55 years of - you decide

George Monbiot  http://www.monbiot.com/2012/12/17/%E2%80%98bug-splats%E2%80%99/               ‘Bug-Splats’ December 17, 2012             Some dead children are mourned; others are dehumanised.   By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 17th December 2012 “Mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts … These tragedies must end. And to end them, we must change.”(1) Every parent can connect with what Barack Obama said about the murder of 20 children in Newtown, Connecticut. There can scarcely be a person on earth with access to the media who is untouched by the grief of the people of that town. It must follow that what applies to the children murdered there by a deranged young man also applies to the children murdered in Pakistan by a sombre American president. These children are just as...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/15/rape-killings-terror-mali Mass rape, amputations and killings – why families are fleeing terror in Mali At refugee camps, reports are flooding in of horrific human rights abuses in a country once famous for its music and joyous lifestyle. Mark Townsend reports on the jihadist nightmare in the Sahel Mark Townsend The Observer , Saturday 15 December 2012 21.59 GMT Zicki Fli and family outside their tent in Goudebo camp, Burkina Faso. Photograph: Mark Townsend for The Observer They were told to assemble in Gao's market place at dusk. A man accused of using tobacco was escorted before the crowd by several members of the al-Qaida splinter group Movement for Tawhid and Jihad in West  Africa . "Then they chopped off his hand. They wanted to show us what they could do," said Ahmed, 39, a meat trader from the town in northern  Mali . That was not the end of it. The severed han...

http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/uaa35812.pdf   UA: 358/12 Index: ASA 38/006/2012 Taiwan Date: 14 December 2012 URGENT ACTION EXECUTION OF TAIWANESE MAN IS IMMINIENT Cheng Hsing-tse is facing imminent execution in Taiwan after the Prosecutor General rejected a request on 11 December to seek an extraordinary appeal. The Minister of Justice could sign an execution order at any moment. Cheng Hsing-tse was arrested on 5 January 2002 and accused of killing a police officer during a gunfight. He was sentenced to death for murder by the Taichung District Court on 18 November 2002. The case bounced back and forth between the High Court and the Supreme Court for appeals and retrials; however Cheng Hsing-tse’s death sentence was finalized on 25 May 2006. His lawyers have since applied for extraordinary appeals but the requests have been rejected each time by the Prosecutor General. Cheng Hsing-tse first retracted his confession, allegedly extracted by the p...

More Americans die in gun homicides and suicides in six months than have died in the last 25 years in every terrorist attack  And the   wars in Afghanistan and Iraq combined .   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html Nicholas D. Kristof   By  NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: December 15, 2012  

The Daktory Court Support - Dakta Blaze   Public event    By  Akl Seshnz https://www.facebook.com/events/194326004035893/ Monday, 17 December 2012 08:30 in UTC+13 Dakta Blaze faces a charge of "obstruction of a police officer" stemming from a visit made by the police while undertaking bail checks of Dakta Green at The Daktory.  Dakta Blaze stepped outside to talk to them and the door closed behind him. He was arrested for obstruction after refusing to open the door for police. Blaze does not have to comply by Dakta Greens bail conditions. This date has been set down for a status hearing. Show your support for cannabis law reform by protesting with us! https://www.facebook.com/events/194326004035893/

The Daktory Court Support - Dakta Blaze   Public event    By  Akl Seshnz https://www.facebook.com/events/194326004035893/ Monday, 17 December 2012 08:30 in UTC+13 Dakta Blaze faces a charge of "obstruction of a police officer" stemming from a visit made by the police while undertaking bail checks of Dakta Green at The Daktory.  Dakta Blaze stepped outside to talk to them and the door closed behind him. He was arrested for obstruction after refusing to open the door for police. Blaze does not have to comply by Dakta Greens bail conditions. This date has been set down for a status hearing. Show your support for cannabis law reform by protesting with us! https://www.facebook.com/events/194326004035893/

  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/kristof-do-we-have-the-courage-to-stop-this.html Do We Have the Courage to Stop This? By  NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: December 15, 2012   IN the harrowing aftermath of the school shooting in Connecticut, one thought wells in my mind: Why can’t we regulate guns as seriously as we do cars? Damon Winter/The New York Times Nicholas D. Kristof Enlarge This Image Edel Rodriguez   The fundamental reason kids are dying in massacres like this one is not that we have lunatics or criminals — all countries have them — but that we suffer from a political failure to regulate guns. Children ages 5 to 14 in America are 13 times as likely to be murdered with guns as children in other industrialized countries, according to  David Hemenway , a public health specialist at Harvard who has written an excellent book on gun violence. So let’s treat f...

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=521103677908009&set=a.201235113228202.49929.100000251448867&type=1   Banksy FB Revolution  shared  Linda Rohdin 's  photo . He isn't wrong. ~ Belfast TURN OFF THE NEWS....... Morgan Freeman's brilliant take on what happened yesterday : "You want to know why. This may sound cynical, but here's why. It's because of the way the media reports it. Flip on the news and watch how we treat the Batman theater shooter and the Oregon mall shooter like celebrities. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris are household names, but do you know the name of a single *victim* of Columbine? Disturbed people who would otherwise just off themselves in their basements see the news and want to top it by doing something worse, and going out in a memorable way. Why a grade school? Why children? Because he'll be remembered as a horrible monster, instead of a sad nobody. CNN's article says that if the body ...

http://www.reprieve.org.uk/2012_12_14_frankieboyle_shakeraamer_to_sue_mi5_mi6 14 December 2012 Frankie Boyle announces that Shaker Aamer is to sue MI5 & MI6 for defamation Comedian Frankie Boyle today joined Reprieve to announce that the last remaining British resident in Guantanamo Bay is suing the intelligence services for defamation. Shaker Aamer has been held at Guantanamo without charge or trial for nearly 11 years. He has been cleared for release under both the Bush and Obama administrations and yet remains imprisoned. The UK government has repeatedly claimed that they want Shaker returned to the UK. Yet Shaker has told his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, that UK agencies are still telling lies about him – lies which prevent him from being released. Reprieve has finally been able to declassify enough material through the US censorship process to move forward on this litigation, and call the UK agents out on their defamation. The defamation consists ...

http://irishtraveller.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Dale-Farm-visit-report-September-2012-2.pdf TEXT ONLY Report by members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Gypsies, Roma and Travellers Visit to Dale Farm Travellers site: A year on from the eviction September 2012 Introduction On 7th September Lord Avebury and Andy Slaughter MP, both members of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Gypsies, Roma and Traveller’s (APPG), and Jane Connolly from the Irish Embassy1 visited the evicted residents of Dale Farm who continue to live on the entrance road to the unauthorised site. In advance of the visit, Lord Avebury contacted Cllr Tony Ball, Leader of Basildon Council and constituency MP John Baron who both agreed to meet APPG members to discuss the issues further. The visit was organised by the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain and attended by the British Red Cross and volunteers working closely with the Travellers. The visiting delegation would like to thank th...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20730627     Gary McKinnon will not face UK charges Computer hacker Gary McKinnon, who is wanted in the US, will not face charges in the UK, the Crown Prosecution Service has said. Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer QC announced the decision, some three months after Home Secretary Theresa May stopped the extradition. Mr McKinnon, 46, admits accessing US government computers but says he was looking for evidence of UFOs. He would have faced up to 60 years in prison if convicted in the US. Mr McKinnon, who had been fighting extradition since 2002, suffers from Asperger's syndrome. He was permitted to stay in the UK on human rights grounds after medical reports showed he was very likely to try to kill himself if extradited. Both Prime Minister David Cameron - who held talks on the case with US President Barack Obama - and his deputy, Nick Clegg, had previously condemned plans to send the Briton to the US. A US Depart...

URGENT: 2nd eviction of Dale Farm families - write to Basildon Council   Event for  Dale Farm Solidarity   11 January 2013  at 15:00  until  14 January 2013  at 17:00 At 7.30pm on the 18th December, the Development Control & Traffic Management Committee of Basildon Council is meeting to consider a further eviction of the Dale Farm families they made homeless last October. The families have been living on the roadside of Oak Lane, adjacent to their former home, with inadequate sanitation, electricity and running water, for the last year. This week this same Committee finally granted planning permission for a 15 pitch Traveller site in Basildon, after rejecting countless  applications by the Dale Farm families. There is a strong case that no eviction should go forward until the council has assessed the housing needs of the families and found culturally appropriate alternative accommodation for the...