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lunes, 19 de noviembre de 2012

Los trapos sucios de la CIA

The Petraeus Affair vs. the CIA’s Long Criminal History
By Julie Lévesque


para Global Research, November 15, 2012


Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-petraeus-affair-vs-the-cias-long-criminal-history/5311818

Confieso que me he criado escuchando hablar de la famosa CIA. Cuando era una tierna infante en la Kuba de Fidel, resultaba algo así como el lobo de Caperucita o la reina malísima de Blanca Nieves. La culpa de todas las desgracias recaía en la CIA. La Compañía, nacida en 1947, era efectivamente, una enemiga acérrima del gobierno de Fidel. Para desgracia de los espías estadounidenses, por una mezcla de motivos los cuales intuyo que todavía no deben tener demasiado claros, fracasaron en todos y cada uno de los intentos, algunos muy imaginativos, para asesinar al Comandante barbudo. Por cierto, existe una colección de los medios usados por la Agencia de Langley (y sus corifeos kubanos) que se puede contemplar en un museo sui generis cito en la Quinta Avenida habanera. Bromitas aparte a costa de la Agencia tal vez menos lista del planeta, invito a las/los codondesastreros de pro que lean el artículo de Lévesque.


The Petraeus Affair has demonstrated yet again how a sex scandal story can be fed into the U.S. media to serve both as a trigger for “political assassination” and as “the tree hiding the forest.” Even though what lies behind the salacious smoke screen is still the object of speculation, most of those speculations are more credible than a simple extramarital affair.
One of the possible explanations of Petraeus’ departure is his stance on Israel which he saw as a liability to US interests in the Middle East:
“The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [Area of Operations]. Israeli-Palestinian tensions often flare into violence and large-scale armed confrontations. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel. Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples in the AOR and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world. Meanwhile, al-Qaeda and other militant groups exploit that anger to mobilize support. The conflict also gives Iran influence in the Arab world through its clients, Lebanese Hizballah and Hamas.” (Ali Abunimah, When Former CIA Chief David Petraeus Enraged the Israel Lobby, Electronic Intifada, November 12, 2012.)
As Stephen Lendman observes, sex scandals don’t necessarily lead to resignations unless state secrets are at stake:
Forget resignation over extramarital sex nonsense unless state secrets were compromised. Lots of elected and appointed Washington officials had affairs. Many likely have current ones. Resignations don’t generally follow. Newt Gingrich survived sex and ethics scandals. He resigned as House Speaker after the Republicans faired poorly in 1998 off-year elections [...]
Overlooked are secret CIA Benghazi operations. Involved are heavy weapons sent to Syrian opposition fighters. Petraeus left days before his scheduled congressional testimony [...] The Benghazi operation is erroneously called a US consulate. It’s “a meeting place to coordinate aid for the rebel-led insurgencies in the Middle East.”
Tasks performed include “collaborating with Arab countries on the recruitment of fighters – including jihadists – to target Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.”Consulate designation provides cover. Obama and Clinton call the post a “US mission.” The State Department lists no consulate in Benghazi. (Stephen Lendman, Petraeus: Resignation or Sacking?, Global Research, November 12, 2012.)
Knowing the CIA’s shadow history, the cover-up of a secret CIA operation supporting terrorists used as proxy warriors to overthrow a foreign government seems the most likely explanation for Petraeus’ departure as Washington’s Blog explains:
Whatever the scope of the CIA’s operation in Benghazi – and whatever the real reason for the resignation of the CIA chief – the key is our historical and ongoing foreign policy.
For decades, the U.S. has backed terrorists for geopolitical ends.
The U.S. government has been consistently planning regime change in Syria and Libya for 20 years, and dreamed of regime change – using false flag terror – for 50 years.
Obama has simply re-packaged Bush and the Neocons’ “war on terror” as a series of humanitarian wars.
And the U.S. and its allies will do anything to topple Iran ... and is systematically attempting to pull the legs out from Iran’s allies as a way to isolate and weaken that country. (Why Did CIA Director Petraeus Resign? Why Was the U.S. Ambassador to Libya Murdered?, Washington’s Blog, November 10, 2012.)
Regime change through terrorism is not the sole vocation of the CIA. Over the years it has proven to be very efficient in money laundering, arms and drug trafficking. Was the drug/arms trade called “The Enterprise” in the Iran-Contragate just an isolated misdeed? Several testimonies of former CIA, DEA and police officials, in addition to numerous books, articles and documentaries on the CIA indicate it was just business as usual.
At a very turbulent town hall meeting November 15, 1996 former LAPD Narcotics Detective Michael Ruppert told then CIA Director John Deutch quite bluntly: “I will tell you Director Deutch as a former Los Angeles Police Narcotics Detective that the Agency has dealt drugs throughout this country for a long time.” The crowd started cheering loudly. A crack cocaine epidemic had been ravaging LA’s poor neighbourhoods since the early 80’s and had devastating effects on the black community. (Watch the video: Former LA Police Officer Mike Ruppert Confronts CIA Director John Deutch on Drug Trafficking)
Michael Ruppert was recruited to protect the Agency’s drug operations in the US. He had the evidence to prove it. He got shot at and was kicked out of LAPD because of it.
Earlier that year, San Francisco Chronicle journalist Gary Webb published a series of articles about the L.A. crack explosion titled The Dark Alliance. The story behind the crack explosion:

For the better part of a decade, a San Francisco Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army run by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a Mercury News investigation has found. This drug network opened the first pipeline between Colombia’s cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the crack capital of the world. (The Dark Alliance. The story behind the crack explosion, San Jose Mercury News.)

While he was working for the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Michael Levine witnessed how the CIA AND the State Department were protecting the drug trade:

The Chang Mai factory the CIA prevented me from destroying was the source of massive amounts of heroin being smuggled into the US in the bodies and body bags of GIs killed in Vietnam. (p. 165)

My unit, the Hard Narcotics Smuggling Squad, was charged with investigating all heroin and cocaine smuggling through the Port of New York. My unit became involved in investigating every major smuggling operation known to law enforcement. We could not avoid witnessing the CIA protecting major drug dealers. Not a single important source in Southeast Asia was ever indicted by US law enforcement. This was no accident. Case after case was killed by CIA and State Department intervention and there wasn’t a damned thing we could do about it. CIA-owned airlines like Air America were being used to ferry drugs throughout Southeast Asia, allegedly to support our “allies.” CIA banking operations were used to launder drug money. (pp. 165, 166) (Michael Levine, America’s “War on Drugs”: CIA- Recruited Mercenaries and Drug-Traffickers, wanttoknow.info, January 13, 2011.)

The Jamaican Shower Posse is another criminal organization which thrived with the help of the CIA and the American governement:

With the recent violence in Jamaica and the controversy over alleged drug lord, Christopher “Dudus” Coke, many people are talking about the infamous Jamaican Shower Posse and the neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens, where they have their base. What is being ignored largely by the media, is the role that the American government and the CIA had in training, arming and giving power to the Shower Posse.

It is interesting that the USA is indicting Christopher “Dudus” Coke, the current leader of the Shower Posse for drug and gun trafficking, given that the CIA was accused of smuggling guns into Jamaica and facilitating the cocaine trade from Jamaica to America in the 70s and 80s. In many ways Dudus was only carrying on a tradition of political corruption, drug running, guns and violence that was started with the help of the CIA [...]

Former CIA agent, Philip Agee, said “the CIA was using the JLP as its instrument in the campaign against the Michael Manley government, I’d say most of the violence was coming from the JLP, and behind them was the CIA in terms of getting weapons in and getting money in.” Casey Gane-McCalla, Jamaica’s Shower Posse: How The CIA Created “The Most Notorious Criminal Organization” Newsone, June 3, 2010.)

Back in 1995, Philip Agee (Nota de edición: Agee era/es un  agente "arrepentido" que publicó un libro, por cierto, bastante malo, con sus experiencias en misiones para la CIA) also warned:

[O]ther targets which are coming up all the time in terms of the intelligence community are the rogue states – the so-called rogue states: Iraq, Libya, Iran, North Korea and, for some, Syria. (Video: Philip Agee – Inside the CIA (the Intelligence Community)(1995)(1-9)(MODERN GOVERNMENT series))

Iraq and Libya have been dealt with. Syria is the current victim and Iran and North Korea are being threatened regularly by the US. Forget WMDs, and the Arab Spring. Those, just as the Petraeus Affair, are only smoke screens and mirrors.

And most of all, forget the “War on Terror” and the “War on Drugs”.

Afghanistan’s opium production, which had been virtually eradicated under the Taliban, has been booming under US occupation and US troops admitted they were protecting poppy fields. (Washington’s Blog, Are American Troops Protecting Afghan Opium?, October 28, 2012.)

The CIA, the US military as well as other governmental agencies are allegedly linked to the Mexican drug war and their goal is said to be far from their stated objective:

A high-ranking Mexican drug cartel operative [Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla] currently in U.S. custody is making startling allegations that the failed federal gun-walking operation known as “Fast and Furious” isn’t what you think it is.

It wasn’t about tracking guns, it was about supplying them — all part of an elaborate agreement between the U.S. government and Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel to take down rival cartels [...]

Zambada-Niebla claims that under a “divide and conquer” strategy, the U.S. helped finance and arm the Sinaloa Cartel through Operation Fast and Furious in exchange for information that allowed the DEA, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agencies to take down rival drug cartels. The Sinaloa Cartel was allegedly permitted to traffic massive amounts of drugs across the U.S. border from 2004 to 2009 — during both Fast and Furious and Bush-era gunrunning operations — as long as the intel kept coming. (Jason Howerton, Mexican Drug Cartel was working alongside the US Government, The Blaze 9 August 2012.)

Compared to all these crimes, an extramarital affair is quite insignificant.





CIA At-A-Glance: En el portal oficial de la CIA se puede encontrar información actualizada de sus misiones y estructura.

Publication Cover, People standing by CIA Seal
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Mission

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is an independent US Government agency responsible for providing national security intelligence to senior US policymakers.
To learn more, visit CIA Vision, Mission & Values.
Central Intelligence Agency

domingo, 18 de noviembre de 2012

El opaco poder de los bancos

It’s the Interest, Stupid! Why Bankers Rule the World
By Ellen Brown
Global Research, November 08, 2012
Url of this article:http://www.globalresearch.ca/its-the-interest-stupid-why-bankers-rule-the-world/5311030

Muchas veces nos preguntamos cómo las entidades financieras rigen nuestro destino. Las respuestas de Brown, autora del artículo que he escogido, pueden dar una idea más o menos aceptable. El punto crítico del asunto son los intereses que se pagan de una u otra manera. Los bancos son negocios y no se puede esperar que funcionen sin obtener beneficios. Pero los consumidores deberían contar con garantías legales para no quedar desvalidos (o desvalijados) por procedimientos de genuina usura. Si os interesa saber algo más, consulten la URL señalada.
In the 2012 edition of Occupy Money released last week, Professor Margrit Kennedy writes that a stunning 35% to 40% of everything we buy goes to interest. This interest goes to bankers, financiers, and bondholders, who take a 35% to 40% cut of our GDP. That helps explain how wealth is systematically transferred from Main Street to Wall Street. The rich get progressively richer at the expense of the poor, not just because of “Wall Street greed” but because of the inexorable mathematics of our private banking system.

This hidden tribute to the banks will come as a surprise to most people, who think that if they pay their credit card bills on time and don’t take out loans, they aren’t paying interest. This, says Dr. Kennedy, is not true. Tradesmen, suppliers, wholesalers and retailers all along the chain of production rely on credit to pay their bills. They must pay for labor and materials before they have a product to sell and before the end buyer pays for the product 90 days later. Each supplier in the chain adds interest to its production costs, which are passed on to the ultimate consumer. Dr. Kennedy cites interest charges ranging from 12% for garbage collection, to 38% for drinking water to, 77% for rent in public housing in her native Germany.

Her figures are drawn from the research of economist Helmut Creutz, writing in German and interpreting Bundesbank publications.  They apply to the expenditures of German households for everyday goods and services in 2006; but similar figures are seen in financial sector profits in the United States, where they composed a whopping 40% of U.S. business profits in 2006.  That was five times the 7% made by the banking sector in 1980.  Bank assets, financial profits, interest, and debt have all been growing exponentially.
http://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept12/cui-bono-Fed9-12.html.

Exponential growth in financial sector profits has occurred at the expense of the non-financial sectors, where incomes have at best grown linearly.

viernes, 16 de noviembre de 2012

En busca del origen de la creatividad


Brain scans of rappers shed light on creativity

Functional magnetic resonance imaging shows what happens in the brain during improvisation.

Open Mike Eagle

Open Mike Eagle, one of the authors of the latest study, performs on Knocksteady TV.
Rappers making up rhymes on the fly while in a brain scanner have provided an insight into the creative process.
Freestyle rapping — in which a performer improvises a song by stringing together unrehearsed lyrics — is a highly prized skill in hip hop. But instead of watching a performance in a club, Siyuan Liu and Allen Braun, neuroscientists at the US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders in Bethesda, Maryland, and their colleagues had 12 rappers freestyle in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine.
The artists also recited a set of memorized lyrics chosen by the researchers. By comparing the brain scans from rappers taken during freestyling to those taken during the rote recitation, they were able to see which areas of the brain are used during improvisation. The study is published today in Scientific Reports1.
The results parallel previous imaging studies in which Braun and Charles Limb, a doctor and musician at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, looked at fMRI scans from jazz musicians2. Both sets of artists showed lower activity in part of their frontal lobes called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during improvisation, and increased activity in another area, called the medial prefrontal cortex. The areas that were found to be ‘deactivated’ are associated with regulating other brain functions.
“We think what we see is a relaxation of ‘executive functions’ to allow more natural de-focused attention and uncensored processes to occur that might be the hallmark of creativity,” says Braun.
He adds that this suggestion is “a little bit controversial in the literature”, because some studies have found activation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in creative behaviour. He suggests that the discrepancy might have to do with the tasks chosen to represent creativity. In studies that found activation, the activities — such as those that require recall — may actually be less creative.
“We try to stick with more natural creative processing, and when we do that we see this decrease in the dorsal lateral regions,” says Braun.

Pump down the volume

Rex Jung, a clinical neuropsychologist at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, has also studied the link between brain structures and creativity, finding an inverse relationship between the volume of some frontal lobe structures and creativity3. “Some of our results imply this downregulation of the frontal lobes in service of creative cognition. [The latest paper] really appears to pull it all together,” he says. “I’m excited about the findings.”
Jung says that this downregulation is likely to apply in other, non-musical areas of creativity — including science.
The findings also suggest an explanation for why new music might seem to the artist to be created of its own accord. With less involvement by the lateral prefrontal regions of the brain, the performance could seem to its creator to have “occurred outside of conscious awareness”, the authors write.
Michael Eagle, a study co-author who raps under the name Open Mike Eagle, agrees: “That’s kind of the nature of that type of improvisation. Even as people who do it, we’re not 100% sure of where we’re getting improvisation from.”
Liu says that the researchers are now working on problems they were unable to explore with freestylers — such as what happens after the initial burst of creative inspiration.
"We think that the creative process may be divided into two phases," he says. "The first is the spontaneous improvisatory phase. In this phase you can generate novel ideas. We think there is a second phase, some kind of creative processing [in] revision."
The researchers would also like to look at how creativity differs between experts and amateurs of a similar artistic ilk to freestylers: poets and storytellers.
Nature
 
doi:10.1038/nature.2012.11835

jueves, 15 de noviembre de 2012

Una mutación genética vinculada al Alzheimer


Alzheimer’s Tied to Mutation Harming Immune Response



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Alzheimer’s researchers and drug companies have for years concentrated on one hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease: the production of toxic shards of a protein that accumulate in plaques on the brain.
Amyloid plaques build up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.
Multimedia

Related

But now, in a surprising coincidence, two groups of researchers working from entirely different starting points have converged on a mutated gene involved in another aspect of Alzheimer’s disease: the immune system’s role in protecting against the disease. The mutation is suspected of interfering with the brain’s ability to prevent the buildup of plaque.
The discovery, researchers say, provides clues to how and why the disease progresses. The gene, known as TREM2, is only the second found to increase Alzheimer’s risk substantially in older people.
“It points very specifically to a potential metabolic pathway that you could intervene in to change the course of Alzheimer’s disease,” said William Thies, chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Association.
Much work remains to be done before scientists understand precisely how the newly discovered gene mutation leads to Alzheimer’s, but already there are some indications from studies in mice. 
When the gene is not mutated, white blood cells in the brain spring into action, gobbling up and eliminating the plaque-forming toxic protein, beta amyloid. As a result, Alzheimer’s can be staved off or averted.
But when the gene is mutated, the brain’s white blood cells are hobbled, making them less effective in their attack on beta amyloid.
People with the mutated gene have a threefold to fivefold increase in the likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease in old age.