9/11 Attacks: Criminal Foreknowledge and Insider Trading lead directly to the CIA's Highest Ranks
CIA Executive Director "Buzzy" Krongard managed Firm that handled "Put" Options on UAL
By Michael C. Ruppert
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=32323
Global Research Editor's note
As September approaches, we are reminded that the anniversary of the tragic events of 9/11 will soon be upon us once again. 11 years later, are we any closer to the truth about what really happened on that fateful day? For the next month until September 11, 2012, we will be posting on a daily basis important articles from our early archives pertaining to the tragic events of 9/11. The following text by Michael C. Ruppert published in October 2001 brings to the forefront the issue of foreknowledge and insider trading pertaining to airline listings on the Chicago Board Options Exchange including United Airlines and American Airlines.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, August 13, 2012
Han pasado 11 años desde los atentados del 9/11 en EEUU, pero en opinión de algunos estudiosos, quedan muchas zonas de sombra en torno a lo que realmente sucedió. Las conexiones con los grandes centros financieros son el objetivo analizado por Michael C. Ruppert y publicado por primera vez en 2001.
Suppressed Details of 9/11 Criminal Insider Trading lead directly into the CIA`s Highest Ranks
CIA Executive Director "Buzzy" Krongard managed Firm that handled "put" Options on UAL
by Michael C. Ruppert
FTW Publications, 9 October 2001, Centre for Research on Globalisation, globalresearch.ca, 20 October 2001
Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. That evidence also demonstrates that, in the case of at least one of these trades -- which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed -- the firm used to place the "put options" on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency. Until 1997 A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker's Trust in 1997. Krongard then became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected to money laundering. Krongard's last position at Banker's Trust (BT) was to oversee "private client relations." In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being closely connected to the laundering of drug money.
Krongard (re?) joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush in March of this year. BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999. The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe. And, as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.
The Scope of Known Insider Trading
Before looking further into these relationships it is necessary to look at the insider trading information that is being ignored by Reuters, The New York Times and other mass media. It is well documented that the CIA has long monitored such trades - in real time - as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves contrary to U.S. interests. Previous stories in FTW have specifically highlighted the use of Promis software to monitor such trades.
It is necessary to understand only two key financial terms to understand the significance of these trades. "Selling Short" is the borrowing of stock, selling it at current market prices, but not being required to actually produce the stock for some time. If the stock falls precipitously after the short contract is entered, the seller can then fulfill the contract by buying the stock after the price has fallen and complete the contract at the pre-crash price. These contracts often have a window of as long as four months. "Put Options," purchased at nominal prices of, for example, $1.00 per share, are sold in blocks of 100 shares. If exercised, they give the holder the option of selling selected stocks at a future date at a price set when the contract is issued. Thus, for an investment of $10,000 it might be possible to tie up 10,000 shares of United or American Airlines at $100 per share, and the seller of the option is then obligated to buy them if the option is executed. If the stock has fallen to $50 when the contract matures, the holder of the option can purchase the shares for $50 and immediately sell them for $100 - regardless of where the market then stands.
A "call option" is the reverse of a put option, which is, in effect, a derivatives bet that the stock price will go up.
A September 21 story by the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, entitled "Black Tuesday: The World's Largest Insider Trading Scam?" documented the following trades connected to the September 11 attacks:
Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options... Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these "insiders" would have profited by almost $5 million.
On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was no news at that point to justify this imbalance;... Again, assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent "insiders," they would represent a gain of about $4 million. [The levels of put options purchased above were more than six times higher than normal.]
No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.
Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanley's share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at least $1.2 million.
Merrill Lynch & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 12,215 October $45 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares had been 252 contracts per day [a 1200% increase!]. When trading resumed, Merrill's shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50; assuming that 11,000 option contracts were bought by "insiders," their profit would have been about $5.5 million.
European regulators are examining trades in Germany's Munich Re, Switzerland's Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster. [FTW Note: AXA also owns more than 25% of American Airlines stock making the attacks a "double whammy" for them.]
On September 29, 2001 - in a vital story that has gone unnoticed by the major media - the San Francisco Chronicle reported, "Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades and market data.
"The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors - whose identities and nationalities have not been made public - had advance knowledge of the strikes." They don't dare show up now. The suspension of trading for four days after the attacks made it impossible to cash-out quickly and claim the prize before investigators started looking.
"... October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each. [This represents 230,000 shares]. Those options are now selling at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called "put" options outstanding [valued at $2.77 million and representing 231,300 shares] according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp."
"...The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of these options..."
As reported in other news stories, Deutsche Bank was also the hub of insider trading activity connected to Munich Re. just before the attacks.
CIA, the Banks and the Brokers
Understanding the interrelationships between CIA and the banking and brokerage world is critical to grasping the already frightening implications of the above revelations. Let's look at the history of CIA, Wall Street and the big banks by looking at some of the key players in CIA's history. Clark Clifford - The National Security Act of 1947 was written by Clark Clifford, a Democratic Party powerhouse, former Secretary of Defense, and one-time advisor to President Harry Truman. In the 1980s, as Chairman of First American Bancshares, Clifford was instrumental in getting the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI a license to operate on American shores. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and banker.
John Foster and Allen Dulles - These two brothers "designed" the CIA for Clifford. Both were active in intelligence operations during WW II. Allen Dulles was the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland where he met frequently with Nazi leaders and looked after U.S. investments in Germany. John Foster went on to become Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower and Allen went on to serve as CIA Director under Eisenhower and was later fired by JFK. Their professions: partners in the most powerful - to this day - Wall Street law firm of Sullivan, Cromwell.
Páginas vistas
martes, 4 de septiembre de 2012
viernes, 31 de agosto de 2012
El Harry (no Potter) enseña trasero.
| Buero, como ya el mundo entero le ha visto el muy triste culo, blanquecino y fofo, al niñato real menor de UK, les ahorro ese mal rato del peor gusto y aquí lo exhibo, tachan, tachan, disfrazado de soldadito valiente. No de nazi por el momento. Si lo mandan a Afganistán se iba a enterar el tío de lo que vale un peine. Pero no, God bless the Queen, que lo del capitancito es la juerga no la guerra. (Fotos de "El País). |
El rey se enfada mucho.
| Amigas y amigos, cualquiera se coje un buen cabreo, es decir enfado o disgusto, por vaya usted a saber qué causa. Eso fue lo que le sucedió ayer al Jefe del Estado español, don Juan Carlos I. Y resultó hasta gracioso ver a su Majestad abroncando al chófer, sufrido y seguro que impecable servidor suyo, debido a que no aparcaba en el lugar exacto que la real y soberana persona deseaba. No se sabe muy bien el motivo de su destemplanza. Puede que tuviera que ver con la prolongada, sonora y bullanguera pitada que le estaban dedicando en ese momento un grupo de funcionarios para hacer constar su disgusto con los recortes de su paga de Navidad. Os aclaro que por funcionarios se entiende en España profesionales como los bomberos, los miembros de la policía, los maestros con plaza fija obtenidas en duras oposiciones. Que quieren que les diga. En España estamos atravesando por una etapa muy dura. Y la verdad me pregunto dónde están los esos empresarios innovadores. Los que arriesgan para crear riqueza. No veo sus patentes de alta tecnología, sus actividades en el exterior. Hay banqueros chapuceros. Hay especuladores de tres al cuarto. Hay latifundistas de corte feudal. No tenemos un Bill Gates. Los parados de larga duración vienen a ser algo así como yogures caducados. Y encima se los tilada de vagos y chupones de papá estado. Majestad, con el debido respeto, preste atención a lo que dice la gente de la calle y deje que su chófer aparque allí donde le parezca mejor. Usted está para conducir a buen puerto cosas más difíciles e importantes. ¿O no?. |
miércoles, 29 de agosto de 2012
Ruth y José Bretón, inocentes perdidos
Hoy voy a contarles a las/ los amigos de fuera de España un triste suceso que tiene conmovido al país y frente al que olvidamos las vicisitudes (y hasta miserias) cotidianas.
Hace ahora 11 meses desaparecieron dos niños llamados Ruth y José Bretón. Su madre, casada con el padre de las criaturas, denunció al hombre por presuntos maltratos psíquicos. La mujer, corajuda y valiente, deseaba separarse de su torturador.
Pero entonces ocurrió algo inesperado: los niños salieron con el padre para no regresar nunca. Y allí comenzó el calvario de la mujer y las búsquedas incansables de la policía. El juez que llevaba (que lleva el caso), con muy buen juicio y templada actuación, dictó prisión preventiva para José Bretón. Un hombre frío que según Serafín Castro, el policía que dirige las diligencias, junto con un amplio equipo multidisciplinar, a veces parece tomarse las cosas hasta con cierto humor. Frío, calculador y sarcástico.
La policía practicó un minucioso registro y búsqueda en la ya tristemente célebre finca de la familia Bretón "Las Quemadillas". Allí encontraron restos de una hogera en la que aparecieron pequeños huesos medio calcinados. El primer análisis antropológico forense, descartó que pertenecieran a los pequeños. Podían ser restos animales. Pero otros exámenes practicados por el antropólogo vasco Dr. Echeverría, de la Universidad del País Vasco, que se brindó a ayudar a la desesperada mujer, han arrojado un resultado muy diferente: resulta que los huesos son humanos y de los niños. Coincide su tamaño y estructura con la edad de los pequeños. Las piezas dentarias son humanas. Posiblemente de la niña.
El Ministro de Interior español enseguida compareció para asegurar que se harían todas las investigaciones científicas pertinentes. Quizás se pueda extraer ADN de las piezas dentales y dar jaque mate al asunto.
Los investigadores españoles, los laboratorios de la Policía Científica, no tienen nada que envidiar a otros de países que presumen de alta tecnología. Pero a veces ocurren errores científicos. Con material óseo sometido a altas temperaturas cabe un dictámen erróneo.
Si he dedicado mi post a tan doloroso asunto es para animar a las mujeres (donde quiere que estén) sometidas a cualquier forma de maltrato a que denuncien o en su defecto que se alejen de su maltratador, aunque reconozco que según que países eso puede costarles hasta la vida.
La madre de Ruth y José es una Madre Coraje. .
Del sujeto, presundo criminal de sus pequeños hijos, prefiero no hablar. Para eso tenemos la justicia.
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| Ruth y José in memoriam. |
Hace ahora 11 meses desaparecieron dos niños llamados Ruth y José Bretón. Su madre, casada con el padre de las criaturas, denunció al hombre por presuntos maltratos psíquicos. La mujer, corajuda y valiente, deseaba separarse de su torturador.
Pero entonces ocurrió algo inesperado: los niños salieron con el padre para no regresar nunca. Y allí comenzó el calvario de la mujer y las búsquedas incansables de la policía. El juez que llevaba (que lleva el caso), con muy buen juicio y templada actuación, dictó prisión preventiva para José Bretón. Un hombre frío que según Serafín Castro, el policía que dirige las diligencias, junto con un amplio equipo multidisciplinar, a veces parece tomarse las cosas hasta con cierto humor. Frío, calculador y sarcástico.
La policía practicó un minucioso registro y búsqueda en la ya tristemente célebre finca de la familia Bretón "Las Quemadillas". Allí encontraron restos de una hogera en la que aparecieron pequeños huesos medio calcinados. El primer análisis antropológico forense, descartó que pertenecieran a los pequeños. Podían ser restos animales. Pero otros exámenes practicados por el antropólogo vasco Dr. Echeverría, de la Universidad del País Vasco, que se brindó a ayudar a la desesperada mujer, han arrojado un resultado muy diferente: resulta que los huesos son humanos y de los niños. Coincide su tamaño y estructura con la edad de los pequeños. Las piezas dentarias son humanas. Posiblemente de la niña.
El Ministro de Interior español enseguida compareció para asegurar que se harían todas las investigaciones científicas pertinentes. Quizás se pueda extraer ADN de las piezas dentales y dar jaque mate al asunto.
Los investigadores españoles, los laboratorios de la Policía Científica, no tienen nada que envidiar a otros de países que presumen de alta tecnología. Pero a veces ocurren errores científicos. Con material óseo sometido a altas temperaturas cabe un dictámen erróneo.
Si he dedicado mi post a tan doloroso asunto es para animar a las mujeres (donde quiere que estén) sometidas a cualquier forma de maltrato a que denuncien o en su defecto que se alejen de su maltratador, aunque reconozco que según que países eso puede costarles hasta la vida.
La madre de Ruth y José es una Madre Coraje. .
Del sujeto, presundo criminal de sus pequeños hijos, prefiero no hablar. Para eso tenemos la justicia.
La psiquiatría como arma arrojadiza
Are people being thrown into psychiatric wards for their political views?
by Washington's Blog
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=32450
Mental Health Diagnoses are Sometimes Politically-Motivated
La psiquiatría es una respetable especialidad médica encaminada al estudio y tratamiento de las enfermedades del sistema nervioso central, o como se dice a aquellas dolencias denominadas "mentales". De momento carece de los recursos de otras disciplinas clínicas ya que el conocimiento del cerebro, y las técnicas para su estudio "in vivo", están en pañales. Aún así, la psiquiatría ha sido empleada con fines muy lejanos de los que estipulan los juramentos hìpocráticos. Cuando la psiquiatría se usa como arma arrojadiza contra las libertades de los ciudadanos se pueden llegar a cometer verdaderas atrocidades. Ya ha ocurrido: lo hicieron el fascismo de Hitler y el estalinismo soviético. Falta por ver si los gobiernos que se dicen democráticos sucumben, en su lucha actual contra el terrorismo, al empleo de un arma sucia y peligrosa. Aquí se expone lo que tiene que decir al respecto un blog que puede consultarse en la URL señalada.
Many psychologists and psychiatrists are good people, who are only trying to help their patients.
But the Nazi government substantially supported psychologists ... many of whom, in turn, espoused extermination of the people they considered to be “racially and cognitively compromised”.
Soviet psychiatrists famously aided Stalin in applying fake insanity diagnoses to political dissenters. The official explanation was that no sane person would declaim the Soviet government and Communism.
American psychologists created the American program of torture which was specially-crafted to produce false confessions to justify U.S. military policy. And see this. And authoritarian American psychologists are eager to label anyone “taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, ... and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook” as worthy of a trip to the insane asylum. (Those traits may also get one labeled as a potential terrorist.)
As prominent forensic psychiatrist James Knoll – psychiatry professor at SUNY-Syracuse and director of a forensic fellowship program – writes in the Psychiatric Times: When psychiatric science becomes co-opted by a political agenda, an unhealthy alliance may be created. It is science that will always be the host organism, to be taken over by political viruses.... [P]sychiatry may come to resemble a new organism entirely — one that serves the ends of the criminal justice system. Even psychologists with good intentions can erroneously label people delusional simply because they themselves make bad assumptions.
There is even a label for this – the “Martha Mitchell Effect” – defined as: The process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient’s perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly. The authors of a paper on this phenomenon (Bell, V., Halligan, P.W., Ellis, H.D. (2003) Beliefs About Delusions. The Psychologist, 6 (8), 418-422) conclude: Sometimes, improbable reports are erroneously assumed to be symptoms of mental illness [due to a] failure or inability to verify whether the events have actually taken place, no matter how improbable intuitively they might appear to the busy clinician.
In other words, psychologists who haven’t taken the time to examine for themselves the claims of their patients will tend to label as delusional anything which they “intuitively” feel is improbable. As such, psychologists and psychiatrists are just as prone to acting out their irrational prejudices as anyone else ... unless they take the time to investigate and educate themselves.
Governments Indefinitely Detaining Citizens In Psychiatric Wards Without Due Process of Law. As such, detention in psych wards on mere “suspicion” of posing a danger – without due process of law – is troubling.
For example, former marine Brandon Raub was just carted off and locked in a psychiatric ward for his allegedly “anti-government” Facebook posts.
AP reports today:
Police – acting under a state law that allows emergency, temporary psychiatric commitments upon the recommendation of a mental health professional – took Raub to the John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell. He was not charged with any crime. Col. Thierry Dupuis, the county police chief, said Raub was taken into custody upon the recommendation of mental health crisis intervention workers. He said the action was taken under the state’s emergency custody statute, which allows a magistrate to order the civil detention and psychiatric evaluation of a person who is considered potentially dangerous.
New York Police officer Adrian Schoolcraft was involuntarily hospitalizated in a psychiatric ward after he recorded videotapes of his fellow police officers engaging in corruption. Claire Swinney of New Zealand was also held in a psychiatric ward and called “delusional” for criticizing the government. Susan Lindauer was held under the Patriot Act for a year at Carswell Air Force Base – where psychiatric drugs were pushed on her – after she alleged government corruption.
The Daily Mail notes: The [British] Government has established a shadowy new national anti-terrorist unit to protect VIPs, with the power to detain suspects indefinitely using mental health arguments.The team’s psychiatrists and psychologists then have the power to order treatment – including forcibly detaining suspects in secure psychiatric units.
Using these powers, the unit can legally detain people for an indefinite period without trial, criminal charges or even evidence of a crime being committed and with very limited rights of appeal.
Until now it has been the exclusive decision of doctors and mental health professionals to determine if someone should be forcibly detained. But the new unit uses the police to identify suspects – increasing fears the line is being blurred between criminal investigation and doctors’ clinical decisions.
Scotland Yard, which runs the shadowy unit, refuses to discuss how many suspects have been forcibly hospitalised by the team because of “patient confidentiality”.
The purpose of the centre is “to evaluate and manage the risk posed to prominent people by...those who engage in inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours in the context of abnormally intense preoccupations, many [Many? That means that some are not] of which arise from psychotic illness.”
Who gets to decide what “inappropriate” or “threatening” means? What if a whistleblower has information that a member of parliament has engaged in bribes? Would trying to reveal such information constitute “inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours” in the context of “abnormally intense preoccupations” with that MP’s illegal actions?
Indeed, a study published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry found a high rate of false positives in the British identification of dangerous persons.
The Mail continues: So-called ‘sectioning’ allows a patient to be held for up to six months before a further psychological assessment. Patients are then reviewed every year to determine if they can be released.
Human rights activists fear the team, whose existence has never been publicised, may be being used as a way to detain suspected terrorists without having to put evidence before the courts. Last night human rights group Liberty said the secret unit represented a new threat to civil liberties.
Policy director Gareth Crossman said: “There is a grave danger of this being used to deal with people where there is insufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution.“This blurs the line between medical decisions and police actions. If you are going to allow doctors to take people’s liberty away, they have to be independent. That credibility is undermined when the doctors are part of the same team as the police.“This raises serious concerns. First that you have a unit that allows police investigation to lead directly to people being sectioned without any kind of criminal proceedings.“Secondly, it is being done under the umbrella of anti-terrorism at a time when the Government is looking at ways to detain terrorists without putting them on trial.”(Leer el resto en la URL correspondiente).
by Washington's Blog
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=32450
Mental Health Diagnoses are Sometimes Politically-Motivated
La psiquiatría es una respetable especialidad médica encaminada al estudio y tratamiento de las enfermedades del sistema nervioso central, o como se dice a aquellas dolencias denominadas "mentales". De momento carece de los recursos de otras disciplinas clínicas ya que el conocimiento del cerebro, y las técnicas para su estudio "in vivo", están en pañales. Aún así, la psiquiatría ha sido empleada con fines muy lejanos de los que estipulan los juramentos hìpocráticos. Cuando la psiquiatría se usa como arma arrojadiza contra las libertades de los ciudadanos se pueden llegar a cometer verdaderas atrocidades. Ya ha ocurrido: lo hicieron el fascismo de Hitler y el estalinismo soviético. Falta por ver si los gobiernos que se dicen democráticos sucumben, en su lucha actual contra el terrorismo, al empleo de un arma sucia y peligrosa. Aquí se expone lo que tiene que decir al respecto un blog que puede consultarse en la URL señalada.
Many psychologists and psychiatrists are good people, who are only trying to help their patients.
But the Nazi government substantially supported psychologists ... many of whom, in turn, espoused extermination of the people they considered to be “racially and cognitively compromised”.
Soviet psychiatrists famously aided Stalin in applying fake insanity diagnoses to political dissenters. The official explanation was that no sane person would declaim the Soviet government and Communism.
American psychologists created the American program of torture which was specially-crafted to produce false confessions to justify U.S. military policy. And see this. And authoritarian American psychologists are eager to label anyone “taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, ... and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook” as worthy of a trip to the insane asylum. (Those traits may also get one labeled as a potential terrorist.)
As prominent forensic psychiatrist James Knoll – psychiatry professor at SUNY-Syracuse and director of a forensic fellowship program – writes in the Psychiatric Times: When psychiatric science becomes co-opted by a political agenda, an unhealthy alliance may be created. It is science that will always be the host organism, to be taken over by political viruses.... [P]sychiatry may come to resemble a new organism entirely — one that serves the ends of the criminal justice system. Even psychologists with good intentions can erroneously label people delusional simply because they themselves make bad assumptions.
There is even a label for this – the “Martha Mitchell Effect” – defined as: The process by which a psychiatrist, psychologist, or other mental health clinician mistakes the patient’s perception of real events as delusional and misdiagnoses accordingly. The authors of a paper on this phenomenon (Bell, V., Halligan, P.W., Ellis, H.D. (2003) Beliefs About Delusions. The Psychologist, 6 (8), 418-422) conclude: Sometimes, improbable reports are erroneously assumed to be symptoms of mental illness [due to a] failure or inability to verify whether the events have actually taken place, no matter how improbable intuitively they might appear to the busy clinician.
In other words, psychologists who haven’t taken the time to examine for themselves the claims of their patients will tend to label as delusional anything which they “intuitively” feel is improbable. As such, psychologists and psychiatrists are just as prone to acting out their irrational prejudices as anyone else ... unless they take the time to investigate and educate themselves.
Governments Indefinitely Detaining Citizens In Psychiatric Wards Without Due Process of Law. As such, detention in psych wards on mere “suspicion” of posing a danger – without due process of law – is troubling.
For example, former marine Brandon Raub was just carted off and locked in a psychiatric ward for his allegedly “anti-government” Facebook posts.
AP reports today:
Police – acting under a state law that allows emergency, temporary psychiatric commitments upon the recommendation of a mental health professional – took Raub to the John Randolph Medical Center in Hopewell. He was not charged with any crime. Col. Thierry Dupuis, the county police chief, said Raub was taken into custody upon the recommendation of mental health crisis intervention workers. He said the action was taken under the state’s emergency custody statute, which allows a magistrate to order the civil detention and psychiatric evaluation of a person who is considered potentially dangerous.
New York Police officer Adrian Schoolcraft was involuntarily hospitalizated in a psychiatric ward after he recorded videotapes of his fellow police officers engaging in corruption. Claire Swinney of New Zealand was also held in a psychiatric ward and called “delusional” for criticizing the government. Susan Lindauer was held under the Patriot Act for a year at Carswell Air Force Base – where psychiatric drugs were pushed on her – after she alleged government corruption.
The Daily Mail notes: The [British] Government has established a shadowy new national anti-terrorist unit to protect VIPs, with the power to detain suspects indefinitely using mental health arguments.The team’s psychiatrists and psychologists then have the power to order treatment – including forcibly detaining suspects in secure psychiatric units.
Using these powers, the unit can legally detain people for an indefinite period without trial, criminal charges or even evidence of a crime being committed and with very limited rights of appeal.
Until now it has been the exclusive decision of doctors and mental health professionals to determine if someone should be forcibly detained. But the new unit uses the police to identify suspects – increasing fears the line is being blurred between criminal investigation and doctors’ clinical decisions.
Scotland Yard, which runs the shadowy unit, refuses to discuss how many suspects have been forcibly hospitalised by the team because of “patient confidentiality”.
The purpose of the centre is “to evaluate and manage the risk posed to prominent people by...those who engage in inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours in the context of abnormally intense preoccupations, many [Many? That means that some are not] of which arise from psychotic illness.”
Who gets to decide what “inappropriate” or “threatening” means? What if a whistleblower has information that a member of parliament has engaged in bribes? Would trying to reveal such information constitute “inappropriate or threatening communications or behaviours” in the context of “abnormally intense preoccupations” with that MP’s illegal actions?
Indeed, a study published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry found a high rate of false positives in the British identification of dangerous persons.
The Mail continues: So-called ‘sectioning’ allows a patient to be held for up to six months before a further psychological assessment. Patients are then reviewed every year to determine if they can be released.
Human rights activists fear the team, whose existence has never been publicised, may be being used as a way to detain suspected terrorists without having to put evidence before the courts. Last night human rights group Liberty said the secret unit represented a new threat to civil liberties.
Policy director Gareth Crossman said: “There is a grave danger of this being used to deal with people where there is insufficient evidence for a criminal prosecution.“This blurs the line between medical decisions and police actions. If you are going to allow doctors to take people’s liberty away, they have to be independent. That credibility is undermined when the doctors are part of the same team as the police.“This raises serious concerns. First that you have a unit that allows police investigation to lead directly to people being sectioned without any kind of criminal proceedings.“Secondly, it is being done under the umbrella of anti-terrorism at a time when the Government is looking at ways to detain terrorists without putting them on trial.”(Leer el resto en la URL correspondiente).
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| Libro antiguo de anatomía: encéfalo y neurona. |
lunes, 27 de agosto de 2012
México lindo y querido
Estoy muy contenta y hasta un poco orgullosa, de las visitas desde México. Invito a las amigas y amigos del planeta azteca que participen. Estaría muy bien algúna colaboradora desde allí. Quedo con vosotros hasta pronto.
lunes, 20 de agosto de 2012
Pánico en los genes
Molecular Psychiatry 15, 1067-1074 (November 2010) | doi:10.1038/mp.2010.
A neuropeptide S receptor variant associated with overinterpretation of fear reactions: a potential neurogenetic basis for catastrophizing
K A Raczka, N Gartmann, M-L Mechias, A Reif, C Büchel, J Deckert and R Kalisch
Poco a poco los datos provenientes de la genética molecular vienen al auxilio de disciplinas médicas que como la psiquiatría se encuentran bastante huérfanas de bases científicas. El ejemplo que he escogido tiene que ver con una investigación para desentrañar la base genética de las reacciones de pánico así como las regiones del cerebro en las que se desencadenan.
En el presente trabajo, publicado en "Nature", uno de los principales protagonistas es el neuropéptido S (NPS), una proteina G recientemente descubierta que se acopla a un ligando- receptor que modula las reacciones de pánico en ratas (rodentes). Un polimorfismo Adenina-Timina (A-T) en el gen NPSR1 que "codifica" el neuropéptido receptor humano confiere una eficacia 10 veces mayor al NPS "in vitro", y se asocia al trastorno de pánico.
Los investigadores también evaluaron datos de voluntarios normales de acuerdo con pruebas clásicas para provocar reacciones de temor. Los portadores del alelo NPSR1 estimaron como más pronunciadas sus reacciones ante estímulos condicionados (CSs) en comparación de los participantes A-A.
Abstract
Neuropeptide S (NPS) is a recently discovered G protein-coupled receptor ligand that modulates fear-like behaviors in rodents. A frequent A>T single-nucleotide polymorphism in the human NPS receptor gene NPSR1 confers a 10-fold higher efficacy of NPS signaling in vitro and has been linked with panic disorder (PD). We here report data from a classical fear-conditioning paradigm in healthy normal volunteers, in which carriers of the NPSR1 T allele evaluated their fear reactions to conditioned stimuli (CSs) as more pronounced than AA homozygous participants, although they did not show elevated peripheral-physiological conditioned responses (skin conductance responses—SCRs). T carriers also exhibited stronger CS-evoked brain activity in the rostral dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), an area that supports the explicit, conscious appraisal of threat stimuli. By contrast, more caudally situated mid-dmPFC, which has previously been associated with the generation of SCRs, showed no elevated response. Moreover, rostral dmPFC activation was correlated with participants’ fear evaluations, further strengthening the link of this activation to increased individual fear appraisal. Our data suggest a genetic and neuroanatomical substrate for catastrophizing overinterpretations of fear reactions and provide a mechanistic explanation for the association between the NPSR1 T allele and PD.
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