Anthi Krontira

Excited to share the first preprint from my postdoctoral work at the Götz lab..check it out to learn how NSCs sustain their population while retaining neurogenic potential. Led by the wonderful @Fionalyl

Lessons from Syria: An imperialist’s enemy is not always an anti-imperialist’s friend On 15th August 2021, when the Kabul US-puppet regime fell, I expressed relief that US imperialism was defeated and, simultaneously, horror at what the women of Afghanistan were about to suffer in the hands of the jihadist Taliban. Immediately, the US liberal-imperialist lobby attacked me for… celebrating the Taliban victory. You see, for imperialism’s stooges, if you do not support US imperialism you must be a supporter of jihadists who opposed US imperialism. The imperialist mindset refuses to see the obvious: we had a duty to oppose, with equal fervour, both US imperialism and the jihadists that US imperialism strengthened through its brutality. They could not see that a US imperialist invasion only strengthened the jihadists who wanted to place the women of Afghanistan under gender apartheid. Last Sunday, Assad’s regime collapsed and the jihadists stormed Damascus. Again, I expressed relief that a tyrannical regime had fallen, adding: “Syrians have suffered enough. The task now is to ensure they do not suffer more, as the Iraqis and the Libyans did after the fall of their dictators. To that end, foreign powers, Western and non-Western, must also be kept at bay.” Immediately, I was (as in the case of the fall of Kabul) attacked for celebrating the… jihadist victory – this time by opponents of US-imperialism. For them, if you did not support Assad you must have been a supporter of the jihadists who opposed Assad, and their US-Israeli cheerleaders. Same logic as that of US imperialism’s cheerleaders: “If you are not with us you are against us”. My anti-imperialist detractors could not see that the Assad regime, because of its tyrannical ways, only strengthened the jihadists who overthrew Assad. So, here is my message to anti-imperialists who think it a good idea to support tyrannical figures like Assad (or, before him, Saddam) because he is the enemy of our imperialist enemy: To fight imperialism and win in the long run, we must win the hearts and minds of people. And we cannot do this by supporting tyrants, whom the people loathe, just because they are enemies of our enemies. But was Iraq not better off, some ask, before Saddam was overthrown by the US army? Of course it was. Was Libya not better off before the West took out Qaddafi? Of course it was. Is Syria not running the risk of becoming an even worse bloodbath after Assad’s fall, just as Iraq and Libya were? Of course it does. But, this is no reason to treat Saddam, Qaddafi or Assad as the ‘solution’, as the antidote to imperialism. Their tyrannical regimes alienate their own people and, in the end, crumble – thus proving incapable of resisting imperialism. That they may be, for a while, the enemy of the chief imperialist, the US, does not make them a friend of anti-imperialists. In short, anti-imperialism will only succeed if anti-imperialists maintain some minimum ethical standards. That’s our greatest weapon, not AK47s or anti-aircraft missiles. For if we stick to minimum ethical standards we can win over the masses worldwide who, in the end, appreciate a principled humanist stance. We can also expose more readily the duplicity of the Western media who, without blushing, went so rapidly from (a) justifying the two-decade-long occupation of Afghanistan as essential in the fight to prevent the jihadists from taking Kabul to (b) celebrating the take over of Damascus by the… jihadists! Alas, if we don’t maintain minimum ethical standards, and instead support tyrants who are opposed to our enemies, our opposition to the enemy’s favourite tyrants will sound as hypocritical as the Western press. And that, believe me, would be the greatest gift to the Western press, to imperialism, to tyranny. For, at that point, it would be reduced simply to a contest between their “tyrants” and our “tyrants”. To conclude, there is nothing confusing about condemning both Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush's criminal invasion of Iraq. Both Milosevic and NATO's bombing of Serb civilians. Both the Taliban and the US invasion of Afghanistan. Both Assad's regime and the US-backed jihadists that overthrew him. Not only is there no contradiction but it is the only right and effective way to be anti-imperialist. Not only is it not neutrality but it is the only right and effective way to take the side of the many, not the few. Turning to what really matters today, what we now have after the fall of Assad is a Western press waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born without saying a word about the US and Israeli bombs falling from the sky all over the new Syria - or Israel’s encroachments into it. Also, have you noticed that no one is talking about the ongoing genocide in Gaza? This is a major victory for Netanyahu, his US minders and their EU genocide cheerleaders. So, comrades, let us maintain minimum ethical standards in combating imperialism. And let’s keep talking Palestine!

GWAS for Nobel prize laureates.

@ChongLi_cl @Knoblich_lab @IMBA_Vienna Congrats Chong! All the best for your new start and I am excited to see the exciting projects you will be working on!

Extremely grateful for the support of the @Knoblich_lab and @IMBA_Vienna during this postdoc journey, where I met amazing scientists from around the world! Excited to start my own group soon at CIBR to continue exploring some of the most fascinating areas of human brain research!

1/ I’m an Israeli historian. My community is still too silent about the horrible war in Gaza. Over 8 months I’ve closely followed the war, reading >1000 articles and viewing >1000 videos/images of the war from all sides. My summary conclusions & full report are in the 🧵:

Αυτό το 92,39% που αγαπάει τόσο τον Κυριάκο και τον στηρίζει επιστολικά, γιατί παραμένει στο εξωτερικό; Πέντε χρόνια τώρα δε χάρηκαν αρκετά, να επιστρέψουν; #ευρωεκλογες

@JPablo_Neuro @DrCriCru @ECNPtweets Congratulations @DrCriCru. So very well deserved !

Big congratulations to @DrCriCru for winning the very prestigious @ECNPtweets Rising Star Award! Very well deserved and a wonderful recognition of your academic achievements and success!!

Congratulations to @DrCriCru and Robert McCutcheon as the winners of the 2024 ECNP Rising Star Award. 🏆 The award celebrates Early Career Scientists whose research has the potential to advance the science of the brain. Read more: ecnp.eu/rising-star-aw… #ECNP #neuroscience

Ο κυβέρνηση έχει δημιουργήσει ένα τερατούργημα που αποκαλεί Κανονισμό Πυροπροστασίας για τις κατοικίες. Υποχρεώνει τον πολίτη να πάρει μέτρα και ευθύνη για αυτό που αποτελεί ευθύνη του κράτους και πληρώνεται από τους φόρους μας. Θα καίγεται το σύμπαν και θα σου λένε δεν είχες πάρει τα κατάλληλα μέτρα πυροπροστασίας. Η δε εφαρμογή των μέτρων που προβλέπονται έχει τεράστιο κόστος για τον πολίτη. Από την κρατική ευθύνη περνάμε στην ατομική ευθύνη. Μόνο που τα λεφτά συνεχίζει να τα εισπράττει το κράτος

We are recruiting! A Postdoctoral researcher position focused on perinatal mental health and treatment is now available in my lab, in collaboration with @LuDonghao lab at @karolinskainst and the KI Research Incubator. ki.varbi.com/en/what:job/jo…

Thank you @BorrellLab for this great preview of our paper! We also agree that glucocorticoids are very exciting regulators of cortical neurogenesis and deserve more attention in this context. @Binder_Lab

I am very thankful for the support and guidance of the amazing @silvianeurompi , @DrCriCru , @CKyrousi, @le_and_er and many other colleagues. I also want to thank @ImprsTp and @mpi_psychiatry for hosting me and my work. I am excited for what lies ahead, working with the Götz lab.

I am excited to share the main work of my PhD studies with @Binder_Lab. Here, we tried to understand how glucocorticoids modulate cortical neurogenesis. On the way, we found surprising associations with beneficial postnatal outcomes. Find it open access at cell.com/neuron/fulltex…

Sometimes Israel’s crimes are so horrific that at first you don’t even understand what you’re looking at. You just stare at it trying to make sense of what you’re seeing for a bit, like you would if you suddenly saw a space alien or a leprechaun or something. It happened to me yesterday when I was watching a Sky News report about a teenage boy who was shot by Israeli forces in Jerusalem for celebrating the release of Palestinian prisoners in the hostage negotiations with Hamas. I was watching it thinking to myself, I must be misunderstanding what I’m looking at. I know that Israel does gross things, but surely the story here isn’t that they shot a kid for being happy about something. Then, as has happened so many times over the last two months, I kept watching and learned that yes, that is indeed what happened. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem Fleur Hassan-Nahoum is seen defending the shooting by saying “part of the deal is that there would be no celebrations for the release of attempted murderers” (this was actually not a part of the deal, it was just a decree issued by Israel’s national security minister) and claiming dishonestly that “we’re talking about the release of attempted murderers” (the vast majority have not been convicted of any crime and have been denied any due process for the accusations against them). The band Eve6 nicely summed up what it felt like watching the clip of the deputy mayor’s comments, tweeting, “The remarkable thing about this clip is her self assurance. Like she’s supremely confident that ‘we shot the teenager because he was celebrating’ is a thing that people will find reasonable.” I had the same experience reading about the five premature babies who were left to die after the IDF raided al-Nasr Pediatric Hospital in Gaza earlier this month, their decomposing bodies only discovered when the temporary ceasefire allowed access to the hospital. It’s just too insane to believe — they attacked a pediatric hospital? And then they left the babies there to die? What?? The only reason we’re learning about this now is because the pause in fighting allowed journalists to get cameras into the building and show the dead infants to the world. This calls to mind the Politico report immediately prior to the ceasefire which said that the White House was worried “an unintended consequence of the pause” would be “that it would allow journalists broader access to Gaza and the opportunity to further illuminate the devastation there and turn public opinion on Israel.” Indeed, since the pause in fighting began the world has been receiving drone footage from mainstream platforms like Reuters and The Washington Post revealing vast expanses of urban terrain completely destroyed by a blanket of Israeli military explosives spanning from city block to city block. Looking at the blatantly indiscriminate devastation that’s been caused by Israel’s assault on Gaza since October 7 makes it clear that the IDF are not targeting Hamas but Gaza itself. I’ve been amazed at how much I’ve been sleeping since the ceasefire started; that’s why I haven’t been writing as much. I guess spending weeks staring at unbelievable horrors unfolding on your screen can be pretty hard on your system if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing, so my body’s been resting up as much as it can while there’s an opportunity. And I’m just here watching this all unfold safely from my home in Melbourne. I cannot imagine what it’s like to be living in the midst of this horror for the last two months, trying to figure out the best way to survive while also grieving the family, friends and neighbors you’re losing along the way. These people have all been deeply traumatized in ways that will haunt them for the rest of their lives, if they survive the violence, disease and deprivation that’s to come. This thing is so astonishingly ugly, and it could get a whole lot uglier after the ceasefire ends. If there’s anything positive to be found in this living nightmare, it’s that it’s so earth-shakingly ugly that it just might shake the world awake.

See our new publication in @PNASNews: Signe Penner-Goeke and her team found that the genetic variants which modulate the sensitivity to the consequences of #stress have an effect on the risk of psychiatric disorders: pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pn…

@hellenicpolice Γιατι;;;;

👮 Ταυτοποιήθηκε και προσήχθη 22χρονος, υπήκοος Παλαιστίνης, ο οποίος εμφανίζεται σε βίντεο το οποίο αναπαράγεται στα μέσα κοινωνικής δικτύωσης να υψώνει τη σημαία της χώρας του κατά τη διάρκεια συγκέντρωσης στο Σύνταγμα, την Κυριακή 5 Νοεμβρίου 2023.

@skasselakis Εξηγείστε μας κύριε Κασσελακη τι σημαίνει για εσας "απλός" λαός.

«Να σου κάνω μια ερώτηση, μη με παρεξηγήσεις. Είσαι Αριστερός;». Ο απλός, καθημερινός κόσμος ποτέ δε θέτει ένα ερώτημα με κακή πρόθεση. Είμαι εδώ για όλες τις απαντήσεις. Με καρδιά και με ιδεολογία μαζί.

@ChongLi_cl @josch_f @TreutleinLab Congrats Chong, lovely work!

Are specific cell types or processes during brain development more vulnerable in autism? We explore this using a single-cell functional genomics approach in brain organoids. Excited to share our latest findings, and thanks for this wonderful collaboration @josch_f @TreutleinLab!

Very happy to share our new study published today in @CellReports. We explored a very important question, which is how does stress affect the brains of males and females differently? Here: cell.com/cell-reports/f…

Dr. Anthi Krontira studies how experiences during #pregnancy and their timing can shape the developing baby's #brain. Join @krontiranthi at Odeonsplatz on July 1st to explore the impact of prenatal experiences on fetal #BrainDevelopment. #SciComm #WomenInSTEM #WomenInScience