Pension revolution - or not!

Follow @JohnPlatinumG George Osborne's latest budget allows pensioners with private annuities to take all their pension in a lump sum. We have been here before. What it amounts to is another attack on our social security system. They know what they are doing. Margaret Thatcher started this by bribing people with £200 (quite a lot of money then) out of the national pension pot to take out private schemes. Private schemes are there to make money for insurance companies (of which many Tory ministers are stakeholders) and not for the benefits of pensioners. Many took this bribe, and many private companies, after having taken huge profits and bonuses, declared themselves bankrupt.

What happened to those left in the lurch through these bankruptcies? They were incorporated back into the national pension scheme. What will happen to people who take a lump sum and squander it rather than take out an annuity? The same. We, quite rightly, do not want our old people to have no income and die in the streets. So they will be incorporated back into the state pension scheme, thus diluting its payout potential. It is a Tory policy. They think because they earn unimaginably high incomes, and will never be in need of a pension themselves, that small savers, small businesses and small investors are in the same position. This foolhardiness is encouraging debt. I fear for society, if it continues to exist in its current state, twenty years from now.

What they are not telling you

Follow @JohnPlatinumG My latest article concentrates on what the mainstream media is not telling us about Ukraine. It began a few weeks back with a leak featuring Victoria Nuland who had declared the US hand by backing the fascist government that has taken over in Kiev. In a recording on which the press concentrated on Nuland's choice phrase "Fuck the EU" but missed out on a lot more important debate about what was proposed in another leaked call. That, and more, is covered in this video which I came across this morning from Storm Clouds Gathering. It shows that the US think Klitschko is too stupid to have a deputy prime-minister role, while the Svoboda fascist, anti-semitic and xenophobic godfather, Oleh Tyannybok, has also got to keep a low profile according to Nuland, the voice of America, whereas Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whose charity pages are no longer available on the web, can be the front man of the new fascist Ukraine. The analysis is spot on.

People have got to start asking themselves why they have not seen any of this on mainstream television or in the press. The truth is the media, including the press, are owned by Neocon/Zionists who have an agenda. You may think you are getting balanced news but you're not. If you care for future generations and planet earth the time has come to wake up and take action. Spread the word.

Moazzam Begg arrested

Follow @JohnPlatinumG My computer's down. I'm in the library. Very important. Moazzam Begg has been arrested. The security services and special branch have too much power especially since the introduction of the anti terrorism acts. Good people are treated as second class citizens. I suspect there might be terms in his release not to talk about the torture in Guantanamo and Bagram. I know they took his passport off him last time he went abroad. Anybody with a brain should realise this is trumped up.  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-26335261

Please Like this page to get Moazzam Begg released.

Get the protection you deserve

Follow @JohnPlatinumG In this age of whistle-blowing this blog, as has been seen, is for it. With thanks to Edward Snowden, Chelsea (Bradley) Manning, Julian Assange, Craig Murray and all the other whistle-blowers who have helped try to make the planet a better, freer place. All this is in the face of governments, especially the USA, which puts the old Soviet bureaucratic information gathering in the shade. Uncle Sam has become the nosy grandparent who opens other people's mail because through US actions this once great nation has alienated itself. Nobody takes it seriously any more. Nobody writes to Uncle Sam any more. Nobody gets an answer. It has no life of its own with its incessant wars and bankrupt economy so it steals your life.

Get the protection you deserve

The US is disgusting thinking itself the policeman of the world. Its spying organisation, the NSA, is an unthinkable encroachment into the privacy of us all. Next Tuesday sees the rest of the world fighting back. If you believe in freedom, and you have a website, register it with this protest which already has nearly 4,500 websites on board.

Platitudes and continual torture

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I have written David Cameron an open letter published today in News Junkie Post about the continual incarceration of Shaker Aamer. Perhaps somebody might show Cameron the letter. In the past I have written directly to Downing Street but do not want to receive yet another of these

David Cameron and William Hague make noises as though they would like to see Shaker Aamer back in England reunited with his family, but they don’t really. Either that or the special relationship between the US and UK is so totally one-sided it is laughable. We went into an illegal war in support of US ambitions to steal natural resources in the Middle East. We have set up new anti-terrorism laws which militate against Muslims and have obviated a basic canon of English law: habeas corpus. We extradite UK citizens to a country currently with the worst human rights’ record on the planet. Yet we get nothing in return.

A fortnight ago, to mark the twelve years existence of that abominable wart on the face of the planet called Guantanamo Bay I went to a meeting in Birmingham at which was shown Guantanamo Boy, a disturbing documentary which follows the four-day interrogation of a young Canadian. Discussing the film was Moazzam Begg, a close friend of Shaker’s and a former internee of Guantanamo himself, and Dr David Nicolls, a medical doctor who has long opposed the Guantanamo concentration camp. No normal person would believe that in the 21^st century man could be so cruel to his fellow man. Moazzam, an articulate young man, has recently had his passport withdrawn by the FCO. The Home Secretary believes a UK passport is a privilege.

Photo: Robert Brenchley

Theresa May has an obsession against Muslims, immigration and free movement, unless you are rich. She has used the anti-terrorism laws in her perpetual war against Islam to see good people imprisoned on flimsy or no evidence. She does not care. She brags about these successes as she sees them at the Tory party conference. She has no conscience. She has no children. Her surrogate child is hatred, mostly hatred against Muslims, but also against anyone who does not fit into her England for the English stereotype. You know what to do at the next election.

Sweden realises its big mistake over Assange

Follow @JohnPlatinumG The ratings of Prime Minister Reinfeldt of Sweden are abysmally low. He is advised by Karl Rove, the man who rigged the US election of warmonger George W. Bush. You may recall Bush actually lost but new computer technology introduced by Rove put a few hundred thousand votes into the Bush ballot box and the wrong man was elected. If the devious Rove cannot save Reinfeldt an interesting situation arises.

All the prosecution team in the Assange case belong to the same party. A new government, one not so partial to dollar diplomacy, might look at the case again, and in a totally different light. My News Junkie Post article published yesterday takes a look at changing opinion in Sweden. Former prosecution lawyer, Rolf Hillegren, is clear that Julian Assange has no case to answer

Who killed Bernt Carlsson and 269 other people from the Lockerbie mid-air explosion aboard Pan Am flight 103?

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Abdelbaset al-Megrahi died from prostate cancer on 20 May 2012. He had wrongly been convicted of being responsible for planting the bomb that caused the mid-air destruction of Pan Am flight 103, the wreckage of which plunged into the Scottish town of Lockerbie. Including flight staff, and residents of Lockerbie, 270 people died from this act of sabotage on 21 December 1988. Al-Megrahi was convicted alone of having committed this crime. The only witness against al-Megrahi was a Maltese shopkeeper, Tony Gauci, who failed to identify al-Megrahi as a suspected customer, and was later, it is said, paid 2 million dollars by the US to keep his mouth shut. Gauci’s first statement was allegedly changed and Megrahi’s defence team were not allowed to see it together with other key evidence which would undoubtedly have exonerated their client. Instead he spent years in prison. Anybody doubting al-Megrahi’s innocence only needs to read chapter 4 of Francis A. Boyle’s “Destroying Libya and World Order (2013). Boyle is an international law lecturer at the University of Illinois. 

After al-Megrahi’s death Prime Minister David Cameron, to whom I would recommend the above cited book, was asked if there could now be a full public inquiry into the sabotage of Pan Am flight 103. Not only did Cameron refuse to consider an inquiry he got the endorsement of Ed Miliband, leader of the opposition − if the Labour Party can be called an opposition any more. He also said that in his opinion al-Megrahi should have remained in prison and not been released on compassionate grounds. Although Conservatives are not noted for compassion, Cameron might have very sound other reasons not to want an inquiry. UK prime ministers who have refused requests from bereaved families for a full public inquiry into the Lockerbie disaster are Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair. That is all of the UK prime ministers from the time of the Lockerbie disaster. Why? 

On board Pan Am flight 103 was the Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations and UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson. He was by far the most likely assassination target and if he was that target unfortunately all the other passengers became victims of the phrase so glibly used today in untargeted deaths: ‘collateral damage’. There was extremely big money at stake and Carlsson, a fearless man, hinted in Granada TV’s ‘World In Action’ documentary ‘The Case of the Disappearing Diamonds’ he was about to expose those corporations exploiting minerals, and miners, in Namibia as Namibia was due to be granted its independence. These companies included De Beers, the company which relieved Namibia of perhaps as much of its precious gemstones as the British Empire extracted from India. Another of the UN commission’s target companies was the Rössing Uranium Mine, also in Namibia.  Mention of the Rössing Uranium Mine might jog David Cameron’s memory, since it could ultimately prove to be his undoing. Three months after the Lockerbie bombing the current PM escorted the Prime Minister of the day, Margaret Thatcher, on a visit to this Namibian mine, a visit which filled Mrs Thatcher with immense pride that she had been born British.  Cameron was a Conservative Party researcher at the time but it is quite clear that he was being groomed as a potential future prime minister when Margaret Thatcher’s time at the helm came to an end. URENCO, a joint British/Dutch/West German-owned uranium-enrichment company, was exporting uranium ore from the Rössing mine, but shady manifests made it difficult to trace where the uranium they purchased was coming  from, and URENCO claimed it did not know from where it got its uranium, so when court proceedings were started by the United Nations Council for Namibia (UNCN) in 1985 it took 15 months to get to court and in July 1987 the United Nations finally began action against URENCO.  There is no logical reason but the UN case against URENCO was dropped after Carlsson was murdered on Pan Am flight 103 and has never been restarted. 

In April 2013, David Cameron announced that the UK would be selling off its interest in URENCO. The UK share amounts to a third. Though the price of uranium is falling on world markets it is thought this privatisation might also serve the dual purpose of covering up the misappropriations and illegal activities that Bernt Carlsson had discovered and was presenting to court on behalf of the UN at the time of his murder.  No wonder David Cameron wanted Abdelbaset al-Megrahi to take the blame for this act of sabotage. Cameron must be concerned in case some doughty investigative journalist has the courage of Bernt Carlsson to reveal just what the Lockerbie bombing was all about. Abdelbaset al-Megrahi had nothing to do with the Lockerbie bombing except it took away the last years of his life. 

Prof. Francis Boyle says it was clear that the United States and United Kingdom did not want the trial that convicted Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and acquitted his co-accused, Lamin Khalifah Fhimah, to take place in a neutral country “because they had no evidence that would stand up in a neutral court of law” (119). Instead it was investigated by Scottish Police, the CIA and FBI, who hardly looked into the possibility that Bernt Carlsson might have been the target, and the excuse for a trial took place in Holland overseen by Scottish Judges while the prosecution case was presented by Scottish prosecutors on the advice of Scottish Police, the FBI and CIA.   

As Paul Foot pointed out in 2004, the year Foot died, to have released Lamin Khalifah Fhimah and to have convicted Abdelbaset al-Megrahi when the prosecution case rested on the joint activities of the two men to blow up Pan Am flight 103, was ludicrous. Gareth Peirce, who John Pilger has described as the best human rights’ lawyer in England, totally dismantled the Scottish prosecution case in 2010 in the London Review of Books. The only way the families of victims of Pan Am 103 will get justice is through an independent public inquiry. Every time a public inquiry is mentioned, as Gareth Peirce pointed out three years ago, some high-ranking politician blows his top. Huge amounts of money were paid to a prosecution witness (Tony Gauci) at the trial of al-Megrahi. Paul Foot mentioned three prime ministers who refused the families’ requests for public inquiries. David Cameron, after the death of al-Megrahi, when asked if there could now be a public inquiry into the Lockerbie sabotage, was content for an innocent man to have his life wasted in prison. He was supported by Ed Miliband. Dr Hans Koechler, an international observer at the Lockerbie trial wrote to Miliband’s brother David in 2008 about the delaying tactics. There is no public inquiry because the governments of the United Kingdom and United States know more about the murder of a good man, Bernt Carlsson, than they are prepared to admit.