In The News

[Inigo Montoya]

US Senate report, declassified cables question results of CIA's interrogation of Hambali
The World Today
By Peter Lloyd


Top secret cables, now declassified, revealed the torture of Hambali began one month after his capture.

The senate report said he was taken to a secret location called COBALT. It is a notorious CIA site in Afghanistan known locally as the Salt Pit.

The report suggested Hambali was stripped naked, shackled and kept in the standing stress position to maximise sleep deprivation.

But did these methods get results? Not according to the majority of findings.

Results of Hambali interrogation questioned
"In late 2003 Hambali recanted most of the significant information he had provided to interrogators during the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques, recantations CIA officers assessed to be credible," it said.


AUDIO: CIA report reveals torture of Bali bombings mastermind(The World Today)


"He had provided the false information in an attempt to reduce the pressure on himself ... and to give an account that was consistent with what he assessed the questioners wanted to hear."

A cable by a CIA agent made this assessment: "After an Indonesian speaker was deployed to debrief Hambali, the debriefer got the distinct impression Hambali was just responding 'yes' in the typical Indonesian cultural manner when they do not comprehend a question."

That was all by November 2003, yet the CIA continued to claim a direct link between the stories Hambali told under torture and the cases they broke.

Frankly we stumbled onto Hambali. It wasn't police work. It wasn't good targetting. We stumbled over it and it yielded up Hambali.

Unnamed agency spy chief


One involved the break-up of an Al Qaeda cell in the Pakistani port city of Karachi.

Members of the group were mostly Malaysians planning to pilot planes into buildings in Los Angeles, the so-called second wave to follow 9/11.

The senate report said that spin was inaccurate. The source that revealed the Karachi cell was, it said, Hambali's brother, Gun Gun Ruswan Gunawan. He was arrested a month after his brother.

The capture of Hambali was one of the eight most frequently cited examples provided by the CIA as evidence for the effectiveness of its enhanced interrogation techniques.

Interrogation did not lead to breakthrough: report
One of the first men the agency tortured after 9/11 was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

According to the senate report, "in 18 separate documents provided to policymakers between 2003 and 2009, the CIA consistently asserted that 'after applying' the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed provided 'the crucial first link' that led to the capture of Hambali".

Inside the mind of a torturer

As the full extent of CIA torture is revealed, former US vice president Dick Cheney says he would do it over again. But what exactly is it that he is defending?


Instead, the senate report concluded the breakthrough came as a result of "signals intelligence, a CIA source, and Thai investigative activities in Thailand".

It added a quote from an unnamed agency spy chief that said: "Frankly, we stumbled onto Hambali. It wasn't police work. It wasn't good targetting. We stumbled over it and it yielded up Hambali."

There was a dissenting senate report, adding views of Republicans including intelligence committee vice chairman Saxby Chambliss.

They insisted the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed helped the CIA trace Hambali and foil another wave of 9/11-style attacks using hijacked planes flown into buildings in Los Angeles and across Europe.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was detained in March 2003, five months before Hambali was tracked down.

Under torture he was said to have revealed that he had sent Hambali $50,000 for the terrorist's next big operation.

It was thought to be a payment for the next spectacular suicide hijackings.

According to the dissenting report, Hambali admitted under torture that he sent his brother and a would-be hijacking team to Karachi because of its "proximity to Afghanistan and the availability of military-style training facilities there".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-...ions-results-of-hambali-interrogation/5957358

 

[Inigo Montoya]

This made me cry...
Eight years' jail for parents on alcohol and cannabis bender who locked up and starved 4yo son
By court reporter James Hancock


The parents of a four-year-old Adelaide boy have been jailed for eight years after locking him in his bedroom for 12 days and feeding him only yoghurt and jelly which they slid under the door.

The District Court heard the boy was just days away from death when he was discovered by chance in October last year, after his mother called police about domestic violence.

The boy's 24-year-old mother and 28-year-old father, who cannot be identified due to a suppression order, were on an alcohol and cannabis "bender" at the time and pleaded guilty to an aggravated charge of endangering the boy's life.

They used a series of cords and straps to tie the door to an adjoining door and occasionally slid yoghurt, custard or jelly under the door, but no water.

During sentencing submissions the court heard a police officer found the boy locked in his bedroom, naked, shivering and surrounded by rubbish and faeces.

In sentencing today Judge Paul Cuthbertson said it was likely the child would bear the emotional scars of their parenting for the rest of his life.

Most of the animal kingdom do a better job of looking after their offspring than you two did for your child.

District Court Judge Paul Cuthbertson


"Most of the animal kingdom do a better job of looking after their offspring than you two did for your child," he said.

"It is against the order of nature to treat any human being or any animal, let alone your own flesh and blood, in the manner that you treated [the boy].

"I do not know what damage of an emotional nature or indeed of a physical nature that [the boy] will carry with him for the rest of his life.

"It is highly likely that he will bear the emotional scars of your parenting."

Judge Cuthberston said even though the parents received money from the community, they did not spend it on looking after their little boy.

"Even though you received money from the community to look after yourselves and your child you thought more of your own individual pleasures and preoccupations and you abandoned your most sacred duties as mother and father," Judge Cuthbertson said.

"Your conduct to your child was a disgrace as you cheated on the public purse by pretending to live at different locations to get more money.

"You lead a life of debauchery."

Judge Cuthbertson set a non-parole period of six years.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-...ing-up-and-starving-four-year-old-son/5960080

 

[Inigo Montoya]

Attorney-General George Brandis surprised by run-in with 'terrorist' David Hicks at human rights awards night
By political reporter Tom Iggulden




"I was tortured for five-and-a-half years in Guantanamo Bay in the full knowledge of your party. What do you have to say?" Mr Hicks said.

Senator Brandis said he was not initially aware of the heckler's identity.

"There was a random individual, who turned out to be a terrorist, yelling at the side of a room for about three seconds," he said, adding he never felt his personal safety was threatened.

"The closest I came to the man who was shouting, who turned out to be David Hicks, was at least 10 or 15 metres away."

The Attorney-General ended his speech and exited the stage during the outburst.

Mr Hicks called the senator a "coward" for failing to answer his questions.

What's your opinion on the war of words between the Federal Attorney-General and the former detainee?


Senator raises concerns over security 'breakdown'
Coalition Senator Ian Macdonald, a member of the senate committee hearing evidence from Senator Brandis, raised concerns over security.

'The CIA is lying'

An outgoing US senator has accused the CIA lying and covering up the scale of its covert operations and use of torture, North America correspondent Michael Vincent writes.


"I'm not blaming the [Australian Federal Police] for this, but this does seem to be a bit of a security breakdown," Senator Macdonald said.

Federal police confirmed Senator Brandis was provided bodyguards for the event, but they were not aware Mr Hicks had planned to attend.

Senator Brandis said it was up to the Human Rights Commission to explain how Mr Hicks gained access to the event, suggesting he may have come as a "plus one" with another guest.

"David Hicks, both in his book and also in his plea bargain document, confesses to acts which under Australian law... we define as terrorism offences," Senator Brandis told the committee.

Since his release from Guantanamo Bay, Mr Hicks has maintained his confession was obtained under duress.

Heckling was unplanned says lawyer
His lawyer, Stephen Kenny, told ABC News Breakfast the outburst was unplanned and that Mr Hicks was not aware Senator Brandis would be speaking at the event.

"I think David was surprised to find Minister Brandis there, talking about human rights, when he was a member of the Howard government who had so completely ignored David's human rights," Mr Kenny said.

Last night's dinner coincided with the release in Washington of a US congressional report into the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) history of torturing terrorist suspects.

The report revealed a vastly wider program of what the CIA has termed "enhanced interrogation techniques" during the period when Mr Hicks was detained in Guantanamo Bay.

"The Australian Government should be held to account how they allowed David Hicks to be treated," Mr Kenny said.

"Our real legal argument is that the offence to which he pleaded guilty to, simply does not exist in international or indeed Australian or American law."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-11/senator-george-brandis-surprised-by-run-in-with-hicks/5960122

 

[Inigo Montoya]

Did Scott Morrison Use Kids in Detention to Get a Bill Through the Senate?
December 11, 2014
by Lee Zachariah

Last week, the Senate passed the Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment bill, allowing it to sail confidently through the House of Representatives.

On the surface, the bill may seem like real progress: 108 children will be removed from detention and brought into the community, and the refugee intake will be increased from 13,750 to 18,750. This looked a lot like the Coalition finally softening its hardline stance against those who have come to Australia seeking refuge.

Dig a little deeper, and the story is quite different. That refugee intake number was actually lowered to 13,750 by the Coalition when they took office, and was originally 20,000. The new number is still less than it was just over a year ago.

The bill also did a number of other things: it removed the Australian government's obligation to comply with international law in regards to asylum seekers; it fast-tracked refugee status determinations, which will see some returned immediately to the country they were fleeing; it blocks asylum seekers' right to claim protection on national interest or character grounds without further explanation; it removes references to the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, redefining the word "refugee" in a way that no longer prohibits them from being returned to a place where they have been persecuted.

It basically grants an unprecedented amount of power to Immigration Minister Scott Morrison.

So why on Earth did the Senate pass it? The reason was this: Scott Morrison said that if the bill would passed, it would allow hundreds of children to be released from detention before Christmas. Senators torn between their dislike of the bill and their desire to see children removed from detention as soon as possible found themselves making a very difficult choice.

And in the end, it came down to one person.

The deciding vote belong to Senator Ricky Muir, who said he was "choosing between a bad decision and a worse decision". Not wanting to half-arse it, he went for the worse decision, clearly putting the full force of the mandate handed to him by the 0.51 percent of the electorate who voted for him. (Electoral reform is desperately needed in this country, but that's for another time.)

But what prompted Muir to go in this direction given his party, the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party (not a joke), has aims largely based around "developing innovative and inclusive motoring policy"? It seems Ricky might have received a few compelling phone calls.

According to Senator Sarah Hanson-Young's speech, children on Christmas Island were being instructed to phone Senator Ricky Muir and beg him to let them out. "If that is not treating the children as hostages," said Hanson-Young, "what is it?"

Muir's spokesman denies the Senator spoke to any of the children, but Muir admitted that he had spoken to "crying staff" from a Christmas Island detention centre.

But if Senator Hanson-Young's claims are true, it's important to note that having children phone a politician is not bad in and of itself. It can be a way of humanising an issue that seems largely abstract, and humanising issues for politicians is almost always a good thing. So what exactly makes this situation abhorrent?

If the directive to give the children Muir's number came from Morrison's office, as it seems incredibly likely it did (Morrison has not denied this claim), then it came from the man who already has the power to free them.

That fundamentally changes everything. It means it is not simply children calling a politician to convince them that a change in policy would free them. It is fare more akin to a terrorist getting their hostage to phone a list of demands through to their family, promising that they won't be released until the family gives into said demands.

This is pretty much the plot to the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, with Morrison as Scrooge, if instead of being visited by three ghosts, Scrooge had spent Christmas Eve imprisoning Tiny Tim and holding him to ransom until Bob Cratchit gave him what he wanted. Let's call it A Christmas Island Carol.

The word "terrorist" may sound like an inflammatory exaggeration, but this behaviour sure does sound like terrorism. It sounds enough like terrorism for us to research the exact definition of the term to see if it qualifies.

To determine if it is, we need a rigid definition of the word, and that's something we don't have. The international community has been struggling to define "terrorism" for a long time, and the last fourteen years have only made things more difficult. If anything, the War On An Abstract Concept has only made it more abstract.

But maybe the international definition doesn't matter. After all, Morrison is determined to habitually ignore what the international community has to say, so let's look at the Australian Government's own definition.

The Commonwealth Criminal Code Act of 1995 defines a terrorist act thusly:

"An act or threat, intended to advance a political, ideological or religious cause by coercing or intimidating an Australian or foreign government or the public. This action must cause serious harm to people or property, create a serious risk to the health and safety to the public, or seriously disrupt trade, critical infrastructure or electronic systems."

Let's parse this out. If the "act advancing a political cause" is Morrison's Migration Bill, the "intimidation" is guaranteeing that children will only be released from detention if the bill passes, and the "serious harm to people" is the asylum seekers either being murdered whilst in custody, dying from negligent behaviour, or being sent back to a country that may execute them, then it's not difficult to see how Scott Morrison qualifies.

Perhaps you think that this argument is a bit of a reach, and that Morrison's tactics were perfectly acceptable. Or that the people whose safety he was playing with don't qualify because they're not Australian citizens. Or that the safety of the Australian public would be at risk if we let undocumented refugees in. Perhaps you think that Morrison's actions don't technically make him a terrorist.

It hardly matters. If you've reached the stage where you must dig into detail and qualifiers in order to prove that you, a Minister representing Her Majesty's Government, are not technically a terrorist, then you're already too far down a path you should be absolutely nowhere near.

http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/did-...in-detention-to-get-a-bill-through-the-senate

 

[Shinigami]

This made me cry...
Eight years' jail for parents on alcohol and cannabis bender who locked up and starved 4yo son
By court reporter James Hancock


The parents of a four-year-old Adelaide boy have been jailed for eight years after locking him in his bedroom for 12 days and feeding him only yoghurt and jelly which they slid under the door.

The District Court heard the boy was just days away from death when he was discovered by chance in October last year, after his mother called police about domestic violence.

The boy's 24-year-old mother and 28-year-old father, who cannot be identified due to a suppression order, were on an alcohol and cannabis "bender" at the time and pleaded guilty to an aggravated charge of endangering the boy's life.

They used a series of cords and straps to tie the door to an adjoining door and occasionally slid yoghurt, custard or jelly under the door, but no water.

During sentencing submissions the court heard a police officer found the boy locked in his bedroom, naked, shivering and surrounded by rubbish and faeces.

In sentencing today Judge Paul Cuthbertson said it was likely the child would bear the emotional scars of their parenting for the rest of his life.

Most of the animal kingdom do a better job of looking after their offspring than you two did for your child.

District Court Judge Paul Cuthbertson


"Most of the animal kingdom do a better job of looking after their offspring than you two did for your child," he said.

"It is against the order of nature to treat any human being or any animal, let alone your own flesh and blood, in the manner that you treated [the boy].

"I do not know what damage of an emotional nature or indeed of a physical nature that [the boy] will carry with him for the rest of his life.

"It is highly likely that he will bear the emotional scars of your parenting."

Judge Cuthberston said even though the parents received money from the community, they did not spend it on looking after their little boy.

"Even though you received money from the community to look after yourselves and your child you thought more of your own individual pleasures and preoccupations and you abandoned your most sacred duties as mother and father," Judge Cuthbertson said.

"Your conduct to your child was a disgrace as you cheated on the public purse by pretending to live at different locations to get more money.

"You lead a life of debauchery."

Judge Cuthbertson set a non-parole period of six years.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-...ing-up-and-starving-four-year-old-son/5960080

Yeah, give me five minutes alone with these ferals...

 

[Shinigami]

@Inigo Montoya. Well? I'm waiting...where's today's News?

 

[Inigo Montoya]

@Inigo Montoya. Well? I'm waiting...where's today's News?

Patience.... it's coming....

 

[Inigo Montoya]

Nearly 300,000 Tons of Plastic is Floating in the World's Oceans

By Katherine Tweed

December 12, 2014 | 9:05 am
Plastic seems to be everywhere in our lives and, according to new research, it has also become a ubiquitous part of the world's oceans.

An international team of scientists joined forces to survey the expansive array of plastic items found afloat in the seas. What they found was everything from buoys and bags to polystyrene pieces and microplastics, totaling about 268,940 tons. The figure does not even include plastic that washes up on beaches and seashores, floats in the water column, or sinks down to the seabed.

Many researchers, journalists, and photographers have documented the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other waste islands, as well as the increasing amounts of microplastics in the water. But the weight and abundance of global ocean plastic pollution has been hard to quantify, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere.

"There's a vast amount of this stuff in a place it doesn't belong," Kara Lavender Law, principal investigator with Plastics at SEA, told VICE News.

The irony of petroleum-based plastics is they were designed to be long lasting but are now the de facto choice of disposable packaging. Every year, 280 million tons of plastic is produced, according to the nonprofit Algalita, a marine research institute.

'You are what you eat and what you eat is coming from an environment with trash floating in it.'
About half of the plastic produced makes its way to the landfill and less than 10 percent is recycled, according to the 5 Gyres Institute, a non-profit that works to eliminate plastic pollution. Some items are durable goods that are used for the long-term. But the rest finds its way into the environment as pollution — often ending up in the water.

The group of ocean researchers took 24 expeditions in international waters, costal regions, and enclosed seas, such as the Mediterranean, scouring the surface with nets or making visual estimates of the number and weight of plastic objects in the water. They then made models to estimate the total amount of plastic in the oceans. Their findings, which provide a baseline for future research, were published December 10 in PLOS ONE.

Although large items make up more of the weight of ocean trash, it is microplastics that truly plague the oceans. Microplastics, defined as 0.33 to 4.75 millimeters, comprised about 92 percent of the more than five trillion particles estimated in the study.

Model results for global count density in four size classes. Model prediction of global count density (pieces per square kilometer; see colorbar) for each of four size classes (0.33-1.00 mm, 1.01-4.75 mm, 4.76-200 mm, and >200 mm).

No part of the world's waters have been spared, but the North Pacific is the worst affected by plastic pollution. The North Pacific has a little more than a third of the total plastic found in the oceans. The PLOS ONE study's findings were similar to a previous study that found the total microplastic load of just the North Pacific was about 35,000 tons.

"That's encouraging that two very different approaches are coming up with a very similar number," Law told VICE News.

The figures are conservative, Captain Charles Moore, one of the paper's coauthors and founder of Algalita, told VICE News. For large floating debris, each piece was estimated to be about a third of an ounce. But Moore said about 90 percent of the pieces he's weighed for other studies was "way more" than that — and sometimes more than a pound. The modeling also took conservative estimates of the amount of plastic waste from urban areas that washes into the ocean.

In the Southern Hemisphere, the study found the Indian Ocean has more pieces of plastic than the South Atlantic and South Pacific oceans combined. What surprised the authors in this study was there is nearly as much total plastic in the Southern Hemisphere as there is in the Northern Hemisphere, even though there are far more sources of plastic pollution in the Northern Hemisphere. The Southern Hemisphere, which includes many rapidly developing nations, like Indonesia, are quickly catching up, said Moore.

But there is far less data for the Southern Hemisphere, and so the findings from this study should be interpreted with caution, said Law.

Model results for global weight density in four size classes. Model prediction of global weight density (pieces per square kilometer; see colorbar) for each of four size classes (0.33-1.00 mm, 1.01-4.75 mm, 4.76-200 mm, and >200 mm). The majority of global weight is from the largest size class.

Researchers know that larger pieces of plastic are broken down into increasingly smaller and smaller pieces. Some is broken down through UV degradation. Other plastic undergoes biodegradation, a process where microorganisms break down the chemicals that make up the plastic. But more often it is marine life - from fish to birds to mammals — that ingests the plastic trash that is everywhere.

For years consumers have been warned about specific plastic items harming charismatic ocean mammals, such as turtles, being caught in the plastic rings that hold six packs of soda or beer. But now researchers know that everything from small invertebrates to large predators are ingesting plastic. And scientists are increasingly asking how much of it is not just impacting aquatic life but also the seafood that finds its way to our plates.

"You are what you eat and what you eat is coming from an environment with trash floating in it," said Law. She cautioned that there is still a lot of research that needs to be done to better understand how plastics might transfer to animal tissue that animals eat. There is also research to better understand how plastics absorb other contaminants in the ocean, such as DDT, and whether that can transfer to the organisms that eat the plastic.

"There's a natural reason to be concerned," Law told VICE News.

Cruise ships legally dump massive amounts of shit into the oceans. Read more here.

So far, global estimates have only looked at the trash on the surface and not the total amount suspended in water or sitting on the bottom. Many types of plastic are certainly further down, either because they break down on the ocean's surface or because many types of plastic resins don't float at all. Moore told VICE News about one third of fish his expeditions have surveyed have ingested plastic.

To curb the amount of plastic that makes its way into the ocean, Moore said those that produce the plastic, half of which goes to packaging, need to be responsible for it.

"So, if you can't imagine vacuuming the planet from Tierra del Fuego to Northern Canada, just think: Cleaning the ocean would be much more difficult," Moore told VICE News. "Society needs to make things that don't require cleanup."

https://news.vice.com/article/nearly-300000-tons-of-plastic-is-floating-in-the-worlds-oceans

I've posted 4 videos Here that relate to this subject...

 

[Cowie]

See they're cleaning the Bondi Hoarders house again next year

 

[Inigo Montoya]

Bus driver allegedly bitten, spat on by passengers at Dandenong

Two women have allegedly punched and bit a bus driver after being asked to pay for their fare during a trip in Dandenong in Melbourne's south-east.

The women boarded route 893 bus at Dandenong Plaza just before 3:00pm AEDT on November 29 and did not pay their fare.

Driver Faavae Tuiloma said that when he asked them to swipe their Myki cards as the bus reached Dandenong Railway Station, the pair attacked him.

He said they hurled abuse at him before punching, biting and spitting at him. They then got off the bus.

Mr Tuiloma, 44, said their reaction was unexpected.



"She just punched me in the chest, I say 'That's it back off' ... I was looking at the lady, all of a sudden she ripped my shirt off and I just defend myself," he told reporters.

"When I came home that day my wife was so (shocked) when she saw me."

The father of five said he had forgiven his attackers.

"I hope you learn something from this and I hope you won't do it again," he said.

Two women, aged 40 and 22 from Noble Park, are being interviewed by Dandenong police.

Senior Constable Charith Pathirana from Dandenong Police, labelled the attack "a low act".

"The bus driver here, he's just doing his job to support his family and he wants to go home in one piece, like everyone," he said.

"There's no compromise, you jump on a bus you've got to pay your fare."

Topics: police, dandenong-3175, vic, melbourne-3000


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-...en-spat-on-by-passengers-at-dandenong/5962180

There is a video of the incident in the link.

 

[Inigo Montoya]

Queensland Bikies Lost Their High Court Challenge but Who Won?
December 12, 2014
by Lauren Gillin

Back in March, Hells Angel Stefan Kuczborski launched a High Court challenge to Queensland's Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment act (VLAD). More commonly known as the anti-bikie laws, Stefan's challenge was backed by a national coalition of motorcycle clubs.

Among other things, VLAD restricts the movements of bikies and associates by making it an offense for them to knowingly gather publicly in groups of more than two, as seen with the Yadina 5 in January this year. It also dictates harsher mandatory sentences for criminal offenses committed by bikies, than those committed by members of the general public.

VLAD came in response to growing concerns over outlaw motorcycle gangs around Australia but many observers see the laws as heavy handed and potentially unconstitutional. That hasn't stopped other states from expressing desires to enact similar laws at home. This last fact made the outcome of Stefan's court case a national story, with a win or a loss determining the spread of VLAD around the country.

Stefan lost. On the eve of the G20, while most reporters were looking elsewhere, the High Court came back with a decision, rejecting the constitutional challenge.

But was it a win for the Queensland government? Well not quite.

The High Court refused to consider the validity of the VLAD laws on the basis that Stefan had no standing to do so. Kuczborski had not been charged under the VLAD legislation and therefore had insufficient interest to challenge them. Standing, a legal term, is what is distinguishes public law from private law. It acts as a pest filter to prevent unaffected parties from challenging government decisions.

In other words, the debate over VLAD's constitutionality was never entered into.

Despite the challenge being rejected, organized crime expert, Associate Professor Mark Lauchs from the Queensland University of Technology, says the judgement actually puts the bikies in a plum position.

The VLAD legislation hinges on the declaration of 26 motorcycle clubs as criminal organisations. This means members can't meet in public or display their club colours. The declarations were made under the direction of the Queensland Attorney General, Jarrod Bleijie, his decisions allegedly backed by secret intelligence gathered by authorities.

Mark, who works out of QUT's School of Justice and Faculty of Law, told VICE the court's interpretation of the VLAD legislation effectively renders the Attorney General's declaration meaningless.

"The fact that Jarrod Bleijie declares an organisation to be a criminal organisation has no effect on anything unless someone's charged with an offence where the declaration will aggravate the offence."

What Mark is saying is this: if three Hells Angels meet in a pub, they can be arrested under VLAD's anti-association laws. For them to be jailed however, prosecutors will still have to prove each time that the Hells Angels is a criminal organisation, despite the Attorney General's claims that they are.

The High Court says courts have discretion to decide out if a club is criminal. Proving criminality is historically difficult. As Mark points out, "no one in the world has ever been able to go to court and prove that any bikie gang is a criminal organisation."

Criminal cases that could have been impacted by VLAD were put on hold pending the High Court challenge. Mark says the case to watch now will be the one against three Rebels members who allegedly bashed a motorcyclist for wearing a leather jacket without the club's permission. If found guilty they could theoretically attract an extra 10 years under the VLAD legislation. However, if they can prove they're not in a crime gang, they'll dodge the jackpotted sentence.

"They don't even have to go to the High Court over it," said Mark. "They can simply sit in the trial court and say 'I'm guilty' and when it comes to the sentencing their lawyers will get up and say 'well hang on that 10 years doesn't apply here because I can show that this isn't a criminal organisation.'"

The bikies for their part say they will launch another challenge but Mark says they don't really need to. If the government tries to take away the courts' discretion to decide on the criminality of a club, they run the risk of another challenge and the likelihood the High Court will deem the laws unconstitutional.

"I think they have already got themselves into a good position, (Campbell) Newman was shocked to see it went through without a change. I think they thought they were going to get 75 percent of it through and now they're going shit what are we going to do now."

However Attorney General Jarrod Bleijie told VICE he welcome the High Court's decision to uphold Queensland's anti-criminal gang laws.

"From day one, the Government has made it clear that these laws only target members of criminal organisations."

http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/queensland-bikies-lost-their-high-court-challenge-but-who-won

 

[Inigo Montoya]

What We Can Learn From Hicks vs. Brandis
December 12, 2014
by Girard Dorney

• 

David Hicks speaking in 2012. Photo by Adam Thomas.

On Wednesday, David Hicks, a former detainee of Guantanamo Bay, heckled Federal Attorney-General George Brandis at a Human Rights Award ceremony in Sydney. Brandis had concluded his address and was walking off the stage when Hicks stood up.

"My name is David Hicks", he yelled, "I was tortured for five-and-a-half years in Guantanamo Bay in the full knowledge of your party. What do you have to say?"

Brandis, who has been a Senator for Queensland since 16th May 2000 and was therefore a member of Federal Parliament throughout Hicks' detention, kept walking. If you watch the video, you won't see anything resembling a grand showdown. Because Hicks waited until the end of Brandis' address, the Attorney General was spared a difficult decision: whether to try to talk to the former inmate of Camp X-Ray and Camp Delta, or to talk over him.

So, after a brief interaction with the next person at the microphone – "You know who I am mate. We know each other. Make him answer my questions" – Hicks looks around, less confident than when he began, and concludes, "He's run away."





The encounter was odd, and contained enough pathos to warrant a news story. But without enough controversy or comment to get it through to a second day of coverage we were left with Brandis' evaluation, "There was a random individual who turned out to be a terrorist yelling at the side of a room for about three seconds." And theassessment of Stephen Kenny, Hicks' lawyer and the man who brought him along to the event, "It was quite a spontaneous thought by David," he said while adding, "The Australian Government should be held to account for how they allowed David Hicks to be treated."

Some publications came down wholly on Hicks' side, avoiding any reference to the circumstances that landed him in Guantanamo Bay, even going so far as to cheer him on.

But for the most part, coverage was limited to some facts about both men, a summation of what was captured on video, and a reference to the damning US Senate report aboutCIA interrogations post 9/11.

Merely detailing Hicks' detention at the hands of the US and his alleged torture doesn't capture what he has meant to Australia. In his lifetime, David Hicks has been perceived and portrayed as the embodiment of two different kinds of a national shame.

At this point in time, it's probably fair to say he is mostly identified with the years he spent in Guantanamo. In light of the weeks' revelations about the behaviour of the CIA, Hicks' allegations of torture have gained in credibility. And it's widely held that the legal




limbo he experienced in Guantanamo for much of the last decade amounted to unlawful captivity, and that we, the Australian people,
deserted him in pursuing our own notions and sense of justice because the Australian government wanted it that way. His experience is an argument against all claims that Australia protects its own.

But at some point in the early 2000s, Hicks was pilloried as an entirely different sort of disgrace. He was an Australian who saw the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001, and answered the call to arms of those who perpetrated it.

And, vaguely, these two discordant narratives persist. Perhaps some day the idea of Hicks as a terrorist will completely disappear, bit it seems unlikely. He has explained that his behaviour was ruled by youthful naiveté and a need to belong. But here are some facts he doesn't dispute: he met Osama Bin Laden on several occasions, and felt honoured; at one point he wrote letters to his family outlining how much he valued martyrdom and jihad; and when he was captured by the Northern Alliance he was aiding the Taliban in a military capacity.

These facts don't excuse his treatment, not even a little bit (though at one point it seemed as though they might), but they do render his reputation problematic. He is a symbol of Australia's involvement in the War on Terror. That an audience of nine hundred at the Sydney Writer's Festival once applauded him, and that Parliament recently passed a law that would likely have meant, had it been around at the turn of the century, that Hicks served a much longer term in an Adelaide jail, gives you an idea of how Australians struggle with this conflict.

George Brandis has also become something of a controversial figure. Not so much for his history with Hicks (Brandis only became a member of Cabinet toward the end of Hicks' detention, and then only as Minister for Arts and Sport) but for the agenda of the current government. He was the figurehead of a campaign to repeal or change Australia's Racial Discrimination Act, arguing that it interferes with the right to freedom of expression. And more recently, Brandis was behind the push for the implementation of a raft of anti-terror laws. Not just amendment of the law that would have applied to David Hicks, but the introduction of laws that critics have argued infringe on privacy rights,press freedom, and the ability for whistle-blowers to alert the public to government overreach.

What makes all of this fascinating is that it took place at the Human Rights Awards, a ceremony run by the Australian Human Rights Commission. The ceremony itself is seemingly worthwhile – certainly the winners seem worthy of praise – but some of the companies that sponsor its awards have faced persistent criticisms of their behaviour.

The lessons would seem to be that no human or human endeavour is perfect, or untainted by intimations of immoral behaviour. And that over many years a person will be many people – including, perhaps, a terrorist, a detainee abandoned by his government, and a heckler, easily ignored and quickly forgotten.

http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/what-we-can-learn-from-hicks-vs-brandis

 

[Inigo Montoya]

ASIA & PACIFIC

'It's a Time Bomb': How the Pacific is Being Fed to Death by Western Food
By Scott Mitchell

December 12, 2014 | 6:00 am
Food problems across the developing world are usually centered on scarcity, but in the Pacific, developing nations are facing the world's greatest epidemic of obesity and diabetes, thanks in large part to the types of food flooding in from wealthy nations.

"It's a time bomb," Ferdinand Strobel, a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) health specialist told VICE News from Suva, Fiji. "They have gone from a rural lifestyle, eating fish and vegetables to the very, very worst of Western lifestyles in one or two generations, and they are paying the price."

Obesity rates in Pacific islands nations are currently as high as 75 percent in countries like Nauru, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga and French Polynesia. The 10 fattest countries in the world are all in the Pacific, according to regional health experts, but the nations don't make the yearly "fattest nation" rankings because the data is compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which only includes developed nations. The Pacific is surveyed far less frequently.

The trans-Pacific partnership could 'establish a war of all against all'. Read more here.

Countries in the region also report that up to 47 percent of their populations suffer from diabetes. By comparison, the rate in the US is roughly 9 percent.

In Fiji, diabetes leads to an amputation every 12 hours, according to an Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade report. The country has a population just shy of 900,000, and diabetes constitutes a public health crisis of epidemic proportions.

"It's a huge problem, but also a bit of a silent one," said Strobel. "Half the people who are suffering are not diagnosed because they are only diagnosed very late when they are displaying the worst symptoms."

Many patients only come to hospital for amputations or after suffering eyesight loss — a late-stage symptom of diabetes — which "causes huge problems in terms of disability for the country," he said.

Strobel added that 80 percent of hospital beds in Fiji are filled by diabetics or people presenting debilitating symptoms from other non-communicable diseases — a range of diseases attributed to diet and lifestyle, including diabetes and obesity, that account for 75 percent of all deaths in the Pacific.

'There are by-products of the meat industry in the rich world that no one wants to consume in the rich nations, but there are people in this region who are willing to consume it.'
A report published this week by the UNDP, the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Commissioner examined the "links between trade liberalization, nutrition and public health in select Pacific Island Countries."

One case cited by the report looked at Samoa's attempt to ban the import of turkey tails, an off-cut meat imported to the country by US corporations that contains 40 to 45 percent fat.

Four thousand tons, or 20 kilos per person, of the product was being shipped to Samoa annually in 2007 when the country tried to ban the product over health concerns. US trade representatives complained about the ban, and when Samoa joined the World Trade Organization in 2011, the Pacific nation was forced to drop the ban.

"We live in an open market," said Strobel. "There are by-products of the meat industry in the rich world that no one wants to consume in the rich nations, but there are people in this region who are willing to consume it. In the free trade setup, these products find their way, through the market, to the poorer countries and people buy them."

Fair Trade found to be failing farm workers and the poor. Read more here.

This has led to the Pacific relying more heavily on imported food than any other region. Imports make up half of consumption. In that market, there's been no need to develop local agriculture to supply locals with fresh local food since decolonization. But issues with cheap imports don't stop there.

"The other problem is food standards," said Strobel. "These are developing countries that are not well equipped in this area."

"Products like turkey tails and mutton flaps that probably wouldn't be labeled as meat in our countries — that would say 'beware' on them — here they are labeled as meat and people put it in their food because it's cheap," he said.

Governments in the region, hamstrung by international trade regulations and a lack of expertise in public health management, have been unable to curb the problem, said Strobel. The situation in the Pacific goes to the very heart of development in the 21st century, he added.

"In a sense it is a symptom of a type of development that has gone on for the last hundred years," he said. "To right this wrong we have to look at a serious social transformation around the entire space of development, not only at the issue of healthcare."

Child workers are getting nicotine poisoning on US tobacco farms. Read more here.

Follow Scott Mitchell on Twitter: @s_mitchell

https://news.vice.com/article/its-a-time-bomb-how-the-pacific-is-being-fed-to-death-by-western-food

 

[Inigo Montoya]

easles: Hundreds in Perth could have been exposed to virus during man's contagious phase
By Pamela Medlen


Hundreds of West Australians could have been exposed to the measles virus after a Perth man contracted the disease while holidaying overseas.

The man came down with measles in Bali in late November.

The Health Department advises that measles is contagious for up to five days before a rash develops and four days following that.

Communicable Disease Control director Dr Paul Armstrong said it was extremely contagious.

"Even if people don't have direct contact with somebody and they're in a room with someone with measles and they don't have immunity to measles, then they are likely to get it," he said.

Most people in Australia are immune to measles due to vaccination.

"There are a group of people born after 1966 who haven't had two doses of measles-containing vaccine," Dr Armstrong said.

"They're the ones who aren't immune to measles and the ones we're particularly concerned about."

During the time the man was contagious he travelled through Perth's southern suburbs where he may have come into contact with hundreds of people.

Possible contact during contagious phase
The department has issued a list of dates and places the man was during the contagion phase:

• Wednesday December 3 around midday: Train from Murdoch to Bull Creek station and connecting bus from Bull Creek station to Fremantle
• Friday December 5 between 3.30 to 4am: Perth domestic airport (Virgin terminal)
• Friday December 5 from 10.30pm to closing: KFC on Canning Highway in Alfred Cove
• Saturday December 6 between 2.30 to 4.30pm: Fremantle Markets
• Sunday December 7 around lunchtime: Roj Kebab shop on Mends St, South Perth
• Tuesday December 9 around 8am: patients and visitors in the vicinity of the Emergency Department at St John of God Hospital in Murdoch

Dr Armstrong said it was important to be aware of the symptoms of measles and how to react.

"The symptoms of measles include first of all a sore throat and a cough, sore eyes, a runny nose and fever," he said.

"After a number of days they develop a rash which usually starts on the upper part of the body and extends more widely."

He said anyone developing symptoms should not turn up to an emergency department or doctor's surgery and risk infecting others.

"They should ring ahead and make sure they don't infect other people and special precautions can be put in place when they do turn up to the medical facility," Dr Armstrong said.

He said the people who had been exposed could develop symptoms for the next week to 10 days.

Locally acquired measles has been stamped out in WA but Dr Armstrong said there had been a three-fold increase in cases coming back from overseas this year.

Western Australia records an average of 12 cases per year, but this year 38 cases were diagnosed, possibly to do with an outbreak in the Philippines earlier this year.

It puts pressure on the Health Department, which must attempt to contact all of the people that came into contact with the carrier.

Dr Armstrong said it was a timely reminder for travellers to make sure they were vaccinated for measles.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-13/hundreds-could-have-been-exposed-to-measles/5964990

 

[Inigo Montoya]

Pseudoephedrine worth more than $13m found in crashed car in Sydney
Updated about 4 hours agoSat 13 Dec 2014, 12:04pm



Pseudoephedrine with a street value of more than $13 million has been found in the back of a car after an accident in Sydney's south.

Just before 7:30pm (AEDT) on Friday a car crashed into two parked cars at Bardwell Park and the driver ran from the scene.

Officers investigating the crash found ice chests and buckets filled with vacuum-sealed bags of white powder.

Police are still looking for the driver.

Inspector Gary Charlesworth from St George Local Area Command said police investigating the incident found 160 kilograms of white powder in the car.

"Within the vehicle there were two blue coloured eskies and six white plastic buckets containing vacuum-sealed bags of white powder," he said.

"They've been presumptively tested and the drug is pseudoephedrine.

"It's used in further processes to make what's commonly called speed or crystal methamphetamine."

He said police were continuing to investigate in relation to identifying the driver.

"One witness saw him leave the scene dressed in a grey hooded sweatshirt and black track pants," he said.

"It's a significant seizure in terms of obvious interdiction with a bigger criminal enterprise. It should make a dent in the local drug trade."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-...th-more-than-13m-found-in-crashed-car/5965260

HA! at the police thinking this will make a dent in the local drug trade... it's just the tip of a very big iceberg......

 

[Inigo Montoya]

WAR & CONFLICT

One of the First Victims of US Torture Is Now Missing in Afghanistan

By Alice Speri

December 14, 2014 | 3:00 am
On the same day a Senate committee released its report detailing a decade of abuse within the CIA's detention and interrogation program, a man cited in the report as one of the first people subjected to the agency's torture techniques was released from the detention center at Bagram Airfield, near Kabul, into Afghan custody.

Redha al-Najar, a Tunisian man identified by the CIA as a former bodyguard of Osama bin Laden, was handed over to the Afghans on Tuesday, but his whereabouts and condition remain unknown, one of his lawyers told VICE News.

Al-Najar, 49, who is described in the CIA report as "clearly a broken man" and "on the verge of complete breakdown," was never charged, was not a prisoner of war, and never had his day in court, his lawyer said — but the US government is scheduled to respond soon to ongoing litigation about his treatment in case that has now reached the Supreme Court.

"We found out that he'd been released the day after the Senate report was released and we were told he'd been released from Bagram to Afghan custody the day before," Caitlin Steinke, an attorney with the International Justice Network, told VICE News. "We don't think it was a coincidence."

"We think that the US government transferred him to the Afghans to be able to say, 'he's not our problem anymore, our hands are clean of this, he's no longer our responsibility,'" she added.

A Broken ManAl-Najar was seized from his home in Karachi, Pakistan in May 2002, the CIA report reveals. Steinke said unidentified agents seized him in front of his wife and child, and that he "was essentially disappeared." In 2003, he turned up at Bagram, which was controlled by the US military for more than a decade until it was handed over to Afghan authorities last March.

"The question has always been, where was he, during the year and a half between those two locations?" Steinke asked. "We have always believed that he was held in CIA black sites and we certainly believe that he was tortured there."

Excerpts of the redacted CIA Torture Report.

The report released earlier this week sheds some light on the mystery. The report describes al-Najar as the first detainee to be held at a location identified in the report as "Detention Site Cobalt." The report also says al-Najar was considered a "high priority [redacted] detainee," and describes "internal discussion at the CIA" regarding the enhanced interrogation techniques to which to he might be subjected.

The report says al-Najar was in CIA custody for at least 690 days.

A cable from July 16, 2002 suggested utilizing "Najar's fear for the well-being of his family to our benefit," and using "vague threats" to create a "mind virus" and force him to cooperate. The other tactics included using a hood, restraints, and music in order to subject him to "sleep deprivation through the use of round-the clock interrogations." Ten days later, officers that the report states had not been trained in the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques suggested keeping him in "isolation," using "sound disorientation techniques," and a "sense of time deprivation."

On that occasion, the CIA officers involved said they thought they had a "reasonable chance of breaking Najar" to extract intelligence on bin Laden and his family's whereabouts.

By September 2002, CIA interrogators described al-Najar as "broken" and "willing to do whatever the CIA officer asked." But the following November, again, other CIA officers described new plans to keep the detainee "in total darkness, lowering the quality of his food, keeping him at an uncomfortable temperature (cold), [playing music] 24 hours a day, and keeping him shackled and hooded."

On that occasion, they described al-Najar as having been left hanging — handcuffed from his wrists — for 22 hours a day for two consecutive days "in order to break his resistance." They also noted that he was wearing a diaper and had no access to toilet facilities.

Al-Najar's detention became "the model" for the treatment of other detainees at the same facility, the report notes.

The End of BagramThe International Justice Network took on al-Najar's case in 2008 after his family contacted the organization. The group sued the US government "with the purpose of having a court hear his case," his lawyer said.

"We wanted the US government to have to justify his detention because no charges had been brought against him and we wanted a court to step in and demand that the government explain why Redha has been detained and grant him the opportunity to defend himself," Steinke said.

It's unclear whether the Afghans have charged him or plan to charge him with anything, she added, calling the state of legal limbo a reason for concern, along with the fact that his lawyers have not yet been able to communicate with him.

"This entire process is so cloaked in secrecy because we still have no access to our client," Steinke explained. "This was denied by the US military while he was held at Bagram — all Bagram detainees were denied access to legal counsel."


Instead, the lawyers pieced their client's case together from accounts made to his family over sporadic phone calls and visits with the Red Cross — the only two forms of contact with the outside world allowed. They put the rest of the puzzle together through media reports and declassified documents.


"We know so little about what is going on in that detention facility," Steinke said, referring to Bagram. "We were getting all these pieces and putting together this puzzle to try to figure out what had happened to him."


That's not unusual. Procedures at Bagram have remained a mystery for years, with lawyers still not sure exactly about how many detainees were held there and who they were, It's also unclear if, when, and where some detainees were transferred.

All detainees at Bagram — non-Afghans who were captured by the US in various locations across the world — were supposed to be released, repatriated, moved to a third country, or handed over to Afghan custody by the end of the year, when the US military's jurisdiction over them expires.

The US Defense Department announced Thursday that all remaining detainees have been transferred and that Bagram's detention center was shut down.

"The Government of Afghanistan will be responsible for all detention facilities," starting on January 1, a spokesman with the US embassy in Kabul told Reuters on Thursday. The timing of the closure had to do with the deadline to end the detention program in Afghanistan this year, not to the Senate report, he added.

But some found the exact coincidence odd.

"We think the closure of Bagram and the transfer of the last detainees was definitely done at the exact same time that the senate report was released because it would be buried in the news," Steinke said. "The torture report would be what everybody is talking about and all of a sudden this detention center were people were held for over a decade without charge would sort of disappear."

And even with Bagram closed down, it's unclear where most detainees ended up. The International Justice Network, which, in addition to al-Najar, represents four other Bagram detainees — from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Jordan — said they only received confirmation that al-Najar's had been transferred, but they're not sure where he is.

More Torture "We have no idea where they are," Steinke said.



"For a few of them we greatly fear torture and even death at the hands of the government in their own countries if they are being forcibly repatriated," she added. "This idea that they would transfer out the remaining detainees without fulfilling their legal and ethical obligations to make sure that they are transferred to a safe country where they will not be tortured is really reprehensible."

Over the past few weeks, US officials have rushed to release the last detainees that have remained in their custody since last March. Many of them, mostly Pakistanis, were returned to their countries, including a top Taliban commander repatriated last week. One Russian detainee was moved to the United States earlier this fall. For others, last-minute arrangements remained unclear — with some even suggesting, as a last resort, the possibility of moving them to Guantanamo.

But the end of Bagram may not necessarily mark the end of detention and even abuse for some detainees tortured prior to their arrival at the prison — including those handed over to Afghan custody, like al-Najar.

While four of the CIA sites identified in the Senate report are in Afghanistan, the torture of detainees and prisoners of war was hardly a new phenomenon in the country.

......

 

[Inigo Montoya]

"After ending Taliban rule in 2001, the US used some of the very same abusive practices employed not only by the Taliban, but by the country's Soviet occupiers in the 1980s and feuding warlords in the 1990s," Patricia Gossman, a senior researcher on Afghanistan at Human Rights Watch, wrote in a post about the report. "While their scale of abuse far exceeded that of US forces, their practices — including beatings and the humiliation of detainees — were distressingly similar. From the perspective of many Afghans, the US was just repeating abusive practices of the past."

Nor is there any evidence those practices are over.

Since the US invasion, Afghanistan's government has repeatedly resisted calls by human rights groups for accountability and an end to abuses carried out by its own security forces, she added, and not a single member of the Afghan police or other security forces has been prosecuted for torture, despite its systematic use across Afghan detention centers.

"Given US unwillingness to prosecute torture by its own forces, the Hamid Karzai government doubtlessly felt no real pressure to see to it that its security forces were held to account," Gossman wrote, referring to the Afghan president at the helm of the country for the past decade, until this year. "Unfortunately, President Ghani will need to tackle torture without any helpful precedents from his predecessor or the US."

For al-Najar, who was in US custody for 13 years, the future remains uncertain.

"Our number one priority is making sure he is safe, that his arbitrary indefinite detention comes to an end," Steinke said. "And now that it's been revealed that he was very sadistically tortured, making sure that that never happens again to him, no matter whose custody he's in."


https://news.vice.com/article/one-of-the-first-victims-of-us-torture-is-now-missing-afghanistan

 

[Inigo Montoya]

Baby taken from Canberra home; ACT police search for boy's father
Updated about 2 hours agoSun 14 Dec 2014, 11:36am


A seven-week-old baby has been taken from a house at O'Malley in Canberra's south.

The baby boy was allegedly taken by his father Garry Gordon at 5:40am while he was being cared for by relatives.

Mr Gordon is described as 25 years old, 193 centimetres tall, heavy set, with short curly red hair and wearing a dark-coloured hooded jacket.

Police believe Mr Gordon may be driving a recently purchased white Mitsubishi Solara 2001 model with ACT plates YBR 67P.

He previously owned a 1993 grey Ford Falcon sedan with ACT number plates YEB 47J.

ACT police previously described the incident as an abduction, but have now said it is a "check welfare".

"The safety of the baby is our first priority," Superintendent Brett Kidner said.

"Garry, we urge you to contact us as soon as you can so that we know you and your baby are alright."

Anyone who sees Mr Gordon has been urged to call police immediately on 131 444.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-14/baby-taken-from-canberra-home/5965888

 

[pecan]

Five dead in Pennsylvania shooting:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/15/us/pennsylvania-shootings/index.html

 

[Tee]

Five dead in Pennsylvania shooting:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/15/us/pennsylvania-shootings/index.html

My favourite Forum Newsgirl?!