Cameron On Cannabis Part 8
Mr Cameron, It’s You Who Needs Education About Cannabis (Part 1)
Don’t Let Cameron Get Away With His Untruths About Cannabis. Write A Letter! (Part 2)
I wrote to Mr Cameron again today.
Dear Mr Cameron,
It is now more than six months since you spoke untruths about cannabis during your YouTube Al Jazeera interview. You have taken no steps at all to correct these. This, from the leader of Britain, is as much evidence of a moral decline as any thieving rioter, greedy banker or cheating MP. Are you in the business of misinformation and propaganda or of truth?
On behalf of the millions of people who use cannabis in Britain, I have written to you on 26th February, 9th and 16th March, 5th and 26th April and 4th July 2011. In response, all I have received are blandishments and a note that my correspondence is “under consideration”.
This year I have made around 30 Press Complaints Commission complaints and two to the Office of Judicial Complaints, all concerning falsehood and untruths about cannabis. I can call newspaper editors to account, even judges but for you, our prime minister, it seems there is no accountability at all.
That the words you spoke were false, there is no doubt. I have already provided you with scientific evidence that is absolute proof of this. Cannabis is not “incredibly damaging”, nor “very, very toxic”. There is only a tiny risk of mental health problems, much less than alcohol, tobacco or even energy drinks. It is nonsense to say that scientific and medical authorities are “free to make independent determinations” about medicinal use. The Home Office is engaged in a cruel and brutal campaign to deny medicine to those who need it unless it comes from its partner and unlawful monopoly producer GW Pharmaceuticals. The Department of Health refuses even to discuss the matter and GPs are warned not to prescribe medicinal cannabis in blatant suppression of their prescribing rights.
You can continue in a Colonel Gaddafi style denial of the truth but neither I, nor the members of CLEAR, nor the millions of responsible and respectable citizens who use cannabis will let you get away with it.
Will you please now deal with this issue in the honourable and honest way that we are entitled to expect?
Yours sincerely,
Peter Reynolds
Friday, 2 September 2011
Cameron On Cannabis Part 8 | CLEAR
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Hospitals in Greater Manchester to treat patients with cannabis | Manchester Evening News - menmedia.co.uk
Hospitals in Greater Manchester to treat patients with cannabis
September 02, 2011
Hospital doctors are to treat patients with cannabis in a world first for Greater Manchester.
Experts believe the drug can relieve pain by numbing muscles – and say it does not give users a 'high'.
It is the first time the drug has been used in a hospital anywhere in the world
Patients at North Manchester General and Fairfield in Bury have been prescribed Sativex – a medication derived from marijuana plants. They will spray the medication under their tongue up to ten times a day.
People who are terminally ill with cancer will intiially take part in the trial but if successful, its use could be extended across the country and used as a painkiller for other conditions. Eight people have already been signed up, and 32 others will be recruited over the next two years.
The drug has been available on prescription in Britain as a treatment for Multiple Sclerosis since last summer – but it has not been used in hospitals before.
Sam Jole, senior research nurse at Pennine, the trust which runs North Manchester and Fairfield, has been involved in setting up the trials and identifying, recruiting and monitoring patients.
He said: “Research in palliative care, especially looking at new drug treatments is rare.
”The majority of cancer research is focused on curing disease. Palliative care is an under-researched medical speciality and the studies are genuinely ground-breaking. I’ve been a research nurse for years and have never come across anything like it.
“It is very important to point out that patients using the spray do not experience the euphoria associated with the illegal recreational use of cannabis. It has passed strict tests for quality, safety and efficacy and doctors are already prescribing it for Multiple Sclerosis patients."
Patients involved in the study will visit either North Manchester or Fairfield General for check-ups four times over a five-week period.
They will also be required to to report their pain scores and usage of painkillers. Every evening over the phone.
Around half of them will be prescribed the active drug and the rest will receive a placebo.
The treatment was the world's first cannabis medicine to win regulatory clearance when it was approved in Canada in 2005. It was approved for use in Britain last June.
The drug, created by GW Pharmaceuticals, is made from two cannabinoid substances found in the marijuana plant, THC and CBD. THC produces a high, but CBD counteracts it, and because Sativex is an oral spray, the drug is absorbed more slowly than if it was smoked so scientists say it is impossible to 'get high' from the treatment.
Dr Iain Lawrie, consultant and honorary clinical senior lecturer in palliative medicine at North Manchester General Hospital, said: “This study is an exciting development in the field of cancer pain management. Initial clinical observations suggest that Sativex will have an important role to play in this complex area of palliative care.”
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Law Management: Opinion: Income inequality in New Zealand
Opinion: Income inequality in New Zealand
Article from- http://www.interest.co.nz/
Posted in Opinion December 5, 2010 - 01:41pm, Neville Bennett
By Neville Bennett
'No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable,' said Adam Smith.Some claim that there are no poor and miserable people in New Zealand. There could be an exception, it is allowed, for derelicts whose vices and sloth have smitten them. But anyone with any “go’ can become prosperous.
I would not put the issue in stark black and white terms.
I would concede that we have a welfare state that has done a good job in providing good providing accessible education, free health (not dental) services, state housing, old-age pensions and social welfare benefits. These have resulted in a minimum standard of living well above the desperate conditions that might be seen elsewhere.
I want to retain this system and regret that a culture has arisen that is indifferent to the growing disparities between rich and poor, but admires the banking elite and the unfettered operation of markets, sneers at the public sector, is unconcerned about sustainability, and embraces endless expansion.I believe in efficiency and equity, and prefer that NZ follows models such as Japan and the Nordic counties which enjoy much higher levels of education, income, equality, health and welfare.
It is appalling that New Zealand has slipped down the prosperity ladder.
Obviously there are other faults with our economy, especially a poor export performance.While we were leaders in per capita income in the nineteenth century, and even in the 1950’s, we are #22 now in the 30 member OECD. As late as 1970 we were ninth. We were also more egalitarian in the 1970’s, but I would be hesitant to claim any causal link between our growing wealth/income disparities and declining prosperity versus other countries.I raise the disparity of wealth and income as an issue because I believe we cannot become really prosperous until that disparity is redressed.
One argument is that our children must get meaningful opportunity.
At present around 20% of children endure a degree of hardship. The Ministry of Social Development admits:
New Zealand’s children suffer not only a higher rate of hardship than other New Zealanders, but a greater share of New Zealand’s children face hardship than in many other countries. The comparison to other countries shows that New Zealand is unusual in choosing to impose such a burden on the youngest segment of the population.It does not make sense to allow our next generation to be impaired. The nature of work means that poorly educated and trained people have difficulty in earning a high market income.We need this, especially as our demographic situation means implies a low ratio of workforce-to-retirees.
Our future workforce will have to be incredibly productive in order to meet their own needs of education and training, service their student debt, save for their housing and transport, and support themselves despite rising taxation to meet accumulated state debt and increased expenditure on health and superannuation.Inequality
I have already established in Part 1 of this series that wealth distribution in NZ is much skewed. I have found more recent data since my article which indicates that the bottom 30% have negligible wealth, the bottom 70% owns only 20% of national wealth. The top 20% owns 70% of our wealth, and only the top 10% has significant assets in investment property, farms, business and financial assets, and trusts.Market income increased for high deciles 1987-1997. Since the 1980’s there has been a trend to pay top managers more. In 1968 the CEO of General Motors’s pay package was 66 times the average GM worker. The CEO of Walmart now earns 900 times the average employee pay. In NZ, the CEO of Westpac gets $5.6 million, about 140 times average pay of $40,000, or 110 times average pay of $50,000. Click onthis link to see a chart of wage and salaries in NZ.
That chart also shows most market income is in the $30,000 to $60,000 range. About 34% of market income is earned by the top 10%, the bottom 30% get 5%. The top 3% pay 26% of income tax, the top 9% pay 42% of income tax.
Wages are rising for high-income earners but the unskilled are going backwards, even though many are in firms which are raising productivity.The Employers and Manufacturers report that employees have received an average of 3% this year, but workers in unskilled jobs averages a 0.1% decline in pay this year. Pay rates dropped for a quarter of the 215 job types in the survey. These workers were not suffering pay cuts but new entrants were offered lower rates.
The measure used for income internationally is the Gini coefficient. NZ is the seventh most unequal in the OECD (our score is 34). This is a higher score than Australia, and puts us in company with the US, Portugal, Turkey and Mexico. We are a world apart from the Nordics and Japan. This link to the NZ Institute gives excellent information on the Gini and graphics showing NZ low relative rating.
The Consequences - Hardship
Hardship is defined by a specific set of deprivations, in which the household is forced to forego goods that are considered required for a basic or minimal acceptable lifestyle.
For New Zealand these include the ability to keep a home adequately warm; a washing machine; a meal with meat, fish or chicken every second day; a phone; a colour television; a private car; one week’s annual holiday; the ability to pay mortgage, rent and utilities on time; and the ability to face unexpected expenses of $1,500.
The age group with the highest incidence of hardship is children, and the age group with the lowest incidence of hardship is those over 65.
One aspect of hardship is inadequate housing. Housing costs have greatly increased for most NZ groups but especially the poor. 17% of children live in crowded conditions nationally, 25% in Manukau. Crowding helps disease: we have a disgracefully high level of meningococcal disease which is a Third-world disease.
The Consequences - Disadvantage
In the UK and US research shows that social mobility is low. The poor stay poor. This may be the case in NZ now, although it was not in the 1950’s and ‘60’s.Those unable to escape low incomes are more subject to ill-health, missed educational opportunities, and depression (with some symptoms of alcohol abuse, obesity, drug abuse and minor criminality). The unemployed and under-employment lose skills and suffer anxiety and stress.
Inequality is associated with crime. NZ has the second highest rate of prison sentences in the world. It has one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy. Our health outcomes are quite good unlike the USA which, despite massive spending, has a life expectancy just above Bosnia and slightly better than Albania. But infant mortality in NZ used to be similar to Denmark but is now twice as high.
Inequality is corrosive. Competition for status and goods increases, people feel a sense of superiority or inferiority because of their possessions, some harden their attitudes to the less well-off and the pathologies of disadvantage flourish.
--------------------------------
* Neville Bennett was a long-time Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Canterbury, where he taught since 1971. His focus is economic history and markets. He is also a columnist for the NBR.
neville@bennetteconomics.comhttp://www.interest.co.nz/opinion/51555/opinion-income-inequality-new-zealand
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"Saya Tidak Bersalah" (I'm Not Guilty) one of Tara Hack's newest singles has been receiving a great deal of attention and international airplay. The song is spreading awareness about Schapelle Corby, an Australian Woman who is wrongfully imprisoned in Indonesia.
When asked about her involvement with the cause Hack said, as quoted by The Sydney Morning Herald, "I hope that in even the smallest way this song helps to bring awareness to Schapelle's horrific situation, I hope it is a tiny step to give Schapelle back the voice that was so cruelly and unjustly stripped from her."
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Tara Hack: Im Not Guilty. Free Schapelle Corby | Marijuana Crimes
Tara Hack: Im Not Guilty. Free Schapelle Corby
This beautiful song tells the true story of Schapelle Corby, an innocent suffering cruelty and abject misery in the hell of an Indonesian prison cell. This outstanding video follows Tara around New York, as she campaigns tirelessly, and includes support messages from dozens of real people in real places across the globe: California, Preston UK, New Orleans, Adelaide (Australia), New Zealand, Ohio, Germany, Virginia, Texas, Macclesfield (UK), Perth (Australia), Tasmania, Dubai, and many many more, with the sequence ending in Canberra, home of the Australian government. Schapelle Corby suffered the most blatant and obvious of show trials for importation of marijuana. No ordinary trial, but one in which the judge refused to test the drugs for country of origin (if they were Indonesian she could not have imported them!), refused to fingerprint the drug bags, and then burned all this evidence so it could never be used to free her! This same judge admitted he had never acquitted anyone in over 500 drug cases! On a daily basis her legal and human rights were grotesquely abused: it is scarecely believable, but it happened. Even the president of Indonesia intervened, urging an example to be made for other Australians! She had no chance whatsoever. None. She was then (in 2005) sentenced to a brutal 20 years in the hell of a squalid and dangerous cell: more than murderers, rapists and terrorists often get. SHE IS STILL THERE NOW – SUFFERING. For the Australian government, after …
Schapelle Corby – Evidence which proves her innocence Part 8/8 | Marijuana Crimes
Schapelle Corby – Evidence which proves her innocence Part 8/8
Truth News Radio Australia’ welcomes Roy Reeves, a close friend of the Corby family, to discuss her case and the miscarriage of justice which now threatens Schapelles life. Schapelle Corby became a household name in Australia after her arrest in 2004 on charges of importing 4.2 Kg of marijuana into Bali. Her subsequent trial and guilty verdict were covered extensively in the news, and in 2005 there was a groundswell of support from all over Australia due to the inconsistencies in the evidence against her, the main one being that the street value of marijuana in Bali is roughly one eighth of the Australian value. Why would someone take enormous risks to import a drug into a foreign country for a massive loss? The weakness of the case against Schapelle was compounded by the fact that the Indonesian prosecutors could not offer a single piece of forensic evidence to support their case, despite repeated requests from Corbys defense team. The marijuana was not tested for its origin, finger prints were not taken and CCTV footage was mysteriously unavailable. The case against Schapelle was based exclusively on circumstantial evidence, bolstered by (disputed) claims that her behavior during the initial search demonstrated guilt. The final twist was a trial by media which occurred after Australian television program Today Tonight payed Jodie Power 0000 cash to air extremely damaging allegations about Schapelles sister Mercedes and the Corby family. In May 2008, a New South Wales …
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Skype now works with any home phone | Crave - CNET
Skype now works with any home phone
August 31, 2011 1:54 PM PDT
14 comments(Credit: Skype)
Skype just got so easy your great-grandmother could use it without having to know anything about a sound card or any other input/output doohickeys that are more convoluted than President Harding and his confounding Teapot Dome scandal! (Look it up, millennials...)
Actually, there is one doohickey, but once it's all hooked up it looks an awful lot like a regular old cordless phone--with VoIP hidden inside. (No need to tell great-grandma about that last part, it will only confuse her--apologies to all technologically astute great-grandmothers out there, BTW.) It's the Freetalk ConnectMe home phone adapter for Skype, which connects to any regular old home phone.
You'll need to connect your PC to set things up the first time, but after that, Skype says you'll just need to make sure your broadband connection and phone are hooked into the adapter. If you keep your landline, you'll want to hook that in too, because the adapter allows you to switch back and forth between Skype and a regular phone line.
"Our mission is to make Skype available everywhere so consumers can enjoy conversations whenever and wherever they are," Neil Stevens, Skype's vice president and general manager for product and marketing, said in a statement. "Now, using Skype at home is as simple as picking up a handset and dialing."
Of course, Skype notes that the home phone adapter is not a replacement for a landline and that emergency 911 calls are not available via Skype, but that doesn't change the fact that, uh, it's a nice replacement for a landline.
Also part of the announcement is a new Skype-enabled cordless phone from GE that includes all the functions mentioned above, with the added ability to be able to make free Skype-to-Skype calls directly from the handset. There are other Skype-enabled handsets out there on the market, but this is apparently the newest and perhaps the shiniest.
Skype's also offering a handful of bundle deals with calling credit for folks that buy either of the new products, with plenty of time to call up great-grammy and learn all about that Teapot Dome doohickey.
Check out the promo video from Skype below.
Crave freelancer Eric Mack is a writer and radio producer based somewhere high in the Rocky Mountains in a "one bar" service area (for both drinks and 3G). He has reported for NPR, Wired, and The New York Times and was previously an editor for AOL. He recently completed his first e-book on the Android OS. Eric is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CBS Interactive. E-mail Eric.
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Social networking in the not-so 'free world'
Social networking in the not-so 'free world'
PSL Editorial
August 30, 2011
The New York Police Department has announced the creation of a division that will focus on Facebook surveillance.In response to the youth rebellion in London’s poorest communities, Prime Minister David Cameron advanced a bold plan: restrict the use of Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry Messenger. Without clarifying how this would work, Cameron has said he is already discussing with British intelligence how to "stop people communicating via these websites and services," which "can also be used for evil."
Not to be outdone, thousands of miles away the Bay Area Rapid Transit system cut off cellphone service on Aug. 11 to thwart a planned protest against police brutality. BART Police killed a homeless man in July, just 18 months after having murdered Oscar Grant in cold blood. Because the protest was thought to be of a "flash mob" variety, requiring strict coordination via mobile devices, it appears that the government's brazen act of censorship succeeded in this instance. There's no doubt that local authorities will try the same thing in the future.
The hypocrisy of the U.S. and British governments will only be lost on those with the shortest of memories. Wasn't it only six months ago that these governments were formally condemning Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak—their long-time ally and puppet—for having restricted the use of the Internet? (It should be remembered that neither government ever cut aid to the Egyptian dictatorship, even at the height of the revolution.)
Wasn't it only two years ago that the House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the government of Iran for "suppression of independent electronic communication through interference with the Internet and cell phones?" Indeed, the U.S. State Department went so far as to urge Twitter to postpone a scheduled network upgrade that would have briefly put the service offline in Iran. The imperialists believed—rightly or wrongly--that Twitter was an essential tool in the hands of the "Green movement," which they hoped would overthrow the Iranian government that has long been a thorn in their side. Twitter complied (unofficially).
The imperialist governments' conception of "universal rights" is in fact highly conditional. If you are part of a rebellion that aligns with their strategic interests, the suspension of the free-flow of information is an abominable outrage, worthy of sanction and condemnation. If you are rebelling against brutality or injustice within Britain or the United States, you are simply, in the words of David Cameron, "plotting violence, disorder and criminality."
The U.S. government is a fan of Facebook and Twitter but only for its own purposes—not because it allows rapid communication among the population. CIA investment arm In-Q-Tel invested in Visible Technologies, which monitors millions of posts on social-networking Web sites. The largest military-industrial firms, from Boeing to Lockheed Martin, have diversified from weapons of war into the data-crunching business, helping the government sift through millions of pieces of data.
Department of Justice documents acquired last year via a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that federal agents are going undercover on social networking sites, using false identities to befriend suspects, "gain access to nonpublic info" and map their "social relationships/networks." No longer embarrassed about such flagrant violations of privacy, the New York Police Department announced this month the creation of a special social-networking "unit" that will operate under the Community Affairs Bureau.
The courts are no barrier to this non-stop assault on our privacy. Posts on social networking sites—from photos to one's interests—are routinely permitted as evidence introduced by law enforcement and prosecutors. As a sign of the times, the California Supreme Court decision ruled in January that the police can search the contents of your cell phone, without a warrant, if the phone is in your possession during a search. (You are not, however, required to give them your passcode if the phone is locked.) Considering how all these devices are linked to one's most personal documents, emails, and contact lists, law enforcement has essentially been given the green light to invade any last vestiges of privacy.
The capitalist class has no interest in stopping this trend. They profit from it. Far from friendly corporations, Facebook and Twitter of course comply with law enforcement. They have repeatedly re-written their privacy regulations to the point that you practically have none left; whatever you post belongs to them, and can be subpoenaed by the state without your knowledge. One can only imagine what sort of deals have been worked out behind closed doors with Facebook's face-recognition features, which identify you in a photo even if you have not been tagged.
There are people fighting back. The governments' attempts to restrict certain services in fact demonstrate how they can be used as effective organizing tools. There are legal organizations like the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund challenging the non-stop assault on civil liberties. There is the "hacktivist" group Anonymous, which has retaliated directly against those institutions that restrict the free flow of information, from BART to police agencies to the credit card companies that refused to allow donations to Wikileaks.
The constant invasions of privacy, and the restrictions on free speech, are not simply bad policy choices. They are an outgrowth of a social system where a tiny few rules and the vast majority have no power. In this context, those in power feel compelled to turn every advance in information technology into a means to further control and monitor the vast majority. This gives them an air of invincibility, but in reality it is a confirmation of their fear.
To liberate these technologies from such uses, therefore, we must fight to end the dictatorship of the small minority that controls our society. Like electricity and water, Internet access and social networking—as vital means of communication—are now public utilities that should be controlled by the people. That will require not just defensive battles to defend our privacy and free speech, but a movement with a forward-looking vision for a new type of society.
US court documents reveal inner workings of CIA renditions | Clare Algar | Comment is free | The Guardian
Until now, we have been limited to lists of suspicious aircraft and networks of flight routes pieced together painstakingly using information from everyone from plane spotters to the European parliament. They have given us the "where", but not the "how".
In that sense, this trove of information gives us an entirely new angle – we can now begin to comprehend the renditions programme in three, rather than two, dimensions.
The documents cast light not only on destinations and planes, but also on the inner workings of the programme: its financial and logistical dimensions.
They show how, in May 2002, contractors hired by the US government sought the use of a private Gulfstream jet for government missions. Richmor Aviation offered the N85VM, on the understanding that it should be in the air at any time given 12 hours' notice.
Over the next three years, this plane flew at least 55 missions for the US government, often to Guantánamo Bay, as well as to numerous destinations worldwide.
These destinations include places that have now been associated with the CIA's secret prison programme: Kabul, where the CIA ran the notorious "Salt Pit" prison; Bangkok, where Abu Zubaydah was first taken and used as a guinea pig for "enhanced interrogation techniques"; Rabat, where prisoners were kept incommunicado and tortured by Moroccan agents who passed information to the US and Britain; and Bucharest, one of the European secret jail sites.
While many of these itineraries had already come to light, the disclosures in this case add new dimensions to the existing evidence.
Page after page of invoices lay out the financial record of the operations, including catering bills, crew costs, flight planning charges, overflight permissions and other assorted mechanisms that made the programme as a whole possible.
Air travel is a complicated business: national aviation authorities need to know where in their airspace aircraft are likely to be in order to avoid collisions; trip planners need to keep them informed and liaise with the pilot and operating companies; communications services, hotel rooms and food all need to be paid for.
All these aspects, each with a price tag, are revealed in unprecedented detail. In a word, we can begin to understand the renditions programme as a business, with all that entails.
Most astonishingly, these documents are a matter of public record. They are not classed as sensitive, they are not confidential: anyone who wants a copy can order them and peruse them at leisure.
In 2007, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Reprieve brought a case against a trip planning company, Jeppesen, arguing that it had participated in arrangements for certain renditions flights.
The US government swiftly stepped in and shut the case down, on the basis that to argue it would reveal state secrets. The ACLU appealed to the supreme court, which in May 2011 declined to consider the case. In the same month, Richmor's litigation concluded, after unveiling this mass of documentation.
You have to ask yourself: if Richmor was allowed to bring its case in the open, why weren't Guantánamo detainees Binyam Mohamed and Bisher al-Rawi given their day in court? This case removes all doubt that what the CIA seeks to protect in renditions cases is not a genuine 'state secret' so much as its own prerogatives.