies, from over 2,000, suitable for review. An odd collection they were. Only studies using Paxil and imipramine, a medicine introduced in the 1950s, made the cut — and other research had found Paxil to be among the least effective of the new antidepressants. One of the imipramine studies used a very low dose of the drug. The largest study Dr. DeRubeis identified was his own. In 2005, he conducted a trial in which Paxil did slightly better than psychotherapy and significantly better than a placebo — but apparently much of the drug response occurred in sicker patients.

Building an overview around your own research is problematic. Generally, you use your study to build a hypothesis; you then test the theory on fresh data. Critics questioned other aspects of Dr. DeRubeis’s math. In a re-analysis using fewer assumptions, Dr. DeRubeis found that his core result (less effect for healthier patients) now fell just shy of statistical significance. Overall, the medications looked best for very severe depression and had only slight benefits for mild depression — but this study, looking at weak treatments and intentionally maximized placebo effects, could not quite meet the scientific standard for a firm conclusion. And yet, the publication of the no-washout paper produced a new round of news reports that antidepressants were placebos.

In the end, the much heralded overview analyses look to be editorials with numbers attached. The intent, presumably to right the balance between psychotherapy and medication in the treatment of mild depression, may be admirable, but the data bearing on the question is messy.

As for the news media’s uncritical embrace of debunking studies, my guess, based on regular contact with reporters, is that a number of forces are at work. Misdeeds — from hiding study results to paying off doctors — have made Big Pharma an inviting and, frankly, an appropriate target. (It’s a favorite of Dr. Angell’s.) Antidepressants have something like celebrity status; exposing them makes headlines.

It is hard to locate the judicious stance with regard to antidepressants and moderate mood disorder. In my 1993 book, “Listening to Prozac,” I wrote, “To my mind, psychotherapy remains the single most helpful technology for the treatment of minor depression and anxiety.” In 2003, in “Against Depression,” I highlighted research that suggested antidepressants influence mood only indirectly. It may be that the drugs are “permissive,” removing roadblocks to self-healing.

That model might predict that in truth the drugs would be more effective in severe disorders. If antidepressants act by usefully perturbing a brain that’s “stuck,” then people who retain some natural resilience would see a lesser benefit. That said, the result that the debunking analyses propose remains implausible: antidepressants help in severe depression, depressive subtypes, chronic minor depression, social unease and a range of conditions modeled in mice and monkeys — but uniquely not in isolated episodes of mild depression in humans.

BETTER-DESIGNED research may tell us whether there is a point on the continuum of mood disorder where antidepressants cease to work. If I had to put down my marker now — and effectively, as a practitioner, I do — I’d bet that “stuckness” applies all along the line, that when mildly depressed patients respond to medication, more often than not we’re seeing true drug effects. Still, my approach with mild depression is to begin treatments with psychotherapy. I aim to use drugs sparingly. They have side effects, some of them serious. Antidepressants help with strokes, but surveys also show them to predispose to stroke. But if psychotherapy leads to only slow progress, I will recommend adding medicines. With a higher frequency and stronger potency than what we see in the literature, they seem to help.

My own beliefs aside, it is dangerous for the press to hammer away at the theme that antidepressants are placebos. They’re not. To give the impression that they are is to cause needless suffering.

As for my friend, he had made no progress before his neurologists prescribed antidepressants. Since, he has shown a slow return of motor function. As is true with much that we see in clinical medicine, the cause of this change is unknowable. But antidepressants are a reasonable element in the treatment — because they do seem to make the brain more flexible, and they’ve earned their place in the doctor’s satchel.

Peter D. Kramer is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - NYT

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

A América e a Europa estão a ir ao fundo – Riscos para todo o mundo

Em Washington discute-se o tecto da dívida; em Bruxelas olha-se para o fosso da dívida. Mas o problema é mais ou menos o mesmo.

Os EUA e a União Europeia andam com as finanças públicas fora de controlo e os seus sistemas políticos mostram-se demasiado disfuncionais para resolver o problema. A América e a Europa estão no mesmo barco, um barco que se está a afundar.

De ambos os lados do Atlântico ficou agora bem patente que grande parte do crescimento económico registado nos anos que precederam a crise se ficou a dever a esse ‘boom' insustentável e perigoso do crédito. Nos EUA as vítimas da crise foram as pessoas que adquiriram casa própria; na Europa foram países inteiros como a Grécia e a Itália, países que aproveitaram as baixas taxas de juro para contraírem empréstimos de uma forma que se revelaria insustentável.

O choque financeiro de 2008 e tudo o que se seguiu foi um rude golpe para as finanças públicas quando a dívida pública começou a subir vertiginosamente. E tanto na Europa como nos EUA a este choque vieram juntar-se pressões demográficas, pressões que assumem cada vez mais a forma de pressões orçamentais, numa altura em que a geração dos ‘baby boomers' começa a reformar-se.

E, em ambos os lados do Atlântico, a crise económica está a dividir os políticos, o que torna ainda mais difícil encontrar soluções racionais para o problema da dívida. E, por outro lado, começamos a assistir também à ascensão de movimentos populistas, como é o caso do Tea Party nos EUA, do partido Dutch Freedom na Holanda ou do partido True Finns na Europa.

A ideia de que a Europa e os EUA representam duas faces da mesma crise tem sido lenta a assimilar, isto porque, durante muitos anos, as elites de ambos os lados do Atlântico não se cansaram de apontar as diferenças entre os modelos norte-americanos e europeus. Já perdi a conta ao número de conferências em que participei e aos debates entre as duas facções: uma partidária dos "mercados laborais flexíveis" ao estilo norte-americano e outra que defendia de forma apaixonada um modelo europeu, contrário ao americano. Na Europa o debate político era semelhante.

Um grupo queria que Bruxelas copiasse Washington e se tornasse na capital de uma verdadeira união federal; e tínhamos aqueles que insistiam que era impossível ter uns Estados Unidos da Europa. Mas ambos os lados partilhavam a convicção de que, em termos económicos, estratégicos e políticos os EUA e a Europa era dois planetas diferentes - "Marte e Vénus", nas palavras do académico norte-americano Robert Kagan.

O debate político norte-americano continua a usar as diferenças da Europa como ponto de referência. A acusação de que Barack Obama está a importar um "socialismo à europeia" é usada para acusar o presidente de ser pouco americano. À esquerda há quem olhe para a Europa como um lugar que faz as coisas de forma diferente e melhor em certas áreas - como é o caso dos cuidados universais de saúde.

Mas estas duas regiões do planeta têm agora mais dilemas do que diferenças em comum - dívidas que não param de aumentar, um estado social cada vez mais caro e difícil de reformar, medo do futuro e estrangulamento político são agora os grandes pontos em comum.
----
Gideon Rachman, Colaborador do fanancial Times

Friday, July 1, 2011

Angola vs Líbia: Entre a paz e a guerra os angolanos procuram novas estradas (Julho de 2011)

Comentário no Circulo.angolano.intelectual (Grupo Facebook) em mérito ao intervento da ilegal da OTAN em Libia.

É historicamente demonstrado que na luta pelo poder os cidadãos que justificam qualquer tipo de intervenção estrangeira (a próprio favor) são inclinados a vender a própria pátria.

Os meios não justificam os fins, excepto no campo da mais pura demagogia. Leio com tristeza as opiniões dos mais grandes "demokratikus" da nossa praça política-cultural, segundo os quais a construção de um estado de direito em Angola justificaria até mesmo a eliminação física de sujeitos políticos.

É triste constatar o pensamento destes ditos "intelectuais" que deixam vazar entre linhas as justificações de mortes como caminho indispensável para a aceleração do processo democrático angolano. Isto nos leva crer que a guerra em Angola não ensinou muito, digo isto porque com facilidade leio opinião de homens e mulheres prontos a entregar-se nas mãos dos "EXPORTADORES DE FALSAS DEMOCRACIAS" (Cfr. Guerra "neo-colonial" em Líbia | Iraque, Afg, Somalia, etc).

Caríssimos, a estrada é clara: formação de mentes, batalha política pela afirmação dos princípios e de justiça e igualdade, em outras palavras, militância em vários campos sociais por um estado de direito através do uso de instrumentos democráticos existentes.

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