The Greens say the attorney general, George Brandis, needs to explain his decision to authorise raids by the intelligence services in the past 24 hours, branding his conduct analogous to the controversial Federal Bureau of Investigation chief, J Edgar Hoover.

Brandis on Tuesday approved warrants for agents of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) to raid the office of a Canberra lawyer, Bernard Collaery, who is at the centre of an espionage case involving Australia and East Timor in 2004.

The passport of a key witness and whistleblower in the case, a senior retired officer of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (Asis), was also confiscated during the raids. The former Asis official was detained and searched.

The attorney general has denied the raids were carried out with the intention of disrupting proceedings in the high-stakes espionage case about to get under way in The Hague.

The Greens moved in the Senate on Wednesday to suspend the standing orders in an effort to force the attorney general to make a comprehensive statement explaining why his conduct was not an abuse of executive power.

The Coalition rejected the suspension motion, arguing that national security matters needed to remain above partisanship.

Labor also rejected the motion, but Senate leader Penny Wong suggested that Brandis should make a statement to bring clarity to events of the past 24 hours, given they had attracted significant public interest.

This view was contradicted in the debate by the veteran Labor senator John Faulkner, who told the chamber that he wasn’t certain what Brandis could add, at least immediately, to a media statement issued on Tuesday night given his national security responsibilities and the protocols they entail.

Brandis could make a statement at any time and the Senate would give him leave. Compulsion was unhelpful, Faulkner reasoned during the suspension debate.

The South Australian independent senator Nick Xenophon backed the suspension motion but said he saw no bad faith on the part of Brandis. He branded the Greens’ comparison of the attorney general to J Edgar Hoover “unhelpful”.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/04/timor-leste-spy-brandis-likened-to-notorious-fbi-chief

I have it on good authority (Gus's own analysis) that:

The spying on the Indonesian President's phone had been ordered by the goons in Washington.

The failure of the operation was deliberate or at best a masterful cock up.

ASIO's graphic department only made the slide to show the CIA that attempts to spy had been made.

The sharing of "information" through the internet and networks leads to BIG holes in the bucket.

Good decent people are always swindled in these cases — and in general.

Lord Downer is in full breach of insider trading laws.

George Brandis is acting like a Nazi SS colonel.

Tony Abbott is an idiot.

Christopher Pyne should be sacked.

The Abbott government is a ratty cirkus full of nasty zombies...

 

Please — if you are decent folks from the rest of the world and see with astonishment the crap Australia does, don't blame us... Tony Abbott got elected PM by default with the overt support of a rabid Uncle Rupe. Most of the decent people in Australia had nothing to do with it. Like them, democracy was raped in the last elections and we beg forgiveness for the mess this Tony has created since... Presently he is not working at sorting out the mess he has created, but at protecting his arse by whatever full-frontal pedalling of lies he can concoct...

 

The Attorney-General George Brandis says the Australian people can’t be told why documents and equipment were seized by ASIO in The Hague on Tuesday. Distinguished former diplomat Dr Alison Broinowski says the secretive ‘Dark State’ of the intelligence services needs to be exposed to the light.

ATTORNEY-GENERAL GEORGE BRANDIS, and now the Prime Minister, say the Australian people can’t be told why documents and equipment were seized by ASIO on Tuesday, nor why a former ASIS operative was interrogated in Canberra. Senator Brandis’ reason is one of the oldest in the book — national security. Alexander Downer, who was Foreign Minister when Australia allegedly bugged East Timor’s cabinet room during oil and gas negotiations in 2004, won’t comment for the same reason: security

Many in Australia might not be much concerned about it, but there is a global struggle under way. It is about nothing less than the future of the world.

On one side of the divide are people who want no change in the way we use the earth’s resources, dispose of waste and reduce global warming, while on the other are people who are so concerned that they believe it’s already too late and we are doomed as a species, within this century.

On one side of the global divide are those who want economic growth and personal wealth at any price, while on the other are people who believe the capitalist system can be changed by nothing less than a revolution.

On one side are those who use their power to repress criticism and dissent, control information and deceive their fellow-citizens, while on the other are people who seek to increase transparency, freedom of expression and trust between and within nations.

On one side are people who support their leaders invading and occupying other countries, killing civilians ‒ including with drone strikes and chemical weapons ‒ and defying conventions on human rights, nuclear weapons, refugees and corruption, while on the other side are those who uphold international laws and principles.

On one side are people who approve the use of terrorist strategies and terrorist behaviour by their own governments against ‘terrorists’, while on the other side are people who see ‘terrorism’ as only the latest of a series of bogeys designed to keep them afraid and compliant.

On one side are people who advocate free expression and democracy, while on the other are people who are hunted and threatened for exposing governments which invigilate their own citizens and foreigners alike.

The only thing they have in common is they all use the internet.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/abbotts-dark-state-war-powers-invigilation-and-trust,5956

Please — if you are decent folks from the rest of the world and see with astonishment the crap Australia does, don't blame us... Tony Abbott got elected PM by default with the overt support of a rabid Uncle Rupe. Most of the decent people in Australia had nothing to do with it. Like them, democracy was raped in the last elections and we beg forgiveness for the mess this Tony has created since... Presently he is not working at sorting out the mess he has created, but at protecting his arse by whatever full-frontal pedalling of lies he can concoct...

 

Timor-Leste’s ambassador to Australia said his country was “deeply disappointed” Australian intelligence agencies had resorted to raids against the tiny nation’s lawyer and star witness in the international hearing of spying allegations and thought “fair-minded” Australians would reject the explanation given by the attorney-general, George Brandis, as ridiculous.

The Canberra lawyer Bernard Collaery, who is representing Timor-Leste in an international arbitration hearing in the Hague, has argued the raids were a deliberate effort by the Australian government to disrupt the proceedings, in which Timor-Leste alleges that in 2004 Australia improperly spied on the Timorese during negotiations on an oil and gas treaty worth billions of dollars in order to extract a commercial benefit.

Timor Leste’s prime minister, Xanana Gusmao, issued a statement on Wednesday calling on the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, to explain himself and guarantee the safety of the witness – a former senior Australian Security Intelligence Service (Asis) officer allegedly directly involved in the bugging of the Timorese cabinet office during the sensitive negotiations of the Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMAT) treaty.

"The actions taken by the Australian government are counterproductive and uncooperative," Mr Gusmao said. "Raiding the premises of a legal representative of Timor-Leste and taking such aggressive action against a key witness is unconscionable and unacceptable conduct. It is behaviour that is not worthy of a close friend and neighbour or of a great nation like Australia."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/04/timor-leste-spy-case-brandis-claims-ridiculous-says-ambassador

 

Snowden says spying worse than OrwellianBy Griff Witte, Thursday, December 26, 5:37 AM

LONDON — National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden invoked George Orwell and warned of the dangers of unchecked government surveillance Wednesday in a televised Christmas message to the British people that reflected his growing willingness to take a public role in the debate he ignited.

Speaking directly into the camera from Moscow, where he has taken refuge after leaking vast troves of information on NSA spying, Snowden said government surveillance methods far surpass those described in Orwell’s dystopic novel “1984.”

“The types of collection in the book — microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us — are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go,” he said. “Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person.”

The brief video marked Snowden’s first television appearance since he fled possible prosecution in the United States and arrived in Moscow in June. It came soon after The Washington Post published an extensive account of his comments during more than 14 hours of interviews.

Revelations from documents leaked by Snowden first appeared in June in The Post and in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, and have continued to emerge in the months since.

In the Post interview, Snowden said he had succeeded in spawning the debate he sought by bringing to light the extent of surveillance by the U.S. and British governments.

“The mission’s already accomplished,” he said. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”

Snowden echoed those sentiments Wednesday, saying he sees an opportunity to “find a better balance, end mass surveillance and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying.”

U.S. and British authorities have accused Snowden, a 30-year-old former NSA contractor, of jeopardizing security on both sides of the Atlantic by divulging vital information about programs used to spy on hostile governments and would-be terrorists.

But Snowden’s leaks also revealed a vast web of surveillance that targets close allies and sweeps up massive quantities of telephone, Internet and location data about ordinary citizens.

A federal judge ruled this month that the NSA data-collection methods are probably unconstitutional, describing them as “almost Orwellian.”

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/snowden-says-spying-worse-than-orwellian/2013/12/25/e9c806aa-6d90-11e3-a5d0-6f31cd74f760_print.html

 

 

"With this order, the worst in living memory, the Australian government is not just gagging the Australian press, it is blindfolding the Australian public. This is not simply a question of the Australian government failing to give this international corruption case the public scrutiny it is due. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop must explain why she is threatening every Australian with imprisonment in an attempt to cover up an embarrassing corruption scandal involving the Australian government."

"The concept of 'national security' is not meant to serve as a blanket phrase to cover up serious corruption allegations involving government officials, in Australia or elsewhere. It is in the public interest for the press to be able to report on this case, which concerns the subsidiaries of the Australian central bank. Who is brokering our deals, and how are we brokering them as a nation? Corruption investigations and secret gag orders for 'national security' reasons are strange bedfellows. It is ironic that it took Tony Abbott to bring the worst of 'Asian Values' to Australia."

A link to this could be "treason". So as a good Aussie citizen, YD posted no links, nor is there a mention of Julian Assange here... See toon at top.

 

 

But we can refresh our memory on something involving money:

 

 

August 10, 2011

 

"Both alleged incidents relate to efforts to secure banknote contracts on behalf of Securency," the AFP said.

Prosecutor David Sewell said there were 68 volumes of material relating to the case which would be served on Gerathy on Thursday.

Magistrate Franz Holzer released Gerathy on bail on conditions including that he surrender his passport, not apply for another and not present at any international departure points.

He must report weekly to Maroubra police station.

Gerathy will next appear in court on September 23 with his co-accused, all six of whom are from Victoria.

The others charged with bribes allegedly paid to secure banknote contracts are Myles Curtis, 55, John Leckenby, 66, Mitchell John Anderson, 50, Peter Sinclair Hutchinson, 61, Barry Thomas Brady, 62, and Rognvald Leslie Marchant, 64.

The men are all former employees of Reserve Bank subsidiaries Securency and Note Printing Australia.

The two companies have also been charged along with two individuals charged by Malaysian authorities.

read more: http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/another-securency-employee-charged-20110810-1imgf.html

 

And :

 

 

Justice Hollingworth said ''much of what really occurred is either not documented or documents are not retained'' and although Ellery had not been in the ''inner sanctum'', his oral evidence would be valuable.

Ellery's crime, committed between June 28 and July 19 2006, carried up to 10 years' imprisonment but Justice Hollingworth said, ''you will not be taken into custody today''.

She gave him six months' imprisonment suspended for two years. If not for his early guilty plea, she said she would have sentenced him to one year imprisonment with a minimum nine-month non-parole period.

Ellery had concealed a commission payment of $79,502 to Malaysian ''agent'' Abdul Kayum Syed Ahmad and/or his company Aksavest, which Securency had verbally agreed to.

Justice Hollingworth said that Ellery had knowingly concealed the commission as reimbursement for marketing, accommodation and other expenses.

She said Ellery had ''succumbed … to the requests of senior employees'' and forwarded a debit note requesting the payment be made. He had claimed that another employee had cited the supporting documents, even though he was aware ''the request was false and no such marketing expenses had been incurred''.

''It was done in order to disguise the true nature of the transaction from the board and the owners of Securency.''

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/judge-slams-bank-secrecy-20120820-24in1.html#ixzz38txp1VbT

 

 

It appears that the real culprits have not gone to prison, but employees under orders have... Who knows... One has to know that paying kickbacks while doing business in Asia is also called "facilitation fees" and part of the traditions. There should be no shame in having paid kickbacks, which "all" business do in Asia and in Arabic countries (check BAE). It's a time-honoured tradition, especially designed for camel trading.

 

The general counsel of Human Rights Watch and Australia’s journalists union have called for a review of a sweeping suppression order in Australia on bribery allegations involving several prominent international leaders.

WikiLeaks revealed on Monday the existence of a suppression order in the Victorian supreme court cast in broad terms that applies across the country. The order prohibits reporting on the allegations “to prevent damage to Australia’s international relations”.

Australian news organisations, including Guardian Australia, remain bound by the terms of the suppression order and cannot report the contents of the order or the names of the individuals involved.

The general counsel of Human Rights Watch, Dinah PoKempner, said: “The embarrassment of diplomatic partners is not the same thing as a threat to national security, or to the integrity of the judicial process, and diplomatic embarrassment cannot justify withholding information relating to serious criminal activity from the public.”

“Secret law is often unaccountable and inadequately justified. The government has some explaining to do as to why it sought such an extraordinary order, and the court should reconsider the need for it now that its action has come to light.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/30/rights-group-and-union-push-for-review-of-australian-wikileaks-gag-order

---------------------------------

Of course the name to watch here, I would guess, is Barry Thomas Brady... Why? Well, I guess that his affidavit and testimony to the court case that was designed to bury him and which was made ultra secret by the Abbott regime, might contain some mighty information about Australian and overseas politicians who made some camel trading deals on the back of brown envelopes... A bit embarrassing, but we shall survive... But let's not be in contempt of court order here... and leave the whole matter to explode or implode or turn to piss by itself... which it will.

 

A university journalism professor will keep his job after spending three months suspended without pay for describing his alleged Twitter trolls as “stupid as fuck”.

Martin Hirst was accused of bringing Deakin university into disrepute after right-wing press columnist, Andrew Bolt, posted a series of the tweets on his blog in the Herald Sun.

But after a letter to the university authorities signed by 150 academics and PhD students, the case was settled on Wednesday and Hirst reinstated.

The row can be traced back to 2008 when Hirst posted a photo of himself at Karl Marx’s grave at Highgate cemetery in London, which he later used as a profile picture on his personal Twitter account.

In April 2014 Daily Telegraph columnist Tim Blair posted the photo on his blog, describing the photo as “the finest leftie selfie ever taken”.

A Twitter user began mocking Hirst for the photo, and a back-and-forth between the troll and Hirst ensued, prompting other people to join in.

In his final response to his alleged Twitter trolls, Hirst adopted a tweet by US actress Kirstie Alley: “... dear stupid as fuck people who just like to be stupid, go be stupid with other stupid people. #stupidfuckcity”

Bolt then intervened, posting the comments along with a quote from university vice chancellor, Jane den Hollander, which described Deakin as: “A premier university in driving the digital frontier to enable globally connected education for the jobs of the future and research that makes a difference to the benefit of our students, our staff and the communities we serve.”

The university suspended Hirst without pay for serious misconduct, amid claims he had brought the university into disrepute.

It was not the first time Bolt had written about Hirst. Hirst has also written about Bolt, accusing him of crocodile tears after he was called a racist by academic, Marcia Langton.

Hirst appealed his suspension, with the final hearing due on Wednesday. But the case was settled after the supporting letter was sent to den Hollander on Tuesday.

“We can understand your concern at Dr Hirst’s actions and the unwelcome attention that Mr Bolt’s blog posts brought to Deakin University,” the letter said. “However, we do not believe that terminating Dr Hirst’s employment is the right decision in this matter. It is not, in our opinion, in the best interests of Dr Hirst or the University.

“We are assured that Dr Hirst has recognised his mistake in engaging with the offensive and anonymous trolls and indulging in the same vile language that they employed against him. We are also pleased to know that Dr Hirst apologised for his actions immediately that Mr Bolt’s attempt to smear him and the University was brought to his attention.”

An email also circulated among staff calling on them to sign the letter in support of Hirst, saying; “It is scandalous that Andrew Bolt and the Murdoch press should have such control over Deakin university’s hiring and firing policies.”

On Wednesday afternoon, Hirst released a statement on his website and on Twitter saying he was remorseful for the tweets and that he would be keeping his job with the university.

Hirst said: “I am pleased and relieved that the matter is resolved.”

Bolt hung up on Guardian Australia before any questions could be asked.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/30/journalism-professors-job-safe-despite-troll-tweet-raising-andrew-bolts-ire

------------------------------------

if one studies all of this very carefully, Bolt hates anything that has a slight slant of left in it... I believe all his furniture in his house have had their left legs trimmed, so they are pleasingly leaning to the right... This silly episode was not about rude tweets, but about the fact that some professor of journalism may have been leaning to the left...

And looking at the standards of "journalists" who are spruikers for the rabid right, such as Andrew Bolt, one has to say thank goodness for people like Martin Hirst...

 

This information has to be put in the public domain — where it belongs. Freedom of speech is a basic tenet of our corroding democracy. This is not esoteric nonsense. It is our raison d'etre. For me, journalism is my religion.

Our messenger colleagues are this minute risking their lives in Ukraine, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa, Gaza, Iraq, and other war zones of man-made horror and murderous acts, to bring us hourly eye-witness reports of our seemingly infinite capacity to kill, mutilate and wound one another in body and spirit. We are surely living proof of the fallacy of the intelligent design credo. 

It would be utterly pathetic if we journalists of the home guard, failed to stand our ground on such trespassing as this insulting Suppression Order. It is tantamount to personal and professional cowardice. It is a violation of our collective rights.

I hope the Suppression Order will be contested.

It is these continuing attempts by governments to keep secrets from us, that gradually extinguish the flickering light of small candles held up to small truths.

The Suppression Order itself is under a Suppression Order. It is embarrassing. Facile. 

It is judicial fundamentalism. It is grotesque government fundamentalism. Further, the Order is a blatant abuse of the separation of powers. In this instance, it is a repugnant legal device deployed for unjustifiable political reasons.

The Order masquerades itself under fatuous claims of higher ground long left untrod by this Government and its predecessor.

It brings insult to Australians and our false claims as champions of freedom of speech.

read more: http://www.independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/suppression-order-on-wikileaks-betrays-democracy-and-freedom,6720

 

see also: smelling the dead roses...

and:  nothing to see here ....

and see toon at top...

and visit: cosy small talk with electrostatic detritus collectors...

and especially: prediction 1959: self-driving cars and fishy walls by 1984...

 

Last month, an Australian judge issued a super-duper injunction preventing the reporting of bribery allegations which involved south east Asian political figures, and in some cases their family members.

The allegations have arisen in a criminal case before the supreme court of Victoria. The super-injunction, which not only prevents publication of the allegations, but the detailed terms of the injunction itself, only came to light because WikiLeaks published the intimate details on July 29.

So while WikiLeaks, anonymous blogs and social media are buzzing with the details of these sweeping court orders, which apply Australia-wide, the mainstream media cannot trespass in this territory for fear of facing proceedings for contempt of court. This is the ludicrous nature of overreaching suppression orders, and this one is to last for five years unless earlier revoked.

The internet has made them so porous as to be useless. Only those who publish above the radar with sizeable assets and readily identifiable journalists and executives (at least ones that are not corralled in foreign embassies) are effectively injuncted from publishing.

Among the parties to these proceedings, which can be reported, are lawyers for the Commonwealth of Australia, instructed by the department of foreign affairs. So you can put two and two together and guess that the government was the applicant for this injunction.

Maybe the judge was trying to protect people whose names would come up in the criminal trial without warning or without legal representation. At the same time, it does seem an extraordinarily wide order to grant on the application of someone who is not a party to the criminal proceedings and whose self-interest lies beyond the issues to be tried and determined by the court.

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/30/wikileaks-gag-order-open-justice-is-threatened-by-super-injuctions

 

"Social media" is a bit fluffy and sounds like a drinking party. It is too broad as it includes "loopy and selfie" ... I will try to use the words "citizen-media" in the future... for what is not official media (mostly MMMM) but citizen aware media, like I hope this site is...