Webdiary - Founded and Inspired by Margo Kingston

"Your conduct is a most fundamental breach of trust and it is an attack on the institution of the family which is so dear to the community." - His Honour Justice Coghlan on sentencing Arthur Freeman to life in prison for the murder of his daughter Darcey.

The term “Drug War” was invented by the warriors themselves, but it is a very descriptive term and we should use it constantly. A war is something expensive, with casualties, and that requires constant justification on the basis of results. If our opponents try to avoid the term, don’t let them. It’s their term, it is apt, and we will insist on it. In our literature we always capitalise “The Drug War” or “The War on Drugs” as it is a proper noun for a historical event with a beginning… and an end.

The question remains, should law-biding aerosol street artists be classified in the same group as vandals? I would say the answer is definitely not. These groups like the one Jasy runs not only promote better communities through quality mural street art but also provide positive guidance and direction to young people in becoming responsible citizens.

When Australia Post made the controversial decision to remove Brett Stewart’s face from the 2008 NRL Grand Final Collector’s stamps, it sent out a strong message to the public. Guilty. But Stewart has not yet been found guilty. So why should he be punished by being left off the stamps?

Music bloggers the world over are getting nervous. Suddenly they are the target of an industry that censors and deletes content without warning, and there’s very little the blogger can do to prevent it. Since late last year, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been making reckless attempts to crack down on online music piracy.

Shouldn’t we be using the anti terror laws to control these thugs? We should make their clubs illegal and destroy the club houses. Anyone known to belong to an outlaw bikie gang should face the same penalties as those belonging to terrorist organisations. There is no difference – both use violence and terror to intimidate the rest of the population.

Peter Faris QC, also writing in today's Australian, asserts that the combination of the Haneef incident and this one demonstrates that the AFP are not capable of overseeing Australian counterterrorism procedures.  His worries about the exposure of Sydney airport as an easy terrorist target are worth contemplating. (Updated)

With the fifteen bodies identified this morning, Victoria Police have now confirmed that 108 people have perished. One small area, Kinglake/Kinglake West, has tragically lost 30 from its community. How many have been injured?

Throughout the Bush years, politicians and the media, both in Australia and abroad, have been prepared to play brazen Alice in Wonderland games with definitions. ... You can admit to the use of stress positions, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and the rest of it – brutalities long familiar from the dungeons of the most sinister regimes in the world – so long as you barefacedly announce, as Bush did in 2006: "The United States does not torture. It's against our laws, and it's against our values." (Jeff Sparrow)

Tolstoy argues that no class of man has the right to punish or sit in judgement upon another, and, from out of the crucible of complexity which he has painstakingly built his story, gives a conclusion almost point-by-point worthy of a lesser evangelist.

You might remember about a month ago, a 7-year-old boy fed 13 animals to a crocodile at the Alice Springs Reptile Centre. During his 30-minute killing spree, the boy beat animals to death with a rock, then threw them to the croc to finish off.

“An authorised person may direct a person within a World Youth Day declared area to cease engaging in conduct that … causes annoyance or inconvenience [my emphasis] to participants in a World Youth Day event...”

According to the DSM, pedophilia is a form of paraphilia in which a person either has acted on intense sexual urges towards children, or has sexual urges towards and fantasies about children that cause distress or interpersonal difficulty. In common usage, the term pedophile or paedophile refers to an adult who is sexually attracted to children, whether or not the adult acts upon that attraction by sexually abusing a child.

For much of my life I've been unable to understand why certain drugs were banned, why prostitution was banned, why certain forms of gambling were banned, why abortion was illegal, or why certain material was censored. The history of the consequences of banning these kinds of activity is well-known. First, they fail.

In this sort of fevered environment, where "morals" are defined in terms of sexual behaviour, the Mirandas become rails runners for opinion dominance. And faux outrage over dubious artworks is just another obvious mode for distraction from real world issues.

For a cops and robbers tabloid, the Herald Sun has been way off the pace in terms of the underworld connections to Opes Prime. The Age has been leading since day one and today’s front page story is perhaps the most significant contribution yet. (Stephen Mayne)

Let me translate for you the psychological message that the Liberals have been spreading to save a marginal seat.  "Be afraid of the Muslims.  They support terrorism.  Labor supports the Muslim supporters of terrorism.  To protect yourself, vote Liberal"

"This is not a Tasmania I any longer recognise, this is Bjelke Petersens Queensland, and it is time we took our Tasmania back—back from the lies, from the intimidation, from the threats, from the character assassinations and blacklisting. Because its our Tasmania, not one company’s fiefdom. We have suffered for too many years them turning Tasmanian against Tasmanian, seeking to make us forget that what joins us is always greater than what divides us, that forest worker and conservationist, union man and greenie woman, southerner and northerner, Liberal and Labor and Green all share a great love for our island and for our people." Richard Flanagan, author

Current estimates are that the value of money being laundered through Australian banks by criminal enterprises approaches $12 billion per year. This amount is equivalent to about 1% of Australia’s GDP - except that it adds nothing to it. In the roughest of terms, it suggests that as many as 1 out of 100 Australian adults may be involved in criminal activity.

Isn't it weird. Amrozi is about to be shot dead as the Indonesian courts decide they can't even look at the nation's Constitutional protection of human rights re the Bali Nine plea not to be shot dead - because they're foreigners. I, for one, will never forgive this government for handing over our bloody stupid, off the rails young people for arrest, knowing Indonesia had the death penalty for such offences. Yet there is silence from Labor. Where is Labor's promise to never ever let this happen again?

Hello. Here is the Australian Law Council's statement yesterday on the death penalty debate. The recent history of this issue is very interesting, as is its prominence now. I'll try to write something later. 

The APEC thuggery results from a Labor and Liberal conspiracy to destroy our civil liberties and give police untrammelled power to serve political ends. I've been warning of this on Webdiary for many years. We saw with Haneef that now, police and/or government lawyers are prepared to lie under oath to the Courts to get their way. And the NSW Labor Government's disgrace started long before Iemma.Have a look at the start of the rot, under Bob Carr, in 2002, when Howard was revving up his 'terror' laws.

Susan Kiefel's appointment as a High Court judge is great for Australia, and one decision of Ruddock I not only applaud, but do so with gusto. Maybe after all his terrible deeds over the last decade he wants to leave something special in place as his career nears its end. I'm reminded of Paul Keating's appointment of Michael Kirby to the High Court just before he lost office. I met Justice Kiefel in the early 1980's in Brisbane, when she was a junior barrister and I was an articled clerk briefing her on a case. She told me then that Tony Fitzgerald had personally mentored her when she worked as a secretary in his chambers, convincing her that she talented enough to finish year 12 and take the bar exam.

Webdiary has done a bit of work on bad and allegedly corruptly procured development over the years. This is an issue that brings people together now matter who they vote for.

I also acknowledge that one of my officers put two errors of fact before the court.  The first related to the SIM card and was based on a misunderstanding of the facts.  The second related to the residence of Dr Haneef in the UK and was based on incorrect material provided by the AFP.  The prosecution is of course under a duty to inform the court promptly of any errors that are made in submissions to the court.  The hearing in which these errors were made was determined in Dr Haneef’s favour and when the errors were recognised it was decided to correct them when the matter was next before the court.

When Vivian Alvarez was found in the Philipines the information of this 33 was already public, so Amanda Vanstone launched an inquiry into the possible illegal detentions of other Australians, or worse other deportations.   247 cases were then sent to the Ombudsman. The most chilling case was the case of LP, an Australian citizen child incarcerated for 149 days as “a visitor to his mother”. Just a guest of the minister in a regime of brutal detention that was utterly illegal. No-one bothered to ascertain if the reality was that the child was a citizen.

"The ultimate challenge is to prevent drug abuse and to treat and rehabilitate drug users successfully. Sweden is a good example of how to do it right. Drug use there is a third of the European average – the result of decades of consistent policies that combine tough punishment of dealers and comprehensive treatment for users.": Antonio Maria Costa, UN Office on Drugs and Crime

"We set out the basics of the Firepower story for those who want to play catch up and try to make some sense out of the machinations of the men with the magic mystery pill." Craig Rowley and Richard Tonkin.

"The amoral practices of AWB in effect armed the enemy as the price of doing business in Iraq. This cost came out of funds set aside for humanitarian needs; and added to the humiliation of the Iraqi people. They will not find justice unless someone lifts the lid on the full, wider extent of the AWB web of deceit. Senior officials should not be allowed to hide behind the paper-thin walls of Cole’s terms of reference.": Stephen Smith