(LondonIND) – New theory questions Hutton finding over death of weapons inspector, but says he was not murdered Read the rest of this entry »

(Telegraph) – Soldiers form loyal “Bands of Brothers” fighting and dying for each other because they have the same instincts that cause mothers to ferociously protect their newborns, a study suggests.

Researchers have found that in the heat of battle they have the same chemicals running through their bloodstreams as protective mothers, meaning they develop incredibly strong bonds with each other but become extremely aggressive to outsiders.

The effect resolves around the hormone oxytocin which is released at times of stress and when people socialise with each other. Read the rest of this entry »

(Truthout) – Iraq war veteran Eric Jasinski, after seeking treatment for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), is being punished by the Army.

Jasinski turned himself in to the Army late last year, after having gone absent without leave (AWOL) in order to seek help for his PTSD. Help, he told Truthout, he was not receiving from the Army, even after requesting assistance on multiple occasions. Read the rest of this entry »

(ABC) – After years on the battlefield or in the trenches, many American soldiers are showing signs of psychological distress. An increasing number of soldiers are turning to medication to alleviate their symptoms. Read the rest of this entry »

(Spiegel) – US defense expert P.W. Singer from the Brookings Institution talks to SPIEGEL ONLINE about the stresses that drone pilots are subjected to and the risk of emotional exhaustion and burnout. The whole experience of war is being changed by the new technology, he argues.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Singer, are drones becoming the new form of combat?

P.W. Singer: Until recently, people looked at this as something abnormal. But drones and robotic warfare in general are actually the new normal now. We’ve gone from using a handful of these systems to now having around 7,000 in the air. And the US is not the only country flying them. There are drones from 43 other countries, including Great Britain, Germany and Pakistan. Read the rest of this entry »

(Spiegel) – US defense expert P.W. Singer from the Brookings Institution talks to SPIEGEL ONLINE about the stresses that drone pilots are subjected to and the risk of emotional exhaustion and burnout. The whole experience of war is being changed by the new technology, he argues.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Singer, are drones becoming the new form of combat?

P.W. Singer: Until recently, people looked at this as something abnormal. But drones and robotic warfare in general are actually the new normal now. We’ve gone from using a handful of these systems to now having around 7,000 in the air. And the US is not the only country flying them. There are drones from 43 other countries, including Great Britain, Germany and Pakistan. Read the rest of this entry »

Nine years ago, the Cheney/Bush/Rove/Rumsfeld administration started, by a series of treasonous lies, its so-called endless wars on the nebulous “terrorism”, much of which was provoked by decades of anti-Muslim/pro-Israeli US foreign policies. According to the US Department of Defense more US military personnel have taken their own lives since 2001 than have been killed in action (KIA) in either Iraq or Afghanistan. In 2009 alone, more than 330 active servicemen and women have committed suicide – more than those KIAs in Afghanistan and Iraq. And this number doesn’t count the veterans who have killed themselves following their discharge. Read the rest of this entry »

American military personnel are continuing to take their own lives in unprecedented numbers, as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq wars drag on. By late November, at least 334 members of the armed forces had committed suicide in 2009, more than the 319 who were killed in Afghanistan or the 150 who died in Iraq. While a final figure is not available, the toll of military suicides last year was the worst since records began to be kept in 1980. Read the rest of this entry »

US Army Specialist Lateef Al-Saraji, a decorated combat veteran, came back from the occupation of Iraq with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Read the rest of this entry »

The right-wing accusations against Barack Obama are true. He is a socialist, although he practices socialism for corporations. He is squandering the country’s future with deficits that can never be repaid. He has retained and even bolstered our surveillance state to spy on Americans. He is forcing us to buy into a health care system that will enrich corporations and expand the abuse of our for-profit medical care. He will not stanch unemployment. He will not end our wars. He will not rebuild the nation. He is a tool of the corporate state. Read the rest of this entry »

Nearly all of the Pentagon’s counter-insurgency warfare doctrine has been based on distortions of the pirated theories of former president of the American Psychological Association, Prof. Martin Seligman.  Now we learn that post traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) treatments for war veterans have been developed from his work as well. Read the rest of this entry »

(DannySchechter) – Economic Stress Is Hidden, But It’s There in a Recovery That Isn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

(Jim Marrs) – Today, one of the biggest problem we have, and one of the things that shocks so many Americans, is the rise of teen suicides and the rise of school shootings. Yet all we hear from the corporate mass media on the shootings is “Well, we need to take the guns away.” Let me tell you something, I went to school in Texas. We took guns to school. Nobody shot anybody. So what’s changed? Drugs. Read the rest of this entry »

During the Vietnam War, GI dissent was both documented and nurtured by a slew of underground GI newspapers. Papers like “Up Against the Bulkhead,” “Harass the Brass” and “About Face” were mimeographed and passed from base to base, hand to hand. These bold, clever, ragtag papers gave voice to the soldiers’ rage against the injustices of the military and offered advice on everything from filing for conscientious-objector status to organizing anti-war protests. Read the rest of this entry »

(Truthout) – Neglect, mistreatment and abuse are the norm for active-duty soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Read the rest of this entry »

The twin vices of drug addiction and alcoholism were rampant in the U.S. military during the Vietnam war and through movies like Apocalypse Now and Platoon became the emblematic image of the armed forces during that war. But figures shows that by the end 2005, of the 104,000 who had sought medical help after serving in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 32,010 were suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, drug addiction or alcoholism. Proportionally, that’s three times as many as those who returned from Vietnam. Read the rest of this entry »

You would think that causing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression might have repercussions. You would think being a major factor in the destruction of around 40 percent of the world’s wealth might get you in trouble. You would think being the cause of the worst housing crisis in history — with millions of people losing their homes because of you — might force a restructuring of how Wall Street does things. Read the rest of this entry »

(WSJ) – Rahm Emanuel was only giving voice to widespread political wisdom when he said that a crisis should never be “wasted.” Crises enable vastly accelerated political agendas and initiatives scarcely conceivable under calmer circumstances. So it goes now. Read the rest of this entry »

(SciDaily) – New research findings by Dr Metin Başoğlu, Head of Section of Trauma Studies at King’s College London and the Istanbul Centre for Behaviour Research and Therapy, examines the psychological impact of war captivity, ‘cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment’ (CIDT) and physical torture. Read the rest of this entry »

Will the Financial Reforms lead to Change or just Prop up the Status Quo?
It is almost axiomatic to argue that renewal comes out of chaos. And reform and change are born in crisis. Read the rest of this entry »

Phil Aliff, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, draws on his own experience with the military’s inadequate mental health care system to make sense of the tragic shooting of five U.S. soldiers in Iraq by an Army sergeant being treated for symptoms of PTSD. Read the rest of this entry »

The Federal Reserve Act was legislated in 1913 to end recessions, panics and depression. Over that almost 100-year period they have been eminently no more successful then their predecessors. Read the rest of this entry »

Ron Paul appeared on Fox Business on May 7, 2009 to say that the stress tests are just propaganda and all the problems we face can be traced to the Federal Reserve. Read the rest of this entry »

An Explosive Hyperinflationary Breakdown

“You’re having a vast bailout planet-wide,” Lyndon LaRouche stated today, summarily dismissing all the diversionary press chatter about bank stress tests, nationalization, profits, stock prices, lending, and so forth. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year alone, the number of recruiters who killed themselves was triple the overall Army rate. Like posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, recruiter suicides are a hidden cost of the nation’s wars. Read the rest of this entry »

The science that explains why elite military forces bounce back faster than the rest of us. Read the rest of this entry »

Wells Fargo & Co. Chairman Richard Kovacevich criticized the U.S. for retroactively adding curbs to the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which he said forced the bank to cut its dividend, and called the administration’s plan for stress-testing banks “asinine.” Read the rest of this entry »

• Nearly half regularly feel stress, finds Prince’s Trust
• Situation likely to worsen as recession takes hold

A significant number of young people are depressed or struggling to cope and the situation is likely to worsen as recession takes hold, according to a report by the Prince’s Trust. One in 10 16- to 25-year-olds polled by the charity for its Youth Index study said they felt that life was meaningless, and more than a quarter (27%) said they were always or often down or depressed. Almost half of all those surveyed (47%) said they were regularly stressed. Read the rest of this entry »