Operación Tamal Blanco

México (lindo y querido), objetivo prioritario para la NSA. Los correos electrónicos de su presidente y los de sus colaboradores cercanos han sido prolija y gustosamente hackeados por la NSA. Tuvieron el pésimo gusto de bautizar las operaciones como "Tamal Blanco". Vaya falta de imaginación. En fin, es el culebrón planetario. Y ellos erre que erre. 

"De acuerdo con un informe clasificado citado por el semanario alemán "Der Spiegel", los servicios secretos estadounidenses señalan que “por primera vez se logró infiltrar la red del servidor central” de la presidencia y se “obtuvo acceso general a la cuenta de correo electrónico del jefe de Estado”. Tal operación recibió el nombre de “Flatliquid” y, de acuerdo con los reportes, se trató de una fuente de información “lucrativa” pues con ella se tuvo acceso inmediato a la oficina del presidente. El hackeo del dominio del correo electrónico de presidencia también incluyó a miembros del gabinete.

El texto de "Der Spiegel" está firmado, entre otros periodistas, por Laura Poitras, quien además de Gleen Greenwald, es la única persona que ha tenido acceso a los archivos de la NSA revelados por Edward Snowden, y profundiza en la labor de espionaje que Estados Unidos ha realizado en la región, específicamente en México y Brasil.

Según "Der Spiegel", tanto México como Brasil pertenecen a los estados incluidos en una lista de espionaje prioritario que data de abril de 2013 y en la que ambos países ocuparían puestos en la parte más alta de la lista. Dicha lista habría sido autorizada por la Casa Blanca y aprobada por el presidente estadounidense Barack Obama. En ella se exponen además las estrategias para todos los servicios secretos de Estados Unidos y contiene una escala que se eleva de 1, para los casos de alta prioridad, hasta 5, para los de menor prioridad.

Para el caso de México, los estadounidenses tienen como prioridad los temas de narcotráfico, al que le otorgan un nivel de prioridad 1; y de gobierno, al que otorgan un nivel de prioridad 3. Dentro de este rubro de gobierno los Estados Unidos desean conocer todo sobre la estabilidad económica del país, sus capacidades militares, los derechos humanos, el comercio internacional (todos con un nivel 3 de prioridad) y el contraespionaje (al que confieren un nivel 4) .“Qué tan intensivamente atacaron los estadounidenses a sus vecinos (Brasil y México), lo demuestra la hasta ahora desconocida operación en México que la NSA bautizó como “White tamale” (Tamal blanco), revela "Der Spiegel".  Los documentos internos citados por el semanario alemán refieren una segunda operación en contra de México en agosto de 2009, cuando los servicios secretos lograron tener acceso a los correos electrónicos de altos funcionarios del gobierno mexicano, que actúan contra narcotraficantes y traficantes de personas".

Who pays "The Army of Islam" ?

Foto de eltiempo.com

Syria: “The Army of Islam”; Saudi Arabia’s Greatest Export

By Phil Greaves

Phil Greaves es un estudioso de asuntos políticos y experto en Medio Oriente. Es británico. Incluyo su presente trabajo debido a que me gustaría que les sirviera a mis visitantes (gracias) para entender quiénes constituyen los variopintos grupos insurgentes en el conflicto sirio. Y que quieren que les diga, yo casi siempre me hago la pregunta: ¿y quién les paga?, ¿a quiénes benefician sus acciones?. Cuando nos mencionan "rebeldes sirios" es como no decir nada. O pretender tomarnos por tontainas

"The western/Gulf media narrative surrounding this new “Islamist Alliance” is a re-hash of failed PR campaigns of the past ; attempting to mitigate the inherent fundamentalist ideologies of the insurgents waging war upon the Syrian state. Syria has been a pluralistic secular society for decades, the majority of its Sunni muslim population are conservative and have coexisted peacefully alongside the many other religions and ethnic minorities that make up Syria’s diverse society, history, and culture. The people of Syria do not aspire to a Saudi sponsored Salafi/Wahhabi leadership or doctrine of law. Contrary to the popular narrative emerging in western and Gulf media that this new force will represent an indigenous “moderate Islamist” coalition capable of taking on the foreign elements and Al Qaeda, the majority of Syrians will be repelled by the sectarian language and ideologies of Zohran Alloush, his groups overt affiliations and pandering to Al Qaeda ideologues, and his “Army of Islam”.

Considering the above context, the narrative of home-grown (Preview) Salafis somehow being more amenable to the Syrian population than their ISIS/JaN fundamentalist colleagues becomes even less tenable. Alloush’s formation of Jaish al-Islam, alongside the “Islamist Alliance” denunciation of the western-backed political opposition, show a marked shift of the insurgency further toward the Al Qaeda ideologues fighting the Syrian regime, not further away from them".
Phil Greaves is a UK based writer/analyst, focusing on UK/US Foreign Policy and conflict analysis in the Middle East post WWII.http://notthemsmdotcom.wordpress.com/


Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/syria-the-army-of-islam-saudi-arabias-greatest-export/5352638

"Recent developments regarding “rebel” groups inside Syria have shed further light on the ideologies and political aims of the militants waging war upon the Syrian state.
On the 24th September, under the moniker of the “Islamist Alliance”, 11 of the largest and most recognisable rebel brigades – a mix of supposed “moderate Islamists” such as Liwa al-Tawhid, the largest “FSA”-branded brigade in Aleppo, alongside more hardline Salafi/Jihadi brigades such as Ahrar al-Sham, and Al Qaeda ideologues Jahbat al-Nusra - released a joint statement denouncing the western-backed expatriates of the “National Coalition” (NC), along with its equally impotent military arm, the “Supreme Military Council” (SMC). Following this statement of intent, on the 29th of September, up to 50 rebel groups operating primarily in the area of Damascus merged to form Jaish al-Islam (Army of Islam). The Damascus merger also included a wide-ranging demographic of militant groups, from the supposed “moderate”, to overt Salafist hardliners. Jaish al-Islam is dominated by Liwa al-Islam, a large rebel group formerly of “FSA” branding, and led by Saudi-backed Zahran Alloush. Liwa al-Islam were also a signatory to the aforementioned statement of denunciation toward the western-backed political opposition.
These announcements have effectively put-to-bed the western propagated myth that was the “Free Syrian Army”. Militant groups the west ostensibly touted as “secular moderates” yearning for “freedom and democracy” from a tyrannical regime; have now openly declared their Salafi/Jihadi fundamentalist ideology, with the ultimate aim of creating a Syrian state ruled by Islamic law.
Already, these announcements are being portrayed as an attempt by Saudi Arabia – yes, ever tolerant and inclusive Wahhabi-preaching Saudi Arabia – and other leading Salafi factions supporting the insurgency to steer “vetted, or moderate Salafi” rebels away from the Al Qaeda aligned groups; particularly the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), who are now portrayed as simply “foreign jihadists” and have become the leading fall-guy in Western and Gulf media for every atrocity committed by the rebels. This false perception has been built as a result of a Western and Gulf initiated public relations campaign to “moderate” the image of the Salafi/Jihadi fundamentalists (aswell as those more inclined to basic criminality, killing, and destruction) who may be more willing to meet the requirements of their Gulf donors and the United States. Yet, contrary to this divisive narrative, the same “moderate” Salafi’s who are now supposedly being encouraged to  disassociate from their Al Qaeda affiliates have happily fought alongside – more often than not as a junior partner – the West’s supposed “number one enemy” (AQ) since the insurgency began in 2011".

Pentagon Cyber Attacks

US Cyber Command’s Plan X: Pentagon Launching Covert Cyber AttacksBy Tom Burghardt


La presente revisión de Tom Burghardt colmará de orgullo patrio a muchos estadounidenses. Están a la vanguardia, no hay dudas posibles. Pero tal vez otros ciudadanos piensen que sus impuestos irían mejor a planes de atención sanitaria. Lo cierto es que parte de las guerras actuales se libran en el ciberespacio o con tecnologías punteras del sector. Que cuestan mucho dinero.  Pero que generan avances tecnológicos. La industria armamentística es el mejor negocio global posible. Propicia soluciones que luego se expanden al mercado civil. Es decir, que tienen su aspecto positivo. Claro, corramos un velo sobre las bajas colaterales, el destino de los refugiados de los países asolados por guerras de rapiña, las epidemias de hambre, endémicas en algunos países africanos. Esos discursos se tachan de populistas. Si les parece entren en la URL correspondiente y decidan.

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-cyber-commands-plan-x-pentagon-launching-covert-cyber-attacks/5352627


"In 2008, the Armed Forces Journal published a prescient piece by Colonel Charles W. Williamson III, a staff judge advocate with the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, the National Security Agency listening post focused on intercepting communications from Latin America, the Middle East and Europe.
Titled “Carpet bombing in cyberspace,” Col. Williamson wrote that “America needs a network that can project power by building an af.milrobot network (botnet) that can direct such massive amounts of traffic to target computers that they can no longer communicate and become no more useful to our adversaries than hunks of metal and plastic. America needs the ability to carpet bomb in cyberspace to create the deterrent we lack.”
While Williamson’s treatise was fanciful (a DDoS attack can’t bring down an opponent’s military forces, or for that matter a society’s infrastructure), he had hit upon a theme which Air Force researchers had been working towards since the 1980s: the development of software-based weapons that can be “fired” at an adversary, potentially as lethal as a bomb dropped from 30,000 feet.
Two years later, evidence emerged that US and Israeli code warriors did something far more damaging.
Rather than deploying an “af.mil” botnet against Iran’s civilian nuclear infrastructure at Natanz, they unleashed a destructive digital worm, Stuxnet. In the largest and most sophisticated attack to date, more than 1,000 centrifuges were sent spinning out of control, “no more useful” to Iranian physicists “than hunks of metal and plastic.”
A line had been crossed, and by the time security experts sorted things out, they learned that Stuxnet and its cousins, Duqu, Flame and Gauss, were the most complex pieces of malware ever designed, the opening salvo in the cyberwar that has long-guided the fevered dreams of Pentagon planners.
Plan X’
Today, that destructive capability exists under the umbrella of US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM), one which has the potential of holding the world hostage.
Last year the Pentagon allocated $80 million dollars to defense giant Lockheed Martin for ongoing work on the National Cyber Range (NCR), a top secret facility that designs and tests attack tools for the government.
Under terms of the five year contract, Lockheed Martin and niche malware developers have completed work on a test-bed housed in a “specially architected sensitive compartmented information facility with appropriate security protocols” that “emulates the public internet and other networks, and provides for the modeling of cyber attacks.”
Originally developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon’s geek squad, NCR has gone live and was transitioned last year to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, federal contracts uncovered by NextGov revealed.
As Antifascist Calling reported back in 2009, “NCR will potentially serve as a new and improved means to bring America’s rivals to their knees. Imagine the capacity for death and destruction implicit in a tool that can . . . cause an adversary’s chemical plant to suddenly release methyl isocynate (the Bhopal effect) on a sleeping city, or a nuclear power plant to go supercritical, releasing tens of billions of curies of radioactive death into the atmosphere?”
NextGov also reported that the “Pentagon is seeking technology to coordinate and bolster cyberattack capabilities through a funding experiment called ‘Plan X,’ contract documents indicate.”

NSA world wide

Pues no. El espionaje no ha sido exclusivamente sobre (o contra) el teléfono de Merkel. Según un documento de la NSA que destapa "The Guardian" (hay que ver que son buenos), funcionaba una red dirigida a cubrir las comunicaciones de unos 35 líderes mundiales. Francia y Alemania proponen que se instaure un "código" de cómo y a quién es lícito espiar. Merkel  ha dado la pauta. Como que es una persona de ideas muy claras lo resumió que ni Kant: "A los amigos no se les espía". Obama, ni sabe ni contesta. 

Foto de Getty Pictures



No se pierdan The Guardian de hoy. Aquí les dejo una primicia del periodista James Ball.

 

"The National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders after being given the numbers by an official in another US government department, according to a classified document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The confidential memo reveals that the NSA encourages senior officials in its "customer" departments, such as the White House, State and the Pentagon, to share their "Rolodexes" so the agency can add the phone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their surveillance systems.

The document notes that one unnamed US official handed over 200 numbers, including those of the 35 world leaders, none of whom is named. These were immediately "tasked" for monitoring by the NSA".

Les dejo el enlace  NSA.gov y si les parece se miran de qué van. El jefe del cotarro es el caballero comandante Alexander  del USCYCIBORCOM; NSA/CSS;USCYBERCOM;DoD et al.

"General Keith B. Alexander, USA, is the Commander, U.S. Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) and Director, National Security Agency/Chief, Central Security Service (NSA/CSS), Fort George G. Meade, MD. As Commander, USCYBERCOM, he is responsible for planning, coordinating and conducting operations and defense of DoD computer networks as directed by USSTRATCOM. As the Director of NSA and Chief of CSS and bla, bla bla".

USA: espío luego existo

"Yo no espío, eso lo hace la CIA"

No es la primera entrada que mi blog destinada a glosar la costumbre de los servicios de inteligencia (?) estadounidenses de convertir en su objetivo a enemigos y aliados por igual. Es decir, que han perdido el sentido del límite. Que espían por lo que les caiga en el saco. Espío luego existo. Para más inri o los pillan o les sale un Snowden que canta. El resultado es un cabreo que recorre, como el desprestigiado fantasma de Marx, el puñetero planeta en crisis. La última gracieta de las orejas globales de la Casa Blanca parece haber sido ni más ni menos que interceptar el teléfono privado de la canciller alemana Ángela Merkel. Lo peor del caso es que debió ser una verdadera chapuza de pinchazo digital, vamos. El Spiegel, que no acostumbra a chuparse el dedito, levantó la liebre. La contraparte alemana, aliados de los estadounidenses, muy morigerados ellos, tacharon de "plausible" el asunto. Merkel que no se va por las ramas, puso a Obama en su sitio con una llamada seguramente grabada para la historia universal de la infamia por la White House. Estados Unidos niega que espiaran el teléfono de Merkel. Tal vez la estación CIA o a los mandados del NSA de turno en el asunto, se les cruzó  de forma casual una conversación inesperada y reconocieron la inconfundible voz de Angi Merkel. Menudo caramelo. Escuchar en secreto a la mujer que dirige Europa. Hacerlo en vivo, en directo y con total impunidad. Un subidón. Un orgasmo. Mejor que una línea erótica. Pero, ¿habrán aprendido algo de lo que captaron?, ¿van a seguir metiendo tanto la pata?. ¿O la oreja?. Una idea gratuita: que los inteligentes servicios estadounidenses nos soliciten información, con buenos modos, sin interceptar E-mails, sin husmear en las miserias de los ciudadanos. Sin demasiadas amenazas.Y que paguen de forma equitativa y razonable las confidencias. Que se conviertan en nuestros confesores laicos. Todos los ciudadanos del mundo mundial seremos sus rendidos confidentes. Todo el poder para los espías. De ellos será el reino y la gloria. Amen.

"Leading politicians and media commentators in Germany expressed serious concern on Thursday following allegations that US intelligence agencies had tapped Chancellor Angela Merkel's cell phone. Merkel's spokesman confirmed that she placed an angry call Wednesday night to United States President Barack Obama to discuss the suspicions, which arose from an inquiry by SPIEGEL".

"La canciller alemana Angela Merkel ha protestado ante el presidente de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, por el espionaje de su teléfono móvil por parte de los servicios secretos estadounidenses.

.

Esta reacción alemana tiene su origen en diversas informaciones del semanario Der Spiegel. Además una inspección realizada por los servicios de información alemanes y la Agencia federal de seguridad ha llevado al Gobierno germano a considerar que las sospechas de espionaje son "plausibles".

El portavoz de Merkel, Steffen Seibert, confirmó que Alemania ha demandado "un inmediato y completo esclarecimiento" del asunto, después de obtener "indicios sólidos" de que Washington vigila las comunicaciones del teléfono privado de la Canciller.
Seibert ha afirmado que espera que las autoridades estadounidenses proporcionen información sobre el alcance global de este tipo de prácticas contra Alemania.
El portavoz alemán expresó también que "como aliado cercano de Estados Unidos, el Gobierno federal espera que en el futuro exista una base clara sobre las actividades de los servicios y su cooperación".
Por su parte, el Gobierno de Estados Unidos negó las sospechas de Berlín. "Estados Unidos no está interceptando y no tiene la intención de interceptar las comunicaciones de la Canciller", declaró Jay Carney, portavoz de la Casa Blanca".

The 2013 Nobel Peace Price Another Farce?

Another Nobel Peace Prize – Another Farce?
By Felicity Arbuthnot


Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/another-nobel-peace-prize-another-farce/5354904

"This year’s Peace Prize awarded, on Friday, 11th October, went to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) the Netherlands based organization, founded only in 1997, unheard of by most, charged with ridding the world of chemical weapons.

The Award came ten days after an OPCW team arrived in Syria to eliminate the country’s chemical weapons stock. A brief visit in August had them scuttling out, an apparent courage free entity, within days. President Assad had requested their investigations back in March, after it was claimed terrorist factions had used chemical weapons – insurgents now believed to be from some eighty three countries, backed primarily by the US, UK, Quatar and Saudi Arabia.

The OPCW’s return, on 1st October, is now touted as a breakthrough with an intransigent regime who had previously blocked them at every turn – rather than had the door open for them since March – the team, now billed as brave souls, working in a war zone – in which the Syrian people and government live – and die – every day – in a blood-soaked insurgency of that that famed “international community’s” making.

Is the annual Nobel justified anyway to an organization which has, in spite of the nightmare hazards to an entire population, agree to destroying an alleged 1,000 tons of highly dangerous chemicals (if we believe what we are told) in just months?

In context, the US still has over three times as much chemical weaponry (estimated at over 3,100 tons) and has defied the specified April 2012 deadline for their disposal, on the basis that the dangers are so great that they cannot complete building the appropriate facilities until 2020 (some reports state 2023.) For the same reasons of technical and safety obstacles, Russia has a believed five times the US amount left to destroy.(i) Shameful double standards rule supreme.

Wade Mathews, who worked on the U.S. chemical stockpile destruction, is uncertain that Syria can meet the deadline. He states that the U.S. disposal took billions of dollars, the cooperation of many levels of government – including the military – and a safe environment, to make sure the destruction was safely executed. (See i.)

To the observer, it would seems that the OPCW has taken on a high profile, rushed, reckless enterprise, under pressure from the US/UN, which could potentially poison Syria’s people and environment in orders of magnitude beyond the alleged horrors unleashed by, near certainly, the insurgents.

So what possible reason for the OCPW Nobel, and why now? Interestingly, OPCW Director-General, Ahmet Üzümcü, is Turkish, a former Consul in Syria’s Aleppo, former Ambassador to Israel, a former Permanent Representative of Turkey to NATO and then to the UN in Geneva.

Apart from Director General Üzümcü obviously having some remarkably useful inside tracks, Syria’s neighbour, Turkey is the sole Middle East NATO Member State (never mind it has no connection to the North Atlantic, being set amid the Mediterranean, Aegean, Black Sea, Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles.)

NATO is certainly not asleep at the wheel when it comes to Syria, as neither are the European Union, which Turkey – in spite of being “Gateway to the Orient” with the majority of the country in it – also aspires to be a Member. Britain and France are, of course EU Members, joined as one with Turkey in meddling in Syria.

NATO, has long sought footholds further east. In an enlightening letter quoted over the years in these columns, but worthy of revisiting, on 26th June 1979, General Alexander Hague, on his retirement as NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, wrote to the then Secretary General, Joseph Luns.

The focus then, of course, was in the context of the Cold War, however the regional geography and the diplomatic skills of President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov in the Syria crisis make the tactics outlined again starkly relevant, especially as President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have arguably been diplomatically eclipsed to near irrelevance.

The US-EU-NATO aspirations for the Baghdad-Damascus road to lead to Tehran (diplomatic “break through” or not) should never be under estimated. Neither indeed, as has been demonstrated since the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, the desire to encircle Russia as confirmed by encroachment of US-NATO bases at astonishing speed and with equal chutzpah.(ii)

The tactics in the NATO letter are arguably as relevant to aims today as when it was written, albeit, targets, circumstances, field of play (or planned war) widened. The penultimate paragraphs read:

“We should constantly bear in mind the necessity of continuously directing attention to the ... threat and of further activising our collaboration with the mass media.

“If argument, persuasion and impacting the media fail, we are left with no alternative but to jolt the faint hearted in Europe through the creations of situations, country by country, as deemed necessary, to convince them where their interests lie.

“The course of actions which we have in mind may become the only sure way of securing the interests of the West.”

Back to the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize. Norwegian Fredrik Heffermehl, jurist, writer, translator, former Vice President of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms, amongst numerous other prestigious international appointments, has long been a thorn in the side of the Norway based Nobel Committee.(iii)

Heffermehl has argued in his published study: “The Nobel Peace Prize. What Nobel Really Wanted”, that the Norwegian Parliament had distorted Alfred Nobel’s intention for the Prize. His researches found numerous academic studies that supported his thesis. The Norwegian Parliament and the Nobel Committee emphatically did not. His dissertation, however has been published and expanded in Chinese, Swedish, Finnish, Russian and in December 2011 was endorsed by Michael Nobel, of the Nobel Family Association, who supported Heffermehl in his assertion that on their present course, Norwegian politicians might lose their control of the Peace Prize.

Norway is, of course is in the NATO “family.” Interesting is the criteria for the Nobel Peace Prize nomination. The Nobel website stipulates:

“Deadline for submission. The Committee bases its assessment on nominations that must be postmarked no later than 1st February each year ... ... In recent years, the Committee has received close to 200 different nominations for different nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize. The number of nominating letters is much higher, as many are for the same candidates.”

So who, in the year to 1st February 2013 rushed to nominate the near unheard of OPCW? And is it conceivable there might have been some accommodation with the date (heaven forbid.)

Well, unless you are very young, you may never know, there is a while to wait:

“The names of the nominees and other information about the nominations cannot be revealed until 50 years later”, states the Nobel website.

It might be worth noting the rotating Members of the Executive Council for the OPCW for 2012-2013 include countries which have done more than a little meddling in the affairs of Syria, including France, the UK and US, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Norway is also on the year’s Council.

Britain’s Foreign Office Minister, Hugh Robertson, sent enthusiastic congratulations to the OPCW on their Award, adding:

“ The UK is providing an initial contribution £2million to support the work of the OPCW in Syria and we stand ready to provide further assistance.”(iv)

Robertson also lauds the OPCW, referring to: “The recent use of chemical weapons by the regime in Syria ...” an entirely unproven and arguably, even libelous allegation.

Speculation, however, as to how another surprising Nobel Peace Prize came about is vacuous. In fifty years though, it is worth a bet that honest historians will be shaking their heads in disbelief.

Another Nobel, another farce".

Atentos a la tuberculosis resistente

Supongo que muchos de mis visitantes (gracias mil) piensan que la tuberculosis  (TB) es una enfermedad propia del siglo XIX de la que morían románticos y literatos mustios. Pero presten alguna atención a los datos de la Organización Mundial de la Salud que reproduzco a continuación. ¿Qué no les importa?. Si pensamos así pecamos de egoístas pero por encima de todo de tontos. Las cepas multiresistentes de tuberculosis son una amenaza para cualquiera que esté en contacto con ellas. Supongamos que en una ciudad europea la afluencia de inmigrantes africanos facilita la presencia de potenciales portadores de cepas multiresistentes de TB. Supongamos que por motivos que no voy a analizar dichas personas no siguen el tratamiento adecuado. Como las cepas multiresistentes no conocen de papeles ni de pasaportes, se suman al "emporio" de microorganismos patógenos. Así que es un problema que nos afecta. De una u otra manera. Y por cierto, el tratamiento de la tuberculosis es bastante económico en comparación con otras epidemias. Les dejo el enlace.

"Approximately 16,000 people were diagnosed with multidrug-resistant  tuberculosis in 2012 but were not given the treatment they needed to stay alive and prevent the spread of the disease, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said.

While there has been some progress – with a drop in cases to 8.6m in 2012, from 8.7m in 2011, and in deaths from 1.4m in 2011 to 1.3m in 2012 – a report by the WHO says there are serious concerns about the estimated 3 million people with TB who are not receiving treatment because they live in remote rural areas, and about the spread of drug-resistant strains".

Drones criminales

El uso indiscriminado de aviones no tripulados, y las  consecuencias de sus ataques sobre civiles inocentes, pueden constituir crímenes de guerra, según Amnistía Internacional y Human Rights Watch en sendos informes. Los responsables: los servicios de inteligencia estadounidenses en su denominada lucha contra el terrorismo. Se reportan casos en Pakistán, Afganistán y Yemen.

"US officials responsible for the secret CIA drone campaign against suspected terrorists in Pakistan may have committed war crimes and should stand trial, a report by a leading human rights group warns.Amnesty International has highlighted the case of a grandmother who was killed while she was picking vegetables and other incidents which could have broken international laws designed to protect civilians.

The report is issued in conjunction with an investigation by Human Rights Watch detailing missile attacks in Yemen which the group believes could contravene the laws of armed conflict, international human rights law and Barack Obama's own guidelines on drones.

The reports are being published while Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister, is in Washington. Sharif has promised to tell Obama that the drone strikes – which have caused outrage in Pakistan – must end.

Getting to the bottom of individual strikes is exceptionally difficult in the restive areas bordering Afghanistan, where thousands of militants have settled. People are often terrified of speaking out, fearing retribution from both militants and the state, which is widely suspected of colluding with the CIA-led campaign".

Ciencia actual

Aquí les dejo dos enlaces muy interesantes. El primero, los llevara a  "Genome Biology", y nos descubre el funcionamiento de un reloj biológico dentro del material genético. Se trata de un trabajo fundamental por sus aplicaciones en el conocimiento del desarrollo de patologías de la vejez y también de los mecanismos del envejecimiento.

El otro trabajo aparece en "Science" y tiene que ver con la importancia del sueño en la fisiología del sistema nervioso central. Todos los animales duermen, de una u otra forma, así que el valor homeostático del sueño no es exclusivo del ser humano. Para decirlo en palabras sencillas, durante el sueño se produce un proceso de limpieza de toxinas. Ya se sabía que dormir bien era sano, necesario y que algunas enfermedades graves cursan con alteraciones del sueño. Ahora un modelo experimental ha descubierto parte de los efectos moleculares del sueño en mamíferos.

"Writing in the journal Genome Biology, Horvath showed that the biological clock was reset to zero when cells plucked from an adult were reprogrammed back to a stem-cell-like state. The process for converting adult cells into stem cells, which can grow into any tissue in the body, won the Nobel prize in 2012 for Sir John Gurdon at Cambridge University and Shinya Yamanaka at Kyoto University.

"It provides a proof of concept that one can reset the clock," said Horvath. The scientist now wants to run tests to see how neurodegenerative and infectious diseases affect, or are affected by, the biological clock.

"These data could prove valuable in furthering our knowledge of the biological changes that are linked to the ageing process," said Veryan Codd, who works on the effects of biological ageing in cardiovascular disease at Leicester University. "It will be important to determine whether the accelerated ageing, as described here, is associated with other age-related diseases and if it is a causal factor in, or a consequence of, disease development".

Sleep Drives Metabolite Clearance from the Adult Brain

1. Lulu Xie1,*, 
2. Hongyi Kang1,*, 
3. Qiwu Xu1, 
4. Michael J. Chen1, 
5. Yonghong Liao1, 
6. Meenakshisundaram Thiyagarajan1,
7. John O’Donnell1, 
8. Daniel J. Christensen1, 
9. Charles Nicholson2, 
10. Jeffrey J. Iliff1, 
11. Takahiro Takano1, 
12. Rashid Deane1,
13. Maiken Nedergaard1,†

+Author Affiliations

1. ¹Division of Glial Disease and Therapeutics, Center for Translational Neuromedicine, Department of Neurosurgery, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY 14642, USA.
2. ²Department of Neuroscience and Physiology, Langone Medical Center, New York University, New York, NY 10016, USA.

1. ↵†Corresponding author. E-mail: nedergaard@urmc.rochester.edu

The conservation of sleep across all animal species suggests that sleep serves a vital function. We here report that sleep has a critical function in ensuring metabolic homeostasis. Using real-time assessments of tetramethylammonium diffusion and two-photon imaging in live mice, we show that natural sleep or anesthesia are associated with a 60% increase in the interstitial space, resulting in a striking increase in convective exchange of cerebrospinal fluid with interstitial fluid. In turn, convective fluxes of interstitial fluid increased the rate of β-amyloid clearance during sleep. Thus, the restorative function of sleep may be a consequence of the enhanced removal of potentially neurotoxic waste products that accumulate in the awake central nervous system.