Los verdaderos prisioneros de ETA: el difícil camino hacia la paz.

EPPK "da por finalizada la fase armada", reconoce el dolor generado y "dará nuevos pasos si existen condiciones para ello".

Pero mientras tanto ETA no acaba de dar los pasos definitivos en la dirección de su disolución: entregar las armas, con lo que lo que queda de la organización armada se convierte en virtual carcelero de sus militantes, tanto prófugos como presos o expatriados.

Siete meses después del cese definitivo de la lucha armada, "Euskal Preso Politikoen Kolektiboa" (EPPK) ha presentado en Gernika la conclusiones de su debate interno, que suponen "un salto cualitativo" en su apoyo e implicación en el proceso. Entre otras cosas, el Colectivo apoya la decisión de ETA y "da por finalizada la fase de la actividad armada como instrumento de lucha".


Un momento de la presentación, en la sala Elai Alai de Gernika. (Jon HERNÁEZ/ARGAZKI PRESS) GERNIKA-. El Colectivo de Presos Políticos Vascos (EPPK) apoya la decisión de ETA y "da por finalizada la fase de la actividad armada como instrumento de lucha". También manifesta que "se adhiere plenamente a la estrategia política de la izquierda abertzale", que destaca que ha supuesto "retomar la iniciativa y afianzar la acumulación de fuerzas". En este contexto, avanza que sus referencias política serán la metodología de Anoeta, el Acuerdo de Gernika y la Declaración de Aiete.


Con especial interés se ha seguido también el séptimo apartado de su declaración, sobre "las otras consecuencias del conflicto". Ahí, EPPK apunta que "somos plenamente conscientes del múltiple dolor generado. De hecho, lo venimos sufriendo directamente o en nuestro entorno desde hace generaciones. Ahora bien, tampoco somos ciegos para no ver que algunos lo ponen al servicio de objetivos políticos". Por todo ello, considera que "es una tarea ineludible que cada una de las partes entienda las raíces de este conflicto que tanto daño ha causado", y augura que será "un ejercicio profundo y doloroso".


En cuanto a la situación de los presos, muestra su plena disposición a hablar sobre ella, y recuerda que ha nombrado una interlocución. El Colectivo considera que "a fin de participar junto a nuestro pueblo en el proceso político, debe desaparecer todo impedimiento para nuestra excarcelación". Y anticipa su "plena disposición para dar nuevos pasos en el futuro, si se dan condiciones para ello". Antes, subraya que todos los planes de los estados «han fracasado» y que lo mismo ocurrirá con todos los intentos que se basen en el "arrepentimiento-delación".


Las conclusiones han sido presentadas en un acto celebrado en Gernika. Tienen forma de declaración, que ha sido difundida a través de un vídeo con voz en off, mientras en la mesa situada ante la pantalla aparecían los retratos de los miembros de EPPK que han sido designados como interlocutores y representantes del Colectivo en este mismo proceso de debate interno, junto al logotipo de EPPK.


El acto ha suscitado una expectación periodística enorme; ha reunido a unos 40 periodistas en la sala Elai Alai. Ex presos políticos vascos de todas las épocas han formado parte del público, junto a algunos representantes de los firmantes del Acuerdo de Gernika, que también suscribió EPPK. Ha contado también con presencia internacional, con un expreso irlandés y otro saharaui.(Información proveniente de "Gara")

México convulso

NARCOTICS: CIA-Pentagon Death Squads and Mexico's 'War on Drugs" Mexico Arrests Three Army Generals

By Tom Burghardt

Mexico se encuentra en una permanente situación de sobresalto y galopante militarización debido a la lucha contra los señores del narcotráfico. Un entramado complejo en el que incursiona Burghardt, y que para aquellos interesados en profundizar en los problemas del país azteca vale la pena que revisen el artículo completo.

URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31100

Earlier this month, the Mexican government arrested three high-ranking Army generals "including a former second in command at the Defense Ministry," The New York Times reported. According to multiple press reports, Tomás Ángeles Dauahare, who retired in 2008, was an under secretary at the Defense Ministry during the first two years of President Felipe Calderón's "war" against some narcotrafficking cartels and had even been mentioned as a "possible choice for the top job."
The Times disclosed that in the early 1990s Ángeles "served as the defense attaché at the Mexican Embassy in Washington," a plum position with plenty of perks awarded to someone thought by his Pentagon brethren to have impeccable credentials; that is, if smoothing the way the for drugs to flow can be viewed as a bright spot on one's résumé.

The other top military men detained in Mexico City were "Brig. Gen. Roberto Dawe González, assigned to a base in Colima State, and Gen. Ricardo Escorcia Vargas, who is retired."
Reuters reported that "Dawe headed an army division in the Pacific state of Colima, which lies on a key smuggling route for drugs heading to the United States, and had also served in the violent border state of Chihuahua."
When queried at a May 18 press conference in Washington, "whether and to what extent" these officers participated in the $1.6 billion taxpayer-financed boondoggle known as the Mérida Initiative or had received American training, Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Robert L. Ditchey II tersely told reporters, "We are not going to get into those specifics."
Inquiring minds can't help but wonder what does the Pentagon, or certain three-lettered secret state agencies, have to hide?

CIA-Pentagon Death Squads
Although little explored by corporate media, the CIA and Defense Department's role in escalating violence across Mexico is part of a long-standing strategy by American policy planners to deploy what the late Col. L. Fletcher Prouty called The Secret Team, "skilled professionals under the direct control of someone higher up." According to Prouty, "Team members are like lawyers and agents, they work for someone. They generally do not plan their work. They do what their client tells them to do."
In the context of the misbegotten "War on Drugs," that "client" is the U.S. government and the nexus of bent banks, crooked cops, shady airplane brokers, chemical manufacturers, and spooky defense and surveillance firms who all profit from the chaos they help sustain.
As Narco News disclosed last summer, "A small but growing proxy war is underway in Mexico pitting US-assisted assassin teams composed of elite Mexican special operations soldiers against the leadership of an emerging cadre of independent drug organizations that are far more ruthless than the old-guard Mexican 'cartels' that gave birth to them."
"These Mexican assassin teams now in the field for at least half a year, sources tell Narco News, are supported by a sophisticated US intelligence network composed of CIA and civilian US military operatives as well as covert special-forces soldiers under Pentagon command--which are helping to identify targets for the Mexican hit teams."
"So it should be no surprise," Bill Conroy wrote, "that information is now surfacing from reliable sources indicating that the US government is once again employing a long-running counter-insurgency strategy that has been pulled off the shelf and deployed in conflicts dating back to Vietnam in the 1960s, in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s, and beyond, and in more recent conflicts, such as in Iraq."

Bankia:or very G.U.B.U.

El lunes  España figuraba en la primera página del diario estadounidense New York Times. Y más nos hubiera valido no ganarnos semejante palmarés. Pero es que somos, como dijo Fraga y admite don Joaquín Estefanía en un sombrío artículo de opinión de "El País": "Spain is different". Pero para muy mal.  El NYT ponía a España a caer de un burro. Y siembra, fomenta, una suspicacia aguda en todo lo que tenga que ver con "nuestro" (el de ellos, el de los grandes gestores, el de los intocables diseñadores de la virtual quiebra  que se padece) del cojitranco sistema financiero. Resulta que en 2011 la entidad matriz de Bankia, el centro de gravedad del banco, la caja del tesoro vamos, declaró unos beneficios estratosféricos. Nada que sospechar de sus números, al parecer, ya que para eso están las entidades financieras. Su naturaleza dentro del sistema capitalista es la generación de beneficios que se extiendan a inversores y ahorradores, sin necesidades de capital suministrado por los estados. Y ahora resulta que Bankia es en la práctica un tenebroso agujero negro,  van tres veces en que se proclama la cantidad necesaria, dinero público, para que no arrastre quién sabe dónde al resto de factores implicados. No se depuran responsabilidades. No se rinden cuentas. Todo adopta una opacidad apestosa. Una ciénaga.

Un sesudo analista de "Nomura", un tal Doragh Quinn, con sede en la City de Londres califica la recapitalización de Bankia de G.U.B.U. Lo que para quienes no estén muy puestos significa "grotesque", unbelievale", "bizarre","unprecedent". Toma castaña.

Los humanos olemos menos y mal

No New Neurons for Smell?

by Elizabeth Norton

Reproduzco aquí un precioso artículo de Science que explica las investigaciones en neurogénesis a nivel del bulbo olfatorio, que es la región cerebral dedicada al olfato. En dicha zona las neuronas sí se reproducen (neurogénesis) pero luego desaparecen. Los humanos, por falta de uso, perdemos la facultad de oler, como probablemente hicieron nuestros ancestros más bestiales. Entre otras pruebas, los investigadores han utilizado avanzadas técnicas de imaginería, en un modelo con ratones. En un entorno plagado de esencias, el sistema nervioso hubiera respondido de otra manera. Hay que hacer notar lo poco que se conoce del órgano que nos hace humanos.

The nose knows. Olfactory neurons (arrows) don't seem to be added throughout life, but is this true only for people who don't use their noses?

Credit: Chiyacat/Shutterstock; (inset) Adapted from O. Bergmann et al., Neuron 74 (24 May) © Elsevier, Inc.Do our brains continue to produce neurons throughout our lifetimes? That's been one of the most hotly debated questions in the annals of science. Since the 1950s, studies have hinted at the possibility, but not until the late 1990s did research prove that the birth of new neurons, called neurogenesis, goes on in the brains of adult primates and humans. Now a surprising new study in humans shows that in the olfactory bulb-the interface between the nose and the brain and an area long—known to be a hot spot of neurogenesis—new neurons may be born but not survive. The finding may rule out neurogenesis in this area, or it might show only that some people don't stimulate their brains enough through the sense of smell, some researchers say.

Previous studies have found evidence of neurogenesis in the olfactory bulb of adult humans. But those studies measured only proteins produced by immature neurons, leaving open the question of whether these youngsters ever grew up to connect with other cells to form functional networks, says neuroscientist Jonas Frisén of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. If new olfactory neurons really reached adulthood throughout a person's life, researchers should find neurons of a variety of ages in this region.

That's not what Frisén and his team saw. The discovery is based on a technique he and his colleague Kirsty Spalding hit upon in 2005, in which they found a clever way to deduce the age of neurons. The method relies on atomic testing carried out in the 1950s and 1960s, which released massive amounts of carbon-14 into the atmosphere; the atmospheric 14C has been steadily declining ever since. Thus, the later a cell is born after this testing, the less 14C it contains.
In the new study, published this week in Neuron, Frisén, Spalding, and colleagues measured levels of 14C in olfactory bulb tissue taken during autopsy from the brains of 15 subjects who were born either before or after the atomic testing period. The researchers found that the neurons in the olfactory bulb were all the same age: the age of the individual they came from. "[That's] evidence that in humans, in this area, neurogenesis doesn't occur," says Frisén.

The finding may mean that as humans evolved from animals, we lost the ability to produce new neurons in this area because we don't rely as much on our sense of smell. On the other hand, it may mean that people living in an affluent, Western city like Stockholm aren't exposed to enough new smells to keep the neurons alive.
Neurobiologist Jeffrey Macklis of Harvard University says the study, though elegant and rigorous, doesn't settle this question quite yet. Macklis's lab and others have found that in mice, newly born neurons play a unique role in learning novel odors and die unless they are activated by new, unfamiliar smells. Because people depend less than rodents on the sense of smell, we might have comparatively less of these neurons to begin with, Macklis says. And what few we do create may not survive, because we aren't exposed to the same number of smells as other animals. "In affluent, Westernized areas, we shower every day; we use deodorant, air fresheners. We go out of our way to make sure that the only smells we're exposed to are the ones we know," Macklis says.

In addition, Macklis points out that the tissue samples may have biased the results. The donors in the study died at the Karolinska Institute, he notes, and some had a history of substance abuse or psychiatric illness, both of which have been shown to decrease neurogenesis. He says that a better test would be to repeat the experiment in healthy people constantly exposed to new scents—chefs, sommeliers, perfumers, or travelers to exotic locales.

Neuroscientist Fred Gage of The Salk Institute in San Diego, California, agrees that the population studied may not be the best one. Gage, who first reported evidence of neurogenesis in the human brain, says the decrease in neurogenesis may show that as animals evolved from quadrupeds to primates to humans, the sense of smell became less important for survival.