Clinton wants to occupy Mexico

US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has declared that she wants the USA to intervene in Mexico "against drug gangs", the same it has been doing in Colombia and other countries. In fact she likened the decaying situation of Mexico to Colombia, however she claimed that the Plan Colombia, that has allowed the USA to establish an effective protectorate over the South American country, has been a success, what is plainly false - unless by success you mean taking over a whole country.

In this sense we must not forget that, on a similar pretext, the, until this year, famously demilitarized and rather prosperous, Republic of Costa Rica, allowed a few weeks ago the USA to take over it. Additionally the USA also controls Haiti, a major narcotrafficking hub (because of deep poverty and lack of democracy, thanks to Uncle Sam again). And we must not forget that, what used to be considered the main US base in Central America, Honduras, suffered a reactionary military coup last year, ousting the legitimate President and turning the country in a factual autocracy with US blessings.

Geopolitics of Middle America
Dark blue: USA and protectorates, light blue: US allies and their colonies
Red: Bolivarian bloc (ALBA), pink: other left-leaning governments
Green: Mexico

So now Hillary wants to add Mexico to the cyclops' menu. But this has rallied all Mexican politicians against. Even if this would not be the case, Mexico may indeed be a too big and too resentful piece of meat to swallowed by giant Uncle Sam. Mexico lists among the 20 largest economies of Earth, has a reasonably strong popular movement, and has many historical reasons to be wary of the USA, which took Texas, California and all what is between them and also partly invaded the Aztec country again during the Mexican Revolution.

There is already a lot of opposition in Mexico to the North American Free Trade Agreement (and the less known Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America) which is considered by many as the main culprit of the degeneration the country is suffering in the last decade or two.

The country's political system is however pretty much blocked by the fact that the PAN (conservatives) won the last elections by means of massive vote rigging. However the left is divided between those supporting AMLO and the PRD (social-democrats) and those who see no or little change possible with them. It is a clear case of "revolution needed urgently" and that is precisely why the USA wants to get greater direct control, probably. However it may well backfire, because a US invasion, even if sanctioned by Mexican institutions, would provide a rally point for all proud Mexicans who are never really happy about their beefy neighbor by the North.

News source: The Guardian.

Psylocibin effective and safe in calming anxiety

Psylocibin is the main active ingredient of "magic mushrooms" (Psylocibe sp., here known as mongis or bongis). It was confirmed in 2008 as the "best trip" by quality rating of the experience in all aspects.

Now it seems it is also the magic herb that can calm people affected by anxiety, at least in advanced cancer patients. Sadly, because of socio-cultural prejudices, the research on the hopeful effects of psychedelic drugs was halted in the 1970s under a heavy load of repressive laws.

Read more at Science Daily.

Ref. Charles S. Grob et al., Pilot Study of Psilocybin Treatment for Anxiety in Patients With Advanced-Stage Cancer. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 2010. Pay per view.

Psychedelics as psychological medicine?

This is not really new, after all a host of religions across the globe use some such drugs in various ways with special success in tackling alcoholism and existential anxiety in general. Also independent researchers such as the "father of LSD" Albert Hofmann have for long defended their usefulness in psychotherapy.

But still it's good to see that the same line of thought keeps reappearing once and again in spite of the institutional demonization of psychedelics. As reported by News Daily today, Franz Vollenweider and Michael Kometer, argue that drugs such as LSD or Psylocibes (magic mushrooms) have a lot of potential in psychotherapy, with the additional advantage that they would be used only for short periods, at low doses in combination with psychotherapy.

Psychedelics can give patients a new perspective -- particularly when things like suppressed memories come up -- and then they can work with that experience.

Mental illnesses...

... are serious, debilitating, life-shortening illnesses, and as the currently available treatments have high failure rates, psychedelics might offer alternative treatment strategies that could improve the well-being of patients and the associated economic burden on patients and society.

But Big Pharma surely prefers to have them taking their mostly useless (and potentially harmful) products for life, regardless of outcome.

East Asian alcohol intolerance gene mapped

Yi Peng et al. The ADH1B Arg47His polymorphism in East Asian populations and expansion of rice domestication in history. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 2010. Open access.

The authors have mapped the allele for alcohol intolerance within the gene among Chinese populations, both Han and non-Han (cf. table 1 for frequencies). There are sharp differences among ethnicities with Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic nations showing low levels of the allele.

The highest densities of the allele are in the province of Zhejiang, just south of Shanghai, where nearly everybody is alcohol intolerant. The authors have estimated possible ages for the origin and spread of this allele and conclude that it originated and spread with rice agriculture. However I am not fully convinced, as happens with all molecular clock estimates. Whatever the case it does seem reasonable to accept that the seemingly oldest variants of the allele are in Central/South Western China.


Above: map of the alcohol intolerance allele included in the study (notice that the Chinese border is pretty much fictitious, including all claims the PRC may have) with clines of frequency and symbols for different estimated ages.

Notice that if the claim of Neolithic origin and spread of this allele is correct it would frontally clash with the notion that the Mongoloid morphotype spread within this same period. Personally I am pretty much skeptic of both claims. However I can imagine that this allele may have spread along some South to North demic expansion like the one associated to Y-DNA haplogroup O maybe.

UK: Brown gets rid of honest drug advisor

The last highly questionable move by the erratic and rather arrogant British PM, John Brown, has been to re-classify cannabis from class A drug to class B, so the police can more easily persecute users and small traders.

This is of course a highly controversial move and his chief advisor on drugs was clearly against. Prof. D. Nutt actually even dared to criticize his boss, declaring openly that the psychotic risk derived from cannabis was virtually inexistent (same as I commented here) and questioning that alcohol and tobacco are treated separately from illegal drugs (both drugs are highly addictive and dangerous).

Well, he got fired right away.

For Prof. Nutt, this is "disappointing". And he warns of increasing conflict between politics and science. He argues that he was not prepared to mislead the public on behalf of the government.

And it seems that's what governments and corporations want scientists for these days: to lie in their behalf.

While the conservatives support the government, the liberal-democrats do not. "What is the point of having independent scientific advice if as soon as you get some advice that you don't like, you sack the person who has given it to you?" C. Huhne declared.

Meanwhile cannabis users in Britain will see their scarce rights even more restricted, risking as much as five years in prison for mere possession.

Source: BBC.

Update (Nov. 5): there is an interesting short article by David Nutt on the issue today at New Scientist: Governments should get real on drugs.
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Genes for bad driving, genes for drinking, genes for all...

Not sure how solid are these news items but today Science Daily publishes two articles on how genes make you this or that.

One quite common genetic variant (30% in USA) makes you apparently a worse driver, and a worse learner in general. However it is very advantageous to overcome neurodegenerative diseases. It is probably one of these cases of dynamic equilibrium in which two alleles offer different adaptative advantages, each one at a different cost.

Another of these allele variants has been found to increase the like for alcohol and make people drink more, however it is independent on the gene that predisposes to alcoholism (alcohol-addiction). This does not change that drinking frequently is the leading cause of alcoholism, of course, just mentions genes that predispose to drinking and to alcohol-dependence as distinct.

I just wonder what adaptative advantage does the gene for alcoholism has, sincerely. There must be something or would have gone extinct.
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Who is Álvaro Uribe

Yes, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, the President of Colombia indeed.

With occasion of his controversial visit to Spain, where he was given an official prize, I had the opportunity to find out some less known details about him (source: Rebelión, in Spanish):

In 1991, he was listed as drug trafficiking mafia leader number 82 in a, now declassified, confidential report of the US Inteligence Agency (PDF), that reads:

82. Alvaro Uribe Velez - A Colombian politician and senator dedicated to cllaboration with the Medellin Cartel at high government levels. Uribe was linked to a business involved in narcotic activities in the USA. His father was killed in Colombia for his connection with the narcotic traffickers. Uribe has worked for the Medellin Cartel and is a close friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria. He has participated in Escobar's political campaign to win the position of assistant parlamentarian to Jorge ((Ortega)). Uribe has been one of the politicians, from the Senate, who has attacked all forms of the Extradition Treaty.

(Links are mine)

Other niceties of the silverspoon narcopresident are that:

· Through his mandate as president, 995 extrajudicial killings happened, of which only 670 were vaguely investigated by the public attorney office and only a handful have finally reached trial.

· In the first term of Uribe's rule some 18,500 people were imprisioned arbitrarily in mass arrest operations.

· 72 congressmen have been investigated judicially, of which 11 have been declared guilty and 4 acquitted. Other 250 high ranking public officers in Uribe's administration are being investigated, including ministers, governors, mayors and directors of major deartments.

· Many people in the close circle of Uribe were appointed in spite of being directly connected with narcotraffic and death squads. Examples are his military advisor, Gral. Alejo del Río, who had been dismissed from active service for his many human rights violations; his former Chief of Police, Jorge Daniel Castro Castro, a well known narco; his Director of Anti-Drugs Intelligence, Gral Oscar Naranjo Trujillo, known accomplice of the coca cartels. When Castro was finally forced out of office for spying illegally nearly everybody, Naranjo took his post.

· Álvaro Uribe was Director of Civil Aeronautics in the 1980s and then gave hundreds of airplane licenses to major drug traffickers. Pablo Escobar then said of him that would not be for Uribe we all would have to go swimming to the USA to deliver the drugs.

· His cousin and close ally, former senator Mario Uribe is currently under arrest on grounds of conspiration for crime by agreements to promote armed gangs outside the law. In other words: organizing death squads.

So this is the President of Colombia who just recieved the "Prize Cortes of Cádiz to Freedom" from the neofascist mayor of Cádiz (the Cortes of Cádiz was the first liberal Spanish parliament, gathered in resistence to Napoleonic occupation and which promulgated a very progressive and democratic constitution, that survived only a few years).

This is the President of Colombia who is the third largest reciever of military aid from the USA.
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Narcotraffic centered in the USA and US protectorates

Interesting article at Rebelión by P. Siris (in Spanish). The author, based on figures of the UN office on Drugs and Crime, notices that USA is by large the greatest consumer of cocaine (45% of the world total) and also a major producer of illegal drugs like marihuana (20% of the world's total, using more land than for maize).

Even more significatively, Siris notices that the number of drug seizures in the North American country has dropped massively in the last decade and now only ammounts to 24% of the world's total, very low considering the huge relevance of the USA as drugs' consumer. Furthermore, the vast majority of world's cocaine production (60%) happens in Colombia, a US protectorate (and certainly not in jungle areas controlled by the guerrilla), while almost all global opiate production is in Afghanistan (96%) , another US occupied country.

Nevertheless, the USA dares to patronize countries like Bolivia, Venezuela and Myanmar (Bolivia and Myanmar are secondary producers of coca and opium respectively, Venezuela is not any major producer of anything) on this issue, while ignoring the Colombia, Peru (second global producer of coca and cocaine) and Afghanistan, as well as other major hubs of drug trafficking like Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, the European Union and the very United States.

Siris argues that the USA is not just the largest drug consumer of the world but that it also controls the production of most of these substances and is the benefitiary of the benefit in the narcotraffic business.

Britain set to fill its jails with marihuana smokers

The reclassification of cannabis as "B-type drug" in the insular kingdom means that posession can mean up to five years in prision. Meanwhile in neighboring Netherlands or Spain posession, and even growing for personal use, is at least formally legal (though, quite contradictorily, trade is not or, in the case of the Netherlands, limited to taverns with a special license).

I wonder if they have even thought in what that means for the penal administration as potentially maybe a fourth of the island's youngsters are elegible for such harsh penalties at some moment.

This reclassification is made on exclussively political grounds, as the scientific advisory council advised against it a few days ago.

More information on hemp at Erowid.