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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (2481)	11/30/2005 12:15:46 AM
From: Geoff Altman	Respond to of 71588

Yes, I agree that civilian consensus has influenced our foreign policies but what I was asking was, "should it"? It may happen whenever there's a wedge issue that initially polarizes Americans that factual and complete reporting by the press suffers greatly. Many popular newspapers have been treating the news more like propaganda, reporting only the "facts" as they see fit instead of the entire factual story. Whenever this is done it projects a false image onto the American public as you know. How in the face of the MSMs fact cherry picking can the average American have the tools to make an educated decision about these wedge issues? Maybe what I should have asked was, in the face of the current state of MSM, should the general public be allowed to influence the foreign polices of the US? That is, other than in the normal course of voting. What triggered this thought in my mind was watching this 60 Minutes video posted on the foreign affairs thread(?). Pallywood(?). It was about these filmed staged battles near an Israeli outpost. Of course the Israelis weren't in the films and didn't participate in any attack but that didn't stop the filming. <g>

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (2481)	11/30/2005 3:31:37 PM
From: paret	Respond to of 71588

Heavy marijuana use damages adolescent brains-study Wed Nov 30, 2005 today.reuters.com CHICAGO (Reuters) - Adolescents who regularly smoke marijuana risk damaging a key brain pathway associated with language development and some predisposed to schizophrenia may contract the illness early, researchers said on Wednesday. Brain scans revealed microscopic abnormalities in a region of the brain that governs higher aspects of language and listening functions in adolescents who are heavy marijuana smokers. Similar damage to the bundle of fibers, called the arcuate fasciculus, that connect the Broca's area in the left frontal lobe and the Wernicke's area in the left temporal lobe was found in the brains of marijuana smokers and schizophrenics studied. "These findings suggest that in addition to interfering with normal brain development, heavy marijuana use in adolescents may also lead to an earlier onset of schizophrenia in individuals who are genetically predisposed to the disorder," said psychiatry professor Sanjiv Kumra of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. The researchers scanned the brains of 114 subjects, 26 of whom were selected because they were diagnosed schizophrenics. Of the schizophrenic group, 15 smoked marijuana. Another 15 subjects were nonschizophrenic adolescent male marijuana smokers who were matched against nonsmokers. It was those smokers whose scans showed abnormalities in the language and listening pathway. The brain's language pathway continues to develop during adolescence and is susceptible to neurotoxins introduced through marijuana use, the researchers said. A scanning technique called diffusion tensor imaging that detects and measures the motion of water molecules in the brain was used in the study, which was presented at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. The technique is not used to diagnose schizophrenia. Roughly 3 million Americans aged 12 and older use marijuana on a daily or almost daily basis, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The researchers said longer-term studies were needed to determine if the brain abnormalities observed in adolescents were permanent or not. © Reuters 2005. All Rights Reserved.