>>11651658

Pete Evans Is Now Posting Neo-Nazi Symbols And The Far-Right Love It

Cam Wilson - November 16, 2020

Australia’s leading conspiracy theorist and celebrity chef Pete Evans has continued to promote more and more extreme views by intentionally posting a cartoon on social media with a Neo-Nazi symbol worn by the Christchurch terrorist.

On Sunday evening, Pete Evans posted a cartoon to his millions of followers on Facebook and Instagram. The cartoon features a caterpillar wearing a Make America Great Again hat speaking to a butterfly featuring the Black Sun symbol — also known as the sonnenrad or sunwheel.

It’s an ancient symbol appropriated by the Nazis, and now associated with Neo-Nazis according to the Anti-Defamation League, a anti-hate organisation. In recent times, it featured on the Christchurch terrorist’s rucksack and manifesto.

When a commenter on Evans’ Facebook page asked about it, he confirmed he knew the symbol.

“The symbol on the butterfly is a representation of the black sun lol,” one person wrote.

“I was waiting for someone to see that,” Evans’ account replied.

Later, Evans responded to another user on Instagram saying that he sees the “the caterpillar as colourful and at peace whereas the butterfly embodies darkness and perhaps shadow […] Or you can look at it as something completely different.”

A reverse Google image search reveals that the meme was also published this week on a Nordic Neo-Nazi website. It’s not clear whether it was posted before or after Evans shared the cartoon.

The post has also been shared in far-right online groups and on white supremacist social media accounts.

Gizmodo has chosen not to name these websites, groups and accounts due to their hateful nature.

While Evans has long been promoting anti-vaccine beliefs and other health misinformation, he’s come under fire this year for posting increasingly fringe and extreme conspiracy theories including COVID-19 denialist and QAnon content.

Since leaving My Kitchen Rules, Evans has promoted an essential oils multi-level marketing scheme and a Byron Bay ‘healing clinic’ while continuing to publish recipe books.

His publisher Pan Macmillan defended its decision to publish his work earlier this year despite his promotion of conspiracy theories and anti-public health views.

Evans and Pan Macmillan have been approached for comment.

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/11/pete-evans-is-now-posting-neo-nazi-symbols-and-the-far-right-love-it/

>>11664950

Pan Macmillan Australia Tweet

"Pan Macmillan does not support the recent posts made by Pete Evans. Those views are not our views as a company or the views of our staff.

Pan Macmillan is currently finalising it's contractual relationship with Pete Evans and as such will not be entering any further publishing agreements moving forward.

If any retailer wishes to return Pete Evans' books please contact Pan Macmillan."

https://twitter.com/MacmillanAus/status/1328210258829840385

George Papadopoulos Tweet

Now would be a good time to declassify all the Obamagate documents. Including on the UK and Australia. That’s the real scandal. Remember “Ambassador Downer”? He will become a household name once they drop the documents

https://twitter.com/GeorgePapa19/status/1328056714168557568

>>11622581

Virginia Roberts Giuffre Tweets

Of course we’re horrified, the language use of sexual abuse against minors & to top it off the justice system labels us young, naive girls as prostitutes. Unacceptable, unconditional period.! We were children? I wonder how Acosta would feel if it was his own daughter?

https://twitter.com/VRSVirginia/status/1328186572152340482

Tara Pretends Eagle Weber @Lakota_winyan

Our message 2 the girls who survived EPSTEIN & MAXWELL'S pedophilia assaults & trafficking-We were horrified that PBC law & system referred 2 the girls as PROSTITUTES! #HumanRightsViolations @VRSVirginia @ArtisticBlower @MichelleLicata8 @pinkPeptobismol @CourtneyWild13 @hrw

https://twitter.com/Lakota_winyan/status/1328181621569294337

—

Come on people!! Stop making this a political issue- it’s ALL of OUR children’s safety at risk. Pro @JoeBiden or Pro @realDonaldTrump is not going to #SAVEOURCHILDEN What is going to help is education, being alert & treating each child as if it were own. #love #kids #Help

https://twitter.com/VRSVirginia/status/1328202005857271808

—

Be horrified, Be disgusted & Be aware that this could be ANY parents worst nightmare and it should be. New stats show 1 in 10 children under the age of 10 will be sexually abused. 1 in 10! No greater cause than to fight for the safety of children. We NEED warriors! Stand with us

https://twitter.com/VRSVirginia/status/1328202975077036032

Killings of Afghans 'happened all the time'

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The disclosures from the special forces soldiers came slowly at first. Some spoke of killing as a "sport". Others of shame suffered in silence.

As word spread among the secretive community of soldiers and spies who had served for Australia in Afghanistan, information arrived with more urgency. Some men spoke matter-of-factly; others broke down. One thread bound many of them. It was their belief that small cliques of their fellow special forces soldiers had turned bad with impunity.

“One of the most disturbing things for me was people saying the phrase ‘it happened all the time',” says Dr Samantha Crompvoets of the information special forces insiders and whistleblowers disclosed to her about summary executions of unarmed Afghans, including prisoners and civilians.

Dr Crompvoets is the author of a secret 2016 report commissioned by military chief Angus Campbell. It was her report that sparked the nation's biggest war crimes probe, the Brereton inquiry, a summary of which is due to be publicly released this week.

For two years, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes have requested an interview with Dr Crompvoets and were rebuffed.

As her 2016 report detailing war crime disclosures is set to be validated this week by judge Paul Brereton's four-year inquiry, the sociologist has granted her first detailed interview about her work and of the role of Lieutenant General Campbell in helping uncover the scandal.

Dr Crompvoets' reluctance to speak publicly is understandable. There is no good news in what she found, except for two facts. First, it was courageous SAS members and Commandos who exposed the special forces dirty laundry. Second, the defence force’s instinctive nature to cover up embarrassment was subsumed by the need to air what Prime Minister Scott Morrison last week described as brutal, ugly truths. These two things have likely saved the SAS from being disbanded like it was in Canada when a similar scandal emerged. Dr Crompvoets drove both of them. Lieutenant General Campbell, too, didn’t look away.

When Dr Crompvoets warned Lieutenant General Campbell in early 2016 that special forces insiders were disclosing to her abhorrent war crimes allegations, he urged her to keep digging and “write it all down”.

“We're not talking about a couple of fog of war events that were, you know, perhaps confusing to understand," Dr Crompvoets recalls. "This is deliberate repeated patterns of behaviour.”

It could have gone another way. Two generals, Lieutenant General Campbell and Jeff Sengelman, had in 2015 commissioned Dr Crompvoets to examine cultural failings in the special forces, especially the poor relations between the nation’s two elite fighting arms, the SAS and the Commandos.

The SAS and Commandos conduct Australia's most arduous and dangerous surveillance and combat missions. Hundreds of their members were tasked with Australia's operations in Afghanistan's south after a western-led coalition invaded the country in response to the September 11 attacks in the United States.

Dr Crompvoets, 44, a highly intelligent and focused businesswoman who runs a Canberra firm specialising in examining and improving organisational culture, had previously been tasked by senior generals to handle sensitive defence force reviews. For her 2015-16 special forces probe, war crimes were not in her terms of reference.

But as she conducted the review, she encountered something much graver than rivalry between two branches of the special forces. It was Lieutenant General Campbell who encouraged Dr Crompvoets to roam more widely across the special forces and intelligence community and record every dark disclosure.

“He told me that bad news doesn’t get better with time,” she says.

In this case, it would get much worse.

Dr Crompvoets knew her status as a female civilian would lead to her being attacked. But it was the fact that she was not in the military that led to special forces insiders turning to her.

“People trusted that I was outside the organisation. I was looking at this quite objectively, I had nothing to win or lose, regardless of what I reported,” she says.

“I was very conscious that I'm a woman who has never been to war and there's a whole lot of stuff that I don't know. But the things that were described to me, there was no doubt that these things had occurred. And I heard similar stories from different people.”

“If I had thought, ‘these are just kind of baseless rumours’, I just wouldn't have reported it.”

(continued)

>>11665665

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Dr Crompvoets' April 2016 report to generals Campbell and Sengelman described conduct that the military insiders she spoke to likened to the Abu Ghraib affair, the Iraq prisoner torture scandal that enveloped the US military in 2004. The crimes disclosed in her interviews with Australian special forces included alleged "competition killing and blood lust" and "the inhumane and unnecessary treatment of prisoners".

In her interview with The Age, the Herald and 60 Minutes, she says some allegedly unlawful behaviour, such as summary executions, were “celebrated and normalised, and almost a rite of passage for some people”.

Some of the men she spoke to, such as a soldier who described two unarmed teens having their throats allegedly slit and their bodies disposed of in a river, were in mental anguish. Others were emotionless as they explained how the mistreatment of prisoners became routine as small groups of special forces began writing their own rules of war.

She remembers a young SAS soldier telling her how “the rules are different here,” as he described the longer leash given to special forces soldiers when compared to regular army soldiers.

“I think that whole idea that the rules are different … creates an environment that is conducive to things going wrong,” she says.

Dr Crompvoets did not spare the chain of command, which sent special forces on multiple deployments and in some cases incentivised high body counts while failing to act on suspicious “killed in action” post-operational reports and briefings.

She wrote how insiders felt it “shameful” that the officers leading the special forces in Afghanistan “muted” concerns about misconduct that were raised at the time. They deployed special forces again and again on capture and kill missions in what by 2012 had become a hopeless war.

Dr Crompvoets’ savaging of the bystander culture that festered in the special forces, where pressure to protect colleagues was strong, has already led to major reforms.

She remains in touch with soldiers shattered by what they witnessed and, sometimes, their own failure to challenge more powerful colleagues or officers who would be later rewarded with medals and promotions.

“I don’t think we should forget that it's not just those soldiers in the Special Forces units. It's those people around them that potentially facilitated those behaviours as well,” she says.

“I also spoke to people who did call out bad behaviour and who were basically belittled and left broken.”

In 2018, two years after Dr Crompvoets delivered her confidential findings that war crimes had likely occurred, parts of her report were leaked to The Age and the Herald by military sources. Dr Crompvoets was savaged on social media and in some mainstream outlets, accused of being a left-leaning feminist cultural warrior. The irony was that she was in fact a conduit for the concerns of battle-hardened soldiers.

Former defence minister Brendan Nelson falsely claimed that the war crimes under scrutiny were "fog of war" incidents, rather than summary executions. The execution of prisoners and non-combatants is a crime under international and Australian law.

On Thursday, Lieutenant General Campbell will tell the nation of the scale of alleged war crimes committed by Australian special forces soldiers in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016. He is releasing the summary of the final report of the Brereton inquiry, the inspector general's exhaustive and forensic probe triggered by Dr Crompvoets’ earlier work.

The Brereton inquiry has interviewed more than 350 witnesses on oath and has reviewed thousands of classified files. Witnesses have given detailed statements and some suspects have confessed.

The report is expected to detail “bloodings”, in which junior soldiers were encouraged to execute prisoners and civilians. The12 cases reported previously by The Age and the Herald involve Afghans murdered while defenceless and unarmed. Some had their hands bound.

Dr Crompvoets expects backlash from some who will try to blur the fact that Justice Paul Brereton’s findings, like her own, are a product of SAS and Commandos who could not stand by any longer.

If you are a current or former ADF member, or a relative, and need counselling or support, contact the Defence All-Hours Support Line on 1800 628 036 or Open Arms on 1800 011 046.

https://www.defence.gov.au/health/dmh/allhourssupportline.asp

https://www.openarms.gov.au/

https://www.theage.com.au/national/killings-of-afghans-happened-all-the-time-20201115-p56erx.html

>>11665665

How the Lindt cafe siege exposed army atrocities

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On December 16, 2014, Australians were absorbing news of the Lindt cafe siege, the deaths of two hostages and claims army special forces should have been brought in to deal with this act of terrorism rather than police.

Major-General Jeff Sengelman had just become Special Operations Commander Australia, which put him in charge of Australia’s most highly trained troops, and it fell to him to assess whether those soldiers could have done a better job.

The issues ­appeared straightforward: whether the troops had the right skills and what powers the civil authorities had to call them in. It was important to find out how agencies involved in counter-terrorism activities felt about the army being involved.

Sengelman engaged sociologist Samantha Crompvoets to discuss with a range of agencies, including the Australian Security Intelligence Service and police forces, what the potential future role of SOCOMD was in relation to domestic counter-terrorism.

No one then had any idea of the dark events this straightforward inquiry would bring to light.

As she began her inquiry in the wake of the cafe siege, Crompvoets was surprised to be told stories that questioned the reputation of the special forces.

Concerned, she wrote up her report on agency views of military involvement in “civil events such as sieges”. An appendix covered concerns raised about SF activities in Afghanistan, noting there appeared to be serious problems with the behaviour of some members of the Special Operations Task Group in Afghanistan that may have extended to unsanctioned, illegal violence.

As this was happening and within days of taking over ­SOCOMD, Sengelman, too, had heard stories about atrocities. He asked SF soldiers to contact him if they were willing to talk. He received about 200 responses.

He took his concerns, and those raised by Crompvoets, to Army Commander Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, who called in the Inspector-General of the ADF. Paul Brereton was asked to examine what were then unconfirmed rumours.

Soldiers appalled

Within days, Justice Brereton’s investigation of war crimes allegedly committed by SF soldiers in ­Afghanistan will confirm that atrocities were committed.

That investigation, and others carried out by the Australian Defence Force in parallel to it, have also identified disastrous failures in the structure and leadership of Special Operations Command.

It won’t bring back Afghans allegedly murdered by some of those sent to protect them but if there’s a degree of redemption for the army in the shocking scenario now emerging, it’s in the fact that the four-year war crimes investigation was launched by the ADF and that it has relied heavily on the testimony of soldiers appalled by what they saw.

Justice Brereton, a major-general in the Army Reserve, has spent four years investigating claims that members of the Special Operations Task Group breached the Laws of Armed Conflict between 2005 and 2016.

Along with probing criminal killings and torture, the inquiry examined whether aspects of the organis­ational, operational and cultural environment in ­SOCOMD en­abled breaches of the law of armed conflict to occur.

ADF commanders have been working to rectify what they’ve described as “catastrophic cultural and professional shortfalls” within SOCOMD and “corrosive” friction between the major special forces units, the Special Air Service Regiment and the commandos. Under the pressure of 20 intense rotations in Afghanistan over 11 years, the special forces had become isolated from the rest of the army, they say.

The Brereton inquiry was carried out amid deep operational secrecy. As the probe progressed, the reality turned out much worse than imagined. By early 2020, it was examining 55 different episodes, predominantly unlawful killings of unarmed ­civilians or prisoners of war.

In 2018, army commander Lieutenant General Rick Burr asked former ASIO chief David Irvine to review SOCOMD to assess why this had happened and how it could be fixed.

Irvine found that after a decade of constant combat in ­Afghanistan and the Middle East, the command was “worn out and run down”. He warned that in an elite unit, esprit de corps could quickly turn into arrogance.

In a closely knit, inward-looking unit, “can do” could become “only we can do”. Australia’s ­special forces had to be well grounded and humble, he said.

(continued)

>>11665944

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Distorted ethos

Irvine stressed the importance of a “redemption initiative” introduced by Sengelman that provided soldiers with the oppor­tunity to confess to trans­gressions and hold themselves to account. That enabled personnel who had conducted themselves in ways inconsistent with army values to be “managed out”.

Irvine noted that the culture among some soldiers was such that they did not report serious crimes to senior officers, “sometimes for fear of ostracisation — or worse — within the unit”.

Identifying what went wrong on the Afghanistan missions, how deep a distorted warrior ethos went within the SAS, straightening out that mindset and ensuring that what appears to have been an entrenched culture of impunity in key parts of the special forces doesn’t emerge again are priorities for the army.

Burr, who commanded the SAS in 2003 and 2004, says since the army became aware of the alle­gations, it has focused strongly on changing elements of the culture in the special forces and introduced strong ethics training.

He insists the special forces are again ready and deployable.

Over the past five years, ­SOCOMD has been integrated within the broader army structure and the command has embraced significant organisational, cultural and capability reforms.

Along with comprehensive reforms, the natural flow of new personnel through the ADF means that 80 per cent of those serving in the SAS now had not deployed to Afghanistan in a special operations task group.

Burr says that reflects how quickly the army can refresh and regenerate capability. That, he says, “gives us a strong platform to make sure we are embracing and inculcating these initiatives and making sure we are living these expectations every day”.

While detailed allegations will emerge only in the coming week when Brereton’s report is released, questions have been asked about whether our SF units might be disbanded. Asked whether the fact they operated in small groups outside the immediate view of commanders played a role in what had happened and meant the model was no longer sustainable, Burr says the model does work and must be sustained.

Operating model

“It has delivered us enormous success over many years and is a model used in many armies … the Australian Army relies on small teams. They have to be well led and they can make a big difference on the ground whether supporting bushfire or counter-COVID operations, or warfighting … They need to be able to act with autonomy, to take advantage of a local situation to achieve their mission.”

For this to continue, trust in junior leaders is critical, he says. “We must invest in leadership, accountability and culture.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/how-the-lindt-cafe-siege-exposed-army-atrocities/news-story/3241a2bc4bb006d19652bbd7c79f48dd

Victim of music teacher Malcolm Winston Day tells court she reported him to protect others from ‘monster’

A woman who was sexually abused by her music teacher more than three decades ago has told a court why she was moved to report him to police.

A woman sexually abused by her music teacher when she was 10 years old has told a court how she bravely raised the alarm in a bid to protect others from “a monster to young girls”.

The victim, who was targeted by Malcolm Winston Day between 1985 and 1987, said she discovered more than three decades later that he was advertising piano lessons.

“I know what teaching the piano can mean for Malcolm,” she told the court in a statement read aloud by an investigating police officer.

“I felt forced to finally go to the police to ensure any children who may have had the unfortunate experience of being around him were safe.”

The woman said her former teacher had made a large part of her childhood “miserable” and had changed her whole life.

Day, now 79 years old, was earlier this year found guilty of one count of maintaining an unlawful sexual relationship with a child.

During his trial, the court heard the abuse started slowly, with Day inappropriately touching his student, and soon moved to more serious offending.

He was acquitted of a second count of the same charge, which related to the alleged abuse of the victim’s older sister.

The girls knew Day, a father of three, through their local church, where he played the organ, and took private piano lessons from him.

However, the District Court heard on Monday that he refused to admit to any of the offending and had lodged an appeal against his conviction.

His victim said she had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and had lived with guilt and shame in the years since the abuse.

“I cannot remember when I last had a night where I didn’t have nightmares of Malcolm’s treatment,” she said.

“I scream out, I physically thrash around, and I end up sleeping on the side of my bed so I can feel the floor under my feet. I feel safer.”

She said she referred to Day by his first name because he no longer deserved her respect: “He is nothing to me except a monster to young girls.”

The woman had intended to become a veterinarian, but her “world imploded” in her year 12 school year, and she spent time in hospital.

Instead, she chose a profession that allowed her to care for cancer patients.

“The one and only positive outcome of being abused as a child is that I believe I have a deep level of compassion for people in crisis,” she said.

“Malcolm’s cruel, selfish and heartless treatment of me has been the thing that allows me to walk alongside people and their families as they suffer the cruel and undiscriminating experience of cancer.”

Day, who appeared in court by video link from prison, was taken into custody after the verdict against him was delivered.

The court heard he was ordained a Methodist minister in 1967 but left the ministry in 1973 to work as a teacher, and he started a music school in 1983.

Defence counsel Andy Ey said there was good reason for Judge Paul Slattery to set a low non-parole period, including Day’s age and his lack of offending before or since.

Mr Ey said Day’s marriage with his first wife broke down around the time of the abuse, and his second wife remained supportive of him.

But prosecutors said there should not be too much emphasis placed on Day’s otherwise law-abiding life, and it should be considered that he had offered no explanation or admission of guilt.

Judge Slattery remanded Day in custody ahead of sentencing next week.

https://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/victim-of-music-teacher-malcolm-winston-day-tells-court-she-reported-him-to-protect-others-from-monster/news-story/d26c16d198fcbefe9f4273b20e397cb8

Repost from Q Research General #14890

>>11662156 (pb)

POTUS

The World is watching

Why does the Fake News Media continuously assume that Joe Biden will ascend to the Presidency, not even allowing our side to show, which we are just getting ready to do, how badly shattered and violated our great Constitution has been in the 2020 Election. It was attacked,..

….perhaps like never before! From large numbers of Poll Watchers that were thrown out of vote counting rooms in many of our States, to millions of ballots that have been altered by Democrats, only for Democrats, to voting after the Election was over, to using Radical Left

….owned Dominion Voting Systems, turned down by Texas and many others because it was not good or secure, those responsible for the safeguarding of our Constitution cannot allow the Fake results of the 2020 Mail-In Election to stand. The World is watching!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1328152466752491526

Repost from Q Research General #14889

>>11661576 (pb)

James Woods Twitter Dog Comms

https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/1328040215345172480

My friend had two Australian shepherds, which she would bring to these big Sunday afternoon parties I had years ago. The dogs would try to “herd” all the guests when we were outside. It was so funny.

https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/1328043485576916992

WeChat student group boasts of targeting academics critical of Beijing

The same Chinese-language WeChat group using the “power of the masses” to co-ordinate complaints against academics in a bid to overturn failed grades is behind campaigns against lecturers and researchers critical of Beijing.

The highest-profile target of the Sydney International Student Help Group is Elaine Pearson, a law lecturer at UNSW who had comments critical of China’s human rights record removed from the university’s website.

The Weekend Australian on Saturday revealed the SISHG was using private WeChat channels to bombard academics with complaints in an attempt to overturn the failed grades of hundreds of international students.

While SISHG’s ownership is masked by the use of pseudonyms such as Mr President and Big Sister, the forum does have links to a major education migration service, Monkey King.

This newspaper also revealed the University of Sydney’s Office of Educational Integrity was monitoring Monkey King.

Ms Pearson’s comments — in which she urged countries to “call out the Chinese government for what they are doing” to Hong Kong — were removed from the UNSW website in August, following a Chinese students backlash.

The university also added the extraordinary disclaimer to Ms Pearson’s comments posted to social media, noting “opinions expressed by our academics do not always represent the views of UNSW”. The comments were reinstated following anger from the sector, human rights organisations and the government.

A search of WeChat shows SISHG accounts were some of the first to demand UNSW remove the comments and social media posts, including one that called for the university to “seriously deal with” academic staff.

“Hope school will seriously ‘deal with’ the personnel related to this issue, to provide all Chinese overseas students an explanation,” the post from one of SISHG’s staff account — known as “UNSW President Big Boss” — read.

Other posts, now removed but reviewed by The Australian, show other SISHG posts read: “Spread it widely! Unfollow their account, resist UNSW official twitter account! Completely not considering Chinese students’ feelings?”

“Extra Extra New! Just in, UNSW official twitter released a news that exploded on Chinese overseas students’ WeChat moments,” another post, on the WeChat platform, reads.

Drew Pavlou, a former University of Queensland student known for his criticisms of the Chinese government, said he had been the victim of a similar co-ordinated campaign. “In my case, it was just within a couple hours that they were able to mobilise hundreds of different accounts to attack me across all my social media,” he said.

UNSW declined to comment.

The backlash against Ms Pearson is not the first time SISHG has used its network of WeChat messaging groups to apply pressure to tertiary institutions.

In August 2017, Sydney University IT lecturer Khimji Vaghjiani was forced to publicly apologise after showing a world map in class that represented the Doklam plateau — territory contested by India, China and Bhutan — as part of Bhutan’s control.

Outrage among Chinese international students led to Dr Vagh­jiani issuing a lengthy apology that said he used an “out of date” map — a “genuine mistake”.

But articles posted on Chinese-language media websites demonstrate SISHG’s role in sparking up fury about the map.

In the aftermath of the incident, SISHG boasted of its ­“success”, including one article which included a screenshot of Dr Vaghjiani’s entire apology.

“China Won,” the article reads before SISHG takes credit.

“This is the power of ‘Sydney President Big Boss’,” the post read, a reference to one of SISHG’s staff accounts.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/wechat-student-group-boasts-of-targeting-academics-critical-of-beijing/news-story/793e08815670195298a6adfeab0f4d04

>>11588488

>>11636417

Australian Federal Police Tweet

From the frontline: Operation Arkstone (Part 1)

14 men charged across Australia, 46 child victims identified, 146 international referrals made, with 3 arrests in U.S.

Phillip Chaves from @USAembassyinOZ @ICEgov and AFP investigator Scott Veltmeyer share their experiences

https://twitter.com/AusFedPolice/status/1328200547153764353

Compulsory vaccination faces legal challenge

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Employers’ power to require staff to vaccinate against infectious diseases will be tested for the first time just as the Morrison government looks to roll out a coronavirus vaccine.

An early childcare educator has made an unfair dismissal claim against Goodstart Early Learning in Queensland for firing her because she refused to take a flu vaccine out of concern it would disrupt her sensitive auto-immune system and her “chemical-free life”.

Goodstart, which runs more than 600 childcare centres across the country, introduced a new infectious diseases policy for employees in June that declared flu vaccination was now part of the inherent requirements of the job.

However, the sacked employee will argue in the Fair Work Commission that the direction was unreasonable as giving a vaccine without consent amounts to assault, according to legal authority around medical procedures.

The case is being handled by lawyer, Nathan Buckley of G & B Lawyers, who has previously encouraged Victorians to flout compulsory laws on mask-wearing and raised more than $88,000 via GoFundMe to fight government or employer attempts to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine.

He told The Australian Financial Review, if the case is successful employers will have to reassess their policies on the pandemic.

"It could potentially impact government policy on mandatory COVID-19 vaccination," he said.

“Organisations can’t dictate what medical procedure an employee can or can’t have without consent.

“There will be a lot of people who have been dismissed who will have to be re-examined."

He said more cases were in the pipeline, including a similar dismissal case at an aged care centre in south-west NSW where he said the employer had relied on government directions and advice to mandate flu vaccines.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has previously suggested that the COVID-19 vaccine would be compulsory but walked back the comments after a backlash.

Masks 'should be alternative'

In the Goodstart case, the employee had worked at the company's Gladstone centre for 14 years before she was told she had to have a flu vaccination unless she had a medical exemption that it was unsafe to do so.

She told the centre she was concerned about side effects as she had had an allergic reaction to the vaccine 11 years ago and had a history of chronic auto immune disease, which she claimed was healed only with the assistance of naturopaths and nutritionists.

She also argued the centre's policy was contrary to the health department's immunisation handbook that says free and informed consent must be given.

But the centre rejected her reasons as a valid exemption, including a medical certificate that attested to her sensitive immune system, and she was fired two months later.

(continued)

>>11676574

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Her lawyers' submissions say that mandating vaccination "fails the test of being an incapacity to perform inherent requirements of the position because the requirement is otherwise unlawful, unreasonable and amoral in that it is a requirement that employees consent to having a battery committed on their body to retain his/her employment".

Even communicating this requirement was a form of assault “because [Goodstart] deliberately or recklessly caused the applicant to be in apprehension that [Goodstart] would arrange for her to be subject to a battery”.

They argued the educator's job was “essentially the same” with or without the flu vaccine and that the centre could have stipulated alternative measures such as wearing masks, greater social distancing and checking temperatures.

The educator also claimed three other staff members refused based on medical objections but were still working without a vaccine.

Fundamental human right

Maria O'Sullivan, senior law lecturer at Monash University and deputy director of the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, said while there might be a case against the government mandating COVID-19 vaccination, it was less likely with employers who have a duty of care to staff and customers.

“Bodily integrity is a fundamental human right," she said. "You can argue that as an employee but the charter of rights at the Victoria, Queensland and ACT level only really apply to public authority. If it was a government department it would raise issues but it would not apply to private companies."

She said if an employer's vaccination direction was reasonable and proportionate to the risk in that type of work then the principle was “if you can’t work within that framework then you have to find another job”.

A Goodstart spokeswoman said the company had decided to make flu vaccinations a condition of employment based on recommendations about early learning employees from the Department of Health and the National Health and Medical Research Council.

“All our people play a key role in keeping each other, our children and families and the wider community safe, and this is a responsibility we take very seriously,” she said.

“We consider vaccination to be an integral part of an organisational approach to reduce the risk of spread and infection of vaccine-preventable diseases and encourage other early learning providers to consider taking part in similar programs.”

https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/compulsory-vaccination-faces-legal-challenge-20201115-p56eoq

CSL plans to build $1.8bn vaccine factory in Melbourne’s north

CSL will look to replicate the factory it built with the US government in North Carolina when it constructs the biggest biotech and vaccine manufacturing facility in the southern hemisphere in Melbourne’s north.

The company’s influenza vaccine business, Seqirus, struck a $1.8bn deal with the Morrison government to build the factory, which is designed to ensure a rapid response to future pandemics.

While the factory will be designed to combat influenza pandemics — the North Carolina factory is already involved in a project with the US government to fight a potential bird flu outbreak — Seqirus says the Australian facility could be retooled to fight any infectious disease.

“Although the facility is being custom-built for influenza, there are parts of it that could be used if there was another pandemic with a different pathogen,” Seqirus vice-president for commercial operations Lorna Meldrum said.

CSL will invest $800m in the factory’s construction, with the commonwealth committing to buy $1bn worth of its product, including flu vaccines, antivenoms for Australian snakes, spiders and marine creatures and a Q-Fever vaccine, over 12 years.

CSL began negotiating with the federal government three years ago to build the facility, which will be located in the Melbourne Airport Business Park.

It will take another six years for the company to build what will become the biggest facility of its kind in the southern hemisphere, by which time it is hoped the world will have recovered from COVID-19.

The depth of planning involved in the factory shows what is required to ensure adequate protection against highly infectious diseases that can shut down entire economies.

“It’s a huge construction effort, employing over 500 people. It will probably be built by the end of 2024, the start of 2025, but with any of these facilities, in making sure it is signed off by the TGA (Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration) and FDA (US Food and Drug Administration), it is about a 12-month process,” Dr Meldrum said.

“It will really be state-of-the-art, so it’s a complex build.”

This year, Seqirus completed a $US140m ($192.1m) expansion of its factory in Holly Springs, North Carolina, which it built in ­collaboration with the US government.

One of the North Carolina factory’s first projects has been preparing for another pandemic, which has involved the manufacture and stockpiling of AUDENZ, the first adjuvanted, cell-based influenza vaccine designed to protect against A(H5N1), commonly known as bird flu.

Dr Meldrum said the production of cell-based influenza vaccines was “a completely new way” to produce a flu vaccine, which for the past 17 years had involved using chicken eggs.

“It was a completely new way of making the vaccine and we have perfected it really, and we have continued to perfect it and improve our yields.

“In a way, the facility in the US, we will be using everything we have learned about the technique and how we have improved it. It will be a facility almost identical to the Holly Springs facility but it will be half the size.

“But we will be using all the technology, everything we have learned from that facility, to bring it here to Australia.”

Dr Meldrum said the Melbourne factory would have three components — the cell production facility for seasonal and pandemic influenza, a “high-speed” fill and finish production line which involves filling syringes with a particular vaccine, and a space to manufacture MF59 — a substance added to some vaccines to improve immune response and to reduce the amount of antigen needed for each vaccine.

“We use MF59 in our influenza vaccines but it’s also being used in the University of Queensland COVID-19 candidate.

“It does what we call antigen spare, so you need less of the antigen and therefore you can make more doses.”

CSL chief executive and managing director Paul Perreault said that providing safe and effective influenza vaccines was “essential in securing our defences against serious public health threats”.

“As a proudly Australian ­company, we are pleased to make this investment in world-class advanced manufacturing,” Mr Perreault said.

“This decision will ensure the future of 1000-plus science technology engineering and manufacturing jobs in Victoria and a supply chain of more than $300m annually,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/csl-plans-to-build-18bn-vaccine-factory-in-melbournes-north/news-story/9d9f394218a2c62bcf5b974d7856a2e9

Resignations in the news

Nine boss Hugh Marks resigns

Nine Entertainment Co chief executive Hugh Marks will step down after revealing he was in a relationship with a former colleague, bringing an end to five years at the top of one of the country’s biggest media companies.

Mr Marks told staff in an email on Saturday afternoon that he had begun the "process of moving on" and that the $4.2 billion television, publishing, digital and radio company would begin the job of finding his replacement on Monday. The announcement was made after the Nine board met at noon on Saturday and comes before News Corporation's Sunday Telegraph is expected to publish an article focussing on Mr Marks's personal life.

"I want to take this opportunity to tell you what a privilege it has been leading this business over a truly transformational period for both the media market generally, and particularly our business," said Mr Marks who indicated he wanted to help with a "smooth" transition to the next CEO.

The abrupt announcement of Mr Marks' resignation follows one of the best performing weeks for Nine on the ASX since it merged with Fairfax Media in 2018. Mr Marks told shareholders operating earnings would be 30 per cent up for the first half of the 2020-21 financial year at the company’s annual general meeting on Thursday. Nine's streaming service, Stan, launched sports channel on Monday after securing broadcast deals with Rugby Australia, Wimbledon and The French Open.

However, the Nine board also held meetings last week to discuss human resources issues including Mr Marks' relationship with Nine's former managing director of commercial, Alexi Baker, according to sources familiar with the discussions. Mr Marks told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, in an article published earlier on Saturday, that his relationship with Ms Baker began when the pair were working together and she reported to the chief executive. The article said the relationship began in recent months.

Nine declined to answer questions about whether Ms Baker had received promotions or bonuses while working for Mr Marks.

Nine chairman Peter Costello was also asked at the company's AGM this week about an article in The Daily Telegraph from May which suggested Mr Marks was in a relationship with his executive assistant, Jane Routledge. Mr Costello said Mr Marks had not breached any company policies. Mr Marks has declined to comment further on the article other than to say “a lot of gossip is out of control”.

https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/business/companies/nine-boss-hugh-marks-resigns-20201114-p56em3.html

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WA Treasurer Ben Wyatt announces he is quitting politics

WA Treasurer Ben Wyatt will not contest the state election in March, revealing he is quitting politics after reversing his previous retirement announcement to help the state through the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr Wyatt initially announced his plans to retire in February, partly citing family health reasons as a factor, but quickly backtracked when coronavirus became a worldwide problem.

In a statement on Monday, Mr Wyatt said he had made the difficult decision to reaffirm his previous intention to retire at the next state election.

“With the successful delivery of the 2020-21 state budget last month, and the strengthening recovery of the state’s economy, I have resolved the time is now right to move on,” he said.

“In March, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on the Western Australian community, I had been reluctant to leave in the midst of this great fight.

“But having completed the delivery of the state budget, which supports the continued economic recovery from the pandemic, I am now confident that WA is well on its way to overcoming the challenges presented to it by COVID-19.”

Mr Wyatt, who is related to federal Minister Ken Wyatt, is the first indigenous person to be treasurer at a state or federal level in Australia.

At the time of his initial announcement, Mr Wyatt said his family had “experienced a personal health issue”.

“(It) prompted this consideration and the kind of future I want to have with my family,” he said.

“My children are of an age that leaves me with a short time to relish new experiences with them, while they still want to hang out with me and before they reach senior levels of high school.”

The former lawyer entered parliament in 2006 and holds the seat of Victoria Park.

Mr Wyatt had sought to challenge for the Labor leadership in 2011, but withdrew when he realised he did not have the numbers to defeat Eric Ripper.

The following year, Mr McGowan was elected the leader unopposed.

Hannah Beazley, daughter of WA Governor Kim Beazley, is tipped to replace Mr Wyatt in the safe Labor seat.

https://www.news.com.au/national/western-australia/wa-treasurer-ben-wyatt-announces-he-is-quitting-politics/news-story/17caabdc3c970e9f16ecd31f64586f3b

>>11536955

The Australian Secret Intelligence Service: 007 blessing and curse

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When intelligence folk smell roses, they look for the funeral. That bit of spy lore is about finding the opportunity in the threats (or vice versa).

The lore hints at the mystique of the trade: the allure of secrets.

As a former head of Oz spies (the Australian Secret Intelligence Service) and spy-catchers (the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation), David Irvine takes a droll view of the forbidden-fruit fascination of both secrets and sex. Irvine cites this wonderful bit of fruitiness from a top British diplomat, Rodric Braithwaite:

‘The subject of intelligence attracts attention out of proportion to its real importance. My theory is that this is because secrets are like sex. Most of us think that others get more than we do. Some of us cannot have enough of either. Both encourage fantasy. Both send the press into a feeding frenzy. All this distorts sensible discussion.’

For journalists, sex and secrets must lead to James Bond (‘racy without careening into the red zone of camp’). And so it was in the final episode of the ASPI interviews with the director-general of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Paul Symon, the question was posed: Is James Bond a blessing or a curse? Both, replied Symon:

A blessing because on holidays it’s a darn good read or darn good movie. Curse, because there’s so much wrong—there’s so much wrong with the way he performs his function. He’s licensed to kill. We don’t give people a licence to kill. He has, one would suggest, an ego, aspects of narcissism that wouldn’t fit comfortably with my people. So, he’s a blessing and a curse.

Dealing with the mythology of the mystique is one reason that Australia’s top spy has gone before the camera for four ASPI interviews.

Symon says ASIS has a good story to tell the Australian people. And as the only ASIS officer who can be named, he sees the need for more public conversations. Lots of media attention is a problem, he says, ‘but no media attention is a problem as well’.

Spies, Symon says, can go to places denied diplomats, where the internet search engines can’t reach. The job is to ‘pick the eyes out of the most sensitive secrets overseas that bear in on our national interest and help inform a judgement that our government needs to make—whether it’s in relation to our military, our economic or security outlook. We’re trying to help inform that debate and we are looking for that piece of gold that is not obtainable by any other means.’

Finding gold is always tough, as is searching for those intelligence nuggets. ASPI senior fellow Andrew Davies, in the ‘new age of espionage’ issue of Australian Foreign Affairs, writes of the complications of darkening geopolitics, surging technology, and a continuing terrorist threat. Yet many ‘dirty tricks’ of the past have transitioned to digital, Davies says, showing ‘the enduring value of old-school espionage’.

Danielle Cave, deputy director of ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre, writes that data mountains and cyberspace loom over spycraft. Spooks must fear algorithms and facial recognition technologies, Cave says, because everyone leaves a trace online: ‘Spies can’t always teleconference like the rest of us.’

(continued)

>>11676926

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Following those themes, I asked Symon about the viability of gathering human intelligence amid the ‘digital cornucopia and cyber cacophony’. The cornucopia–cacophony line drew the most amused raised eyebrow from Australia’s chief spy in our interviews. But my follow-on line (‘There’s a lot of noise out there.’) worked because, apparently, that touches concepts ASIS is using, as Symon explains:

There are jewels there, and that’s what drives us—to find those jewels. The other aspect of that very complex array of cornucopias and cacophonies that you’ve talked about is that … there’s an opportunity for us to ‘swim’ in that noise—as the term that we use inside the organisation—and to be pretty invisible in that noise. There’s a lot happening, a lot of bandwidth, there is a lot of noise. How can we perform our function in the middle of that without it being clear that we are part of a foreign espionage service? How do we use that cacophony? How do we swim in all of that noise to quietly go about our business? We’re turning our mind to that, because we think that’s where the future of the Service lies.

Reaction to the ASIS interviews varies. The Australian’s Ben Packham thought getting the top spy in front of a camera for the first time made for ‘a landmark series of video interviews’. By contrast, Hamish McDonald (one of the finest Oz foreign correspondents of my generation) felt it went ‘softly, softly’ in the ‘carefully controlled setting’ of ASPI.

The historian Peter Edwards sees the interviews responding to the need to make ‘secret agencies as transparent as possible about their past, current and likely future activities’. A comment I valued was from a Canberra wise owl who said the series works because it’s ‘reporting on ASIS as an organisation rather than a fantasy’.

The effort to clarify purposes and principles is where Symon starts and finishes the final ASPI interview: ‘We are not some maverick organisation sitting outside. We are the Australian people, we are comprised of them.’

For 68 years, ASIS has dwelt in the most secret spaces of the spook universe. In lifting the cloak a little, Symon concludes with these words to Australians on what they should understand about ASIS:

We are you—we serve you, we serve the government, we serve the prosperity and security agenda that we all aspire to for our nation now and into the future. We’re a component. We proudly serve Australians. We think we do it well, we do it legally, we do it with propriety, we do it conscientiously.

And so really my message is, while there is a certain mystique around a secret intelligence service, we know our bearings, we have our bearings. We care deeply about what we do. We’re here for Australia. We’re for Australians. We serve with pride. That’s the message I want to send.

https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/the-australian-secret-intelligence-service-007-blessing-and-curse/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz17u6zRIEg

ASIO launches first public awareness campaign to warn Australians of foreign spies on social media

The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) is warning of the dangers posed by foreign spies who use social networking sites to cultivate and groom potential targets in espionage operations.

In its first public awareness campaign, ASIO has collaborated with its international Five Eyes intelligence partners to urge people online to "think before you link".

ASIO director-general Mike Burgess said foreign intelligence agencies were known to target Australians through social media and professional networking platforms if they believed they may give up sensitive information.

"As my mum always used to say, 'If it's too good to be true, it probably is'," Mr Burgess told the ABC.

"Now that might sound a little risk adverse or paranoid, but actually if someone is offering something really good and you don't really know who it is, you might want to pause and think."

Last year, ASIO warned in its annual report that "hostile intelligence services" were using social media to target people across business and government.

In the United States, former CIA officer Kevin Mallory was recently convicted of espionage after being recruited via professional networking site LinkedIn.

A report in the New York Times in 2019 also said China was using LinkedIn to try to cultivate foreign spies.

The ASIO boss is declining to say which particular nations are behind online attempts to lure Australians, but Mr Burgess believes there are several culprits.

"It is the view of my organisation, ASIO, that there is more than one country using social networking sites to identify, groom and cultivate relationships with Australians that have access to sensitive information," he said.

Mr Burgess revealed some social media platforms were reluctant to cooperate with his intelligence agency when it asked for assistance in shutting down espionage threats.

"We get cooperation from companies across the board — some of them are helpful, some of them are not so helpful," Mr Burgess said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-17/asio-warns-foreign-spies-grooming-australians-on-social-media/12889228

>>11677548

Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Tweets

Foreign spies are targeting Australians online—be aware, be discreet and be responsible; if you are concerned, report suspicious activity to #ASIO.

Think Before You Link: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Read more at asio.gov.au/TBYL

https://twitter.com/ASIOGovAu/status/1328471358322294785

—

#DYK foreign spies are targeting Australians online? Director-General of Security, @MikePBurgess, introduces #ASIO’s new campaign, Think Before You Link, which offers practical advice to protect yourself from #espionage & foreign interference.

Learn more asio.gov.au/TBYL.html

https://twitter.com/ASIOGovAu/status/1328441710846701568

—

THINK BEFORE YOU LINK

Director-General's introduction

Not everyone you meet online is who they say they are. That won’t be news if you’re familiar with the messaging from our colleagues at the Australian Cyber Security Centre and Australian Federal Police about keeping yourself safe online.

But ASIO’s interests are a little different. Our business is to identify those who are trying to recruit Australians with access to sensitive information in order to get them to commit acts of espionage or foreign interference. This includes foreign spies who are targeting online social and professional networking sites.

That’s why this campaign is primarily aimed at Australians with access to sensitive information, such as those of you working in government, defence industry or academia. But our message is a cautionary tale for all Australians—be mindful of what personal information you choose to post online. You could be targeted for information that, if shared, could have serious consequences for Australia’s security, its economy or your business.

When it comes to online targeting by foreign spies, Australia is not alone. Citizens across the world face similar threats. We are working with our partners in the United Kingdom, the United States and New Zealand who have developed similar campaigns.

Be assured we’re not telling people to stop using social media and professional networking sites. We understand these are an important part of how we live and work. We’re simply asking people to be aware of the risks, to think about what they are putting online, and take action if they suspect they are being targeted.

The information we’ve prepared is designed to start the conversation. The message is simple: be aware that foreign spies are targeting Australians online, be discreet about your access to sensitive information, and be responsible—please report suspicious activity that concerns you.

As always, we remain your security service. Stay safe and please think before you link.

Mike Burgess

Director-General

https://www.asio.gov.au/TBYL.html

>>11620828

Judge weighs up media's no-case submission on Pell contempt charges

A judge is considering whether Australian media companies and their journalists have a contempt case to answer over the way they first reported George Pell's conviction on child sex abuse charges.

Prosecutors allege news outlets and individual journalists breached a suppression order and other rules by publishing reports in December 2018, in the days after Cardinal Pell was found guilty and while he was still awaiting another trial.

The media companies are defending the contempt charges. Their reports did not name Cardinal Pell but said a high-profile person had been found guilty of serious charges and was awaiting another trial.

Cardinal Pell was released from prison in April when the High Court quashed his convictions on appeal.

Thirteen of the 100 contempt charges against 12 media companies and 18 journalists were withdrawn by prosecutors last week, but lawyers for the media then submitted to the Supreme Court that their clients have no case to answer on the remaining charges and they should be struck out.

Justice John Dixon heard the last of the submissions on Tuesday and reserved his decision on the remaining charges. He is expected to take several days before announcing his decision.

If Justice Dixon decides the media companies have a case to answer, the trial will continue.

Prosecutors argue the media breached conditions of the suppression order imposed by the County Court and encouraged readers, listeners and viewers to search online for more information about the case.

Prosecutors also argue individual journalists can be held liable for publishing, as they prepared their reports with the intention they were to be published or broadcast.

But lawyers for the media companies argue prosecutors have failed to prove their case on the issue of which journalists are responsible for publishing.

They also argue prosecutors failed to prove the news reports encouraged people to search online, as there was no evidence that anyone other than Office of Public Prosecutions solicitors actually conducted searches.

OPP solicitors searched for overseas reports that named Cardinal Pell in the fortnight after his conviction, but their use of terms such as "high profile Australian convicted" and "Australian media can't report it" were mostly unsuccessful.

Of the 12 searches by OPP solicitors, eight yielded nothing. Of the four successful searches, Cardinal Pell was named in articles written by The Washington Post and the New York Post, but those reports were written after the Australian media had published their reports.

Matt Collins, QC, representing The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and other news outlets and journalists, told the court on Tuesday it was "fanciful speculation" to suggest there were people who heard, read or saw the Australian reports, then conducted a successful search online based on the limited information, and were then to be called as a potential juror in Cardinal Pell's second trial.

The County Court imposed the suppression order over Cardinal Pell's case to ensure jurors in the second trial did not know he had been found guilty at the first trial. The second trial was abandoned by prosecutors in February last year, which allowed Australian media to name the cardinal.

Last week prosecutors withdrew some charges against some News Corp publications and three of the company's digital editors.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/judge-weighs-up-media-s-no-case-submission-on-pell-contempt-charges-20201117-p56f95.html

Morrison to talk up Australian hydrogen in first meeting with new Japanese PM

Prime Minister Scott Morrison will push for Japan to take Australian hydrogen during a trip to Tokyo where he will meet with new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga for the first time.

The two leaders are expected to sign a defence pact to streamline each nation's use of the other's military bases, which will open the way to conduct more military exercises, including in the South China Sea.

Mr Morrison will also meet with Japanese business leaders, with whom he is expected to talk about the importance of hydrogen as an export fuel.

Australia's gas exporters have been hoping Japan's commitment to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 will help Australia's fledgling hydrogen industry.

Australia and Japan have been negotiating the defence reciprocal access agreement since 2014, with the key sticking point being the possibility of Australian Defence Force personnel facing the death penalty for crimes such as rape and murder while serving in Japan.

The in-principle deal will set out administrative and legal procedures for Australian and Japanese forces, including the use of military bases and conduct during joint exercises.

The proposed agreement is vital if the two countries are to increase their military co-operation, including in the South and East China Sea. It will be the first agreement covering a foreign military presence in Japanese territory since the 1960 Status of Forces Agreement with the United States.

China's militarisation of the South China Sea and its incursion into Japanese territory in the East China Sea has been a growing concern for Australia and Japan.

Mr Morrison, who is flying from Melbourne on Monday night, will become the first world leader to meet with the new Prime Minister in Japan. He is due to return on Wednesday morning.

Mr Morrison's meeting with Mr Suga and a signing a ceremony for the new defence pact are expected on Tuesday night. While the bilateral meeting between the two leaders will be dominated by security, Mr Morrison is also likely to raise the hydrogen push.

Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, said the meeting was a chance to affirm that Mr Suga was just as proactive in Indo-Pacific diplomacy as his predecessor, Shinzo Abe.

With the US election of President-elect Joe Biden, Professor Medcalf said the growing defence relationship between Australia and Japan could be used to complement the presence of the US in the Pacific.

While Australia welcomed Donald Trump's more assertive stance towards Beijing, the US President regularly unsettled American allies such as Japan and South Korea by demanding they pay billions more for a US troop presence.

"Australia and Japan really are the strongest bilateral pillar in the region that prepares the ground for American re-engagement under Biden," Professor Medcalf said.

"In the post-Trump era – this will work to support and sustain a US presence, it won't be an insurance policy against fears of America being unreliable.

"China should not be surprised that the Australia-Japan relationship continues to strengthen because China's actions have done so much to strengthen the relationship."

Michael Shoebridge, director of the defence program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said Japan would not have to worry about the possibility of the US withdrawing troops, and could instead have "more positive co-operation with partners like Australia and the big alliance partner America".

"This is part of the recognition that even post-Trump, expectations that America is the single answer to the region's security are misguided," Mr Shoebridge said. "Japan knows, just like Australia knows, that's just not right. America's power is essential but insufficient by itself."

He said the agreement on how Australian and Japanese troops interacted would be a "real enabler for bigger things".

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/morrison-to-talk-up-australian-hydrogen-in-first-meeting-with-new-japanese-pm-20201116-p56exr.html

Facebook apologises to Australian MP falsely accused by conspiracy theorist of being in 'paedophile network'

Nationals MP Anne Webster, her husband and not-for-profit group targeted by ‘disgraceful and inexplicable’ posts

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Facebook has apologised to Nationals MP Anne Webster over months-long delays in responding to reports of abuse she received from an online conspiracy theorist that led to an $875,000 defamation payout order.

In September, federal court justice Jacqueline Gleeson ordered the payout to the first-term Mildura MP over Facebook posts in April by Australian conspiracy theorist Karen Brewer. The posts were shared hundreds of times and falsely accused Webster of being “a member of a secretive paedophile network” who had been “parachuted into parliament to protect a past generation of paedophiles”.

Webster’s husband and the not-for-profit they set up to help single mothers were also included in the payout.

Gleeson in her decision said Brewer’s posts were “disgraceful and inexplicable”.

Brewer’s account was not deleted by Facebook until Guardian Australia reported on the case in August.

Webster installed security cameras at her home because she feared being physically attacked.

In a parliamentary committee hearing on family, domestic and sexual violence, Webster questioned whether Facebook could support people subject to abuse online if it took around five months for Facebook to take action in her case.

“It took till August until anything was done, after several court hearings and Facebook being reminded that they were part of the contempt of court if they continue to post it – if you continue to post it,” she told Facebook’s Australian director of public policy, Mia Garlick.

“So I’m concerned that the responsiveness is actually not there. If it’s not there for me, then is it there for people who are abused in domestic relationships, or relationships that are over?”

Garlick apologised for how Facebook had handled the case.

“I do want to apologise for the experience that you had on our platform and I understand how upsetting and damaging untrue accusations that were said must have been for you.

“And I think that there are a number of claims that are made particularly about public figures – and primarily, it’s often female public figures – that will violate our community standards that we will be able to take action on and remove promptly,” she said.

But Garlick differentiated between Webster’s experience on Facebook and the experience of people who are not public figures. She said content was not automatically removed in cases where public figures are accused of crimes, but said Facebook reviews applicable laws to see if the content could be found to be in breach of the law, and then it is blocked.

“I think one of the difficulties that arise in relation to the current state of defamation law is where we have to make a judgment about whether the person posting the content could rely on the defence of truthfulness,” Garlick said. “And recent court decisions have also changed the standard for the content to be considered unlawful.

“And so we actually engage with local counsel to work through that legal analysis.”

(continued)

>>11677795

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Garlick said posts were blocked, and the account was removed for “repeatedly violating community standards”, but blamed “legal complexities” for Facebook not acting faster.

“There were some additional legal complexities in that case. And certainly, you know, we’re actively engaged in advocating for reform of defamation law to try to assist in more swiftly addressing those kinds of issues.”

Webster pointed out the defamatory posts also targeted her husband and a charity, and she said Facebook’s abuse reporting tools were not fit for purpose.

“If they are to guard the safety of the users, I don’t think it’s doing a very good job,” she said. “The fact that it takes maybe 48 hours – maybe three days – for a response to come at all and then for any action to be taken really was only after a court finding that meant Facebook would be held in contempt of court.

“I’m just assuring you that I am absolutely focused on ensuring that people in Australia are not harmed in the way that I was harmed, and that my organisation was harmed and that my husband was harmed – it is not OK.”

The MP said the policies were not working and needed to be improved.

Garlick said Facebook’s machine learning and AI processes were developing to ensure that abusive content was caught before it was posted, but it was hard to hard code in potentially defamatory content.

“Our goal is to try to remove harmful content before people even see it, because that removes the harm,” she said.

“I very much understand and I’m very sympathetic to your case. And I do think that our ability to sort of code for defamation law is a much more complex thing.”

As part of a state and federal reform of defamation law announced last year, social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter could be held liable for content posted on their platforms.

Currently a federal court decision has found news companies are liable for the comments posts on Facebook, despite the fact that news companies do not have the ability to pre-moderate comments on Facebook.

Facebook has resisted any suggestion it is a publisher, and therefore liable under law for what its users post on the site. Webster said she believed Facebook is a publisher and therefore holds such liabilities.

Garlick said Facebook was advocating for effective compliance regulatory frameworks “to give the public and governments the confidence that we do take responsibility.”

Garlick said in the second quarter of 2020, Facebook removed 2.4m pieces of content for bullying and harassment, 22.5m for hate speech, and 35.7m for adult nudity.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/nov/17/facebook-apologises-to-australian-mp-falsely-accused-by-conspiracy-theorist-of-being-in-paedophile-network

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL40L_gOzIA

#LetUsSpeak: Daughter finally unmasks paedophile dad

One of Victoria’s most sadistic paedophiles and rapists has finally been unmasked by his own daughter as thousands of victims get their voices back.

Nina Funnell - NOVEMBER 17, 2020

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Landmark new laws scheduled to come into effect tomorrow will allow tens of thousands of Victorian rape survivors to self-identify in media, as the woman who started the #LetUsSpeak campaign finally reveals her real name and the identity of man who abused her.

David Hodson, one of Victoria’s most sadistic paedophiles and rapists can finally be unmasked, after one of his victims – his biological daughter, Jaime Lee Page – won an eight month legal battle to reveal her real name and the chilling details of what happened in the “house of horrors” she grew up in.

Hodson, who is also a convicted murderer, spent years sexually terrorising his young daughter Jaime, and her older stepsister Carol, who he later murdered in 1997, after she reported the frequent rapes and incest to police, along with allegations of bestiality involving the family dog.

Until now, an oppressive sexual assault victim gag law which has prevented Jaime from revealing her own name, has also served to protect Hodson, because there has been no way to reveal his identity without also indirectly revealing Jaime’s identity too.

Today, after a lengthy eight-month legal fight which has cost tens of thousands of dollars, Jaime has finally won the right to reveal her real name, and with it, the details of her “dark childhood”.

In the process, she has also produced landmark law reforms which are set to restore agency, voice and identity to tens of thousands of sexual assault survivors, after she spearheaded the #LetUsSpeak campaign in August this year.

As those new laws prepare to come into effect tomorrow, Jaime is finally revealing her whole story and the full, never-heard-before events which triggered the #LetUsSpeak campaign.

JAIME LEE PAGE: THIS IS MY STORY

“The first time it happened, I was eight years old,” says Jaime Lee Page, a 40-year-old mother of three from Melbourne.

“He came into my room at night and asked if I wanted to play a game. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I was so young and so confused and I thought ‘is this what every father does?’”

From then on, Jaime’s father, David Hodson repeatedly raped and molested his daughter, until, at age 12, she finally attempted suicide.

“I just couldn’t do it anymore. He had threatened to kill me or hurt my family, or kill my animals if I told anyone what was going on. I was only 12, I’d just started high school.”

Jaime thought her darkest hour was behind her, but yet worse lay in store.

When Jaime turned 16, her older stepsister Carol reported to Mill Park police station that she, too, had endured years of sexual abuse at the hands of Hodson.

“When Carol found out what happened to me, she came forward to the police to try and protect me,” Jaime says, “But unfortunately by doing that, she angered my father.”

Police obtained seminal DNA evidence from Carol’s clothing, and in June 1996, Hodson was charged with rape, gross indecency, and bestiality for sickening abuse he’d perpetrated on the family dog.

As the lead witness, Carol went into hiding, where she remained for several months. But just four days before she was due to give evidence, Hodson tracked her down using the services of a private investigator.

“I was at home one morning and a news clip came on,” Jaime says. “A woman had been gunned down in her car on the way to work and the man had also tried to kill himself. I just thought ‘what a terrible story’.

“Then they had another clip and it showed my father being wheeled out on a stretcher to the air ambulance. I could see the tattoo on his hand that I had seen so many times in my life, and I just knew it was my father.

“I fell to the ground, I was shocked. I was screaming. I wanted my sister back.”

Hodson had shot Carol three times in broad daylight outside her workplace in Mordialloc. She died immediately.

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Jaime and a friend rushed to the hospital where Hodson was being treated for a superficial self-inflicted gunshot wound.

But Hodson recovered and in the weeks that followed, he was charged with murder.

To Jaime’s dismay, Carol’s own mother, Sue Morris, then married Hodson in a prison wedding. The nuptials meant she would never have to testify against him.

“It made me sick. The wedding was at Port Phillip prison. They even sent me an invitation. It was a gigantic slap in the face to Carol. I wanted nothing to do with it” Jaime says.

That was in 1997. With Carol no longer alive to testify, and Jaime – who was still a child – far too traumatised to face court, police dropped the sexual abuse charges and instead pursued the single murder count. In 1998, Hodson was found guilty and sentenced to 24 years jail.

‘I NEED TO HONOUR MY SISTER. SHE STILL NEEDS JUSTICE’

For two decades, Jaime Lee Page tried to move on with her life and not think about the horrific “monster” who had tormented her entire childhood.

But in April 2018, she received a knock at the door.

It was police telling her that Hodson had been scheduled for parole and, having never been convicted of any sexual crimes, would not have to register as a sex offender.

“I was terrified. Not just for my own children. I wouldn’t want him living next to any family with kids” says Jaime, now a mother herself.

“I thought, if he gets out of jail and is unknown as the sex offender and monster that he is, and the public have no idea of the disgusting crimes he committed against me and my sister, then that’s dangerous: it’s not right.

“So I dug really deep, I found a place where I could share what had happened to me and I came forward and I guess you could say I bravely told my story of my childhood experiences: my horror, my hell.”

At first Hodson denied the sexual abuse allegations, but after Jaimie withstood a lengthy cross examination, he converted his plea to guilty in 2019, and was sentenced to a further nine years jail.

“I cheered out loud, because that was the moment my sister deserved, that I deserved. It was justice well done,” she says.

Sadly, though, Jaime’s relief was short-lived.

While the conviction has stuck, Hodson appealed the length of the sentence, and by March this year, it was dramatically slashed, meaning that once again he will be eligible for parole in 2022.

The news devastated Jaime and her family.

“I think that broke me, that was the day that broke me. I felt absolutely disgusted with the court system. I felt alone, let down.”

LET US SPEAK

Jaime contacted News Corp journalist Sherele Moody, hoping to blow the whistle.

It was only then that Jaime learned that just weeks earlier – in February this year – a radical victim gag-law had commenced which prohibited her and all other rape victims from speaking under their real names, once charges were laid or a conviction was in place.

A de-identified story was published, but unable to name herself, her sister, or Hodson, Jaime wanted more.

“I contacted the #LetHerSpeak campaign, because they were having success in fighting similar gag laws in Tasmania and the Northern Territory.

That was in April, the same week that Tasmania reformed its own sexual assault victim gag-law.

From there Jaime began working behind the scenes with the campaign legal partner, Marque Lawyers. But unlike equivalent cases in Tasmania and the Northern Territory, there was no precedent in Victoria for Jaime to follow.

“At that stage, the Victorian courts were not even aware that this law had come in,” Michael Bradley, managing partner of Marque Lawyers, says. “It was an illogical, incoherent mess. They had no process to even deal with her request to obtain an exemption.”

To make matters more complicated, Victoria’s Attorney-General, Jill Hennessy, outright refused to admit that the new law which her Government had introduced in February had created the problems and red tape which Jaime was now bound up in.

“I was so angry,” Jaime says. “No one in a position of power would listen when we tried to explain what was going on. No one cared that I was at home suffering.”

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Across June and July, multiple letters outlining the legal reality of the botched law were sent to the Government on Jaime’s behalf, but by August, with still no commitment forthcoming from the Government to reform the gag law, Jaime and fellow sexual assault survivor, Nicole Lee, bravely decided that they would front a Victoria specific campaign.

Later that month: #LetUsSpeak was launched.

Within hours of launch, the campaign went viral and was picked up by media around the world. Over 200,000 people signed a petition for law reform and donations began rolling in to a GoFundMe page set up to assist with Jaime and Nicole’s legal fees.

When the original goal amount of $20,000 was achieved, the campaign expanded, and to date, 11 sexual assault survivors have now secured their court orders via support from the Campaign GoFundMe and Marque Lawyers.

But behind the scenes Jaime was suffering. In June the courts had informed her lawyers that she would need to seek her father’s permission to reveal her own name.

In September, after she refused, an officer for the court forwarded her application to her offender anyway.

“I felt so angry. I felt violated. They had no right to share my information with my father,” Jaime says. “He’s a predator. He’s in jail for a reason. It angered me that they would even think that his opinion mattered.”

Jaime’s lawyer lodged a complaint about the court officer responsible, a copy of which was sent to Hennessy’s office.

But four days later, the campaign learned that the Department of Justice and Community Safety had now appointed that same officer as the key point of contact for all sexual assault victims who were seeking court orders to be named.

“It was a farce” says Dr Rachael Burgin, lecturer of law at Swinburne Law School and Chair of RASARA, a partner organisation to the #LetUsSpeak campaign.

“At every point, the process was failing survivors and exacerbating their trauma and distress.”

Publicly, though, the Government was telling a very different story, boasting to media that the process had been successfully “streamlined”.

Then, in October, as Jaime’s legal battle ticked over into its seventh month, the campaign was dealt another blow.

Embedded within draft legislation intended to amend the gag on living sexual assault survivors, was a nasty thorn: while living victims would get their voices back, the Government proposed introducing a new gag on the names of deceased rape victims – including Jill Meagher, Aiia Maasarwe and Eurydice Dixon.

Worse, the proposed gag on dead victims would also prevent Jaime from ever naming her beloved sister Carol.

“The main reason I was doing all this was to honour my sister, my beautiful sister who no longer has a voice,” she says.

“I remember speaking at my sister’s funeral all those years ago and I made a promise to Carol that no one will ever, ever forget you.

“So when I found out I was pregnant with my first child, I decided to honour Carol by giving that name as my daughter’s middle name.

“And my daughter now embodies all the things that Carol was: she’s brave, smart, kind, cheeky, funny. My children are so proud to hear stories about Aunty Carol and even though they may have never met her, they love her and they’re very aware of the amazing person that she was …. She died trying to save me. She’s my hero and she’ll always be my hero.”

WE WILL FIGHT IT

An emergency meeting was called between the #LetUsSpeak campaign partners, and the decision was made to run “a campaign within a campaign”, to fight the proposed gag on deceased victims’ names.

Following the launch in October, more than 4000 letters were sent to parliamentarians via the campaign, condemning the Government’s proposed gag.

Jill Meagher’s mother, Edith McKeon, wrote a public statement declaring that she was “f —king fuming” that grieving relatives – who had not even been consulted on the proposed ban – could face up to four months jail, if they continued to name their deceased loved one.

She was joined by John Herron, the father of murder victim Courtney Herron, and Saaed Maasarwe – the father of slain rape victim, Aiia Maasarwe, an international student whose body was found near La Trobe Bundoora campus in January last year.

“I think it would be an injustice to victims and families” said Mr Maasarwe of the proposed gag.

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Eventually, even the mother of Jill Meagher’s murderer, Adrian Bayley, weighed in, with an emotive plea to the Government not to further silence deceased victims and their grieving families.

But throughout it all, Jaime remained gagged.

“It was heartbreaking. It took me to a really dark place. I felt like giving up many times. And if all this had just been for myself, I would have given up. But my sister needed a voice. She needs a voice now. And everyone needs to know who she is,” she says.

“So I kept getting out of bed and fighting for justice for her and all people like her. She died trying to save me and every other little girl – I love her, I miss her – so this was the least I could do for her.”

JAIME’S LAW: VINDICATION AT LAST

Last week, at long last, Jaime finally won her hard fought battle.

Represented by barrister Michelle Zammit, she secured her court order, meaning she can now name herself, and by extension, her sister Carol and the man who abused the them: David Hodson.

At the same hearing Judge Michael McInerney also threw out a spurious argument launched by the Department of Public Prosecutions who tried, in vein, to claim that it is already a crime to name deceased rape victims. (The Act does not mention dead people at all).

That decision by the Judge then set off a ripple effect throughout parliament, which ultimately led to a cross bench revolt against the Government’s intended ban on naming deceased rape victims.

So, last Tuesday, following almost eight hours of heated parliamentary debate, the opposition, in partnership with the Greens and several cross benches forced an amendment to the Bill.

The result: Not only has the Government’s attempted ban on deceased victim’s names been thwarted in its tracks, but tomorrow new laws will be introduced which will allow living sexual assault survivors to reclaim their voices and identities.

“Nothing at all was easy in any of this,” says Jaime, “but I feel amazing the law is actually going to change. I am immensely proud. The law should never, ever, ever have been in place, but it turns out people do actually want to listen to survivors: they want to hear us.

Because of Jaime’s advocacy and the #LetUsSpeak campaign, the new laws will also grant survivors in Victoria powers they have never had before, including the ability to tailor their consent regarding which media outlet can name them and what details can be included.

“This is a significant moment” says Dr Burgin, Chairperson of RASARA. “In this way, the laws are making history by giving survivors more control over their narratives than they have ever had in the past.

As for Jaime she says that after an exhausting eight months, she is proud to have ultimately succeeded.

“I think one day, when my children understand all this, they will say ‘my mum was brave, she came forward to pave the way for other survivors to be able to share their stories.’ “And that’s what I want them to learn: you need to fight for what is right, and even in the darkest of days, you don’t give up.”

“And I know my sister would be so proud. I can now look up towards the sky and know that she’s at peace and justice has finally been served for my sister.

To donate towards Jaime Lee Page’s remaining legal costs, visit the #LetUsSpeak GoFundMe.

https://au.gofundme.com/f/stop-silencing-survivors

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/letusspeak-daughter-finally-unmasks-paedophile-dad/news-story/a42a69ec06c81d56fd398cfa6e142573

Scott Morrison and Murdoch's News Corp empire 'operating like a team', former PM Malcolm Turnbull says

Malcolm Turnbull has accused Prime Minister Scott Morrison of working as "a team" with News Corp newspapers and Sky TV.

The former prime minister has joined Kevin Rudd in backing a petition for a royal commission into media diversity and the role of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which they both believe is a malevolent and partisan force in Australian political life.

In his recent memoir Mr Turnbull accused Mr Murdoch of bringing his prime ministership down.

"Morrison, I think, has determined not to suffer the same fate I did from the right of the Liberal Party in the Murdoch press," he told 7.30.

"So Morrison is cleaving very closely to the Murdoch press, and they are backing him up.

"They're not holding him to account for failings, and they're criticising his opponents. And yeah, they're operating like a team."

'News Corp is now essentially propaganda'

While the petition has more than 500,000 signatures, it has failed to secure a royal commission so far. Instead, the Greens will hold a Senate inquiry.

"The critical thing, you have to recognise that News Corp is now essentially propaganda. It's a political organisation that employs a lot of journalists," Mr Turnbull said.

Kevin Rudd concurs.

"Whereas once the Murdoch press would generally lean conservative, but see it [as] in its interest to give the other side of politics a half a go, in the last decade, it's simply been wall-to-wall propaganda on behalf of the Liberal National Party … And [in the US it's become] propaganda for the far-right Republican Party," Mr Rudd said.

"Well, enough is enough."

'Extraordinary access' claim rejected by Abbott

Malcolm Turnbull believes the relationship between the prime minister's office and the Murdoch media was even closer under the man he succeeded.

"Tony Abbott operated almost in a partnership with News Corp," he said.

"Their reporters, their editors had access to Cabinet decisions before they were taken, in fact, reported Cabinet decisions having been taken when in fact that [sic] turned out they hadn't been, so there was extraordinary access."

Mr Abbott declined an interview with 7.30, but released a statement describing the allegations as "baseless smears".

"Unlike some, as Prime Minister, I never leaked out of Cabinet or backgrounded against colleagues," he wrote.

"To me, this is dishonourable and a betrayal of the solidarity that should exist within a political party with a shared commitment to the people it represents.

"I make the general point that Australia needs more media outlets and more media diversity; but won't otherwise respond to baseless smears or dignify a hatchet job."

Turnbull talked with Murdoch 'a lot' as PM

By his own recollection, Mr Turnbull has known Rupert Murdoch in one way or another for 40 years.

Despite being able to get the media baron on the phone, he was unable to convince him to call off the attacks on his leadership when it mattered.

"I used to talk to him a lot, actually," he said.

"I couldn't understand this bitter campaign against me from Sky News and from some of his newspapers, particularly The Australian … he'd say 'They don't have many viewers' or 'The Oz (The Australian) doesn't have many readers,' and he'd always obfuscate it.

"But the reality is I thought it was crazy."

Mr Turnbull believes Mr Murdoch wanted "to install" Peter Dutton as prime minister, and he failed.

When asked if that showed Mr Murdoch wasn't "all-powerful", Mr Turnbull replied: "It shows you his influence is considerable."

When approached for an interview, Prime Minister Scott Morrison's office directed 7.30 to the Communications Minister's office. A spokesman declined to comment publicly ahead of the Senate inquiry.

News Corp declined 7.30's request for an interview and did not respond to written questions.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-17/scott-morrison-murdoch-media-like-a-team-turnbull-says/12891218

EXCLUSIVE: How sloppy federal prosecutors who agreed to Jeffrey Epstein's sweetheart plea deal were played so well by the pedophile's lawyers they didn't even realize they were giving immunity to Ghislaine Maxwell, new report claims

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Federal prosecutors who agreed to Jeffrey Epstein's sweetheart plea deal were played so well by the pedophile's lawyers they didn't even realize they were giving immunity to Ghislaine Maxwell.

An explosive new report reveals that the prosecutors from the Southern District of Florida (SDFL) thought they were only giving legal protection to four female Epstein associates.

They later admitted that it 'never dawned' on them the immunity clause was also designed to protect Maxwell, who is accused of being Epstein's chief recruiter.

Epstein's lawyers persuaded them to use language so loose it could also apply to the British socialite, who is due to stand trial next year for allegedly procuring girls as young as 14 for him.

The stunning blunder features in a report by the Department of Justice's internal watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) which has not been released in full but DailyMail.com has seen a copy.

It reveals in unprecedented detail the errors that led to Epstein serving just 15 months in jail in 2007 despite the FBI identifying dozens of potential victims.

Among the other revelations is that the SDFL failed to obtain Epstein's computers and surveillance tapes from inside his houses even though they could have proved he was in possession of child pornography.

The prosecutor in charge of the case thought that the material 'would have put this case completely to bed' and given them evidence to put Epstein away for years.

An attorney working for Epstein had a prior relationship with one of the prosecutors and told him to 'do us a solid (favor)' and get his boss to suggest giving Epstein just two years in jail, the report says.

A senior prosecutor was so cozy with Epstein lawyer Jay Lefkowitz he told him he 'enjoyed' working with him and that 'Mr Epstein was fortunate to have such excellent representation'.

The OPR report was commissioned by Attorney General William Barr in early 2019 after the Miami Herald's devastating investigation into Epstein's plea deal, called Perversion of Justice.

Journalists began their inquiries after the US Attorney who signed off on Epstein's agreement, Alex Acosta, was appointed by Donald Trump as his Labor Secretary meaning he would be in charge of US government policy on human trafficking.

The series of stories helped lead to Epstein's arrest in August last year and he hanged himself in prison while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges - Acosta was forced to resign.

The OPR report was designed to look into whether or not any of the prosecutors engaged in corruption or professional misconduct.

The report concludes that did not happen, partly because the bar was that prosecutors 'intentionally or recklessly violated a clear and unambiguous standard'.

However over 350 pages it digs up profound and disturbing questions about the handling of the case.

The most troubling is the handling of the immunity clause in the non prosecution agreement (NPA), the deal Epstein signed to make federal charges disappear.

Instead he would plead guilty in state court to two felony prostitution charges, be sentenced to 18 months in jail and register as a sex offender.

Under the immunity clause, which was suggested by Epstein's lawyers who haggled repeatedly over the language, four women were also given protection from prosecution.

They were Sarah Kellen, who was allegedly one of his main recruiters, Nadia Marcinkova, an alleged sex slave, Adriana Ross, one of his associates, and Lesley Groff, who is said to have been his New York based assistant.

All the women have subsequently denied any wrongdoing and some have said they are victims.

The final language of the immunity clause was: 'The United States agrees that it will not institute any criminal charges against any potential co-conspirators of Epstein, including but not limited to (the four women)'.

The wording was loose enough that it applied to Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend who his victims have claimed ran his sex trafficking operation - she has denied the allegations against her.

Yet Jeffrey Sloman, the First Assistant US Attorney in the SDFL, told the OPR that it 'never occurred to him that the reference to potential co-conspirators was directed toward any of the high-profile individuals who were at the time or subsequently linked'.

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Ann Marie Villafaña, the Assistant US Attorney who was in charge of the case, said that apart from the four named women they had not much evidence on 'any other potential co-conspirators'.

She said: 'So, we wouldn't be prosecuting anybody else, so why not include it?….I just didn't think that there was anybody that it would cover'.

She conceded to OPR that she 'did not catch the fact that it could be read as broadly as people have since read it'.

Villafaña said that at the time she told a colleague: 'I don't think it hurts us'.

Villafaña told the OPR that Epstein's lawyers told her that he wanted to 'make sure that he's the only one who takes the blame for what happened'.

Villafaña and her colleagues believed Epstein's conduct was his own 'dirty little secret' and appear to have missed the fact that Maxwell was his alleged top lieutenant.

Villafaña said they 'didn't have any specific evidence against her' but they had already spoken to one victim who 'implicated' her but the conduct was not in Florida.

Villafaña told OPR: '(We) considered Epstein to be the top of the food chain, and we wouldn't have been interested in prosecuting anyone else'.

The report says: 'She did not consider the possibility that Epstein might be trying to protect other, unnamed individuals, and no one, including the FBI case agents, raised that concern'.

Solman agreed and in retrospect 'understood the non-prosecution provision was designed to protect Epstein's four assistants, and it 'never dawned' on him that it was intended to shield anyone else', the report said.

The horrible irony of this is that not only did Maxwell slip through the net, but she could use the very same NPA for her defense in her upcoming trial.

Before Epstein killed himself his lawyers argued that the deal with the SDFL was part of a 'global' agreement with the US government and that he couldn't be prosecuted twice.

Maxwell may well do the same.

Among the other details in the report is the extraordinary revelation that the prosecution failed to obtain the computers removed from Epstein's Palm Beach mansion prior to them being raided by the Palm Beach Police Department.

Mysteriously all the computers including those with records of surveillance cameras had been removed by the time officers arrived.

The report says that Villafaña knew who had possession of the computer equipment and the tapes - it does not say who.

They could have provided additional victims and given 'powerful visual evidence' of a 'large number of girls' Epstein victimized', the report says.

Villafaña made repeated efforts to get the computers from Epstein's lawyers but they blocked her and her superiors did not pursue this.

The report says that this evidence was 'relevant and potentially critical' and says that it could have led to evidence of Epstein transmitting child pornography images across state lines, a serious federal crime.

Villafaña told the OPR: '(If) the evidence had been what we suspected it was…(it) would have put this case completely to bed. It also would have completely defeated all of these arguments about interstate nexus'.

In its most withering section, the report says: 'It was clear Epstein did not want the contents of his computers disclosed. Nothing in the available record reveals that the USAO (prosecution) benefited from abandoning pursuit of this evidence when they did.

'Instead, the USAO agreed to postpone and ultimately to abandon its efforts to obtain evidence that could have significantly changed Acosta's decision to resolve the federal investigation with a state guilty plea or led to additional significant federal charges.

'By agreeing to postpone the litigation, the USAO gave away leverage that might have caused the defense to come to an agreement much earlier and on terms more favorable to the government.

'The USAO ultimately agreed to a term in the (plea deal) that permanently ended the government's ability to obtain possible evidence of significant crimes and did so with apparently little serious consideration of the potential cost',

The issue with the computers was not the only instance where Villafaña felt blocked by her male superiors.

The report paints her as one of the few voices within the department calling for Epstien to be arrested as soon as possible.

She told OPR that she was in a hurry to lock up Epstein 'because child sex offenders don't stop until they're behind bars'.

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But she butted heads with Matthew Menchel, the chief of the criminal division for SDFL.

In a blunt email to her, he said: 'If you want to work major cases in the district you must understand and accept the fact that there is a chain of command – something you disregard with great regularity'.

When Epstein signed the plea deal, one of Villafaña's colleagues told her: 'This case only resolved with the filthy rich bad guy going to jail because of your dedication and determination'.

She said: 'After all the hell they put me through, I don't feel like celebrating 18 months. He should be spending 18 years in jail'.

While Villafaña maintained a combative stance with Epstein's attorneys when she could, some of her male colleagues were far cosier with them.

Andrew Lourie, deputy chief of the criminal division at the time, appeared to get on well with Lefkowitz, one of Epstein's 'dream team' of lawyers which also included Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr, who wrote the impeachment investigation of Bill Clinton.

When Lefkowitz emailed Lourie to ask for his help to stop details about their negotiations being leaked, he told him: 'I have enjoyed working with you on this matter'.

Lourie replied: 'I enjoyed it as well. Mr Epstein was fortunate to have such excellent representation'.

That was not the only such connection between the prosecution and the defense and Epstein's lawyer Lilly Ann Sanchez briefly had a relationship with Menchel in 2003 when they both worked at the SDFL.

The report says that in 2018 Villafaña claimed that the idea of Epstein serving a two year jail sentence was done as a favor to Sanchez.

She wrote in an email: 'Months (or possibly years) later, I asked former First Assistant Jeff Sloman where the two-year figure came from. He said that Lily [sic] Ann Sanchez asked Mr. Menchel to 'do her a solid' and convince Mr. Acosta to offer two years'.

Sloman told OPR that he could not recall making such a remark.

Menchel said he couldn't recall how the two year figure came about and said his prior relationship with Sanchez played no part in his decision making.

Despite turning up fresh evidence about the investigation the OPR was still unable to explain why Acosta decided on such a lenient sentence for Epstein.

The report says he appeared to be trying to find a middle ground between what Epstein would have got if the case was handled by federal prosecutors from the start, potentially decades in jail, and what he would be getting in state court, which amounted to a slap on the wrists.

In a scathing passage, the report says that Acosta's reasoning was 'untethered to any articulable, reasonable basis'.

As a result he drew up a plea deal that was 'too difficult to administer, leaving Epstein free to manipulate the conditions of his sentence to his own advantage'.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8953871/How-sloppy-federal-prosecutors-foolish-mistakes-got-Jeffrey-Epstein-15-months-jail.html