Homofobia en Rusia



Todo sea dicho: hubo un momento, en los mismísimos ochenta, que la prestigiosa clasificación americana de enfermedades mentales, la que se sigue en todo el mundo académico, incluía la homosexualidad como trastorno de la personalidad. Y psiquiatras, psicólogos, sociólogos y demás entendidos en la psique humana ganaban dinero intentando la curar tal fallo. Era así y aparecía en los libros especializados. Es conocida la persecusión que han sufrido gays y lesbianas en muchos países. Pero desde hace mucho tiempo eso ha cambiado: los psiquiatras ya no "curan" la homosexualidad. No obstante, en Rusia todavía se dictan normas contra gays y lesbianas. Se fomenta la homofobia de múltiples maneras. Hay que protestar alto y claro para que cesen los ataques contra personas que tienen el derecho a vivir su sexualidad como les apetezca.



Drones sobre Yemen

El presente artículo de Timothy Alexander Guzman, llama la atención sobre las consecuencias de la guerra contra el terrorismo islámico que desarrolla Estados Unidos en Yemen. Se desconocen las cifras exactas de civiles muertos por ataques con aviones no tripulados (drones). Al parecer, el precio que paga la población civil es muy alto. Según el Buró de periodismo de investigación, entre 2002 y 2013 se han producido 1,105 bajas.

Yemen under Assault: Drone Strike Kills 4 “Suspected Al-Qaeda” Members
By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/yemen-under-assault-drone-strike-kills-4-suspected-al-qaeda-members/5345263

Washington’s approved drone strikes claimed the lives of 4 suspected Al-Qaeda members in the Maarib Province in Yemen on Tuesday. It took place in the wake of the “Terror Alert” issued by Washington last week. Reuters stated that “The New York Times reported on Monday that the closure of the U.S. embassies was prompted by intercepted communication between al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri and Nasser al-Wuhaishi, head of Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).”
The report also said that “The Yemeni tribal leaders said five missiles struck a vehicle travelling in Maarib Province in Tuesday’s strike, killing all of its occupants. State news agency Saba also said initial reports indicated that four suspected al Qaeda militants were killed in the air strike in Maarib, but gave no further details.”
Were civilians killed by this particular drone strike? In the past, civilians killed by drone strikes in Yemen have been the usual outcome. Obama’s war on Al-Qaeda in Yemen has been more aggressive than the previous Bush administration according to the New America Foundation based in Washington D.C., stated “As of August 6, 2013, U.S. drone and airstrikes had killed an estimated 610 to 849 people in Yemen, according to the New America Foundation data. Of these deaths, 99% occurred during Obama’s presidency.”
The drone strike initiative began under U.S. President George W. Bush, but Obama has expanded the drone war in the Middle East and other parts of the world. In a report conducted by the ‘Alkarama Foundation’ a human rights organization based in Switzerland called ‘The United States’ War on Yemen: Drone Attacks’ clarified what impact the drone war in Yemen has on the civilian population:
From the first air strike in November 2002 until the month of May 2013, there have been between 134 and 226 U.S. military operations in Yemen, including strikes by aircraft, drone missiles, or attacks launched from warships stationed in the Gulf of Aden. However, the exact number of operations is unknown due to the secrecy surrounding the United States’ military interventions in Yemen. As such, the number of casualties is also unknown. In a study of civilian victims of U.S. attacks in Yemen by Yemeni journalist Ali Al-Sha’bani, he notes the difficulty of obtaining accurate information about the number of strikes and people affected. In 2012, he counted 109 air strikes in nine provinces, causing the deaths of 490 people, including 390 civilians.
While the Bureau of Investigative Journalism counted nearly 1,150 deaths between 2002 and April 2013 due to U.S. attacks, Dennis Kucinich, a representative of the U.S. Congress, placed the number of deaths in Yemen at 1,952, in a speech to Congress. He says: “We have not declared war on any of these nations [Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia] but our weapons have killed innocent civilians there. Highly reputable research shows that the number of high-level targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is estimated at about 2 percent.” The head of national security in Yemen, Ali Hassan Al-Ahmady, announced that during 2012, a hundred members of al-Qaeda had been killed by U.S. aircraft strikes
The latest reports on the U.S. drone strike in Yemen can be a prelude to a military intervention led by American and British forces if the current civil war in Syria leads to an attack on Iran in the future. The “Gulf of Aden” is a strategic waterway for oil exports vital to America’s interests. The “Gulf of Aden” is located between Yemen, Somalia and the southern part of the Arabian Peninsula were the majority of people are anti-American because of America’s relentless drone strike policy. As told by a Yemeni journalist and activist Farea al-Muslimi in a U.S. Senate hearing reported by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism last April. (Consultar la URL mencionada).
‘Drone strikes are the face of America to many Yemenis,’ Farea al-Muslimi told a rare US Senate hearing on targeted killing yesterday.The Yemeni journalist and activist gave emotive testimony at a Senate subcommittee about the impact of drone strikes and targeted killings on his homeland. His statement was a view from beneath the strikes that is almost unique in Washington and drew some applause from the chamber.

Texto de "Las máscaras"

Como "Las Máscaras" han recibido tanta atención, aquí va el texto del pintor. René Portocarrero era un enorme artista y una tierna y amable persona.

El litigio por las células HeLa

Si están interesados por la ciencia, no se pierdan el presente artículo que trae Nature. Se trata de uno de los casos más apasionantes en torno a las células HeLa y sus genes cuya secuencia ya se conoce. Los descendientes de Henrietta Lack, al parecer, han llegado a un acuerdo con los Institutos de Salud estadounidenses (NIH). ¿Deberían recibir una compensación económica?. El acuerdo al que se llegue marcará jurisprudencia.

Deal done over HeLa cell line


Family of Henrietta Lacks agrees to release of genomic data.

Ewen Callaway en Nature

"Deborah Lacks wanted answers. In 1974, she asked a leading medical geneticist to tell her about HeLa cells, a tissue-culture cell line derived from the cancer that had killed her mother Henrietta in 1951. The researcher, who was collecting blood from the Lacks family to map HeLa genes, autographed a medical textbook he had written and said that everything she needed to know lay within its dense pages.
It would be more than 30 years before the family got a better explanation.
Now the director of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), Francis Collins, is trying to make up for decades of slights. Over the past four months, he has met Lacks family members to answer questions and to discuss what should be done with genome data from their matriarch’s cell line.
“We wanted to get a better understanding of what information was going to be out there about Henrietta, and what information was going to be out there about us,” says Henrietta’s grandson David Lacks Jr. (Deborah Lacks died in 2009.) On 7 August, Collins announced that the family has endorsed case-by-case release of the information, subject to approval by a committee that will include family members (see

Fraudes tontos on line



Es bien conocido que la red está profusamente contaminada por informaciones falsas, ofensivas o para usar el lenguaje googeliano, "maliciosas". Para combatir la basura on line, y por encima de todo, evitarnos problemas, hay algunas medidas muy sencillas: no identificarnos ante desconocidos. Si uno no metería en su casa al primero que se encuentre por la calle no hay motivo para regalar nuestra dirección. Comunicar el teléfono es una suprema tontería ya que se pueden realizar llamadas a cobro revertido desde algunos países, y la factura  resultar millonaria. Es fácil de realizar. No hay que ser un super hacker. Las niñas y niños deberían abstenerse de proporcionar datos personales manipulables de forma delictiva. En fin, que se puede disfrutar la red y guardar la intimidad. El caso que les traigo es el de un/una cantamañana ( o de un ordenador programado) que se identifica como "Major Alan Eduard". Es un supuesto militar estadounidense destacado en Afganistán. Ha difundido un scam antológico donde solicita a alguien "confiable", que esté dispuesto a recibir, y guardarle hasta que él termine su destino bélico, unos 20 millones de dólares. A cambio el panoli/ o la, que le haga saber sus datos (DNI, pasaporte, fotos, dirección, teléfono, datos laborales y si se tercia datos bancarios) se quedará con el 30% del dinero. No creo que tal trola cuele. Pero entre los millones de usuarios de la red que han recibido el  scam, pues la probabilidad estadística es reeducida, pero nunca se sabe. El posible negocio está en colectar datos de personas y usarlos o venderlos. Un fichero de almas cándidas. Un semillero de tontos.  Si buscan "Alan Eduard" en Google les lleva directo a "Anti-Fraud International".

Anti-Fraud International > Scam Mail Depot > Military scams > Major Alan Edward, American in Afghanistan

PDAView Full Version : Major Alan Edward, American in Afghanistan
 "Major.Alan Edward"

Subject:
I am Major Edward currently serving with the 3rd Brigade Support Battalion in Afghanistan. I have a proposal for you,reply



GPS cerebral en humanos



Al parecer, el cerebro humano posee células especializadas en la orientación espacial, identificadas en otros mamíferos. El asunto es muy importante por sus repercusiones. La información procede de Nature Neuroscience y ha recibido la atención del NYT.

J oshua Jacobs of Drexel University in Philadelphia and a team of scientists including Michael J. Kahana at the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. Itzhak Fried at U.C.L.A. and Tel-Aviv University, reported in Nature Neuroscience on Sunday that signals from electrodes implanted in human patients with severe epilepsy proved the presence of grid cells that function in the same way as those found in other mammals.
“It completes the picture,” said Edvard I. Moser of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, one of the discoverers of grid cells. “It’s a significant contribution.”
Dr. Jacobs said the research was important to do because, although it had seemed likely that grid cells existed in human beings, it was far from certain.
“It’s not at all clear that humans and rodents behave in the same manner,” he said.
An area of the brain where grid cells are found in rats, and now in humans, the entorhinal cortex, is often damaged in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease, so knowing how the navigation system works is important, Dr. Jacobs said. The scientists also located grid cells in another brain area in humans, the cingulate cortex, where, Dr. Jacobs said, they have not been found in rats.



Misoginia aguda



Como todo el mundo sabe, "misoginia" significa odio a la mujer, rechazo a lo femenino. Se da en todas las civilizaciones. Hasta en las que se precian de civilizadas. Y en algunas, cuasi feudales, está firmemente institucionalizada y sacralizada. El texto que viene a continuación es de Polly Toybeen de  "The Guardian", a propósito de un caso judicial en el que, al parecer, Su Señoría se dejó llevar por su abominación de las mujeres. La acusada tiene 13 años. Según Toybeen el odio a las mujeres es tan profundo que a veces se ceba hasta en criaturas que han sufrido abusos. Las formas de misoginia son muy variadas: desde la pornografía denigrante hasta la desigualdad en los salarios, las bromas obscenas, el ninguneo laboral o las faltas de respeto dentro del hogar. 
"Of course I don't mean all men - we all may have brothers, lovers, sons, fathers, colleagues and friends who are not women-haters at all. The point is the prevailing wind of misogyny still blowing through everything, that erupts in public with cases like this so you can see it spelled out loud and clear. It sustains women's lower pay and the objectifying of women - often very young - in the pictures of them or in the porn read by men and young boys that makes girls shave their public hair for fear of being thought disgusting for not fitting the porn imagery. Girls are bullied for their looks, called slags if they act like boys. You know, don't you, how the wind blows hard against women still.


Child are innocent - in law and in moral thinking. That doesn't mean they are all nice and good. Listen to any playground to hear the spite and bullying they inflict on one another. Nor are women nicer than men - they are often collaborators in other women's oppression. What I mean here is an institutional misogyny, a default position, underlying assumptions and prejudices that surface less often in public than they did because it's less socially acceptable than it was - ( a good thing too). But it lurks. You only have to look at the domestic violence figures - two dead women a week - to see the under-currents. No, I don't belong to the 'all men are rapists' school - but I do think society is institutionally instinctively misogynist."

Fervor de Buenos Aires en La Habana




Andaba callejeando por La Habana vieja, esa ciudad de las columnas y los milagros. El calor me había sofocado. Y entré en una ínfima librería de viejo. Más bien una habitación medio derruida rodeada de cajones y estantes descabalados. Me recibió un hombre cordial de edad indefinida. - No - dijo - yo no soy el dueño, él ha salido a comprar el pan, ya sabe como es eso. Pero pase con confianza y mire lo que quiera. Y me franqueó una puerta que daba a otra habitación atestada de libros, revistas, carteles, folletos. Curiosos recetarios de cocina. Novelas de Corín Tellado. Textos de marxismo. Una Babel de papel. Pero como se estaba al fresco y yo padezco una bibliofilia aguda, decidí explorar un territorio tan promisorio. Y entonces acerté a revolver un cajón polvoriento que alguna vez sirvió para alojar botellas de cerveza Cristal. Allí estaba "Fervor de Buenos Aires", con la portada dibujada por Nora Borges. El resto se lo pueden imaginar. O tal vez no. Pagué lo que el buen hombre quiso. En CUC, claro, que es la moneda que ayuda a vivir mejor en Cuba.Le dí una propina y desaparecí. Todavia no me lo acabo de creer.

 





BARRIO RECONQUISTADO

Nadie vio la hermosura de las calles
hasta que pavoroso en clamor
se derrumbó el cielo verdoso
en abatimiento de agua y de sombra.
El temporal fue unánime
y aborrecible a las miradas fue el mundo,
pero cuando un arco bendijo
con los colores del perdón la tarde,
y un olor a tierra mojada
alentó los jardines,
nos echamos a caminar por las calles
como por una recuperada heredad,
y en los cristales hubo generosidades de sol
y en las hojas lucientes
dijo su trémula inmortalidad el estío.