Tuesday, 13 November 2012

BirminghamStrong Justice 4 ALL - To all the families, campaigners and supporters across the uk, Keep calm and FIGHT FIGHT! FIGHT!! We seek Justice for all the following

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/26276

JUSTICE FOR AZELLE RODNEY NOW!!!!
To all the families, campaigners and supporters across the uk, Keep calm and FIGHT FIGHT! FIGHT!!
We seek Justice for all the following
ANTHONY GRAINGER - DIED 3RD MARCH 2012
MARK DUGGAN - DIED 4TH AUG 2011
JAKE MICHAELS - DIED 22 AUG 2011
SMILEY CULTURE - DIED 15TH MARCH 2011
KINGSLEY BURRELL - DIED 31ST MARCH 2011
DEMETRE FRASER - DIED 31ST MAY 2011
LIOYD BUTLER - DIED 4TH AUG 2010 
IAN TOMLINSON - DIED 1ST APRIL 2009
HABIB 'PAPS' ULLAH - DIED 3RD JULY 2008
SEAN RIGG - DIED 21ST AUG 2008
DORIAN ROBERT MACKIE -DIED 25 AUG 2008
AZELLE RODNEY - DIED 30TH APRIL 2005
MIKEY POWELL - DIED 7TH SEPTEMBER 2003 
RICKY BISHOP - DIED 22ND NOVEMBER 2001
plus many many more

DEATHS IN (or as a result of) CUSTODY IN THE MIDLANDS REGION

Clinton McCurbin - Wolverhampton died 20th February 1987
Alton Manning - 33yrs Birmingham died 8th December 1995
David Henderson - 18yrs Wolverhampton died 22nd March 2000
Martin Green - 25yrs Staffordshire died 15th July 2002
Mikey Powell - Birmingham died 7th September 2003
Michael Bailey - 23yrs Birmingham died 24th March 2005
Lee Sean McArdle - 19yrs Birmingham died 12th February 2005
Victor Massey - 54yrs Nottingham died 8th August 2006
Lloyd Butler - 39yrs Birmingham died 4th August 2010
Kingsley Burrell - 27yrs Birmingham died 31st March 2011
Demetre Fraser - 21yrs Birmingham died 31st May 2011

John Shorthouse - 5yrs old shot dead by police in Birmingham 24th August 1985. R.I.P

People For Schapelle Corby QUESTIONS THE CIA MUST ANSWER Did the CIA advise Australia to sacrifice the life of a citizen they knew to be innocent?

From FACEBOOK

 


QUESTIONS THE CIA MUST ANSWER
Did the CIA advise Australia to sacrifice the life of a citizen they knew to be innocent? 

Did the CIA tell them that the airport security issues had to take priority over a life? 

Did CIA input encourage immoral Australian politicians, who embarked upon a course which included the suppressing of evidential proof of her innocence, the misleading of their parliament, and the orchestrating their media? 

Did the CIA realize that the Australian regime would sink into a pit of self-interest corruption?

Please see the following revelations of CIA input:
www.expendable.tv/2011/10/ exhibit-mutual-assistance-r equest.html

See the corruption of the Australian government for yourself, in sacrificing a life they always knew ot be innocent:
www.expendable.tv 


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25 UNREPORTED FACTS ON THE SCHAPELLE CORBY CASE

1. Schapelle Corby's boogie-board bag was the only one not scanned at Sydney Airport: it was diverted past the scanner by baggage staff. Customs Minister Ellison withheld this vital information, even when Schapelle Corby’s lawyer asked directly about scanning. [Transit Report]

2. This information was also hidden from Parliament, when direct questions were asked, and critically, it was withheld from the Bali court. John Howard, and his friend, Head of Sydney Airport Corporation Ltd, Max Moore-Wilton, also kept quiet about it, when they both knew. [Transit Report]

3. The AFP never investigated the reason for this missing screening data, and AFP Commissioner Keelty, who also knew, never commented upon it. [Transit Report]

4. Schapelle Corby’s bags were subsequently found to be 5kg overweight on the Qantas system, when she had checked her bags in, underweight, without any excess charge ($175). [Transit Report]

5. Again, neither Schapelle Corby, nor the Bali court, were ever provided with this critical information. [Supplementary Report]

6. Two weeks before the verdict, AFP Commissioner Keelty told the media that there was no evidence of airport drug syndicates using innocent passengers, when this was clearly, demonstrably, and utterly, false. The AFP had held the Kessing Reports for months, and it withheld a host of other vital support evidence, which proved the long term and systemic nature of such syndication at Sydney Airport. [Transit Report]

7. The AFP and DFAT demonstrably evaded the forensic and DNA tests which Schapelle Corby begged for. [Mutual Evasion Report]

8. The AFP also told Parliament that it couldn't perform marijuana pollen tests, when it could, and indeed, had originally offered to perform them for the INP. It also refused the services of a forensics expert, who had volunteered to perform them. [Mutual Evasion Report]

9. Ellison subsequently told a clearly false story about marijuana testing, in a letter to a constituent. [Mutual Evasion Report]

10. DFAT did not invoke the MACMA treaty to obtain the sample of marijuana which Schapelle Corby begged them for, when it could have done so within the provisions of the treaty itself. [Mutual Evasion Report]

11. The AFP and Qantas provided wholly contradictory stories about the missing CCTV footage, which Schapelle Corby pleaded for. [Transit Report]

12. Foreign Minister Downer, and Prime Minister Howard, publicly endorsed the original Bali trial, when they were well aware of the multitude of legal and human rights abuses committed throughout. [Bali Trial Report]

13. Ellison publicly endorsed the burning of the evidence, when Schapelle Corby pleaded for it to be preserved. [Mutual Evasion Report]

14. DFAT have, de facto, endorsed and suppressed the ongoing documented abuses of a mentally ill Australian citizen for eight years. [Health Report]

15. ACLEI, when forced to examine the AFP's role in the affair, was directly and demonstrably complicit with an AFP officer, in producing a report which was an utter embarrassment to all parties. A functionary, who was at the heart of the Howard regime when the AFP abuses occurred, was allowed to rubber stamp ACLEI's complicit rubber stamp. [Whitewash Report]

16. The government forced an Australian QC, Mark Trowell, on to Schapelle Corby. He then decimated her appeal by attacking her defence team to the media. When he subsequently admitted that he was working for the government, and not for Schapelle Corby, the government hid, refusing to comment. The precise role of Justice & Customs Minister Ellison, Trowell’s long term friend, in this affair, has never been explained. [Insider Report]

17. Downer and Howard publicly called a standard flour hoax a “biological agent” and a “murderous attack”, when there was no evidence whatsoever to suggest that it wasn’t flour. Neither of them said that the note included with the flour didn't even mention Schapelle Corby, and was even written in Bahasa, when they promptly blamed it on her supporters [PowderGate Report]

18. Ellison did not alert the parties necessary to prevent the false (but support-wrecking) story from circulating around the world, when he was informed of the benign nature of the flour, by email, at 6:35pm on the same day [PowderGate Report]

19. The government seized Schapelle Corby's book royalties, when she was still in legal process in Indonesia, when it knew that this would signal 'guilt' to Jakarta. It brought the Australian judiciary itself into disrepute, by illegally extending its jurisdiction outside Australia, and holding secret trials, at which Schapelle Corby was not even represented [Political Seizure Report]

20. The government thus denied her the funds for another appeal, and for medicine, even though it was well aware of the nature of the Bali trial, and of the vital primary evidence which it had, itself, wilfully withheld [Political Seizure Report]

21. The dozens of breaches of the Freedom of Information Act, with respect to requests made on behalf of Schapelle Corby, for information held on herself, remain totally un-addressed [FOI Abuse Report]

22. The AFP suppressed a secret recording of two known criminals discussing the collection of marijuana from Sydney Airport on the same day that Schapelle Corby flew to Bali [Candidate Sources Report] 

23. The Commonwealth Ombudsman has supported the government with respect to every complaint ever lodged relating to Schapelle Corby. The same applies to every other quango presented as a watchdog to the public. [Quango Report]

24. Serious broadcasting media abuses, including criminal matters, which were submitted to the government in 2011, were excluded from the Finkelstein media inquiry. Compelling evidence of political interference with respect to the ABC, and evidential proof of subsequent editorial and reporting abuses, continue to be ignored. [Media Reports]

25. The current Attorney-General has refused to accept a formal Crime Report, including a 450 page evidential Addendum, which documents serious breaches of the law by politicians and the AFP [Crime Report].

 

Monday, 12 November 2012

Obama Has Already Quietly Begun Revising the Government’s War on Drugs Jul 5, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/05/obama-has-already-quietly-begun-revising-the-government-s-war-on-drugs.html

The Daily Beast

Obama Has Already Quietly Begun Revising the Government’s War on Drugs

Jul 5, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

Marc Ambinder’s GQ story about a possible Obama pivot in the drug wars misses a crucial fact: the pivot has already happened, writes James Higdon.

Never mind a second term, Barack Obama’s pivot on the drug war has already begun.

While Marc Ambinder’s much discussed, scantily-sourced GQ report of a second-term “pivot” runs through the murderers’ row of complaints against theDrug War—the cocaine/crack disparity; mandatory minimum sentencing; property-seizure laws and the fattening of the corrections industry—he doesn’t report that the president’s “aides and associates” have identified any of these as a starting point for Obama to “tackle” first.

“Don’t expect miracles,” Ambinder cautions, and that’s where he gets it wrong. The miracle has already happened. Here’s the answer that Ambinder’s anonymous sources failed to leak to him: the pivot point for Obama’s new direction is homegrown marijuana, and it’s already started.

The presidential request for the FY13 budget deals a mortal blow to the helicopter-powered marijuana eradication umbrella. It does so by cutting in half the funding for the U.S. National Guard Counterdrug program, the Defense Department’s contribution to the marijuan-eradication effort that has, for the past 20 years, limited the size of domestic marijuana patches and increased the demand for “blood pot” imported by ultraviolent Mexican drug cartels—while doing nothing to stem the supply to anyone who wants to get high.

Until now, the DEA and state law enforcement could count on the National Guard to fly hundreds of helicopter hours over national forests and other public land, where growers became active following the passage of property-seizure laws in the Reagan years—but the FY13 budget changes that.

The 50-percent cut is not being apportioned evenly across the states—it’s a two-thirds cut in Oregon and a 70-percent cut in Kentucky, while the Southern border states are receiving less severe reductions in funding. It’s essentially a diversion of Defense Department assets away from the interior American marijuana fields to where the national-security risk is greatest: along our Southern border.

obama-drug-war-higdon

Carolyn Kaster / AP Photos

“We’re not going to have legalized weed anytime soon,” the president told late-night television host Jimmy Fallon in April. But there’s a lot a president can do to unwind the marijuana prohibition without going full-on Peter Tosh. After all, how effective is an umbrella with holes in it?

Without a fully functional eradication program, the feds cannot keep domestic pot production down. So even if it remains illegal, domestic production could boom during FY13, the first growing season of Obama’s potential second term.

The road map to pot decriminalization, an essential first step for any pivot on the drug war, can be found in the executive order President Obama issued on immigration to effectively implement components of the DREAM Act without the help of Congress by ordering his executive branch to de-prioritize enforcement of certain laws.

The simple fact that President Obama would even consider breaking the taboo of the marijuana prohibition is itself a miracle, given that our last president from the Democratic Party gave us the 1996 federal three-strikes law, which remains one of the most outrageous components of the pot prohibition, sending nonviolent marijuana growers to prison for life without parole for the offense of persistent criminal farming.

When Obama makes public his drug-war pivot, he will have 40 years of an abusive relationship between the Oval Office and marijuana to undo. When Ambinder says that drug laws in America “were created almost nakedly to marginalize disfavored groups,” what he’s talking about in part is how President Nixon doubled down on the already-in-place marijuana prohibition on the morning of May 26, 1971.

“I want a goddamn strong statement on marijuana,” Nixon told his chief-of-staff, Bob Haldeman. “I mean one on marijuana that just tears the ass out of them ... By God we are going to hit the marijuana thing, and I want to hit it right square in the puss ...”

President Reagan followed suit with a massive expansion of the federal government’s powers in matters of drug-related justice: eliminating federal parole; creating mandatory minimum sentences, and allowing federal agents to seize land and property from people merely suspected of being involved in “drugs,” whether those drugs were marijuana or heroin, in complete disregard of the suspect’s Fourth Amendment protections.

When Obama makes public his drug-war pivot, he will have 40 years of an abusive relationship between the Oval Office and marijuana to undo.

Any détente of the drug war that Obama might tackle in his theoretical second term must include, eventually, a massive legislative package that returns America to a pre-Nixon posture on pot; flattens the cocaine/crack disparity; eliminates mandatory minimum sentences; re-instates federal parole for nonviolent and victimless crimes; reins in property-seizure laws; grounds the fleet of pot-spotting helicopters; and grants blanket clemency for those currently serving federal prison time for trumped-up marijuana crimes.

In other words, in his second term, President Obama needs to kick Richard Nixon right square in the puss. In the meantime, by easing enforcement of domestic marijuana cultivation, thereby reducing demand for Mexican blood pot and freeing up Defense Department assets to send to the Southwest, the president can achieve another of his campaign promises: improving our border security.

Spartacus Strikes Back – The Truth About Atos and the WCA

http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/spartacus-strikes-back-the-truth-about-atos-and-the-wca/

narking off the state since 2005

 

Spartacus Strikes Back – The Truth About Atos and the WCA

A report has been released today by disabled campaigners highlighting the often harrowing experiences that sick and disabled people face due to the infamous Work Capability Assessment (WCA).

The WCA is a short computer based health and disability test, carried out by French IT company Atos.  This assessment is used to judge eligibility for sickness and disability benefits and has led to thousands of people, often with serious health conditions or disabilities, being declared ‘fit for work’.

Many more people have been placed in the Work Related Activity Group, which means claimants are expected to take part in jobseeking activity including the Government’s Work Programme.  This means attending training and job search sessions under threat of punishing benefit sanctions.  There have even been suggestions raised by DWP officials that this group should be forced to attend workfare.  Astonishingly it is large disability charities, such as Scope (@scope), Mencap (@mencap_charity) and MIND (@MindCharity) who refer disabled people to the DWP to face benefit sanctions if they are judged to have not complied with the demands of the Work Programme.

Today’s report is the result of extensive research carried out by We Are Spartacus, a network of disabled campaigners, activists, researchers and bloggers and features extensive testimony from those who have attended the WCA themselves as well as from advice workers who have supported people through the process.

This important document deserves to be widely read.  Please tweet, blog and share as much as possible: http://wearespartacus.org.uk/wca-peoples-review/

“My client has had brain damage since a massive haemorrhage/coma at the age of 22. This has left him with a short term memory of 20 minutes. He doesn’t remember me, or my voice, and keeps extensive diaries of daily events so he can record what he has to do. He has been found capable of work 3 times, and on one occasion he lost his home, because he couldn’t remember what he had to do to appeal. (IS stopped, so I presume HB stopped, although we will never know as he doesn’t remember).”

“I have a brain tumour and was left disabled because I had the left side of my cerabellum amputated, because of this my balance and co’ordination to my left side is shot coupled with the fact that all the cancer could not be removed I am also terminally ill, I DID NOT MAKE IT INTO THE SUPPORT GROUP. I was told I should be working in a set period of time, funny as it was the same as my lifespan, I contacted my MP who was luckily an x GP and gave him permission to look at my medical notes he was disgusted and got my decision reversed I am now in the support group. The letter from the DWP stated that I was not terminally ill for the purposes of benefit entitlement.”

“I have just got back from my esa medical. I was made to do things that caused me severe pain, despite telling the lady that i would be if great pain if i attempted to do this she told me i had to do it otherwise she would have to say that i refused and that the decison makers class refusing to take part in the activity as “able to work” she actualy said and i quote ” its like the drink driving test if you dont do the test your automacitly classed as failing it.”

“Karen Sherlock, 44, was put in the Work Related Activity Group in 2010. Where she was required to attend interviews, work-related activity etc.

She suffered from Diabetic Autonomic Neuropathy (gastric causing unpredictable and severe diarrhoea), Gastropaerisis (causing unpredictable and severe bouts of vomiting), Diabetic Retinopathy, partially sighted (loss of peripheral vision in both eyes and some central vision in left eye), Heart condition, Chronic Kidney Disease, Vitamin B12 Deficiency, Anaemia, Hypertension, High Cholesterol, Hypothyroidism, Asthma and Chronic tiredness due to multiple illnesses.

Her husband Nigel said it was a disgrace she was refused benefits and said her battle finally took its toll on her health.

Last year she lost a long process of appeal against the decision but continued her campaign. In April 2012, as a result of the time-limiting of ESA to one year, her £96-a-week benefits were stopped, plunging her into despair as her health deteriorated.

She won her appeal a few weeks ago and she was finally put in the Support Group.

She died eight days later on 8 June.”

These same types of assessments, again carried out by Atos, are shortly to be extended to almost three million people currently receiving Disability Living Allowance.

 

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