/qresearch/ - Q Research

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CURRENT DOUGH

https://controlc.com/fb691a20

Australia treasurer calls for easing Covid curbs despite rising cases

Colin Packham - December 11, 2021

CANBERRA, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Australia must loosen COVID-19 restrictions to bolster its economic recovery, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said on Saturday, even as daily infections rose to a six-week high.

"States need to keep calm and carry on. And not overreact to the Omicron variant," Frydenberg told reporters in Melbourne.

Australia is one of the world's most vaccinated countries, with nearly 90% of people over 16 fully inoculated. Still, Australia said it found 1,753 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, up about 3% in the last week and the highest daily total since Oct 29.

Frydenberg said state and territory leaders must loosen curbs implemented to slow the spread of the virus, emphasising the need to accelerate Australia's economic growth while he played down concerns about the Omicron variant.

"Our economic recovery depends upon it. We have the vaccination rates now at record highs and that has proven to be a vital defence against Covid."

While some measures have been eased as vaccines were rolled out, interstate travel is still prohibited between several states and capacity limits in shops and restaurants are strictly enforced.

Australia's A$2 trillion ($1.4 trillion) economy was badly damaged by lockdowns in the country's two largest states with gross domestic product falling 1.9% in the third quarter.

Economists and policy makers expect Australia's economy to rebound sharply in 2022 as it reopens its international borders, boosting tourism and the education sector.

Australia last month delayed allowing foreign visa holders to enter until at least mid-December. Frydenberg said on Saturday a decision on whether to reopen would be made in the next few days.

($1 = 1.3945 Australian dollars)

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australia-treasurer-calls-easing-covid-curbs-despite-rising-cases-2021-12-11/

'Arrogant' pedophile priest Anthony William Peter Caruana jailed for 15 years

Luke Costin - 10 December 2021

Police and a former student of child abuser Anthony William Peter Caruana have described the pedophile priest's jailing for 15 years as a good day.

The former Chevalier College teacher, now 80, attacked students in a swimming pool, a band storage room, dormitories, his office and on rugby pitches while working at the NSW Southern Highlands school from 1982 to 1989.

He was jailed on Friday for 26 offences against 12 boys.

The victims were aged 12 to 14 and often boarded at the school.

"It's been 39 years in the coming and it's a good day for all the victims," Detective Senior Constable Brad Streeting told AAP.

"Justice for them has finally come and hopefully this will add to the closure for them."

The sentiment was shared by Brendan King, who described Caruana as "an arrogant prick right to the end" who'd "lied and lied in the witness box" during his trial this year.

He and other Chevalier students complained to police in 1989.

That sparked the priest's removal from the college and court proceedings in the 1990s.

But Caruana's acquittal in 1992 for counts related to Mr King and another boy delayed justice until some boys gave evidence at the child abuse royal commission and police revived the case.

"I was picked on by other teachers when I made a complaint to police," Mr King, who wasn't a complainant in the 2021 trial, told AAP.

"(The Catholic Church and Missionaries of the Sacred Heart) have tried to cover this up for a long period of time … now we're here today, 26 counts guilty for similar offences - we know who the liar is."

Like Mr King, the 12 victims of Caruana's offending suffered turmoil after their abuse, including poor mental health, homelessness and a loss of trust in family and school staff who considered them to be liars or exaggerators.

The NSW District Court was told one academically strong boy, who Caruana forcibly orally and anally raped after band practice in 1984, became stricken by anxiety at school.

"Like many victims of child sexual abuse, he engaged in substance abuse, mainly alcohol," Judge Robyn Tupman said.

Another victim attempted suicide at 21 and chose not to have children.

Caruana pleaded not guilty at trial, telling the jury in June he'd left out "in my dreams" when talking to church counsellors in the 1990s about his "feeling" towards boys.

Since he was convicted by the jury in July, his only sign of remorse had been expressed through a doctor's report, Judge Tupman said.

While he was unlikely to re-offend, the judge tossed aside suggestions of good character and references from long-time cycling friends of a "very spiritual, religious and highly moral" man.

After being removed from the school in 1989, Caruana was made an archivist for the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, remaining there until he was remanded in custody in July.

Judge Tupman noted the elderly man may die before his 10-year minimum term ends in 2031.

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https://thewest.com.au/news/crime/pedophile-priest-to-be-jailed-in-sydney-c-4888760

Tasmanian health department put interests of alleged pedophile James Griffin ahead of victims, Ombudsman says

Emily Baker - 10 December 2021

Tasmania's Ombudsman has accused the state's health department of putting the interests of an alleged paedophile nurse ahead of his victims in a scathing review into its response to requests for information.

The Tasmanian Health Service's (THS) handling of allegations against James Geoffrey Griffin — who took his life in 2019 after being charged with child sex offences — has been singled out for special attention in the Commission of Inquiry into child sex abuse.

But behind the scenes, the department has argued it would be against the public interest to release details of complaints against Griffin while he worked on the Launceston General Hospital (LGH) children's ward — despite Ombudsman Richard Connock finding many documents requested by freelance journalist Camille Bianchi early last year could be published in some form.

In April 2020, Bianchi applied under Right to Information laws, for records of staff complaints, reports and email correspondence relating to Griffin's behaviour while working on Ward 4K.

More than 100 pages of relevant information were unearthed — but the department claimed none of the documents could be released, citing privacy issues, concern for the mental health of Griffin's friends, family and former colleagues, and fears publicising such information could deter people from making similar reports in the future.

A decision published by Mr Connock about a month ago disagreed.

"Allegations against Mr Griffin were never formally proven and were denied by him, and there are valid procedural fairness concerns in releasing documents regarding disputed allegations and unfinalised disciplinary and criminal proceedings," Mr Connock wrote.

"The weight of these factors is reduced, however, due to the extensive publicity already given to the allegations against Mr Griffin and his death … the damage has already been done."

The THS argued LGH staff were suffering stress and anxiety over the "matters associated with Mr Griffin", feelings compounded by guilt and grief.

"While the department's consideration of the interests of its staff and Mr Griffin's associates is understandable, I am concerned that it does not appear to have considered the interests of the victims of Mr Griffin's alleged offending while he was in its employ and the concerns of LGH patients and the general public about the adequacy of management of concerns by the department as highly," Mr Connock said.

"I consider that the public interest in protecting the interests of alleged sexual abusers of children is lower than that of the victims of such abuse.

"In contrast, the department does not once mention or appear to consider the victims of Mr Griffin's alleged offending or the valid community concern and desire for accountability from the department, given that abuse is alleged to have occurred against vulnerable child patients receiving care in a public hospital over an extended period."

The documents have still not been released, but the Ombudsman's account of the records shows relevant documents included:

• Handwritten notes used to record incidents of concern

• A formally reported "incident" in August 2017

• A notification to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency

• An email chain between a Tasmania Police officer and a THS doctor "regarding whether further action should be taken"

• Mr Griffin's resignation letter

Bianchi, who pushed ahead with podcast The Nurse despite the THS's refusal to cooperate, said the Ombudsman's review was enlightening.

"As distressing as this process has been, it's offered an invaluable insight into the contempt with which the system treats the public," she said.

"This information belongs to the patients and staff at LGH, and many others whose lives have been impacted by the matters raised in these documents."

Five women contacted Tasmania Police with complaints of sexual abuse in the months leading to his death.

The first woman to contact police alleged Griffin had sexually abused her from the age of 11.

According to the coroner's report into his death, Griffin made admissions of sexual misconduct in relation to her.

Police also found "a significant amount of child exploitation material", including "self-generated images" after searching his home.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-10/health-dept-ombudsman-review-handling-james-griffin-complaints/100686984

Global child abuse ring member Bret Anthony Chesworth jailed for crimes of the 'worst kind'

Giselle Wakatama - 10 December 2021

A New South Wales man who was a member of a global child abuse network has been sentenced to four-and-a-half years' jail for crimes a court heard were of the "worst kind".

Warning: This article contains details that some readers may find distressing

Bret Anthony Chesworth, 55, pleaded guilty to seven of nine charges earlier this year.

The guilty pleas related to the possession of child abuse material and using a carriage service to transmit and access child abuse material between March 2019 and September last year.

The Newcastle District Court heard Chesworth was caught with a series of images of children on his phone and other devices, including images of a six-month-old baby.

The two charges that were dropped included a bestiality offence against his cavoodle pet dog between December 2019 and November 2020.

Judge scathing of Chesworth

Chesworth was arrested by Australian Federal Police at his New Lambton Heights home on the outskirts of Newcastle in November last year.

He was the 15th of more than 20 suspects arrested as part of Operation Arkstone, which was established following a report from the US National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children.

In handing down his sentence, Judge Chris O'Brien said a video sent by Chesworth of an adult male raping a toddler was particularly disturbing, showing a child experiencing significant pain and distress.

"Right-thinking members of the community would find that video abhorrent," the judge said.

The court heard another video that he sent showed a baby being sexually abused by a woman.

Judge O'Brien noted other offending included "Daddy, son" fantasies.

"All of the offending was part of an ongoing course of criminal conduct," he said.

"The offender engaged in a collaborative network of like-minded people to access, transmit and solicit child-abuse material."

He noted that Chesworth had wrestled with his sexuality and was forced by his Mormon father to undergo six months of homosexual conversion therapy.

The judge said Chesworth had confided in a psychologist, while awaiting sentence, that he had "paedophilic and deviant interests".

'Abhorrent, depraved' offending

The "depraved" nature of Chesworth's crimes were highlighted by Commonwealth prosecutor Sarah Short in her closing address, ahead of the sentencing.

Ms Short said Chesworth encouraged his co-offenders to commit crimes and that the children involved were extremely distressed.

She said Chesworth's offending was "abhorrent", "particularly depraved" and that the material he was caught with was of "the worst kind".

Judge O'Brien said while Chesworth had a limited criminal history, his prospects for rehabilitation were guarded.

He said the sentence reflected a 30 per cent discount for Chesworth's guilty pleas and other factors, including the impact COVID was having on inmates in the state's jails.

Due to time already served, Chesworth will be eligible for parole in May 2023.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-10/global-child-abuse-ring-member-bret-anthony-chesworth-jailed/100690820

>>15175394

PM under pressure to end Assange 'lunacy'

Marty Silk and Tiffanie Turnbull - DECEMBER 11 2021

The federal government has "raised the situation" of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's confinement with the UK and US, but has stopped short of calling for the Australian to be released.

The 50-year-old is wanted in the US over the publishing of thousands of secret US diplomatic and military files, some of which revealed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange is also accused of trying to recruit hackers to provide WikiLeaks with classified US information, and if found guilty could face up to 175 years' imprisonment.

In the UK the High Court ruled on Friday he could be extradited to face 17 charges, after a lower court ruled Assange shouldn't be sent to the US due to a real and "oppressive" risk of suicide in January.

Senior judges ruled that risk was mitigated by assurances from US authorities that the father of two wouldn't be held in highly restrictive prison conditions.

Assange's lawyers intend to challenge the court's ruling with another appeal, this time in the UK's Supreme Court.

Federal Independent MP Andrew Wilkie is calling on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to "end this lunacy" and demand the US and UK allow Assange to be released.

"Mr Assange should be looking forward to spending Christmas with his two young boys and his fiancee, but instead he's facing a 175-year jail sentence and the very real possibility of living out his final days behind bars," he said in a statement.

"He is a hero, not a villain, and journalism is not a crime.

"Again the United Kingdom proves it's a lackey of the United States and that Australia is delighted to go along for the ride."

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said it respected the UK legal process and Australia was not a party to the case.

DFAT said it was monitoring Assange's case, had offered him consular assistance and sought his consent to discuss his health situation with UK prison officials, but he hadn't responded.

The department did not comment on Mr Wilkie's call for the government to demand Assange be released.

"The Australian Government has raised the situation of Mr Assange with US and UK counterparts - including our expectations of due process, humane and fair treatment, access to proper medical and other care, and access to his legal team - and will continue to do so," a DFAT spokesperson told AAP.

The UK court's decision has drawn ire from the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, who sharply criticised the verdict.

"This is a shortcoming for the British judiciary," Mr Melzer told the DPA news agency on Friday.

"You can think what you want about Assange but he is not in a condition to be extradited," he said, referring to a "politically motivated verdict".

Assange has been held in the UK"s Belmarsh Prison since 2019 after he was carried out of the Ecuadorian embassy by police and arrested for breaching bail.

He initially entered the building in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden where police wanted to interview him about sexual assault allegations, which he has always denied and which were eventually dropped.

Lifeline 13 11 14

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beyondblue 1300 22 4636

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https://www.begadistrictnews.com.au/story/7547367/pm-under-pressure-to-end-assange-lunacy/

Biden tells Jimmy Fallon right wing extremism in the GOP and Trump's big election lie are a wedge in the way of bipartisanship

Sarah Al-Arshani - Dec. 11, 2021

President Joe Biden took a shot at partisanship and Republicans during an interview with “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon on Friday night.

Biden told Fallon that part of the reason why he was late to taping for the show was because he was at the funeral of former Senator Bob Dole.

“He asked me on his deathbed whether I would do his eulogy,” Biden said. “We’re friends. We disagree, but we’re friends. We used to have an awful lot of that relationship and it still exists except that the QAnon and the extreme elements of the Republican Party and what Donald Trump seem to be feeding with the ‘Big Lie’.”

Biden was referencing Former President Trump’s repeated false claims that the election was stolen and Trump and his associate’s attempts to overturn the results.

The President told Fallon that he thinks there are numerous Republicans in Congress who would agree with his remarks.

Biden also said he hoped to see Democrats and Republicans socializing like they were at the 44th Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday.

Biden’s interview with Fallon was his first late-night show appearance since taking office. The president also discussed the COVID-19 pandemic even endorsing a song by Fallon that featured Ariana Grande and Megan Thee Stallion that encouraged Americans to get booster shots, The New York Times reported.

“The bottom line is that the way to avoid the virus is to get two shots and then get the booster shot,” Biden told Fallon.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/biden-says-right-wing-extremism-in-the-gop-prevents-bipartisanship-2021-12

https://twitter.com/FallonTonight/status/1469529690872459264

EXCLUSIVE: Pervert Josh Duggar tried to get off on gruesome 'hurtcore' video Daisy's Destruction, 'the worst of the worst' in international child porn that shows cruel torture and beatings of 18-month-old girl

BEN ASHFORD IN FAYETTEVILLE - 11 December 2021

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It sounded so unimaginably cruel, so repulsive, that for years it was dismissed as an urban myth.

Little wonder then that when hardened investigators looking for evidence to nail perverts like Josh Duggar finally viewed a copy of Daisy’s Destruction they broke down in tears and couldn’t believe their eyes.

The warped movie depicts an 18-month-old infant being hung upside down, beaten and tortured in what is widely regarded by law enforcement as the most gruesome example to date of ‘hurtcore’ – a sub-genre of child porn where perverts get off on seeing kids in pain.

It was just one of the horrifying titles reeled off by prosecutors this past week in the federal trial of former reality TV star Duggar, 33, who faces decades in jail for downloading a trove of outlawed material.

Hunched over a computer in the shabby office of his Arkansas car lot and hiding behind the anonymity afforded by the Dark Web, the dad-of-seven repeatedly searched for Daisy’s Destruction, according to the government.

Investigators didn’t find the video itself but as they burrowed deep into his seized HP device they uncovered two telltale ‘torrent files’ marked DD and DD1.

Likened to ‘library index cards’, torrent files contain a set of instructions that can be fed into peer-to-peer software to locate and download the real thing on the shadowy BitTorrent network.

When James Fottrell, Director of the FBI’s High Technology Investigative Unit, punched the same file names into a government database of known child pornography his worst suspicions were confirmed.

‘DD is associated with Daisy’s Destruction. It’s one of the most offensive video series that I’m familiar with throughout my career,’ Fottrell told jurors at a federal courthouse in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Daisy’s Destruction, he went on, depicted various depraved scenes including a distressed little girl child being tied upside down, beaten on the hands and feet and doused in hot wax.

‘The infant is screaming and crying,’ added Fottrell, whose extensive forensic analysis of the HP computer helped convict Duggar on charges of receipt and possession of child porn.

As the once clean-cut star of TLC’s 19 Kids and Counting languishes in the Washington County Detention Center ahead of sentencing, DailyMail.com can reveal that the true story behind Daisy’s Destruction is every bit as disturbing as the abuse outlined by Fottrell.

The infamous video is the work of Australian predator Peter Scully, 58, who is currently serving a life sentence in the Philippines for human trafficking and raping minors.

Scully fled Melbourne in 2011 after he was implicated in a multi-million dollar real estate scam and settled in Mindanao, where authorities say he launched a worldwide pedophile ring offering encrypted pay-per-view streams of children being viciously beaten and molested.

Most of his victims were impoverished local kids procured from their parents for food or promises of work. Others were lured into his home by a harem of teenage prostitutes groomed to be his accomplices.

One told 60 Minutes Australia in 2015 how she brought two young cousins back to Scully who kept them in chains and dog collars. He later ordered them to dig graves in the basement and threatened to bury them unless they carried out depraved sex acts.

The series of videos comprising Daisy’s Destruction became Scully’s highest grossing production, with VIP pedophiles from the US, UK and Germany paying $10,000 per viewing.

But as it grew in infamy in pedophile forums and chatrooms across the globe it also brought him into the crosshairs of law enforcement, triggering an investigation in the Netherlands which grew into a global manhunt.

Scully was tracked back to the Philippines where investigators located three of his victims, including the young child known as Daisy who was alive but deeply traumatized.

His face was blurred on film but investigators recognized the monster’s Australian accent and arrested him in February 2015.

Three years later Scully was convicted of one count of human trafficking and five counts of rape by sexual assault, the first of 75 charges he is still being tried for.

Prosecutors said that many of the investigators, journalists and officials who watched and listened to his videos were reduced to tears.

(continued)

>>15175522

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Scully is also charged with the murder of an 11-year-old girl whom authorities suspect he strangled with a rope and buried under a house he rented.

‘They were the most devastating thing I have ever seen,’ Ruby Malanog, one of the lawyers prosecuting Scully, told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2016.

‘I cried when I was watching them … in fact I feel like crying just now while talking about it. It was hard to believe what I was seeing … that somebody could do those things to children.’

Forensic computer experts in the Duggar case did not find evidence that he watched Daisy’s Destruction, just that he searched and sought out the torrent file associated with it.

However they did establish that he downloaded numerous other titles including Pedo Mom, Play Tot Sweetie and more than 60 porn images known as the Marissa series using a peer-to-peer application called uTorrent.

Duggar’s downfall began on May 14, 2019 when his system made the first of two ‘digital handshakes’, not with another pervert, but with Detective Amber Kalmer of the Little Rock Police Department.

Kalmer was using a specialist police program called Torrential Downpour which targets pedophiles by catching them in the act of sharing child pornography files online.

Kalmer tipped off Feds who traced the IP address to Duggar's used car dealership, Wholesale Motorcars, in Springdale, Arkansas, and seized his office HP desktop, iPhone and MacBook.

When forensic scientists studied the HP they found someone had installed complicated software called a Linux partition which creates a second, independent operating system within the same device.

The partition could only be accessed by rebooting, hitting F9 and entering the password intel1988 - the same password used for Duggar’s internet banking and the Duggar family Instagram and Twitter accounts.

It provided the secret online space where he could search for, download, then delete child pornography, all behind the innocent veneer of a standard work computer with a wallpaper of his family.

Defense lawyers contended that a former employee or hacker could have exploited Duggar’s lax internet security to hijack his computer and remotely download the material without anyone knowing.

But prosecutors branded their arguments a ‘fantasy’ and used texts and images to place the accused at the keyboard; jurors unanimously agreed with them.

The court also heard from a close family friend this week who shed new light on the molestation scandal that engulfed the Duggars in 2015, tarnishing their wholesome image and leading to the cancellation of their hit TLC show.

Bobye Holt choked back tears as she revealed how Duggar had confessed at age 15 to groping and penetrating his younger sisters during ‘bible time’ and while they slept.

The defense fought to exclude her testimony but the judge ultimately agreed that it provided important clues about his sinister appetite for minors.

Duggar, the eldest of Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar’s nine daughters and ten sons, will be sentenced in the new year and faces up to 20 years in jail and a fine of $250,000 on each of two counts.

His lawyers say he will appeal the verdicts.

Jurors deliberated for six hours before returning guilty verdicts on Thursday on charges of possessing child pornography and receipt of child pornography, both punishable by 20 years in jail and a $250,000 fine.

Duggar glanced anxiously toward his wife Anna and dad Jim Bob but showed little emotion as each juror was asked individually to reaffirm their decision.

The once clean-cut Christian star of 19 Kids and Counting finally broke down in tears, however, as marshals placed him in handcuffs but they allowed him to linger for a few moments beside his family in the public gallery.

'I love you', he mouthed towards Anna, also 33, who remained composed throughout the brief hearing before burying her head in a supporter's arms and weeping as it ended.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10296609/Josh-Duggar-sought-Daisys-Destruction-worst-hurtcore-porn.html

—

Death penalty call for accused Australian child sex predator Peter Scully in Philippines

Lindsay Murdoch - September 20, 2016

https://www.smh.com.au/world/death-penalty-call-for-accused-australian-child-sex-predator-peter-scully-in-philippines-20160920-grk65r.html

>>15175394

Julian Assange suffers stroke during court appeal, his fiancee says

Laura Chung - December 12, 2021

Julian Assange suffered a stroke during his High Court appeal, his fiancee has revealed on social media.

Assange’s partner and the mother of his two children, Stella Moris, posted on social media that the WikiLeaks founder had suffered a stroke in October and he needed to be freed from prison. She did not provide an update on his condition following the stroke.

Around the time of the stroke, Assange was reported to have attended his hearing intermittently over more than five hours. He appeared dishevelled, wearing an untucked shirt, baggy trousers, a dark tie and had a face mask covering only his mouth. His white hair reached his shoulders.

On Friday, the United States government moved a step closer to extraditing Assange to face trial over his leaking of the WikiLeaks cables after securing a victory in England’s High Court.

Lord Justice Tim Holroyde overturned a previous judge’s ruling that Assange should not face legal proceedings in the US because he might take his own life.

He ordered the court to send his case to Britain’s Home Secretary Priti Patel to determine whether the Australian citizen should be sent to the US.

Assange will remain in Belmarsh prison, and Ms Moris said his lawyers would appeal the “abusive and vindictive” prosecution.

“Julian’s lawyers are intending to appeal to the Supreme Court on this decision,” she told supporters outside the court this week.

“For how long can this go on? We will fight, every generation has an epic fight to fight and this ours.”

Assange will remain in prison until a final decision is made.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/julian-assange-suffers-stroke-during-court-appeal-his-fiancee-says-20211212-p59gv9.html

https://twitter.com/StellaMoris1/status/1469796539115708416

>>15180115

Julian Assange has a stroke in Belmarsh prison: Fiancée blames extreme stress caused by US extradition battle

SARAH OLIVER - 12 December 2021

Julian Assange has had a stroke in Belmarsh Prison, his fiancee Stella Moris revealed last night.

The WikiLeaks publisher, 50, who is being held on remand in the maximum-security jail while fighting extradition to America, was left with a drooping right eyelid, memory problems and signs of neurological damage.

He believes the mini-stroke was triggered by the stress of the ongoing US court action against him, and an overall decline in his health as he faces his third Christmas behind bars.

It happened at the time of a High Court appearance via video link from Belmarsh in October.

A 'transient ischaemic attack' – the interruption of the blood supply to the brain – can be a warning sign of a full stroke. Assange has since had an MRI scan and is now taking anti-stroke medication.

Ms Moris, 38, a lawyer, said: 'Julian is struggling and I fear this mini-stroke could be the precursor to a more major attack. It compounds our fears about his ability to survive the longer this long legal battle goes on.

'It urgently needs to be resolved. Look at animals trapped in cages in a zoo. It cuts their life short. That's what's happening to Julian. The never-ending court cases are extremely stressful mentally.'

She said he was kept in his cell for long periods and was 'short of fresh air and sunlight, an adequate diet and the stimulus he needs'.

Assange faced a major legal setback on Friday when the High Court overturned a judgment made this year preventing extradition to the US to face charges under the US Espionage Act.

His lawyers successfully argued he would be kept in conditions in the US that could lead to a serious risk of suicide. The High Court reversed the earlier ruling after the US government offered assurances about his potential imprisonment.

But Ms Moris said: 'I believe this constant chess game, battle after battle, the extreme stress, is what caused Julian's stroke on October 27.

He was feeling really unwell, far too ill to follow the hearing, and he was excused by the judge but could not leave the prison video room.

'It must have been horrendous hearing a High Court appeal in which you can't participate, which is discussing your mental health and your risk of suicide and in which the US is arguing you are making it all up.

'He had to sit through all this when he should have been excused. He was in a truly terrible state. His eyes were out of synch, his right eyelid would not close, his memory was blurry.'

Assange was examined by a doctor, who found a delayed pupil response when a light was shone into one eye – a sign of potential nerve damage.

Ms Moris and Assange have two sons, Gabriel, four, and Max, two, and have been engaged for five years. She said he had 'more or less' recovered – but she fears the attack shows his health is failing.

She visited him for around an hour yesterday, taking the children to see him in a prison hall shared by dozens of inmates and their loved ones.

She said Assange was distressed about being kept from his family, adding: 'He finds the prospect of a third Christmas in prison difficult.'

The US wants Assange to face allegations of conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information after Wikileaks published hundreds of thousands of leaked documents relating to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.

He sheltered at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 because he feared extradition, staying for seven years until he was forcibly removed and sent to Belmarsh in 2019.

He has until December 23 to appeal against last week's judgment, and could face many months – potentially years – on remand in the UK.

Ms Moris said: 'It remains an outrage that someone who is not serving a prison sentence should be held in prison for years on end.

'Julian is not a threat to anyone and it is a complete disregard to his individual liberty and our right to a family life.

'The US plays dirty every step of the way – it's a war of attrition. We can see from the fact that he has suffered a mini-stroke this is having a dangerous impact on him.'

A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said last night he would not comment on an individual prisoner.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10300037/Julian-Assange-stroke-Belmarsh-prison-Fianc-e-blames-extreme-stress.html

>>15175394

>>15180124

Stella Moris Tweet

Australia's foreign minister @MarisePayne is meeting with the US government who is literally torturing her citizen Julian #Assange to death, right now. What is she going to do about it?

She must put a stop to this. Now. Before it's too late.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10300037/Julian-Assange-stroke-Belmarsh-prison-Fianc-e-blames-extreme-stress.html

https://twitter.com/StellaMoris1/status/1469833110338609152

>>15175352

Australia shortens wait time for COVID-19 booster doses as Omicron cases rise

Colin Packham - December 12, 2021

CANBERRA, Dec 12 (Reuters) - Australia said on Sunday it will shorten the wait time for people to receive a COVID-19 booster following a rise in cases of the Omicron variant.

Australia had previously said it would offer the booster to everyone over 18 who had had their second dose of the vaccine six months earlier.

But with rising cases of the Omicron variant, Health Minister Greg Hunt said the time interval will be shortened to five months after the second dose.

"A booster dose five or more months after the second dose will make sure that the protection from the primary course is even stronger and longer lasting and should help prevent spread of the virus," Hunt said in an emailed statement.

"Data from Israel shows boosters supporting reductions in the rate of infection in eligible age groups, severe disease in those aged over 40 years and deaths in those over 60 years."

Australia will use both vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna in its booster programme.

Australia is one of the most vaccinated countries, with about 90% of people over 16 fully inoculated.

Still, Australia on Sunday reported 1,556 cases in the previous 24 hours as infections lingered near the six-week high reported a day earlier.

Australia has recorded about 229,000 COVID-19 infections, well below the toll of other nations, and 2,100 deaths.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australia-shortens-wait-time-covid-19-booster-doses-omicron-cases-rise-2021-12-11/

China’s response to Aukus deal was ‘irrational’, Peter Dutton says

Defence minister accuses Beijing of ‘bullying’ over criticisms of Australia’s pact with the US and UK

Daniel Hurst - 12 Dec 2021

China has responded “irrationally” to the Aukus pact between Australia, the United States and Britain, the defence minister Peter Dutton says.

The conservative Australian minister continues to mount forthright criticism of the Chinese government, accusing it of “bullying” countries that stand up to Beijing.

Dutton on Sunday said the Australian government had formed the Aukus partnership with the US and the UK because it wanted to see “see increased stability and peace in our region”.

“The response by China to that, I think, was irrational,” Dutton told Sky News Australia.

He said it was wrong to suggest Australia was the one fuelling an arms race in the region “when we’re talking about acquiring eight nuclear-powered submarines at a time when China has 355 vessels in its [naval] fleet, going to 400 within the next nine years”.

“And they are producing on a tonnage rate more naval assets every 18 months than what the Royal Australian Navy has in its entire fleet,” Dutton said.

China has sought to portray the Aukus deal as an “Anglo-Saxon clique” and a threat to the nuclear non-proliferation system.

China’s acting ambassador to Australia, Wang Xining, likened Australia to “a naughty guy”, saying it would be branded as a “sabre wielder” rather than a “peace defender” as a result of the plan.

But the concerns are not confined to China, with the Australian government moving to allay Malaysia and Indonesia’s worries that the Aukus deal could add to a regional arms race and pose nuclear non-proliferation issues.

Tensions with Beijing are set to increase, after Australia joined the US and the UK last week in announcing a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in protest over human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region.

China’s foreign ministry said those countries would pay a price for their “mistaken acts” and “posturing”. When asked on Sunday about this threat, Dutton said China issues such comments “regularly and not just against Australia”.

The defence minister said China had also “threatened” Lithuania with trade actions in recent weeks, adding: “We see it more and more regularly and it’s unsettling and it’s unnecessary to be honest.”

Dutton – who has been accused of ramping up national security rhetoric for political purposes as a federal election looms – said it was important to “be realistic” about how China’s outlook had “changed quite dramatically” under Xi Jinping’s leadership.

He said the Australian government’s “problem is with the Chinese government, not with the Chinese people”.

He said Australia had “an incredibly successful diaspora community” with more than a million people of Chinese origin “who have made an enormous contribution to our country”.

Dutton attracted controversy last month when he said it would be “inconceivable” that Australia wouldn’t come to Taiwan’s aid if the US defended the democratically governed island against an invasion by China. He denied this amounted to pre-committing Australia to war.

The Australian foreign minister, Marise Payne, discussed tensions across the Taiwan Strait during a meeting with the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, in the UK on Saturday.

The US state department said the pair had “reiterated support for a peaceful resolution of cross-Strait issues without resorting to threats or coercion and emphasised Taiwan’s important contributions to global health development”.

Payne and Blinken met on the sidelines of a G7 foreign and development ministers’ meeting in Liverpool. They also “agreed on the importance of having a Senate-confirmed Ambassador in place in Canberra as soon as possible in light of the scope and scale of shared challenges we face”.

The Biden administration is yet to name an ambassador to Australia but there has been speculation that it may nominate Caroline Kennedy, the former ambassador to Japan and daughter of John F Kennedy.

Amid continued competition for regional influence, the Australian government announced on Sunday it would join with the US and Japan to fund a new undersea telecommunications cable in the Pacific.

The project, estimated to cost up to $A104m, aims to improve internet services in Kiribati, Nauru and the Federated States of Micronesia. Payne said such partnerships “meet genuine needs” and “respect sovereignty”.

Regional security will be one of the main topics on the agenda when South Korea’s president, Moon Jae-in, meets with Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison in Canberra on Monday.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/dec/12/chinas-response-to-aukus-deal-was-irrational-peter-dutton-says

I Left QAnon in 2019. But I’m Still Not Free.

Some say the movement is losing its power. But I see the opposite.

JITARTH JADEJA, AS TOLD TO ANASTASIIA CARRIER - 12/11/2021

1/3

Since it became clear that the QAnon conspiracy theory was a driving force in the siege of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, Anastasiia Carrier has been interviewing former QAnon believers and hearing from them, in their own words, how they were drawn into that world and how they got out. Their stories reveal surprising political implications of a movement that is still thriving outside mainstream scrutiny. This is the second article in the series; you can read the first here.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/08/13/qanon-radicalization-bernie-sanders-supporter-503295

(This interview was done virtually over a series of video calls.)

I left QAnon back in 2019, but I don’t seem to be able to walk away. I talk about my experience a lot — to the Washington Post, CNN and Rolling Stone magazine among many others. I even apologized to Anderson Cooper on his show for having once thought that he ate babies.

I’m one of the few former followers willing to go on the record with their story, which means I’m a source for journalists and researchers and sometimes also a guide for former believers who want to talk to someone who understands what they went through. I’m also one of the senior moderators of the QAnonCasualties forum on Reddit, a message board for family members of QAnon believers. I might have left, but I still have a close look into how the conspiracy theory is spreading and affecting people.

These days, QAnon isn’t getting the headlines it was after Jan. 6. I guess most of the world doesn’t pay attention to QAnon anymore unless its followers do something especially bizarre, like the recent gathering in Dallas where hundreds met in hopes of seeing John F. Kennedy Jr. alive. But from where I stand I don’t see QAnon fading away — I see it getting stronger.

I was sucked into QAnon in the winter of 2017. At the time, I casually followed various conspiracies online and the internet led me to Q. I was living in Australia, where I still live, but I had been interested in American politics since spending six months in the U.S. a few years before. I had rooted for Bernie Sanders during the 2016 primary and felt let down when he lost.

When I found QAnon, I didn’t just flirt with it — I fell deep. I internalized the idea that the world was run by the Cabal, a Satan-worshiping child-molesting group of liberal politicians, Hollywood moguls, billionaires and other influential elites. I believed that Donald Trump was leading the fight against the Cabal and that there was a plan in place to defeat them. I couldn’t wait for the coming of the Storm, QAnon’s version of judgment day that would herald the announcement of martial law and a wave of public executions. I was looking forward to the execution of Hillary Clinton, whom Q portrayed as a pedophile and a murderer. I would have cheered. QAnon showed me that I can be enthusiastic about violence, and it’s hard to forgive myself for that.

I understood QAnon was a lie on June 13, 2019. Just minutes after I wrote a post online laden with QAnon conspiracies, I watched a YouTube video that reviewed the times that Trump used the phrase “tippy top” throughout the years. Q said that when Trump said this phrase, he was signaling to Anons, “the patriots,” that everything was going according to the plan in the fight with the Deep State. But the video showed that Trump had always used this phrase a lot, long before he ever ran for the presidency and Q came to be. That’s when it clicked for me: This was all a lie.

I walked out onto the porch of my house in Sydney, Australia, smoked a cigarette and took in the idea that I had lost two years of my life to a vile conspiracy crafted by a psychopath. I had even introduced my dad to it. He is still a follower; I can’t get through to him.

Then I went inside, sat down and wrote a different post, this time on a Reddit forum devoted to debunking the conspiracy. I titled the post: You guys were right.

(continued)

>>15180259

2/3

The pain and shame that came with the disillusionment were overwhelming. I couldn’t look people in the eyes. I felt like I had committed a violent crime and was running for my life. I was terrified that someone would find out my secret and my life would be ruined forever. I lived with this fear for a year. During that time, I didn’t speak about QAnon or read anything about American politics because it reminded of my time in Q’s thrall.

There was only one way I reexposed myself to QAnon during that time: I reread comments on the Reddit post I had written the hour I quit. The kind words of strangers saying that it wasn’t my fault and that I was brave for getting out made me feel better. It was through that post that a journalist found me in June 2020 and I got my first interview request. The only thing the journalist asked was for me to tell my story.

“The only thing?” I thought. There was no such thing as just telling my story. I asked everyone in my life who knew about my time with QAnon if I should talk to the reporter. Every single one of them tried to talk me out of it.

And yet, the general public was just becoming aware of QAnon and was underestimating the real-world danger the online conspiracy could cause. I thought people should know more. I also wanted to be able to reach those who were on the edge of falling for QAnon or leaving it. I thought that going public about my experience might provide them with the nudge that would help them escape the lie. I also didn’t see the point of doing it halfway — if I wanted Anons to take me seriously, I needed to put my name on the record.

I also felt physically safer speaking up in Australia than I would have if I lived in the U.S. I knew Anons could be violent (someone later posted my address and a photo of my house online) and I found comfort in knowing that most QAnon followers seem to live in the U.S. and that it would take an expensive plane ticket and a very long flight for anyone to get to me. Australia also has stricter gun laws, so I didn’t need to worry that someone could show up armed.

“Whatever. I’ll do it. Life is too short. Who cares?” I thought. And after ignoring the interview request for a month, I responded and said I’d do it.

I was very nervous during my first interview, but it felt great to get my experience out. Even before that story published, more interview requests came in, and I accepted them all. One after another, these interviews drained me of my shame. Now I tell all former Anons to share their stories — it’s cathartic. For so long, my biggest fear had been that someone would find out I had followed Q. By telling the whole world about it, I removed all the power that shame had over me. I still feel guilty for my beliefs, but I’m not scared or ashamed anymore.

Over the past year, I’ve spoken with many journalists, researchers and family members of those who fell for QAnon. No one has told me that my story has helped them escape QAnon, but I do speak with current Anons surprisingly often. Usually, they reach out to mock or confront me, but I almost always manage to turn it into a real conversation. I know how to speak to them because I used to be one of them — I don’t demean them but neither do I let them get away with rambling and bogus reasoning. These conversations are very draining — they can last 12 hours and require writing long essays, addressing their arguments point by point. The trick is to not let them walk over you and to push back on their beliefs without insulting their intelligence. And if it’s someone you care for, you can try to ask them why being right is more important to them than having a functioning relationship with you.

(continued)

>>15180265

3/3

A few months ago, I livestreamed a QAnon conference in Dallas. Attendees didn’t refer to their movement as QAnon, but all the elements were there — the ideas, the slogans and the current “celebrities” of the conspiracy movement. I wanted to be there to talk to them. Why? Going from a Bernie Sanders supporter to a Trump supporter to being politically homeless left me with a lot of unfinished emotional and intellectual business with both the right and the left. I’ve sorted through all my unfinished business with the left by talking with the media. I think most media leans left, but I also saw how journalism works and how carefully I was vetted before my story was considered credible. But I still feel angry and betrayed by the right. The intellectual right has a lot of great ideas but they abandoned them all to stand by Trump and his claims about election fraud. What went wrong? I would have talked to the Dallas attendees about that.

Even though I wasn’t there, one thing that surprised me about that Dallas conference was how polished and well put together it was on a professional level. It tells me that the movement’s infrastructure is improving and it is growing. I disagree with people who say that QAnon is fading away — I think its believers are growing as fast as the fandom of “Game of Thrones” when it came out. Their content might be banned from popular social media but I think they are still there, flourishing away from the eyes of polite society.

This worries me. I believe QAnon has a lot in common with doomsday cults and in the past, doomsday cults turned violent. I was not surprised when the FBI said that “digital soldiers” could turn to violence, nor was I surprised by the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. I think it’s inevitable that more real-world violence will occur in future. Eventually, Anons will get tired of waiting for the Storm. Then, they will take the bringing of the martial law into their own hands.

I don’t see a natural end point to this conspiracy now. It has survived Q’s disappearance and Trump’s 2020 loss, which, according to the theory, was never supposed to happen. The movement is changing, though. QAnon has always been a blanket conspiracy that allowed people to bring what conspiratorial beliefs they wanted into it. Now, without Trump in the White House and Q trying to directs its flow, this inclusiveness has become more pronounced. What is left is a more decentralized movement, with an ever growing range of beliefs, united by a shared culture of distrust toward institutions and a do-it-yourself approach to conspiracy theories.

My biggest dream now is seeing other former QAnon followers go on the record with their experience so I can fade away into obscurity and bum around. I had a life before this and I want to go back to it. But no one is willing to take these responsibilities from me. Once a reporter told me that maybe no one speaks up because I’m already doing it. Maybe so. But I don’t want to be doing this forever.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/12/11/q-anon-movement-former-believer-523972

>ALL FOR A LARP?

>>15180267

Just another attention seeker wanting fame off his own narrative. How would he like to be viciously attacked and persecuted every day? How would he like to be disabled in a wheelchair enduring twenty years of trauma surgeries? This is about crimes against humanity and the precious blood of God's children. My last trauma surgery required four units. I have never seen such a smear campaign in my entire life. I exposed the truth because I love my country. I have cried every day watching the media cover up Nancy Pelosi in the underground rooms of Epstein island and the names in the flight log. The vatican and royal family were also involved in this trafficking ring I exposed. I also exposed the drug andrenochrome exported from China. There are no coincidences as to why I downloaded and exposed all the files in this back channel. It has been nearly three years since I exposed everything and I had written every one in the media. None of them want to acknowledge a disabled mom exposed a world wide trafficking ring. The president is well aware of what is going on and so does military intelligence. Dont think posting in this back channel makes you anonymous. Q no longer needs to post because we have everything. There was no coincidences as to why I followed the breadcrumbs. Q=Alice as in Alice in wonderland. I sometimes wish I was never awakened to the evil in this world. Who knew exposing the truth would have me crying every day. I am not a dangerous person nor have I been to the capitol building. There are no coincidences in this world. Merry Christmas and God Bless. I am thankful that I am still here for such a time as this. Revelations 5:5

>>15175352

More border rules ease in Australia ahead of Christmas holidays

Renju Jose - December 13, 2021

SYDNEY, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Coronavirus-free Queensland state opened its domestic borders to all vaccinated people on Monday for the first time in nearly five months, as Australians gear up for quarantine-free travel across most of the country during the busy Christmas period.

Hundreds of cars queued up at the state's southern border with New South Wales well before the rules were set to relax at 1 a.m. local time (1400 GMT, Sunday), television footage showed.

Queensland, Australia's third most populous state, shut its border to New South Wales in July and then later to people coming from Victoria to protect against a Delta outbreak that rocked the country's east for several months.

"We will live with COVID - but on our terms," state Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said in a tweet as the state topped its goal of having 80% of people over 16 fully vaccinated - a prerequisite for relaxing rules.

Qantas said it would fly nearly 10,000 passengers to and from Queensland on Monday in about 100 flights, with most fully booked.

The easing of border restrictions comes just days before school summer holidays begin and will be a boost for the state's lucrative tourism sector which has been badly hit by the internal border curbs.

Australian states have been relaxing border rules after reaching higher vaccination levels despite the threat from the new Omicron variant.

Tasmania is set to reopen its borders to other states later this week, while Western Australia said it would reopen its border on Feb. 5. South Australia has been welcoming interstate arrivals since late November.

Australia has recorded nearly 229,000 cases of COVID-19 and 2,104 deaths, far fewer than many comparable countries. Around 70 cases of the Omicron variant have been detected in the country so far, mainly in Sydney.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/more-border-rules-ease-australia-ahead-christmas-holidays-2021-12-12/

Australia to acquire new weapons under billion-dollar defence deal with South Korea

Defence Minister Peter Dutton touted the deal as a boost for Australian firepower and security in the Indo-Pacific.

AAP / SBS - 13 December 2021

Australia and South Korea have struck a $1 billion defence deal as leaders Scott Morrison and Moon Jae-in hold formal talks in Canberra.

The South Korean president and First Lady Kim Jung-sook were welcomed to Parliament House by the prime minister on Monday where they signed the official visitors book.

Australia and South Korea will upgrade their ties to "comprehensive strategic partnership" status during the visit.

A new $1 billion deal — under which Korean defence company Hanwha will provide 30 self-propelled howitzer artillery weapons, 15 ammunition supply vehicles and radars to detect enemy artillery — is the largest defence contract struck between Australia and an Asian nation.

The new vehicles will be able to quickly fire and move to avoid enemy counterattacks.

Mr Morrison said the relationship continued to grow, underpinned by trade, shared values, common regional strategic interests and a commitment to an open, inclusive and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.

"Our comprehensive strategic partnership with the Republic of Korea is underpinned by our joint commitment to defence and security cooperation," Mr Morrison said.

The two nations this year mark 60 years of diplomatic relations.

Mr Moon is the first international leader to visit Australia since borders reopened.

Australia has comprehensive strategic partnerships, or their equivalents, already with ASEAN, China, Fiji, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and Papua New Guinea.

South Korea is Australia's fourth-largest trading partner and fourth-largest export market under a free trade agreement that has been in force since December 2014.

Mr Moon, who concludes his presidential term next year, has previously flagged greater cooperation with Australia on low-carbon technology and space development, as well as national infrastructure and defence.

In particular, his country is pushing for a region-wide partnership to boost the production and distribution of hydrogen, which by 2050 is expected to account for 13 to 18 per cent of world energy.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-to-acquire-new-weapons-under-billion-dollar-defence-deal-with-south-korea/eb744290-2322-42c4-a0dc-56bf4315d799

Dershowitz: Ghislaine's Prosecutors Won't Call Her Main Accuser. Why?

Alan Dershowitz - 10 December 2021

Why did the government not call "one of Ghislaine Maxwell’s most prominent accusers," who is at the "forefront of the case?"

Why is such "a central player" so "conspicuously absent from the witness list?"

Why did the government leave such a "gaping hole that the jurors may find unsettling?"

Why "the empty chair?"

These obvious questions are being asked by the media and legal experts.

Still, many know the answer but refuse to share it publicly.

The answer should be obvious to anyone familiar with the facts: the government is not calling Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre because they don’t believe she is credible.

Additionally, according to the testimony of a witness, who they do believe, she herself was complicit in Maxwell’s alleged crimes.

Prosecutors don’t believe Virginia Giuffre because she has accused, in the media and under oath, many prominent people of having sex with her.

They include the late Sen. George Mitchell, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, billionaire Leslie Wexner, Britain’s Prince Andrew — and me.

All have categorically denied the accusation, but more importantly, her own lawyer, Bradley Edwards, in television and other interviews has said that, based on his 11-year investigation, no "high profile people would be implicated."

Edwards also said that Wexner was telling the truth when he said that he was not involved in any sexual activities related to Epstein.

Giuffre had sworn that she had sex with Wexner, the high-profile head of Victoria’s Secret, on many occasions. So, Giuffre’s lawyer was essentially accusing his own client of perjury.

Giuffre’s other lawyer, David Boies, in a conversation with me, said that significant parts of her claims against me did not stand up.

Moreover, Giuffre’s best friend and her best friend’s husband have both testified that Giuffre is not telling the truth.

And Giuffre’s own emails, which she tried to suppress, show that she never even met me.

Had Giuffre had been called as a witness, the government would have been obliged, under the Brady rule, to have provided all this information — and more — to the defense.

I know the government has this material because I gave it them.

But even if the government provided this information to the defense, it would have been precluded from calling Giuffre as a witness and vouching for her credibility, because they know she simply is not credible.

The other reason the government didn’t call her is that one of its key witnesses, using the name "Carolyn," testified that, when she was 14, Giuffre — who was nearly 19 at the time — received money to bring her to Epstein’s house for sexual massages.

Carolyn claimed Giuffre "would make a lot of money" from Epstein for doing so.

Carolyn also claims that when they arrived at Epstein’s massage room, Giuffre took off all her clothes, "got on top of Epstein" and had sex with him in front of the 14-year-old.

Carolyn said she was paid $300 but doesn’t know how much Giuffre received.

In order for Giuffre to testify at the Maxwell trial, she would have to be given immunity from prosecutors for her own alleged crimes. That would have made her a terrible witness.

The real reasons why Giuffre isn’t being called are obvious.

But her lawyer and the media are obscuring the truth.

Boies told The Miami Herald that he was "mystified" by the prosecution’s decision, but it probably related to the fact that it is only "bringing charges with women who were under the age of consent at the time."

But Giuffre initially swore she was 15 when she first had sex with Epstein and Maxwell.

She vividly remembered spending her "sweet 16 birthday" with them.

The age of consent in Florida is 18. When confronted with employment records, she changed her testimony and said she was 16 — still below the age of consent.

Moreover, one of the alleged victims — Kate — was well above the age of consent.

So Boies’ claim is nonsense.

Julie Brown, a reporter for the Miami Herald article, has relied on Giuffre as a major source for her prize-winning articles about Epstein and Maxwell.

But Brown won’t acknowledge Giuffre’s lack of credibility now because it would undercut the veracity of her "acclaimed" articles.

So, Brown has provided other implausible excuses, such as the age of consent — omitting to report that the age is 18 in Florida.

There is nothing mystifying about the government’s decision not to call Giuffre.

They don’t believe her nor does anyone who looks at the facts.

https://www.newsmax.com/alandershowitz/boies-maxwell-giuffre/2021/12/10/id/1048187/

https://qanon.pub/?q=Welcome%20aboard.

https://qanon.pub/?q=dershowitz

AFP warns online child sex offenders are offering Australian children vouchers and cash for naked images

Summer Woolley - 13/12/2021

Australian children as young as 10 are being offered cash and food vouchers in exchange for naked or sexually suggestive images.

On Monday, the Australian Federal Police lifted the lid on the new strategies used by online child sex offenders following increasing reports of children self-producing child exploitation material (CAM) for financial incentives.

Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE) Commander Hilda Sirec said while online offenders have long-used emotionally-coercive tactics to exploit children into self-producing CAM, investigators had identified a new trend.

In recent months, cases involving young teenagers being offered incentives such as money, food deliveries and vouchers has grown.

Children as young as 10 are also being targeted with incentives such as in-game currency on popular online games.

Commander Sirec warned school holiday periods typically led to an increase in reports of self-produced CAM as children spent more time on social media unsupervised, with vulnerable children at particular risk.

“Once an image has been shared it can end up anywhere, including on some of the world’s most depraved dark web child abuse forums as offenders often circulate images among themselves,” she said.

“Disturbingly, we also know offender networks routinely trade information about particular users of social media who are susceptible to incentives or coercion, which will lead to repeated contact requests from other predators.”

The ‘tell-tale’ signs

Commander Sirec said parents and carers should be alert for “telltale signs” that their children may have fallen victim including “unexplained food deliveries arriving or children having additional money in their accounts”.

“The start of the school holidays is the perfect time to sit down and talk to them about their online activities, including the type of conversations they are having online and with who,” she added.

“It is important that parents approach these conversations with their child openly, in a non-judgemental way.

“Ensure your child is comfortable coming to you if an issue arises and make it clear that nothing is so bad that they can’t tell you or another trusted adult about”.

Parents and carers can start a conversation by using the Family Online Safety Contract - an agreement between them and their children that can assist in setting boundaries and expectations for their online activities.

https://www.thinkuknow.org.au/sites/default/files/2020-10/Family%20online%20safety%20contract%20%28prefilled%29.pdf

If parents are concerned about an issue that has happened online, it is critical children are supported. Parents and carers can make a report online by alerting the ACCCE via the Report Abuse button online.

https://www.accce.gov.au/report

Members of the public who have any information about people involved in child abuse and exploitation are urged to call Crime stoppers on 1800 333 000.

https://crimestoppers.com.au/

If you or someone you know is impacted by child sexual abuse and online exploitation there are support services available at ACCCE.

https://www.accce.gov.au/help-and-support/who-can-help

https://7news.com.au/news/australian-federal-police/afp-warns-online-child-sex-offenders-are-offering-australian-children-vouchers-and-cash-for-naked-images-c-4922309

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken Tweet

Great to meet with my good friend @MarisePayne today. We reaffirmed both our nations' deep commitment to a peaceful and secure Indo-Pacific, COVID-19 economic recovery and resilience, and cooperating to deliver results for our citizens and partners around the region.

https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1469806012936900619

—

Foreign Minister Marise Payne Tweet

(United States) & (Australia) are the closet of friends and allies. @SecBlinken and I discussed our work to promote a free, open & inclusive #IndoPacific, & to progress the AUKUS partnership. We share experiences & democratic values that make our alliance an anchor of stability for our region.

https://twitter.com/MarisePayne/status/1470122892096536576

Moderna vaccine deal to deliver 100 million doses

SIMON BENSON - DECEMBER 13, 2021

1/2

Australia is poised to become the largest producer of mRNA vac­cines outside the US and Europe under a $2bn-plus deal with global pharmaceutical giant Moderna to build a plant in Melbourne capable of producing 100 million respiratory vaccines a year, including future Covid-19 booster doses.

A three-way partnership ­between the federal government, the Victorian government and Moderna, to be announced on Tuesday, will position Australia as the region’s main respiratory vaccine producer for future potential pandemics and seasonal flu.

The 10-year strategic and commercial alliance will create a sovereign manufacturing hub that will challenge China’s soft-power push into the region, with a guarantee that a proportion of vac­cines will be donated to Australia’s Asian and Pacific neighbours.

While the facility will be built to manufacture seasonal mRNA flu vaccines still in development, it will also be equipped to locally produce Covid-19 vaccines if and when needed, with medical ­experts claiming the world could still be dealing with the virus for another decade.

The $2bn life-saving ­announcement will come amid rising infection numbers in NSW and stubborn levels of Covid-19 in Victoria.

In NSW, end-of-year parties and the emergence of the highly infectious Omicron variant are being blamed for a surge in daily infections, with analysts predicting case numbers will double to 1000 a day before Christmas.

Victoria’s case numbers have fallen from a peak of 2297 on Oct­ober 14 to remain steady at an average of about 1100 since early November, creeping up slightly in recent days to 1290 on Monday.

The new facility will also use mRNA technology for treatment of cancer and rare diseases.

Australia last week was the first country to approve Moderna mRNA vaccines for Covid-19 booster shots.

Senior government sources said the deal met three key ­national interest pillars, including an insurance policy for future pandemics, a sovereign manufacturing capability and a national security imperative.

Scott Morrison hailed the in-principle agreement as a “strategic partnership” that would allow for 100 million mRNA vaccines to be produced during a pandemic, with Australia having priority access to both pandemic and non-pandemic respiratory mRNA vaccines.

“This investment will continue to secure Australia’s future economic prosperity while protecting lives by providing access to world-leading mRNA vaccines made on Australian soil,” the Prime Minister said.

“The new mRNA manufac­turing facility in Victoria will produce respiratory vaccines for potential future pandemics and seasonal health issues such as the common flu, protecting lives and livelihoods.

“Medical manufacturing is at the heart of our Modern Manufacturing Initiative, creating jobs and securing Australia’s economic recovery … unlike Labor, we’ve got more than a million Australians back in work.”

(continued)

>>15186797

2/2

Australia is already the largest manufacturer of vaccines in the southern hemisphere through the CSL facilities also based in Melbourne and regarded as the ­nation’s leader in the field of medical research.

The new facility will establish Australia as the only mRNA ­vaccine technology manufacturer currently outside of the US and Europe.

Industry sources confirmed the deal was worth “several billion dollars”, although the exact price tag was deemed commercial in confidence.

The federal government funding component would come from grants under the $20bn Medical Research Future Fund.

General manager Moderna Australia and New Zealand Michael Azrak said: “Moderna is proud to be at the forefront of mRNA vaccine development and to be playing a role in the global response to the pandemic.

“We look forward to finalising agreements and starting work to develop onshore respiratory mRNA vaccine manufacturing capability here in Australia,” he said.

The Victorian government said the facility would be built to produce 25 million doses a year but it would have the capacity to scale up to produce 100 million doses a year during a pandemic.

The Acting Victorian Premier, James Merlino, said mRNA ­technology was a “new frontier for vaccine development” and a “new weapon in the fight against a range of diseases”.

“This is a huge announcement not just for Victoria but the whole country – being able to manufacture mRNA vaccines and treatments locally will lock in vaccine security both on our shores and across our region.”

Minister for Health and Aged Care Greg Hunt said the facility would ensure Australians were given priority access to the most advanced vaccine technology.

“This is another key pillar in Australia’s long-term medical manufacturing future, and we are looking forward to finalising the agreements with Moderna as soon as possible,” Mr Hunt said.

“Ensuring Moderna has a manufacturing presence here will deliver Australia priority access to products manufactured here in Australia, by Australians, for Australians, using the most cutting-edge vaccination science avail­able in the world today.”

Both the Victorian and NSW governments have previously stumped up promised funds for mRNA research, amid the federal government’s troubled vaccine rollout prior to the Delta wave of the pandemic. The nation’s vaccination rate is now among the highest in the world.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/moderna-vaccine-deal-to-deliver-100-million-doses/news-story/b024938df039874f7efec6fea5b8155e

Scott Morrison in election pledge for return of freedoms

GEOFF CHAMBERS - DECEMBER 13, 2021

Scott Morrison has promised to give Australians their “freedom” back and get big government out of their lives, as the Coalition ­anchors its re-election pitch with a pledge to keep the nation “stronger, safer, together”. ­

Speaking at The Sydney Institute’s annual dinner on Monday night, the Prime Minister pushed back against left-wingers who ­believed the pandemic was a “pretext for a more expansive government role and reach into society across economic, social and cultural domains”.

Mr Morrison outlined his three election priorities – the economic recovery, national ­security and championing “unity and social cohesion” – but conceded the government hadn’t “got everything right”.

With conservative minor parties accusing the Coalition of overreach in its management of the pandemic, Mr Morrison said the prominence of government during the Covid-19 crisis was “not some new norm; it has a use-by date”.

“By instinct more than ideology, Australians support effective, practical yet limited government. An enabling partner; not a meddling, busy-body overseer. Government that delivers tangible benefits to people’s everyday lives. That empowers people to make and pursue their choices,” Mr Morrison said.

“That opens the door for each generation to Australia’s promise – economic opportunity and ­reward for hard work, a fair go for those who have a go, can-do ­capitalism, a strong social safety net when times are tough, and a country that holds true to the best traditions of liberal democracy in an uncertain world.”

As state and territory governments ease restrictions across the country, Mr Morrison said it was not normal for governments to tell people “where we can and can’t go, who we can and can’t invite into our homes, to stay home, to close our businesses”.

“It’s not normal to keep track of where we’ve been, not be allowed to visit friends or relatives, go out to dinner or the pub. None of these restrictions belong in the lives of Australians. Australians don’t like it. I don’t like it,” he said. “Yet for the greater good, we have done it. We got on with our lives as best we could because we knew it was temporary. We knew that on the other side was something that we’ll never take for granted again. Our freedom.

“And so Australians kept their side of the deal. It is time for governments to now keep theirs; to step back and let Australians step forward.”

Mr Morrison said the national cabinet, which has met 57 times since its formation at the start of the pandemic, was “not perfect” but had succeeded “better than ­almost any other federated system in the world”.

He also hit back at Labor ­attacks over the handling of vaccine supplies, declaring “we got the vaccination job done, with now one of the highest vaccination rates in the world”.

“This wasn’t easy. We had our challenges and our critics. In a crisis what matters is not that you have setbacks, but that you overcome them.”

In a pitch to voters at the dinner attended by former prime minister John Howard and senior ministers, Mr Morrison said the experience gained by the government in leading the nation through Covid-19 pandemic would help the Coalition “secure Australia’s success”.

“In the past 20 months, our ­operational tempo as a government has made us more experienced, more prepared and more resilient for the next set of challenges our nation faces. And there will be many more in the years ahead.”

In the speech, titled What Matters Most, Mr Morrison said he remained committed to the goals that guided him when he replaced Malcolm Turnbull in 2018.

“Keeping our economy strong, by securing our recovery, so we can guarantee the essentials that Australians rely on; keeping Australians safe in an even more uncertain and changing world, both at home and abroad; and taking our country confidently forward together. In short, our economy is primed for growth. But securing our economic recovery in 2022 cannot be taken for granted.

“Having avoided the labour market scarring feared last year, we must continue to secure the workers we need for a jobs boom.”

On national security, he said the “potential for massive disruption (from cyber attacks) is real”, with more than a third of incidents reported in the last year linked to infrastructure assets. He spruiked Australia’s involvement in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, AUKUS and ASEAN as crucial in protecting the nation’s interests. ‘

“The common thread is plain enough – these are big national plays for big strategic stakes where we must protect Australia’s interests,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/scott-morrison-in-election-pledge-for-return-of-freedoms/news-story/a2b7e74d8e1f437245c8be8413d8e763

>>15175394

Joyce says Assange shouldn’t be extradited to US

Anthony Galloway - December 14, 2021

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce says Julian Assange should not be extradited to the United States to face espionage charges, calling for the WikiLeaks founder to either be put on trial in Britain or brought back to Australia.

Mr Joyce said the Australian citizen, who has spent more than two years in Belmarsh Prison in south-east London, should not be forcibly sent to the US because he was not on American soil at the time of his alleged offences.

“I have no standing in the British courts. But in that birthplace of the common law, I hope the learned come to a just conclusion,” Mr Joyce writes in an opinion piece for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. “They should try him there for any crime he is alleged to have committed on British soil or send him back to Australia, where he is a citizen.”

His comments were echoed by Liberal MP Bridget Archer, who said Assange should be released and returned to Australia.

Assange is trying to avoid extradition to the US to face 18 charges relating to the publication of hundreds of thousands of classified military documents and diplomatic cables more than a decade ago. Before being sent to Belmarsh, he sheltered at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for seven years.

Mr Joyce has previously opposed Assange’s extradition to the US as a backbench MP. But this is his first contribution to the debate since he retook the Nationals leadership in June and England’s High Court last week ruled Assange could be extradited to the US.

He is now deputy chair of the powerful national security committee of cabinet, which considers the major foreign policy and national security issues for the federal government.

Mr Joyce urged people to set aside their personal opinion of Assange, adding he had never met the 50-year-old but from his observation, he didn’t respect him and “I presume I would not like him”.

“It is a case of how our citizen is protected and judged. Imagine a sliding door moment and it was not Assange but you who was in court in Britain,” he said.

Mr Joyce said people needed to “set aside the grave issues that surround the actions of Assange” from whether he should be extradited to the US.

“Assange did not steal any US secret files, US citizen Chelsea Manning did. Assange did publish them.

“In Australia, he received a Walkley Award in journalism for it. Assange was not in breach of any Australian laws at the time of his actions. Assange was not in the US when the event being deliberated in a court now in London occurred.

“The question is then: Why is he to be extradited to the US? If he insulted the Koran, would he be extradited to Saudi Arabia?”

Mr Joyce said liberal democracies needed to uphold a “vessel of rights” that included the “right to liberty and the right to habeas corpus”.

“If we are content that this process of extraditing one Australian to the US for [allegedly] breaking its laws even when he was not in that country is fair, are we prepared, therefore, to accept it as a precedent for applying to any other laws of any other nation to any of our citizens?”

Asked for a response to Mr Joyce’s comments, a government spokesman said its position was unchanged.

“Australia will continue to respect UK legal processes, noting that these are ongoing proceedings,” the spokesman said.

Mr Joyce’s intervention has angered some Coalition MPs, who say Assange’s actions in publishing national security secrets put Australian lives at risk in war zones.

There are more than 20 members of a parliamentary group set up to oppose Assange’s extradition, but only three Coalition MPs have signed up: Mr Joyce, Ms Archer and Nationals MP George Christensen.

Ms Archer said she believed Assange should be “released and returned to Australia” and she would “continue to advocate for diplomatic action for that to occur”.

“I appreciate that there are a range of views in relation to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks,” she said. “The fact is that he is an Australian citizen who continues to suffer significant mental and physical health issues as a result of his ongoing incarceration because of the protracted legal battle.”

Labor MP Julian Hill, a longstanding opponent of Assange’s potential extradition, said he hoped the Deputy Prime Minister’s comments would give other Coalition MPs the “courage and cover to speak up and say enough is enough”.

“There is no legal resolution to this case, it can only ever be resolved politically,” Mr Hill said.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/joyce-says-assange-shouldn-t-be-extradited-to-us-20211213-p59h1j.html

>>15190138

OPINION: I have never met Julian Assange and I presume I would not like him, but he’s entitled to justice

Barnaby Joyce, Deputy Prime Minister and National Party leader - December 14, 2021

There is, in a decent society, a vessel of rights that we hold throughout our entire life. Rights that are not created in some legal sonic boom at one undefined point of our existence nor switched off like the power to a fridge because of a fear or a confusion as to the worth of their contents.

Rights, that though you may be unaware of them, apply equally to the person who has unlimited resources and has been blessed with the greatest luck in the random draw of life, and to those who have been less fortunate. Rights such as the right to liberty and the right to habeas corpus.

A decent society makes the investment to uphold everyone’s basic attachment to this vessel of rights. You can judge a society on whether the protections and enforcement of these rights is actively pursued by the state in a form where all are truly equal.

In a liberal democracy, care must be taken to avoid laws that stumble around how basic rights may come and go. How a state deliberates over one person’s rights is an indication of the clarity, consistency and authenticity it applies over all.

Julian Assange is a current case in point. As an individual, whether you like him or despise him, it is beyond him, given his circumstances, to protect his rights by himself. So we must hope for the British courts to do so, and we will judge its society accordingly.

I have never met him and, from observation, don’t respect him. I presume I would not like him. And I view these facts as a clarion call to be all the more vigilant that he is treated just as one of my most powerful colleagues or dearest friends would be.

It is a case of how our citizen is protected and judged. Imagine a sliding door moment, and it was not Assange but you who was in court in Britain.

The Assange issue inspires so much rhetoric, so much totemism, screams from the choir and three-minute diagnoses. To look at it clearly, you must leave your uninformed preconceptions at the door of the high-colour sideshow. You must also set aside the grave issues that surround the actions of Assange. They are a separate matter to the key issue: where was this individual when he was allegedly breaking US law for which the US is now seeking his extradition from London?

Assange did not steal any US secret files, US citizen Chelsea Manning did. Assange did publish them. In Australia, he received a Walkley Award in journalism for it. Assange was not in breach of any Australian laws at the time of his actions. Assange was not in the US when the event being deliberated in a court now in London occurred. The question is then: why is he to be extradited to the US? If he insulted the Koran, would he be extradited to Saudi Arabia?

What country was he a citizen of at that time; what does it mean to be a citizen, and what rights therefore attach to it? If we are content that this process of extraditing one Australian to the US for breaking its laws even when he was not in that country is fair, are we prepared therefore to accept it as a precedent for applying to any other laws of any other nation to any of our citizens?

I have no power in Britain or US over these matters. I have no standing in the British courts. But in that birthplace of the common law, I hope the learned come to a just conclusion. They should try him there for any crime he is alleged to have committed on British soil or send him back to Australia, where he is a citizen. I am isolated in a room in Washington with an as yet undetermined variant of COVID-19, but have been asked back in Australia if my previous position on this matter remains the same. It does, and I hope this gives my reasons why. I hope it shows I am consistent on such matters.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/i-have-never-met-julian-assange-and-i-presume-i-would-not-like-him-but-he-s-entitled-to-justice-20211212-p59gto.html

Prosecutors launch bid to have Australia’s worst-ever child sex predator, Jadd William Brooker, jailed indefinitely for his crimes

He’s the worst child sex offender in Australian history – now prosecutors will push for him to be locked away indefinitely, potentially never to be released.

Sean Fewster - December 14, 2021

An HIV-positive pedophile who has made history as Australia’s worst-ever child sex offender is an uncontrollable predator who should remain behind bars indefinitely, a court has heard.

On Tuesday, prosecutors told the District Court they would seek to have Jadd William Brooker’s case transferred to the Supreme Court.

Once there, they will use laws that were enacted following a campaign by The Advertiser to have Brooker declared incapable of, or unwilling to, control his sexual instincts.

If the bid is successful, Brooker will still receive a prison term for his 182 crimes against children and teenagers in Australia and around the world – but not a non-parole period.

Instead, he will stay in jail unless or until two mental health experts agree he has learned to manage, or is willing to exercise control over, his perverted desires.

Because of a campaign by The Advertiser, the Carly Ryan Foundation and the abuse survivor known as “XX”, neither age nor institutionalisation will secure Brooker’s release.

Some of SA’s most infamous sex criminals are serving indefinite periods of detention, including kidnapper Colin Charles Humphreys and murderer Mark Errin Rust.

Brooker, 39, of Glenelg East, was the central player in an SA-based, online pedophile ring that included former SA Labor adviser Benjamin John Waters.

Among the millions of pieces of data on Brooker’s computers were conversations in which he vowed to infect children and adults with HIV – one of his victims later took his own life.

Veteran police detectives have dubbed his record-breaking number of online and in-person crimes “the worst and most degrading” they have ever investigated.

On Tuesday, Tim Clarke, for Brooker, said his client’s charges were spread across three different court files that should be consolidated in the District Court.

He asked the case be adjourned until January to allow that to happen – Lucy Boord, prosecuting, said the case’s proper venue was a higher jurisdiction.

“I’m instructed to make an (indefinite detention) application in relation to Brooker once all of the files are before the District Court,” she said.

“It will then be requested that the matter be referred to the Supreme Court.”

She said that application would be based on two expert reports which had yet to be sourced, and would likely not be ready until early in the new year.

Judge Geraldine Davison said she had “anticipated being the sentencing judge” for all matters, but understood the application.

She remanded Brooker in custody until January, when all three court files will be in the District Court, for the matter to be referred.

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts-sa/prosecutors-launch-bid-to-have-australias-worstever-child-sex-predator-jadd-william-brooker-jailed-indefinitely-for-his-crimes/news-story/22dfa28ca206b436e9ea6f125019182f

Ben Roberts-Smith wins access to private emails in defamation case

David Estcourt - December 14, 2021

War veteran Ben Roberts-Smith has won access to a series of messages between lawyers defending three newspapers accused of defamation and a solicitor representing a former soldier who has agreed to testify against the Victoria Cross recipient.

The ex-soldier, known as “Person 56”, was a member of Mr Roberts-Smith’s patrol in 2012 and participated in missions in Darwan and Fasil. In allegations published in 2018, Mr Roberts-Smith was accused of being involved in the death of handcuffed farmer Ali Jan during the Darwan mission.

In a decision handed down on Tuesday, Federal Court justice Wendy Abraham ruled that the contents of four emails sent by the papers’ lawyers, and information contained within another communication with a lawyer for the Department of Defence, were not protected by privilege and must be handed over.

Mr Roberts-Smith is suing The Age, the Herald and The Canberra Times over a series of stories starting in June 2018 that he alleges accused him of war crimes and an act of domestic violence against a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair. He denies all wrongdoing.

Of the communications, three of the emails contained information that lawyers acting for the newspapers had argued were developed for the purposes of obtaining legal advice and therefore privileged.

Another one of the emails, written by Minter Ellison lawyer Dean Levitan to solicitor Sam Richter, who is representing Person 56, discussed the circumstances under which the former soldier could give evidence in court against Mr Roberts-Smith.

Additionally, the contents of a private conversation between lawyers representing the papers and Mr Richter, which was conveyed by Mr Richter to Department of Defence lawyer Anthony Reilly, must also be handed over.

Client legal privilege is a legal right which entitles individuals and organisations to obtain legal advice about their circumstances and keep it confidential.

Mr Robert-Smith’s barrister Arthur Moses, SC, argued that the papers’ lawyers had implicitly waived privilege and Mr Roberts-Smith’s legal team was therefore entitled to the documents.

The news outlets are relying on a defence of truth to defend their claims, and have applied to the Federal Court to call Person 56 as a witness when the trial resumes next year.

The court had previously found that a report prepared by investigative journalist Ross Coulthart, a former reporter for Channel Seven, which summarised allegations and rumours about Mr Roberts-Smith would remain secret, after it found it could not be used because it was covered by legal privilege.

Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko said the trial would resume in Sydney in February next year after a six-month pause owing to coronavirus restrictions.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/ben-roberts-smith-wins-access-to-private-emails-in-defamation-case-20211214-p59hf1.html

RealGhislaine Tweet

Kevin Maxwell on Good Morning Britain

video.wixstatic.com/video/ba2454_9…

https://twitter.com/RealGhislaine/status/1470106712116023300

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/ba2454_90ee4b8ea153433c955b3d44473f906d/480p/mp4/file.mp4

Former footy star Brett Finch facing charges relating to child abuse material

Former NRL grand final winner Brett Finch has been charged by police with commenting on child abuse material, one of eight arrested by detectives.

Josh Hanrahan and Dean Ritchie - December 14, 2021

Embattled former NRL star Brett Finch has been arrested for allegedly making comments about child abuse material in an online chatroom.

Finch, 40, was arrested on Tuesday morning and taken to Kogarah Police Station where he was charged with five counts of use carriage service transmit or publish or promote child abuse.

He was granted conditional police bail to appear at Sutherland Local Court on Tuesday, January 11 2022.

The alleged offending involving Finch is understood to have last taken place in January, with other incidents allegedly occurring more than 12 months ago.

Finch’s solicitor Paul McGirr stressed it was not alleged Finch had shared any child abuse material.

“And there’s no evidence from the police to suggest otherwise,” McGirr said.

“We don’t know who’s making those alleged comments. At this stage, it is a defended matter – there is nothing more I can add. All we have at this stage are scant details.

“It would be foolish for anyone to comment or pass judgement on Brett or the matter.”

It is understood Finch will defend the charges although his manager, Steve Gillis, refused to comment on the matter.

Finch was one of eight men arrested as part of the Strike Force Hank investigation by the NSW Police Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad.

The strike force seized mobile phones, electronic items and illicit drugs, as part of their ongoing investigation into the alleged transmission of child abuse material through an adult telephone service.

“We will allege that each of the men arrested by detectives over the past month expressed desires to engage in sexual activity with children, and in some cases, attempted to access child abuse material from other users of the service,” Detective Superintendent Jayne Doherty said.

“Producing, disseminating or possessing child abuse material are serious offences, and detectives will continue to dismantle these types of operations, so children are free from harmful situations, exploitation and abuse.”

Finch was scheduled to host a sports show on SEN radio on Tuesday afternoon before withdrawing from the shift. He had been substituting for holidaying regulars Bryan Fletcher and Joel Caine.

SEN took the feed from their afternoon show in Melbourne.

Finch has endured a long and controversial battle with alcohol, drugs and depression.

He checked himself into a mental health facility in October, 2019.

In a 15-year NRL career, Finch played 330 games for Canberra, Sydney Roosters, Parramatta and Melbourne. He also represented NSW between 2004 and 2006.

Speaking on a Melbourne podcast just last week, Finch urged those struggling with mental health issues to “keep going.”

“People say they’re going through hell. Well, if you’re going through hell, keep going,” he said. “Why stop? People give up because their life is hell. Keep going! Who wants to stay in hell?

“I could have given up many times, I’m so glad I didn’t. People didn’t give up on me.”

Former teammates have been aware of Finch’s drug and alcohol issues and have regularly attempted to assist in his recovery.

“We all try but he doesn’t seem to want to be helped,” said one former Roosters teammate.

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/police-courts-nsw/former-footy-star-brett-finch-charged-with-sharing-child-abuse-material/news-story/f5078d62cb9096dd46b69be5308706da

Tipoff regarding Dame Linda Dobbs. BILLION POUND HBOS INVESTIGATION

The Dame often visits Cape Town, South Africa and used to stay over with Jorje Pringle and Mirko Manojlovic's house in Newlands Cape Town (11 Rose Avenue)

They are very good friends and she was also at Jorje's son's wedding.

Please see the Dame here at the wedding at the 4:00 Mark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqVEa1aNBTw

Now this may seem perfectly innocent, but some questions remain:

1. Mirko Manojlovic has had many court cases against him since the 1990s up until recently. Here is one such case http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAWCHC/2017/167.html

Mirko won this court case, but it was under very strange circumstances. He put a company into business rescue in order to avoid creditors.

Mirko also has a trust called THE HERMES TRUST which is at Investec Private Bank. Registered 1998 or 1999.

If you search for more on Mirko on Google, its all gone, but if you search on DuckDuckGo.com, you may find quite a bit of information on him. He has spent years having everything on him removed.

There is a large group of people whom he has scammed and stolen from over the years. It is easily 50 to 100 people. Many people out of jobs because of this thief.

2. Jorje Pringle is linked to Retired ex Brigadier General McGill Alexander. They attended school together.

This general became a diplomat and in the late 90s he was held hostage in Taiwan. This can be found on the internet

The general works with foster kids. But is this legit or is there something more sinister going on here?

The general posts strange things regaring Pizza (known pedo symbol) and spiral logo (another pedo symbol).

3. Why did many of the Dame's cases involve light sentences for child abuse?

4. Mirko, Jorje use many satanic type symbols.

One eye symbolism

Masks

Owl symbol

Snake/Oroboros

Sunesi snake

5. How did Jorjes' son drive at 180km/h and 250km/h on the highway and not get prosecuted?

https://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/western-cape/bit-of-fun-on-the-road-1018619

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsm08yiDWsk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwCT2QUhIvQ

Shandor posted these videos on Youtube himself. These are backups.

He since crashed the blue Subaru in a legal race in Knysna. So he is not such a good river as he makes out. Endangering lives for his thrill.

The dame is seen at the wedding at the 4:00 mark. This is the same guy - Shandor Hrabar (son of The good friend of the Dame).

Did the good friend, The Dame pull strings?

Is the General legitimate or was there more to this story about the hostage in Taiwan? Was Chen the hostage taker really innocent?

This information will be released to the press soon, but you are welcome to do a story on this.

I suspect that any of the above will cause huge chaos regarding the HBOS investigation which I believe is just a delay tactic to cover for the bank fraud.

DAME FRIENDS WITH SOUTH AFRICAN FRAUDSTERS

DAME ATTENDS WEDDING OF SPEEDSTER WHO WAS NOT PROSECUTED

https://mirkomanojlovicblog.wordpress.com/

Or is the Dame really a very bad judge of character? Is she an idiot? I doubt she is an idiot. Then she must know or be complicit? Either way she should not be investigating a billion pound HBOS matter.

>>15175352

Australia reopens borders to non-citizens despite Omicron worries

Renju Jose - December 15, 2021

SYDNEY, Dec 15 (Reuters) - Australia on Wednesday reopened borders to vaccinated skilled migrants and foreign students after a near two-year ban on their entry, in a bid to boost an economy hit by stop-start COVID-19 lockdowns and restart international travel.

The emergence of the new Omicron variant forced officials to delay the reopening by two weeks after health officials sought a temporary pause to get more information about the strain, which so far appears to show milder symptoms than other COVID-19 variants.

"We're going to live with this virus, and we're not going to let it drag us back to where we've been," Prime Minister Scott Morrison told radio station 4BC on Wednesday. "We've got one of the highest vaccination rates, which means we can fight this thing. We don't have to surrender to it."

Australia has inoculated nearly 90% of its population above 16 with two doses and shortened the wait time for booster shots after the emergence of the Omicron cases.

Morrison, who had been deemed a casual contact after attending an event last week along with a COVID-infected person, said he has been cleared to fly interstate to Queensland after negative test results.

"That's what living with the virus is," he said.

Australia closed its borders in March 2020 in a bid to contain the spread of the new coronavirus and had limited the number of citizens and permanent residents allowed entry. The relaxation of border rules is expected to ease labour shortages, which threaten to hamper an economic rebound.

The return of foreign students, who are worth about A$35 billion ($25 billion) a year to the Australian economy, will help businesses to fill many casual jobs. More than 235,000 foreigners, including about 160,000 students, held visas for Australia at the end of October, official data showed.

The easing in travel rules comes as the state of New South Wales, home to Sydney, lifted most restrictions from Wednesday for the unvaccinated, despite a steady rise in Omicron infections after a staggered reopening.

The state logged 1,360 new cases, the biggest daily rise in more than three months and since a nearly four-month lockdown ended in early October. Australia has recorded about 235,500 cases and 2,117 deaths since the pandemic began.

($1 = 1.4069 Australian dollars)

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australia-reopens-borders-non-citizens-despite-omicron-worries-2021-12-14/

>>15175394

Assange's mother describes 'unending pain'

Ted Hennessey - DECEMBER 15 2021

The mother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has spoken of her "unending, gut-wrenching pain" over her son's possible extradition to the United States.

The 50-year-old is facing extradition to the US over espionage charges relating to the publication of classified military information in 2010 and 2011 by WikiLeaks.

His mother Christine has written an open letter describing her fears over her son being imprisoned "for the rest of his life".

"Fifty years ago in giving birth for the first time as a young mother, I thought there could be no greater pain," she said.

"But it was soon forgotten when I held my beautiful baby boy in my arms. I named him Julian.

"I realise now that I was wrong. There is a greater pain.

"The unending, gut-wrenching pain of being the mother of a multi-award winning journalist who had the courage to publish the truth about high-level government crimes and corruption.

"The pain of watching my son, who sought to publish important truths, being endlessly globally smeared.

"The pain of watching my son, who risked his life to expose injustice, being fitted up and denied a fair legal process, over and over again."

She spoke of her son being "cruelly psychologically tortured" by the authorities.

Christine Assange added: "The constant nightmare of him being extradited to the US and being buried alive in extreme solitary confinement for the rest of his life. The constant fear the CIA will carry out its plans to assassinate him.

"The rush of sadness as I saw his frail, exhausted body slumping from a mini-stroke in the last hearing due to chronic stress.

"Many people are also traumatised by seeing a vengeful superpower using its unlimited resources to bully and destroy a single defenceless individual.

"I wish to thank all the caring, decent citizens globally protesting Julian's brutal political persecution.

"Please keep raising your voices to your politicians till it's all they can hear. His life is in your hands."

Julian Assange has spent the past two years in Belmarsh Prison in London after almost a decade hiding in Ecuador's embassy in the capital.

He is facing a renewed push for his extradition to the US after the High Court last week overturned a previous ruling against such a move.

Australia's deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce also came to his defence, saying Assange should be kept in the UK and tried there or returned to his home country.

Assange's fiancee Stella Morris has accused UK authorities of playing the role of "executioner" after he suffered a mini-stroke in prison.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7552070/assanges-mother-describes-unending-pain/

COURT BATTLE - Prince Andrew hits out at ‘unintelligible’ rape accuser Virginia Roberts and claims she ‘changes her story’

James Beal and Jacob Bentley-York - Dec 14 2021

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PRINCE Andrew has claimed his sex assault accuser has a “tendency to change her story” – as he fights to have her lawsuit against him thrown out.

Lawyers for the Duke of York, 61, hit back against Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who alleges that he sexually assaulted her three times when she was 17.

Last month Virginia’s attorneys accused the prince of “victim shaming” and using her to “gratify his own sexual desires”.

In response, Andrew Brettler, the prince’s lead lawyer, said Virginia’s allegations were “vague” because she had given different versions of what happened to her.

He has asked a judge to throw out Virginia’s New York lawsuit against the royal.

Mr Brettler said: “Her complaint is ambiguous at best and unintelligible at worst.

“Giuffre’s refusal to include anything but the most conclusory allegations is puzzling given her pattern of disclosing to the media the purported details of the same allegations.

“Perhaps it is Giuffre’s tendency to change her story that prompted her to keep the allegations of the Complaint vague, so as not to commit to any specific account.”

(continued)

>>15195832

2/3

However, Roberts stood by her accusations, saying the Prince "was an abuser, he was a participant".

In September, her legal team confirmed that they had issued Andrew with a writ ahead of his pre-trial in New York due to start next month.

Royal sources claimed that it has left Andrew “totally consumed” by the case as he last week told his US legal team to cancel their Christmas plans, vowing they must leave “no stone unturned.”

Meanwhile, Robert’s lawyers hit out at Andrew's disastrous Newsnight interview in 2019 – claiming that it was evidence of his "guilt".

The Duke of York sparked fury with a legal filing in October that branded Virginia a “money-hungry sex kitten” who was only suing him for “another pay day”.

David Boies, Virginia's lawyer, then hit back in a court filing in New York opposing Andrew's motion to dismiss.

He wrote: "During that interview, Prince Andrew said that he could not recall ever meeting Ms Giuffre, a denial so at odds with photographs and other evidence that it is itself indicative of guilt."

(continued)

>>15195835

3/3

Andrew famously claimed in the interview he was medically unable to perspire, a response to Virginia's account of an alleged sweaty dance in London.

And he claimed a photo of him with his arm round Virginia - said to have been taken in Ghislaine Maxwell’s home - could have been doctored.

The British socialite – Jeffery Epstein’s former lover- currently remains on trial in New York and has been repeatedly accused of “serving up” girls to the late financier.

Amid a slew of fresh claims she allegedly brought young women to Epstein’s ‘paedo island’ - described as littered with “hidden cameras.”

The Duke of York - who was a friend of Epstein - is widely reported to have visited Little St James in the Caribbean where Roberts claims that she was assaulted as a 17-year-old old.

The Royal has strenuously denied any wrongdoing and strongly refuted the allegations made.

Prince Andrew has been approached for comment.

https://www.the-sun.com/news/4268357/prince-andrew-hits-out-rape-accuser-virginia-roberts/

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60119368/giuffre-v-prince-andrew/?filed_after=&filed_before=&entry_gte=&entry_lte=&order_by=desc

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.564713/gov.uscourts.nysd.564713.53.0.pdf

>>15150297 (pb)

RealGhislaine Tweet

Our sister's trial resumes on Thursday December 16 - 13 DAYS OF INACTION BY AG MERRICK GARLAND ON HER in-trial conditions - DISGRACEFUL, INHUMANE AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL

https://twitter.com/RealGhislaine/status/1470872648003555339

Caroline Kennedy to be next US ambassador to Australia

ADAM CREIGHTON - DECEMBER 16, 2021

Joe Biden has nominated Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of former president John F. Kennedy, to be the next ambassador to Australia, pending Senate confirmation, ending months of speculation as to whether she wanted the role.

Former Australian ambassadors and foreign policy experts feted the decision as a signal of the ever closer ties between Washington and Canberra, owing to Ms Kennedy’s close connection with President Biden and the White House.

Ms Kennedy, 64, has a distinguished history of diplomatic experience, having served as US ambassador to Japan under former president Barack Obama for four years to 2017.

“Prior to her time in Japan, Kennedy was at the forefront of education reform efforts in New York City, creating public private partnerships to promote arts education, school libraries, and performing arts spaces,” the White House said in the announcement.

Ms Kennedy said in a statement that she was “excited to get to know the Australian people, learn about their fascinating country and share with them what I love most about America”.

She called Australia “a country that is vital to our future security and prosperity”.

“I look forward to collaborating with the government of Australia to strengthen our alliance, improve global health and increase vaccine access during this terrible pandemic and to address the urgent climate crisis,” she said.

Kim Beazley, Governor of Western Australia and former US ambassador said Ms Kennedy would be “enormously effective” in Canberra.

“She is a good diplomat and has had a great history in the political life of the United States. She is a woman who gets noticed and we want that in an American ambassador to Australia,” he said.

Michael Thawley, who preceded Mr Beazley as Australia’s ambassador in Washington, said Ms Kennedy was “politically astute” and her appointment reflected the “esteem and affection which Australia enjoys in the US”.

“As the daughter of one of the US’s most loved presidents and a member of one of the US’s most significant political dynasties, she is something of a symbol of the consequential place Australia occupies in the US’s world view,” he said.

Press speculation about Ms Kennedy’s impending nomination, presumably leaked by well connected officials, had sprouted up throughout the year, inviting concern she may ultimately have not wanted the role.

Speaking in May when speculation of her candidacy first emerged, Joe Hockey, treasurer in the Abbott government and former Australian ambassador in Washington, said the appointment of Ms Kennedy would be “hugely symbolic”,

“It would be a very powerful statement that Joe Biden sees Australia as a key ally in the Indo-Pacific region,” he said.

“It would be symbolic, not only because of her vast personal experience as a successful ambassador to Japan, but also because of her position as a member of the royal family of the democratic party.”

Ms Kennedy, an early supporter of Joe Biden’s bid for the presidency, if approved by the Senate, will succeed Donald Trump’s ambassador to Australia, Arthur Culvahouse, a US lawyer, who returned to the US in January after 22 months as ambassador.

Ms Kennedy would be the first ambassador in Canberra appointed by a Democrat president since John Berry’s appointment in 2013, who succeeded Californian lawyer Jeffrey Bleich, Barack Obama’s first appointment as ambassador in Canberra.

Ms Kennedy, who grew up in New York before receiving a degrees in arts and law at Columbia and Harvard University, backed Mr Biden’s bid for the presidency in a January 2020 editorial in The Boston Globe.

Caroline, daughter of Jacqueline Kennedy, was five when her father was assassinated in Dallas in November 1963, just two months short of three years since his inauguration.

It was among a series of tragedies the famous US family endured, including the death of Caroline’s brother, John, in a plane crash in 1999.

Ms Kennedy has three adult children and is married to Edwin Schlossberg.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/caroline-kennedy-to-be-next-us-ambassador-to-australia/news-story/eb5f564828583e7a253540b2c8f2a5db

>>15200685

Joe Biden has nominated Caroline Kennedy as his ambassador to Australia. She's more than a symbolic choice

Greg Jennett - 16 December 2021

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The list of ambassadors that American presidents have dispatched to Canberra has grown long and eclectic over the years, crowded with mates, millionaires, ex-military types and the odd misfit.

Scattered among them are former congressmen, bankers, a one-time Major League Baseball team owner, a car sales mogul and political donors.

Joe Biden has nominated Caroline Bouvier Kennedy to join their ranks with a background so rare, it seems to be unique.

Until Biden, no president appears to have appointed an ambassador anywhere, let alone Australia, who has lived in the White House longer than he has.

Sure, Caroline Kennedy was only a little girl of preschool age for most of her time at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, before that time was tragically cut short by her father's assassination.

Even so, the years she spent growing up there in America's First Family with her father John, mother Jacqueline and brother John Jr defined her and tethered a connection with presidencies stretching over more than half a century.

Photos from the Camelot era capture an energetic young Caroline happily riding her pony on White House lawns and playing in the Oval Office in the early 60s.

Almost 60 years later, Biden's posting is an acknowledgement of the Kennedy family's enduring place in American history.

But Kennedy is more than JFK's daughter.

The appointment reflects the key role she played in helping Biden make his breakout from the US Senate into the vice-presidency back in 2008.

She was in charge of the search for Barack Obama's running mate, and threw her support behind the then-Delaware senator.

The recommendation became life-altering for Biden.

If he felt a debt was owed for the opportunity, a posting to Australia is one way to repay it.

A symbolic choice at a critical moment

Symbolically, selecting a trusted figure from Democratic Party royalty is a statement of the value Joe Biden places on the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) as it enters its 71st year.

Practically, it promises some benefits for the battalions of professionals whose job is to daily manage the relationship between Washington and Canberra.

Although reserved — some might even say shy — Caroline Kennedy will have the same open line to Joe and Jill Biden from Canberra as she does when at home in New York or Massachusetts.

Her voice may be quiet, but she won't be ignored.

What's less clear is how often the 64-year-old might seek to use the limited political clout she's got, and on which issues she chooses to wield it.

Despite the personal regard she's held in, it would be a mistake to believe Ambassador Kennedy could single-handedly get the Biden team to do things it wouldn't otherwise do for its ally.

In any case, this year's AUKUS security pact proves the current administration was already prepared to stretch the bounds of what it's prepared to do with Australia, long before the new nominee was even close to being announced.

(continued)

>>15200689

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Now that she's about to move into the position, Kennedy will quickly discover she's only a short-term custodian of long-term projects which transcend elected governments and the individuals within them.

From the Biden administration's point of view, nudging Australia towards higher goals for cutting carbon emissions remains top of mind, as does its constant encouragement to Canberra to remain vigilant about Beijing's creeping influence in the west Pacific.

For the Morrison government — or whichever one is in power after next year's election — navigating the China dilemma on trade and security with the backing of a powerful ally will always be unfinished business for politicians, policymakers, admirals, generals and diplomats alike, for decades after this ambassador returns to the States.

Camelot stills evokes nostalgia for many

JFK's daughter certainly has some understanding of the limits of her powers.

She's a little more experienced now than she was in 2013, when Barack Obama sent her as his top envoy to Tokyo.

All indications from her four years in Japan suggest Caroline Kennedy leans more towards soft public diplomacy, using the profile she brings, rather than top-level political deal-making.

"I know that I was not a likely choice," Kennedy humbly said when reflecting on her first ambassadorship to a Harvard audience.

"My strongest qualifications were that I was close to the president and that I had a well-known name. But it turned out that those are the qualities that the Japanese most valued."

These may turn out to be the same qualities she puts to work in Australia too, no doubt still pursuing the promotion of education and women's rights.

But her renown, coupled with her lack of experience in public office, did bring unexpected complications for the full-time diplomats who worked behind the celebrity ambassador.

When the State Department's Office of Inspector-General — an audit unit — ran a routine review of Japan operations in 2015, it noted kindly that "the Ambassador does not have extensive experience leading and managing an institution of the size of the US Mission to Japan".

Nor did the Tokyo office really have any experience in the load a Kennedy's popularity would put on staff implementing Caroline's "innovative approach to public diplomacy".

"The external demand for the Ambassador's personal participation in events across Japan has strained a number of programs at the embassy, including the gifts program," the Inspector-General observed.

In case State Department diplomats in Canberra quake at the prospect of a similar tidal wave of generosity, the auditors added that eventually the processing "caught up on the backlog of gifts sent to the Ambassador".

(continued)

>>15200695

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Kennedy's new role requires a tough stance on Beijing

As she'll soon be reminded when going through Senate confirmation hearings, much has changed in the US outlook on China since Kennedy's last posting in Asia for Obama.

These days the Biden administration is tough in language and temperament on Beijing's "bullying", "intimidation", "coercion" and "assault on basic values" from Hong Kong, to Xinjiang, the South China Sea and down to Australia .

Such strident language won't come naturally to Ambassador Kennedy though — that's not her style.

The new job will demand an elevation of pitch and tone towards China, compared to what she's been comfortable expressing so far.

In a video linkup with Tufts University in April, she lamented creeping doubts over America's reliability, but didn't offer much reassurance.

"For countries in Asia that are geographically and economically very close to China, they don't want to be forced to choose," she said of the rivalry between the US and the Chinese.

"I'm really impressed with what the new administration is doing, and I think its goal is to empower and strengthen our allies and partners, but I think people still have a lot of questions about whether we mean it at this time."

Convincing Australia and its neighbours that America is in fact seriously committed will be her duty.

JFK's own ambassador had musings on Australia

Living in the shadow of a famous father and being the only survivor of an immediate family bedeviled by untimely deaths has made the lawyer and author the keeper of the Kennedy flame.

As an active board member of the official JFK Library and Museum in Massachusetts, she's familiar with the trove of documents, films and memorabilia it preserves.

That's handy, because buried deep in the archive are some useful tips from the man her father sent as his ambassador to Australia.

Bill Battle of Virginia had come to know the young Jack Kennedy on wartime service aboard US patrol torpedo boats in Solomon Islands and even helped rescue him after his vessel was infamously hit and sunk by a Japanese destroyer.

The friendship stuck, and in 1962 the then-president asked him to be his eyes and ears in Australia.

"Why? I mean, why, do you want me to go to Australia? What is there that I can do that you can't get somebody else to do better?" Battle asked.

Kennedy convinced him of "the emergence of Australia as a power in Southeast Asia" and how "it would be important to him to have someone who was personally close and wasn't bound by the hierarchy of the State Department in a listening post as critical as Australia."

Bill Battle took his family to the bushy little capital and threw himself into improving intelligence sharing, resolving trade tensions, trying to flog American military equipment like F-111 jets and bombers to the government and, above all, getting close to Prime Minister Robert Menzies.

"I think that the type of person you need at that post is one who can deal most effectively with members of the Australian government and the ministry," he reflected in an oral history interview given after returning home, still grieving his friend's assassination.

"That does not have to be an experienced, smooth diplomat.

"You've got to be willing to go do what's needed there. Australia is still small enough that people in government are quite honest."

In a more complex Indo-Pacific region, the tips probably hold as true now as they did for JFK and his man 60 years ago.

Silky smooth diplomatic prowess isn't a pre-requisite.

An ability to open doors to meet important people is.

Raised in the court of Camelot at the White House, Caroline Kennedy's been doing that all her life.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-16/caroline-kennedy-to-be-australias-next-us-ambassador/100416638

>>15200685

>>15200689

Q Post #703

Feb 10 2018 03:33:29 (EST)

“Rest in peace Mr. President (JFK), through your wisdom and strength, since your tragic death, Patriots have planned, installed, and by the grace of God, activated, the beam of LIGHT. We will forever remember your sacrifice. May you look down from above and continue to guide us as we ring the bell of FREEDOM and destroy those who wish to sacrifice our children, our way of life, and our world. We, the PEOPLE.”

Prayer said every single day in the OO.

JFK - Secret Socities.

Where we go one, we go all.

Q

https://qanon.pub/#703

https://qanon.pub/?q=jfk

Huawei ‘helped create’ tech for China’s state surveillance and ‘re-educating’ of Uighurs

DIDI TANG - DECEMBER 15, 2021

Huawei was involved in creating mass surveillance programmes for Beijing and offered to produce technology that would enable the authorities to monitor the forced “re-education” of Uighurs, an investigation has alleged.

A review of the telecom company’s confidential marketing materials by The Washington Post found evidence that appeared to contradict Huawei’s denials of a role in China’s state surveillance.

Huawei, which has faced allegations that it is a de facto organ of the Chinese state, has long insisted that it has no knowledge of or control over how its products are used once sold. Western governments, including Britain, have blocked Huawei from their new 5G telecom networks over security fears.

The newspaper claimed that Huawei co-developed surveillance systems and pitched them with marketing materials bearing the company logo. It claimed that slides in the material showed surveillance functions specific to police or government agencies, suggesting that the Chinese authorities may have been the “intended audience”.

The newspaper reviewed more than 3,000 PowerPoint slides outlining what it said were surveillance projects co- developed by Huawei with other companies in five areas: “Voice recording analysis, detention centre monitoring, location tracking of political individuals of interest, police surveillance in the Xinjiang region and corporate tracking of employees and customers.”

Huawei said it had “no knowledge of the projects mentioned in The Washington Post report”, adding: “Like all other major service providers, Huawei provides cloud platform services that comply with common industry standards.”

The marketing presentations allegedly showed that Huawei helped to design some technical underpinnings for China’s controversial re-education programmes for detainees in the far-western region of Xinjiang. As many as a million members of Muslim minorities, especially the Uighurs, were sent, without due process, to re-education and vocational training centres, where they had to undergo indoctrination sessions and, in many cases, were abused.

The marketing materials purport to show that Huawei, along with a business partner, developed the prison management system, including software to manage the attendance of ideological re-education classes and prison labour shifts by the detainees. Other promotional materials are alleged to show that Huawei pitched a technology to help the government to analyse voice recordings for state security purposes. The system, apparently co-developed with a Chinese artificial intelligence company, is touted for its ability to identify individuals through their voices. IFlytek, the AI company alleged to have worked with Huawei, has been sanctioned by the US for human rights violations against the Uighurs.

Another marketing presentation pitches a solution to track “political persons of interest” through measures such as pinpointing the location of their electronic devices and tracking them with surveillance cameras equipped with facial recognition. Huawei’s technology is said to have been used to help public security in Xinjiang to capture criminal suspects.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/huawei-helped-create-tech-for-chinas-state-surveillance-and-reeducating-of-uighurs/news-story/07c284e0e7a2a39c3d1504a129387814

>>15201098

Australia’s 5G Huawei ban ‘the right move’ for security: Michael Dell

DAVID SWAN - OCTOBER 24, 2021

US tech billionaire Michael Dell has praised Australia’s early move to block Huawei from involvement in building its 5G ­telecoms infrastructure, describing it as “the right move” on security grounds, amid new claims the China tech giant poses a national security risk and is effectively pulling out of the Australian market.

Mr Dell, the founder and chief executive of Dell Technologies who is worth an estimated $US52.6bn ($70bn), is touting an industry-wide shift towards Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN), which would negate the need for specialised equipment and instead let telcos use software to run their networks on standardised hardware.

Dell has recently landed 5G deals with the likes of DISH in the US and Vodafone and Orange in Europe, and it’s understood it has held talks with the Australian government about it using technology in local telco infrastructure.

“I believe it was the right move,” Mr Dell said of Australia‘s move to block Huawei.

“Countries are much more aware of the importance that telecommunications networks have in the security of a nation.

“We have really for some time now, in response to demands from many of the largest carriers, building up this capability.

“The O-RAN movement has really taken hold and with our supply chain and integration capabilities, and our strong alliance with VMware, we’ve created a great set of capabilities that is highly applicable to the 5G rollouts in Australia and many other countries too.”

It follows revelations that Huawei is effectively pulling out of Australia, with its local workforce down to just 145 from a peak of about 1200.

The Chinese state-linked company has closed research labs and retrenched hundreds of employees after its revenue plunged following bans on its involvement in the country’s broadband and 5G networks, according to financial statements filed with Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

A new report from a European defence agency also identified that Huawei’s P40 5G smartphone, on sale in Australia, poses security risks including the potential for malware.

Huawei was contacted for comment.

Mr Dell said Australia was one of the strongest performing markets for his company and he was keeping a close eye on some of our fastest-growing tech start-ups and what they’re accomplishing.

“You’ve got some great things happening in Australia. Canva, Atlassian and Afterpay are becoming great companies,” he said.

“It is inspiring to see so many new companies, new entrepreneurs, new business coming through, and you’ve got some great new start-that are making a real impact on the global stage. It’s inspiring to see how many hard tech problems are being solved by entrepreneurs going after them at an unprecedented scale these days.”

Dell is based in Texas, and more than 50 companies including Atlassian, Zendesk and Asana have signed an open letter warning that Texas’s recent anti-abortion bills will threaten local tech recruitment in the state.

Fellow tech giant Salesforce has also spoken out on the laws, and committed to help its employees relocate if they’re concerned about the ability to seek reproductive care.

Dell has around 13,000 employees in Texas, and is one of the state’s biggest employers.

“We want to provide more health care to our team members in Texas, not less,” Mr Dell said.

“There are some challenges to these various bills that are running around, and I don‘t exactly know how that’s gonna play out, but we’re going to protect our team members and make sure they’re very well taken care of.”

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/australias-5g-huawei-ban-the-right-move-for-security-michael-dell/news-story/1159988511024de10bf83fc183a812e4

>>15175394

>>15195698

'I'm not going to put up with it': Julian Assange's father vows to keep fighting for his freedom

John Shipton has told SBS News of the "very, very distressing and disturbing” handling of his son's extradition case by Britain's legal system.

Alexander Britton - 16 December 2021

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For John Shipton, father of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, optimism and pessimism are two sides of a coin that holds no interest.

“I try not to use those sensibilities as sources of energy. I just take things as they come toward me, whatever event or whatever I think can be done, and I do the best I can on the day,” he told SBS News.

His son is currently being held in prison more than 17,000 kilometres away, housed with some of Britain's most notorious criminals, while a legal battle looks set to rumble on well into 2022.

Mr Assange faces up to 175 years in prison in the United States for alleged breaches of the Espionage Act.

“As long as I have got energy to continue to fight on behalf of Julian, and push this battle forward, and get a deeper understanding of the forces that are arranged against Julian and increase my capacity to engender assistance from population, parliamentarians, institutions, I'm okay,” Mr Shipton said, speaking from Victoria where he lives.

Mr Assange has been held in London's Belmarsh prison since 2019, and is currently detained on an extradition warrant to the US over espionage allegations stemming from publishing military and diplomatic files in 2010.

A sliver of light in the case from earlier this year – a judge in Westminster Magistrates' Court ruling the extradition could not proceed – was dashed last week when a higher court allowed an appeal from the US.

Mr Shipton said the situation and his son's treatment by the British legal system was “very, very distressing and disturbing”.

He added: “I'm continually startled by the savage malice displayed towards Julian by the English judiciary.

“You know, parents have duties to fight for their kids. That's the only proper duty they have.

“So we just fight, you know, and the malice, the more intense the malice, the greater the energy that I put into this matter, because I'm just not going to put up with it.”

The US said the release of the classified information put lives in danger, but Mr Assange's backers say the case is retaliation for his exposing of wrongdoing in overseas conflicts.

Among those who have called for Mr Assange, 50, to be set free are Amnesty International, the International Federation of Journalists and Human Rights Watch.

And, earlier this week, Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce joined calls to end attempts to extradite Mr Assange to the United States and raised questions over its fairness.

Mr Shipton welcomed the “very firm statement” by Mr Joyce, adding: “We're carried aloft by an increasing tide of support.

“He is not an American citizen, he is an Australian citizen. There are many, many publishers, in parallel with Julian and with Wikileaks, who have published his information and none of them are arraigned, or indicted, or hounded, or smeared, or suffer the savage malice and vicious hatred of state organisations overseas.

“So we can see that, with the activity in parliaments around the Western world, that the electorates are concerned about this activity, and that concern is forcing its way into … parliaments in the Western world.”

(continued)

>>15201141

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The plea from Mr Shipton is simple.

“I would say that all [Australian Prime Minister Scott] Morrison has to do is pick up the telephone [and] say to [UK Prime Minister Boris] Johnson: 'Bring this to an end, please. This is an Australian citizen, innocent of any wrongdoing, suffered 13 years of slings and arrows and malice and hatred from the institutions in your country',” he said.

“If he's broken any laws in the United Kingdom, try him there. As he hasn't broken any laws in the United Kingdom, then there's an aeroplane waiting for him at Gatwick and send him home straight away.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told SBS News this week: "Australia will continue to respect the UK legal process."

“The Australian government has raised the situation of Mr Assange with US and UK counterparts – including our expectations of due process, humane and fair treatment, access to proper medical and other care, and access to his legal team – and will continue to do so," they said.

Mr Shipton said: “Looking further into the future? I attempt not to do because, you know, all you've got in life is time. You get some time here. And I'm 77 and will be 78 next year.

“So I just take things as they flow towards me and do my best with them.

“As far as Julian's concerned, and his children, they have a lot more to lose. So I imagine they, you know, feel despair and distress and Stella [Moris, Julian's fiancée] has to carry them along. And they only get to see their father once in a while even while knowing that no actual offence has been made.”

Mr Shipton last spoke with his son a fortnight ago, shortly after it was ruled Mr Assange could marry Ms Moris while in prison.

“His spirits were a little elevated at that victory … being able to put his affairs with Stella in very good order. So that was one element,” Mr Shipton said.

“You make your best of these circumstances. His circumstances are not good. So you don't you try and elevate the mood of the meetings, but it's very moving.”

For now, the case still exists in legal limbo. The most recent ruling means the extradition hearing should return to the Westminster Magistrates' Court but Mr Assange's legal team will move to have it heard at the UK Supreme Court.

“It's beginning to be a mirror image in Julian's court case - persecution, prosecution and its irregularities, its lawbreaking and its abrogation of human rights - it's begun to be a mirror of what Julian uncovered in Iraq.

“It's like a hideous reflection.”

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/i-m-not-going-to-put-up-with-it-julian-assange-s-father-vows-to-keep-fighting-for-his-freedom/6f9405ba-6bd6-4c72-9fea-d82c375de17c

Biden DOJ partners with Australia to speed up sharing digital data on crime

Emily Zantow - December 15, 2021

The Biden Justice Department on Wednesday launched a law enforcement partnership with Australia to make it easier for officials to share digital evidence on crimes.


Attorney General Merrick B. Garland signed off on a bilateral agreement aimed at cutting some red tape by allowing the two countries direct access to each other’s digital crime evidence, including information held by U.S.-based global providers.

“This agreement paves the way for more efficient cross-border transfers of data … so that our governments can more effectively counter serious crime, including terrorism,” Mr. Garland said.

Under the agreement, the U.S. can order providers under its jurisdiction to hand over digital evidence to Australia and vice versa.


Australian Minister for Home Affairs Karen Andrews said the “landmark” agreement will ensure international officials have timely access to evidence on serious crimes, including child sexual abuse, terrorism and ransomware attacks.


“Until now, Australian agencies have relied on complex and time consuming mechanisms, such as mutual legal assistance agreements to access crucial evidence from other countries,” Ms. Andrews said. “Investigations and prosecutions have stalled and even derailed as a result of these arrangements.”


Negotiations for the agreement began in 2019 under former Attorney General William Barr. It will now be subject to review by Congress and the Australian parliament.

The partnership stems from the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act passed by Congress in 2018. The U.S. also entered into a similar agreement last year with the United Kingdom.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/dec/15/biden-doj-partners-australia-speed-sharing-digital/

>>15195832

Secret Epstein settlement with Prince Andrew accuser to be made public

Lee Brown - December 15, 2021

A secret Jeffrey Epstein settlement that Prince Andrew believes should protect him against a sex-assault lawsuit is going to be made public, two judges ruled this week.

Late pedophile Epstein signed the deal in 2009 with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the longtime accuser who is now suing Andrew, 61, for allegedly having sex with her three times when she was 17.

The UK royal’s legal team has insisted the civil settlement — which has remained under seal — also shields him and others “from any and all liability” that stem from Giuffre’s accusations.

On Tuesday, Manhattan federal Judges Loretta Preska and Lewis Kaplan signed a joint order outlining plans to make public the document that Andrew’s team submitted in a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

“Mr. Epstein, as is well known, is deceased. The Document is well known to Ms. Giuffre,” the judges wrote, noting it has also “been available to all parties in this case for some time.”

“We question whether any proper purpose would be served by the continued secrecy of the document save, perhaps, the dollar amount the settlement provided it for,” the judges wrote.

They gave a Dec. 22 deadline to show “good cause” to keep it secret or “the Court will file the entire Document on the public record on or about January 3, 2022.”

In her suit against the embattled royal, Giuffre claims she was ordered by Epstein or his alleged cohort, Ghislaine Maxwell, to engage in sex acts with Andrew at least three times in London, New York and the Virgin Islands in 2001 when she was 17.

The middle son of UK monarch Queen Elizabeth II has long vehemently denied Giuffre’s claims, including during a disastrous UK TV interview that led to him being booted from royal duties.

After repeatedly dodging attempts to be served Giuffre’s lawsuit, he has fought to get the complaint thrown out, claiming his accuser was herself a sex trafficker and arguing that she was not underage at the time she claims she was forced to have sex with him.

https://nypost.com/2021/12/15/epstein-settlement-with-prince-andrew-accuser-to-be-made-public/

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/60119368/giuffre-v-prince-andrew/?filed_after=&filed_before=&entry_gte=&entry_lte=&order_by=desc

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.564713/gov.uscourts.nysd.564713.54.0_1.pdf

>>15175352

Pubs, parties push Australia's COVID-19 cases to record levels

Renju Jose - December 17, 2021

SYDNEY, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Australian authorities on Friday rushed to track down hundreds who attended a Taylor Swift album party in Sydney last week that has become a super-spreading event as cases in the country hit a new pandemic high for the second straight day.

COVID-19 infections, including the new, more transmissible Omicron variant, have been spreading in pubs and nightclubs as social distancing curbs ease after higher vaccination levels.

Despite the surge in cases, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia had entered "a different phase of the pandemic" and ruled out lockdowns to contain the spread of the virus.

"Case numbers are no longer the metric … the real measure is what does it mean for serious illness, (intensive care), hospitalisation, pressures on the hospital system," Morrison said during a media briefing on Friday.

He said initial signs suggest the Omicron variant could be less severe than other variants.

At least 97 cases, including some potential Omicron ones, have been detected among people who attended the Taylor Swift theme party. More than 600 people who checked in at the venue must test and self-isolate but officials flagged there could have been more guests.

A record 3,820 cases were reported in Australia on Friday, with the bulk in its most populous states of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, exceeding the previous high of around 3,400 a day earlier.

NSW authorities have warned daily cases could hit 25,000 in the state by the end of January with authorities looking to accelerate the rollout of booster vaccine shots to ward off the threat from the Omicron strain.

Health officials blamed gatherings at pubs and clubs for the "rapid rise" in cases. "Some of these have led to super-spreading events," NSW health official Jeremy McAnulty said.

Neighbouring Victoria, meanwhile, is on alert after an Omicron-infected person attended a busy pub and hotel in Melbourne.

Australia has reported around 243,000 cases and 2,134 deaths since the pandemic began.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pubs-parties-push-australias-covid-19-cases-record-levels-2021-12-17/

Peter Dutton says there is no escaping Omicron’s spread in Australia

COURTNEY GOULD - DECEMBER 17, 2021

Defence Minister Peter Dutton has called for calm despite foreshadowing a “confronting” battle with Omicron that Australia can’t escape.

As cases rise across the country, many have been forced into isolation and others have been left scrambling for a booster shot.

But speaking with Nine, Mr Dutton said Australia can no longer hide from the virus.

“It is confronting because they are big (case) numbers but this is what we have been preparing for,” Mr Dutton said.

“This is why we have asked people to get vaccinated … Because there is no hiding from this variant.

“But we can‘t lock down because there is no escaping from this … if we go into lockdown, we might as well be in lockdown for the next couple of years because we just won’t deal with it.

“We are in the best possible position to deal with it and we want people to reunite at Christmas and not to miss out on having another family Christmas together.”

Deputy Labor leader Richard Marles agreed, telling Nine that Australia can’t turn back now.

“I think we have crossed the Rubicon as a nation in terms of living with the virus,” he said.

“I think where it is all at now is making sure that we get the booster rollout happening and happening efficiently.”

But, AMA Vice President Dr Chris Moy cautioned there was still not yet enough evidence to categorically say Omicron is less severe than other variants.

“Although there have been these early reports, which are not clear, Omicron may be a milder condition, the sheer number of people who are infected … we still may end up with a large number of people in hospitals at the same time,” he told ABC’s Radio National.

So far, close to a million Australians have received a third shot of the Covid-19 vaccine.

But the emergence of the Omicron variant has reignited concerns about the effectiveness about the vaccine rollout after a decision to bring forward booster shots to five months led to a rush of people attempting to get a third shot.

Speaking with Sky News on Thursday, vaccine rollout chief Lieutenant General John Frewen assured there was no issues with jab supply.

“We've been working really hard this week to get additional orders in place,” he said.

“It’s a huge logistical challenge, but the supply is there, we’ve just got to make sure it gets to the, to the right places.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Australia would be ready if the nation’s vaccine advisory recommends cutting the interval time by another month.

“We are every week reviewing that interval period with ATAGI for those booster shots and if they choose to take it forward to four months, well, we have a million vaccines right now in the distribution system, particularly in pharmacies, all around the country,” he told reporters on the Central Coast on Thursday.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/breaking-news/peter-dutton-says-there-is-no-escaping-omicrons-spread-in-australia/news-story/e80795d519b776ca3da9e7c37724ad5a

Faulty Chinese aluminium adds to Navy boat delays, costing extra $44 million

Andrew Greene - 17 December 2021

The Royal Australian Navy expects its new Evolved Cape Class patrol boats could now be delayed by up to nine months, while an extra $44 million will need to be spent keeping its old fleet in the water, after poor-quality aluminium was imported from China.

In March the ABC revealed Australian shipbuilder Austal had detected deficiencies in the material, believed to have been sourced from Wuhan.

At the time Defence said it expected "the scheduled launch dates of all six boats to be delayed by between four and 16 weeks".

Now an Auditor-General's report has revealed the delays have been significantly upgraded to between six and nine months, partly because Austal is also struggling to recruit skilled labour.

"The ANAO's [Australian National Audit Office] comparison of the date ranges provided by Austal against contracted dates indicates that delays of between six and nine months are anticipated for all six boats' acceptance milestones," it said.

According to the ANAO, Austal advised Defence in June of "further schedule delays due to production workforce issues" in the $350 million project.

For the first time Defence has also publicly quantified how much the delays to the Evolved Cape Class patrol boats will cost in terms of keeping older Armidale Class boats in the water.

The ANAO said that in July this year Defence estimated delays would cost an extra $43.9 million.

"This has resulted in the planned extension of service of the Armidale class and a reduced in-service period for the evolved Cape class, demonstrating the consequential effect of project schedule delays to ADF capability and the Australian Government's naval shipbuilding strategy."

Shadow Assistant Defence Minister Pat Conroy criticised the government's handling of the project.

"This, at a time when our nation's security is of critical importance," he said.

"This is an incompetent, wasteful government that cannot deliver Defence projects on time and on budget.

"As always, taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for their stuff-ups, and our Defence personnel are left without the capabilities they need, when they need it."

West Australian-based shipbuilder Austal was awarded the contract to build six of the 58-metre Cape Class vessels to replace the Navy's ageing Armidale Class fleet in May last year.

A month after the ABC revealed problems associated with the imported aluminium, Austal ended its joint venture with a Chinese shipbuilder called Aulong Shipbuilding.

Defence Minister Peter Dutton has been contacted for comment.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-17/faulty-chinese-aluminium-navy-boat-delays/100708910

>>15201173

Australia more exposed to cyber attack after AUKUS: Karen Andrews

ADAM CREIGHTON - DECEMBER 17, 2021

Australia is more exposed to a major cyber-attack after joining the AUKUS security pact with the US and the UK, home affairs Minister Karen Andrews has warned, amid growing concern about hostile cyber attacks from China and Russia on critical infrastructure.

In Washington to sign the Cloud Act agreement with the US, which will make it easier for US and Australian law enforcement agencies to share online information about potential criminals, Ms Andrews said Australia’s energy grid was a likely target of a future attack.

“We know that there is some concern in the Indo-Pacific region about the AUKUS arrangement, so it’s quite possible it will lead to greater attacks on Australia, whether or not that is specifically targeted to us or because Australia is so closely aligned with the US is yet to be determined,” she told The Australian.

“Our intelligence and cyber security agencies assess it is no longer a matter of if an attack will occur, but rather when,” she said earlier, in a speech at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies on Thursday.

Ms Andrews called on democracies to “step up” to equip their law enforcement agencies with the power to respond to the growing threat of cyber crime and ransomware attacks, one of which crippled the US Colonial Pipeline in May.

“We must create a rules-based global digital order in which critical infrastructure is supported and defended when it comes under attack,” she said. “Not since the splitting of the atom has technological disruption created so much opportunity, but also presented so many challenges.”

Ms Andrews said in Australia phone scam incidents had doubled in 2021 and since 2019 the parliament, logistics companies, small business, hospitals, utilities, school and a university had come under attack, including Queensland’s CS Energy last month, blamed on Russian or Chinese hackers.

“We are very conscious of what China is doing and will continue to monitor it very closely, but it would be wrong to focus on one nation because that would make us complacent,” the Minister said.

“Cyber is an opportunity for China to disrupt what is happening in Australia,” she said, pointing to the Microsoft Exchange hack earlier this year as part of a growing trend. The Five Eyes nations, which includes Australia and the US, blamed on Chinese state actors.

The Minister played down privacy concerns about the new agreement, which motivated some European criticism of the US initiative. “I don’t see it as loss of privacy, I genuinely do see it as enabling law enforcement agencies to gather info that they need for prosecution,” the Minister said.

Ms Andrews met US Attorney-General Merrick Garland a day earlier to sign the agreement, which is intended to “to prevent, detect, investigate and prosecute serious crime, including child sexual abuse, ransomware attacks, terrorism and the sabotage of critical infrastructure over the internet”, according to the US Department of Justice.

“This Agreement paves the way for more efficient cross-border transfers of data between the US and Australia so that our governments can more effectively counter serious crime, including terrorism, while adhering to the privacy and civil liberties values that we both share,” Mr Garland said.

Minister Andrews, who has responsibly for Australia’s international border, said she was “very comfortable” with sticking to the timetable for reopening, despite the spread of the Omicron.

“I’m firmly of view we need to get back to living our lives as quickly as we possibly can, we need borders reopened for economic growth, recovery and to reunite families,” she said.

Ms Andrews said she didn’t raise Julian Assange in her meeting with the Attorney-General, after deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce spoke out in favour of his right to stay in the UK earlier this week.

“The government position is very clear: very respectful of the UK legal system, and it’s up to the US whether they want to continue to pursue extradition,” she said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/defence/australia-more-exposed-to-cyber-attack-after-aukus-karen-andrew/news-story/22dc0fd570d6e8c51beb59f34a95d753

Cardinal Pell Has One Question for Cardinal Becciu: ‘Will He Just Tell Us What the Money Was Sent for?’

The former prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy sat down for an interview on his three-volume 'Prison Journal' touching on his incarceration, Cardinal Becciu and Vatican finances.

Joan Frawley Desmond - December 16, 2021

1/4

When Cardinal George Pell took a leave of absence in 2018 from his post as the inaugural prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy and returned to Australia to stand trial for his “historic sexual abuse” case, he was the highest ranking Church official to be swept up in a decades-long global scandal that has shattered victims and wreaked havoc on the Church’s moral credibility.

Convicted in 2018, he would spend 402 days in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, before his guilty verdict was overturned by Australia’s highest court in 2020.

During his incarceration, the former archbishop of Melbourne from 1996-2001 and of Sydney from 2001–2014 was barred from celebrating the Mass, forcing him to dig deep into his faith and prayer life. He was heartened, however, by the steady flow of letters from friends and well-wishers who offered prayers, spiritual counsel and reading materials.

While working with his lawyers to appeal his conviction, the cardinal began a journal, chronicling the sudden constraints placed on his daily routine, reflections on Holy Scripture, and reactions to unfolding events in Rome, including evidence of the Holy See’s problematic real estate investments in London.

The subsequent revelations of high-level financial corruption, leading to an ongoing Vatican trial, also raised questions about whether curial officials who had opposed the cardinal’s insistence on an external audit of all Vatican finances, helped to bring his case to trial in the first place. At issue: 2.3 million in Australian dollars ($1.65 million) worth of Vatican funds sent to Australia that have yet to be accounted for.

Since his acquittal and release from prison, the now retired cardinal divides his time before Rome and Sydney. In December, he visited San Francisco, the home town of his U.S. publisher, Ignatius Press, which has released three installments of his Prison Journal.

During a visit this month to St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, California, Cardinal Pell spoke with Register senior editor Joan Frawley Desmond about the spiritual impact of incarceration, his decision to forgive his accuser and the Vatican financial corruption trial that may be linked to his own case.

“I have one question for Cardinal Becciu,” Cardinal Pell told the Register, referring to the former chief of staff in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State now facing charges of embezzlement and abuse of office. “Will he just tell us what the money was sent for?”

—

At the beginning of your prison diary, you wryly observe that you were “overdue for a retreat.” It is said that prison can be a monastery. Why is that the case?

If you’re in solitary confinement, you’ve got a lot of quiet time. I had my breviary, I had rosary beads, I had some spiritual books. And I had a daily program of prayers, which I just followed.

Your diary gave the impression that your formation kicked in, and you adapted quickly.

Yes, it did. And, as I said, my pre-Vatican II seminary was a good preparation for solitary confinement.

In the third installment of your diary, you talk about being denied the privilege of celebrating the Mass, and the spiritual wounds that inflicts. And yet, God is still present.

God is with you, whether you feel it or whether you don’t, so I was aware of that. And, you know, for most of my life, I have not been a religious enthusiast or swamped with religious consolations.

But oddly enough, I was probably as peaceful as I’ve ever been religiously, during my time in jail. And one reason for that, of course, is that you’re not nearly as busy and distracted as you are when you’re leading a busy life as a bishop or as a priest.

(continued)

>>15206766

2/4

You received many letters in prison, and some of them supported your prayer life and your spirits. Can you describe the impact of those letters early on, and how that correspondence developed?

They were a big psychological boost. The number of letters was enormous: In over 400 days, I received around 4,000 letters, averaging about 10 a day.

It waxed and waned, not least because I think I ruined the censorship system in jail. One of the wardens said to me a little ruefully, as he brought me mail for a couple of days, “You’ve got more mail this weekend than I’ve received in my life.”

There were many beautiful writings. Very early on, somebody sent me a text from St. Anthony of Egypt, the hermit who founded monastic life, and which I struggled through. He was a pretty hardline sort of fellow. But that was just one example. People would send me religious books or articles, and then increasingly I got all sorts of very interesting intellectual material that was a diversion and a real stimulus.

Was there a sense of the tables being turned: You were being ministered to by the faithful, as opposed to pastoring them?

Oh, very much — when you’re in jail, at the bottom of the pit, you’re being held up by a lot of people. I’m more appreciative now than I ever was of basic courtesies, like a kind word.

You have said that you forgave the man who accused you. is there something you can share about that process of forgiveness, and the feelings that involved?

I didn’t particularly feel it at all. You decide to forgive and then generally your feelings follow.

Also, I realized that whatever else was true about him, he’d suffered in his lifetime. When he gave evidence, I had thought he wasn’t particularly together. I mean, he changed the story 24 times.

A Christian has to decide to forgive or not forgive a number of times when going through life. So it’s not as though I was never faced with such a choice like this until I was 76 or 77 and in jail. And if you’ve tried to forgive little things, you’re probably in a better place to just forgive when the big challenge comes.

You write that we Christians believe suffering in faith can be redemptive. And you also say that during your time in prison you realized that you had led a “relatively sheltered life and may have been inclined to underestimate the evil in society and the damage done to many people, victims.” What helped to bring this to light?

As a bishop, I had to deal with a lot of these cases [alleging the sexual abuse of minors] — there was an immense amount of suffering and sadness. I handed the cases over to a process [of investigation] and I would have to implement the decisions. All this took me very much more into the world of suffering. My convictions were deepened by me experience in the prison isolation wing, where I experienced the damage done to my fellow prisoners. Many of them are ruined by drugs. I heard their anger and their anguish and their banging on the doors [of their cells]. I was powerless to help.

After you were unjustly convicted of sexually abusing two minors, did you ever see yourself as a substitute and your suffering as kind of an offering for the sins of Church leaders who had not or would not pay any penalty in this life for their crimes?

I never saw it explicitly in those terms. But I was very aware of the failures of Church leaders. I probably was more aware of trying to offer up my small difficulties as an offering to help the victims, and I certainly pray for some of the bishops I knew who seemed to have mucked things up spectacularly in terms of their approach.

(continued)

>>15206769

3/4

You mean, they thought they were protecting the Church, but ended up facilitating abuse and cover-ups?

Telling lies sometimes, yes. But it’s very difficult to know what motivated a specific individual.

The initial point was that right across the board, people kept that area of life under wraps, and not just in the Church. So that was the initial starting point. And you might say, in their defense, they didn’t realize the terrible damage that was not always but regularly done [to victims]. And they didn’t realize the persistence of this perverse compulsion, this habit.

You left your position as the inaugural prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy to stand trial in Australia, suspending your campaign to reform the Vatican’s financial system. Later, you learned that significant sums of money were transferred to Australia around the time of your arraignment in 2017. Are you confident that these allegations will come up in the Vatican trial?

I’m not confident of anything with the Vatican trial. I don’t know what’s going on. I’m not even entirely sure that it will go ahead. It might fail for legal reasons.

There’s no doubt that 2,300,000 [Australian dollars] was sent from the Vatican to Australia. Cardinal Becciu acknowledged that.

We just received the available recordings of the [Vatican] trial, and it looks as though Msgr. [Alberto] Perlasca, [the longtime investment manager for the Vatican], said under interrogation that the money was sent to the bishops’ conference in Australia for my legal defense. That’s certainly not true. We’ve asked the bishops’ conference, they received nothing. We certainly received nothing.

So I have one question for Cardinal Becciu: “Will he just tell us what the money was sent for?” And if it’s nothing to do with me or for entirely innocent purposes, good, I would be quite pleased, and we can get on with our lives.

What did you know about the London property scandal when you served as prefect?

I didn’t know a great deal when I went home. We did know the Secretary of State would not give us access to their records, and would not let the auditors in. We also knew they made an accounting error on the London property, which had the effect of masking it. We picked that up.

But we were entirely ignorant of the debacle that was developing.

You were so close when you had to go back and stand trial.

If the auditors had been allowed in, if we’d been allowed in, this would have been one of the first things [they would have flagged]. The [Vatican] would not have lost so much money.

We would never have agreed to the deal, explicitly written up in the contract, whereby they paid millions to get hold of the 30,000 shares for what they thought would give them ownership of the [London] building. In fact, there were 1,000 shares remaining that had all the voting rights, and I understand they had to pay [an additional] 15 million euros to get hold of those shares.

During your tenure as prefect, you tried to professionalize the oversight of Vatican finances.

Not just that, we changed the methodology [to align with] Western business practices. That means informed people with access to the information can judge where the Vatican is financially. Before we came along, you couldn’t do that. Only one or two people might have [had a complete grasp of Vatican finances].

For example, 1.3 billion euros that was not on the books. It was just sitting in separate accounts for a rainy day. It may have been for an innocent purpose, but it wasn’t declared.

(continued)

>>15206773

4/4

Some argue that the outcome of the trial doesn’t matter very much because the Holy Father has made significant structural reforms to Vatican finances that will prevent this from happening again. Can it be prevented from happening again?

You can have the best structures in the world, but [their effectiveness] depends on the integrity and competence of the people [leading them]. So I just don’t know whether we are going to a better place than we were.

There’s also an annual structural deficit of 20 or 25 million Euros; and with COVID that went up to 50 or 70 million Euros a year at least.

We also know there’s significant pressure building in the pension fund, hundreds of millions, with a deficit looming. These are very real financial constraints.

The corruption has certainly been diminished, in some cases eliminated, and might be substantially eliminated everywhere. But the challenge now, is the financial pressures on the Vatican. They’ve got to either reduce their costs or make more money.

Do you see Pope Emeritus Benedict when you’re in Rome?

I do see him. He is failing. He is very, very weak. I will phone him before Christmas to see if he is strong enough for a visit.

This pontificate began with Pope Francis calling on bishops to get out of their chanceries to have the smell of their sheep. In an unexpected way, you have done just that. You may be retired, but what might be your contribution to the renewal of the Church at this point?

I am retired and divide my time between Sydney and Rome. I need to stay out of the way of my successors in Australia and let them do their work.

I try to say my prayers and do my reading. I am also doing a bit of public speaking and writing, touching on public life and the Church in the Western world, where the number of Christian believers has eroded and there has been a decline in practice for those who continue to believe.

[Sociological research confirms that] the more radically liberal the beliefs and practices of the Christian community, the more quickly they lapse into non-belief.

Religiously conservative movements are more durable. Our fundamental teachings are clear and are non-negotiable.

We would be obliged to maintain them even if they damaged numbers and practice. But contrary to expectations, it is the liberal Catholic communities e.g. in Belgium, Quebec, as well as Protestant groups who accommodate to the world who are losing more people.

The Church seems to be split on whether to maintain or relax Church discipline, specifically on reception of the Eucharist.

We’re not just offering hospitality at Mass, with Holy Communion. If you come to my place, I’ll offer you a biscuit and tea or coffee, it wouldn’t matter who you were. But that’s not what we believe about the Eucharist. We believe it really is the body and blood of Christ, the son of God.

You have to be a monotheist. You have to believe in Jesus Christ, and in the Real Presence. St. Paul wrote about the dispositions necessary to make a good and fruitful reception of Communion.

I have a wonderful story about a career criminal who was in jail. The chaplain was asked whether the prisoner came regularly to the prison Mass. He said yes. And then the chaplain was asked if the man went to Communion, and he replied, “No, he is a man of faith. He understands that he can’t go to Communion.”

https://www.ncregister.com/interview/cardinal-pell-has-one-question-for-cardinal-becciu-will-he-just-tell-us-what-the-money-was-sent-for

https://qanon.pub/?q=Pell

https://qanon.pub/?q=pecking

https://qanon.pub/?q=cardinal-george-pell

RealGhislaine Tweet

Our sister's trial resumes today, Thursday, Dec 16 - Please listen with an open mind to ALL the evidence presented.

#GhislaineMaxwell #GhislaineMaxwellTrial #trial

https://twitter.com/RealGhislaine/status/1471473089871589377

>>15206839

The truth about my sister, Ghislaine Maxwell

Ian Maxwell - 17 December 2021

1/2

The mainstream media’s pronunciation of my sister's name has been about as accurate as their coverage of her. No, it's not 'Jizlaine', it's 'Giilen'. Firmly a French name, it was my mother, Betty’s riposte to my father's choice of the name Kevin for my younger brother.

My mother is all too often written out of the Maxwell story but in fact she was the major influence on all our lives. That’s partly because of her loving nature but also because my father was so seldom present in our childhood. He was an incessant traveller and his many interests kept him away.

Betty was determined to maintain our French identities. We all have dual British and French nationality and that's why, if Ghislaine had had any thought she might be arrested, she could have left after Epstein died and gone to France from where there is no extradition to America.

Whilst my mother gave us all the security and love that has welded us together as a family, my father provided the discipline. He was a hugely courageous soldier in the British army and fought the most gruelling battles of the war from the Normandy beaches to Berlin for which he was conferred the Military Cross.

Bob was a survivor. He was also a man of profound inner sorrow having lost his parents and most of his family in Auschwitz, the pain of which he carried with him all his life. He survived by developing a thick carapace combined with relentless self-promotion but underneath he was forever grieving.

In our different ways we have all inherited Bob’s survivor gene. The vile conditions in the Metropolitan Detention Centre are well documented: the rats, the poor sanitation, being woken every 15 minutes with a torch shone in her eyes. But as awful as it is, it’s not Auschwitz. Ghislaine knows that.

She has now survived over 500 days of effective solitary isolation in that evil place. But she’s weakened, drained and hollowed out. Two of my siblings who have supported her in court have told me they no longer recognise the pin sharp, smart sister we all once knew

Bad food, lack of hygiene and poor ventilation are common for many prisoners. Add in the isolation and unjustified suicide watch regime, the estimated 3,500 pat downs and intrusive strip searches she has been forced to endure (some of which she has reported), the obstacles she still faces in reviewing legal papers, plus the multiple irrational denials of bail, Ghislaine is suffering an abominable abuse of her human rights.

In condemnation of this unrelenting treatment, our family has lodged a complaint with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

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Our father's death apart, Ghislaine was born to tragedy. Forty-eight hours after her birth on Christmas Day 1961 our oldest brother Michael, then aged 15, was all but killed when the car he was a passenger in collided with a lorry in thick fog. He was in a coma for seven years and died in 1968.

As a result Ghislaine, who should have been the centre of my parent's attention as their newest child, was hardly given a glance so profound was their grief. One day when she was about three, she planted herself in front of our mother and said simply 'Mummy, I exist'. Betty swept her up in her arms and hugged her, never letting her feel abandoned again.

Much has been made of our father's influence on Ghislaine but our mother's was much more significant. In the Address given by Oxford’s former vice chancellor Sir Colin Lucas at her memorial service in 2013, he talked about: 'Her code of personal conduct, loyalty, conscience, duty… above all, in addition to courage she had great energy, tenacity, determination, promptness and shrewd intelligence'. These are attributes Ghislaine has developed in her own life. They have stood her in good stead and will continue to do so I’m sure.

Now, for the past 18 months the Epstein scandal has dominated the media. Fuelled by their shame and fury at losing Epstein in federal custody the authorities instead targeted my sister. They then staged a dramatic arrest and trial that effectively pronounced her guilty to millions of Americans before any evidence was called.

We all have intense sympathy for those who are victims of abuse — yet throughout the trial, Ghislaine has been loudly maligned. These detractors include those who have not been called as witnesses and whose claims have not been tested in court under oath.

During the trial, certain media accounts have suggested that the prosecution has fumbled its case. But this is to perpetuate the trope of Ghislaine's guilt in the court of public opinion. This narrative does not admit the possibility that the government has simply not had the evidence.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-truth-about-my-sister-ghislaine-maxwell

Ghislaine Maxwell's defense begins after judge denies request for witnesses' anonymity

Defense attorneys argued their witnesses could face scrutiny and harassment.

James Hill,Aaron Katersky, and Ali Dukakis - 17 December 2021

Defense attorneys for Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, began to present their case on Thursday after a judge denied their request to allow three of their anticipated witnesses to testify under a pseudonym or using only their first names.

In her decision, Judge Alison Nathan of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York wrote that the court, "after significant independent research," could not identify a single case in which a court has previously granted the use of pseudonyms to defense witnesses, leading her to believe that the request was unprecedented.

Nathan ruled that, unlike the government's witnesses who were granted anonymity, the defense's witnesses are expected to deny any sexual misconduct by Epstein and Maxwell, so they would not qualify as victims entitled to such protection.

The defense's claims regarding the high-profile nature of the case failed to sway the judge.

"The Defense argues that anonymity is necessary to protect its witnesses from scrutiny and harassment because of the significant publicity this case has garnered," Nathan wrote. "But these generalized concerns are present in every high-profile criminal case. They do not present the rare circumstances that prior courts have found justify the use of pseudonyms."

The defense appears to be centered on downplaying Maxwell's role in Epstein's life and highlighting the fallibility of human memory following two weeks of testimony from multiple women who say Maxwell frequently facilitated, and sometimes participated in, their sexual abuse by Epstein when they were underage.

Thursday's first witness, Maxwell's former personal assistant Cimberly Espinosa, described Maxwell as Epstein's "estate manager," and said that while Maxwell and Epstein "behaved like a couple," they never lived together, and that their relationship changed when they both began to date other people.

Espinosa described Epstein as "a giver" and "a kind person," and testified that during her six years of employment, she never saw either Epstein or Maxwell behave inappropriately with underage girls.

During cross-examination, however, she acknowledged that she worked in Epstein's office and never at his homes, where Maxwell's accusers allege their abuse took place.

A subsequent witness, University of California-Irvine psychology professor Elizabeth Loftus, testified that sometimes people "remember things differently than they actually were." Loftus, an expert on human memory, is not permitted to testify directly about any of Maxwell's accusers, many of whom provided gut-wrenching tales of abuse – but she said that "emotion is no guarantee you're dealing with an authentic memory."

Human memory "doesn't work like a recording device," Loftus said, and people can "fall sway to misinformation and their memory becomes inaccurate."

Maxwell faces a six-count indictment for allegedly conspiring with and aiding Epstein in his sexual abuse of underage girls between 1994 and 2004. She has been held without bail since her arrest in July 2020 and has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

It's unclear whether Maxwell will take the stand during her trial. If convicted, she could spend decades in prison.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/ghislaine-maxwells-defense-begins-judge-denies-request-witness/story?id=81797739

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Chinese Spies Accused of Using Huawei in Secret Australia Telecom Hack

Software update loaded with malicious code is key evidence in years-long push to block Huawei, officials say

Jordan Robertson and Jamie Tarabay - 17 December 2021

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The U.S. government has warned for years that products from China’s Huawei Technologies Co., the world’s biggest maker of telecommunications equipment, pose a national security risk for any countries that use them. As Washington has waged a global campaign to block the company from supplying state-of-the-art 5G wireless networks, Huawei and its supporters have dismissed the claims as lacking evidence.

Now a Bloomberg News investigation has found a key piece of evidence underpinning the U.S. efforts — a previously unreported breach that occurred halfway around the world nearly a decade ago.

In 2012, Australian intelligence officials informed their U.S. counterparts that they had detected a sophisticated intrusion into the country's telecommunications systems. It began, they said, with a software update from Huawei that was loaded with malicious code.

The breach and subsequent intelligence sharing was confirmed by nearly two dozen former national security officials who received briefings about the matter from Australian and U.S. agencies from 2012 to 2019. The incident substantiated suspicions in both countries that China used Huawei equipment as a conduit for espionage, and it has remained a core part of a case they’ve built against the Chinese company, even as the breach’s existence has never been made public, the former officials said.

The episode helps clarify previously opaque security concerns driving a battle over who will build 5G networks, which promise to bring faster internet connectivity to billions of people around the globe. Shenzhen-based Huawei dominates the more than $90 billion global telecommunications equipment market, where it competes against Sweden’s Ericsson AB and Finland’s Nokia Oyj. But the U.S., Australia, Sweden and the U.K. have all banned Huawei from their 5G networks, and about 60 countries signed on to a U.S. Department of State program where they’ve committed to avoiding Chinese equipment for their telecommunications systems. Such efforts, which have also included U.S. sanctions against the Chinese company, have slowed Huawei’s growth and heightened tensions with China.

The briefings described to Bloomberg contained varying degrees of detail, and the former officials who received them had different levels of knowledge of — and willingness to discuss — specifics. Seven of them agreed to provide detailed accounts of the evidence uncovered by Australian authorities and included in their briefings.

At the core of the case, those officials said, was a software update from Huawei that was installed on the network of a major Australian telecommunications company. The update appeared legitimate, but it contained malicious code that worked much like a digital wiretap, reprogramming the infected equipment to record all the communications passing through it before sending the data to China, they said. After a few days, that code deleted itself, the result of a clever self-destruct mechanism embedded in the update, they said. Ultimately, Australia's intelligence agencies determined that China’s spy services were behind the breach, having infiltrated the ranks of Huawei technicians who helped maintain the equipment and pushed the update to the telecom’s systems.

Guided by Australia's tip, American intelligence agencies that year confirmed a similar attack from China using Huawei equipment located in the U.S., six of the former officials said, declining to provide further detail.

Mike Rogers, a former Republican congressman from Michigan who was chair of the U.S. House of Representatives intelligence committee from 2011 to 2015, declined to discuss the incidents. But he confirmed that national bans against Huawei have been driven in part by evidence, presented in private to world leaders, that China has manipulated the company’s products through tampered software updates, also known as patches.

“All their intelligence services have pored over the same material,” said Rogers, a former FBI agent who is now a national security commentator on CNN. “This whole body of work has come to the same conclusion: It's all about administrative access, and the administrative patches that come out of Beijing are not to be trusted.”

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Many people familiar with Australia’s intelligence told Bloomberg that they were bound by confidentiality agreements and couldn’t discuss it on the record. But Michèle Flournoy, former under secretary of defense for policy at the Department of Defense under President Barack Obama, said she wasn’t constrained from doing so.

Flournoy, who is co-founder and managing partner of WestExec Advisors LLC, a national security consulting firm closely aligned with the Obama and Biden administrations, confirmed the intrusion and the tampered software update from Huawei. She said she learned about the episode after leaving government in early 2012, emphasizing that the information was shared in unclassified forums.

“The Australians from the get-go have been courageous in sharing the information they had, not only with the intelligence channels but more broadly in government channels,” Flournoy said. “Australia experienced it, but it was also a vicarious wake-up call for Australia’s allies.”

The Australian Signals Directorate, that country’s leading cybersecurity agency, declined to answer specific questions about the incident. “Whenever ASD discovers a cyber incident affecting an entity, it engages the relevant entity to provide advice and assistance,” the agency said in a statement. “ASD’s assistance is confidential — it is a matter for relevant entities to comment publicly on any cybersecurity incident.”

“Australia is not alone in the threats we face from state-based actors in cyberspace,” the agency said, noting that the government has “joined with others in the world to express serious concerns about malicious cyber activities by China’s Ministry of State Security.”

In the U.S., the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the National Counterintelligence and Security Center declined to comment.

Bloomberg didn’t find evidence that Huawei’s senior leadership was involved with or aware of the attack. Huawei declined to address specific questions. “It is hard to comment on speculation and unquoted ‘senior sources,’” John Suffolk, Huawei’s global cybersecurity officer, said in a statement. “It is also hard to comment on generalizations such as ‘Australian telecommunications,’ ‘software update,’ ‘equipment,’ etc.”

But, he added, “no tangible evidence has ever been produced of any intentional wrongdoing of any kind.”

Suffolk said that Huawei’s technicians can access networks only when customers authorize it, and that customers control when updates are installed on their systems. He said Huawei considers the possibility of its workers being compromised a “valid threat” and takes steps to protect against it, including restricting access to source code and using “tamper-proofing mechanisms” to guard against abuse. “We closely monitor all of our engineers. Where the law allows we undertake additional vetting,” he said. “We control the software and equipment they use, and mandatory compliance training is required every year.”

Suffolk said that Huawei urges governments, customers and the “security ecosystem” to review its products and look for vulnerabilities, and “it is this openness and transparency that acts as a great protector.”

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the country “opposes and would crack down on any forms of cyberattack and internet espionage activities in accordance with the law, not to mention refraining from encouraging, supporting or conspiring with hacking attacks.”

“Australia’s slander on China carrying out cyberattacks and espionage penetration are purely a move like a thief crying to catch a thief. This kind of arbitrary smear on another county is an extremely irresponsible action that China firmly opposes,” the ministry said. “We urge Australia not to abuse the name of ‘national security’ and put groundless accusations and unreasonable pressures on Huawei and other Chinese companies.”

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Huawei was founded in 1987 by a former officer of China’s People’s Liberation Army, Ren Zhengfei, as a sales agent for business telephone systems, and over the last three decades it has grown to become the world's biggest maker of telecommunications equipment, which includes the routers, switches and cell-tower antennas used to shuttle voice and data traffic over mobile networks.

Huawei entered the Australian market in 2004 and built relationships with two of the country’s three main wireless network operators.

Australia’s dominant telecom — Melbourne-based Telstra Corp. Ltd. — has long avoided Huawei products, owing to concerns about potential Chinese tampering and the company’s partnership with Ericsson, according to three former Telstra executives. “Telstra does not have any equipment from Huawei in its network now, nor have we in the past,” the company said in a statement.

But Telstra’s two smaller rivals embraced the technology.

An early and symbolically important partner was Optus, a division of Singapore Telecommunications Ltd., which is Singapore’s biggest telecom. Optus picked Huawei for several large-scale infrastructure upgrades, starting in 2005 with a deal for digital subscriber line equipment. Optus later picked Huawei in 2007 to supply part of its nationwide 3G wireless network and in 2012 for part of its 4G network. In addition to being Australia’s second-biggest mobile carrier, Optus also operates the country’s largest fleet of satellites, and it works closely with the Australian military.

Huawei’s other key partner in Australia was Vodafone Hutchison Australia, the country’s third-biggest mobile carrier. It selected Huawei to overhaul its entire 2G and 3G infrastructure in 2011 and later for parts of its 4G networks as well.

The identity of the telecom impacted by the breach in Australia wasn't shared widely in the briefings by Australian and U.S. intelligence officials, according to the people who received them. But a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Australian telecommunications executive who worked in a national security role said they were told it was Optus.

Optus disputed the information. “Optus has a strong track record of providing trusted and secure services, including to major government agencies. These are delivered in close collaboration with government and with strict adherence to its advice on security matters,” the company said in a statement. “Optus takes security very seriously. Any incidents of breaches or inappropriate vendor behavior would be taken into account in our network investment decisions, but we have no knowledge of the alleged incidents.”

After a 2020 merger, Vodafone Hutchison Australia became TPG Telecom Ltd. The company said it wasn’t aware of an attack. “We can confirm that there was no such malware in our network, and we have never heard of this alleged incident in respect of any Australian networks,” the company said in a statement. “We comply with all directions and advice from the Australian government in relation to national security.”

Starting around 2010, officials in Australia and the U.S. had grown alarmed by two trends: the rising number of hacking attacks from China and Huawei’s expanding role in their countries’ telecommunications systems, according to Michael Wessel, who for more than 20 years has been a commissioner on the congressionally created U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The commission examines national security implications of the trade and economic relationships between the two countries and reports its recommendations.

The countries began investigating whether any of those hacks traced back to Huawei equipment, he said.

“If there’s a locksmith who’s installing more and more locks on the doors in a community and suddenly there’s a rash of silent robberies, at some point the locksmith becomes a person of interest,” Wessel said. “Huawei around that time became a significant entity of interest.”

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By that point, the NSA had already penetrated Huawei’s corporate networks in China, looking for evidence of any links between the company and China’s military, according to documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and published in news articles in 2014. Under a program called Shotgiant, the U.S. monitored e-mail accounts belonging to Huawei employees including Ren, the company’s founder. NSA also looked for ways to exploit Huawei products in Chinese-built networks in countries considered high-priority intelligence targets, including Afghanistan, Cuba, Iran, Kenya and Pakistan, according to the documents and articles.

Huawei’s Suffolk said in his statement that “no such evidence was ever presented that demonstrated Huawei was anything other than highly professional and that our founder Mr. Ren has many, many boring e-mails.”

Concerned about potential intrusion into its communications systems, Australia began taking a harder line on Huawei and China. In particular, Australia blocked Huawei from participating in massive project to build a nationwide broadband network, a surprise decision that triggered a diplomatic uproar when the news leaked in early 2012. Then-Prime Minister Julia Gillard said the decision involved “national security matters” that she couldn’t discuss. Gillard declined to comment for this story.

Around that time, Australia discovered the breach — an extraordinary find given the hackers' efforts to cover their tracks.

The seven former officials who provided detailed accounts of their briefings said that Australia’s intelligence agencies had detected suspicious traffic flowing from the country’s telecommunications systems to China, a trail that led to Huawei equipment. Investigators gained access to some of the infected systems, but they arrived too late. Digital forensics on those systems revealed only fragments of the malicious code’s existence, and investigators reconstructed the attack using a variety of sensitive sources, including human informants and secretly intercepted conversations, the former officials said.

The attackers had siphoned all the data flowing through the equipment during the malware's short window of operation, the former officials said. The data gave them access to the contents of private communications and information that could be used to target specific people or devices in future attacks, the former officials said. Bloomberg was unable to learn what, if anything, the attackers did with it.

Also in 2012, around the time Australian officials were briefing U.S. agencies about the breach, the intelligence committee of the House of Representatives published findings that China’s spy services had a “wealth of opportunities” to tamper with products from Huawei and a similar company, ZTE Corp., from their design to their maintenance on customer networks. One of those involves so-called managed services, a common offering where companies provide ongoing support, including remote software updates, for their equipment after it’s installed at customer sites, the report found. “Unfortunately, such contracts may also allow the managed-service contractor to use its authorized access for malicious activity under the guise of legitimate assistance,” the report found.

Huawei and ZTE don’t need to be a participant in — or even be aware of — any attacks for them to occur through their employee ranks. “Chinese intelligence services need only recruit working-level technicians or managers in these companies” to carry out compromises of customer networks, the report found.

At the time, Huawei said the report “employs many rumors and speculations to prove nonexistent accusations,” while a ZTE spokesman said that after a year-long investigation, “the committee rests its conclusions on a finding that ZTE may not be ‘free of state influence.’” That standard “would apply to any company operating in China,” the spokesman said.

In the years since then, various reports have linked Huawei or its employees to spying and surveillance. In 2019, for example, the Wall Street Journal reported that Huawei technicians, in at least two instances, helped African governments spy on political opponents, intercepting their encrypted communications and using cellphone data to track their locations. Last year, Australia’s Financial Review found that Huawei built a facility to store the entire data archive for the Papua New Guinea government, but it contained glaring security gaps that exposed sensitive files to being stolen. And on Dec. 14, the Washington Post published documents from Huawei showing that the company has played a broader role in tracking China’s populace than it has acknowledged.

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Huawei denied each of the reports, and the company has consistently pushed back against allegations that its products pose a security risk.

“Huawei has not had any major cybersecurity incidents while working with more than 500 telecom providers, including most of the top 50 telecom operators, for nearly 20 years in 170 countries to connect more than 3 billion people,” the company says on its website. “No other vendor can claim this level of cybersecurity success.”

Keith Krach, the former under secretary for economic growth, energy and the environment at the U.S. Department of State under President Donald Trump, declined to discuss specific incidents. But he confirmed that the U.S. and its allies have had evidence for years that China has manipulated Huawei equipment through software updates.

“Huawei has thrown a lot of head fakes by saying it would never put a back door in the hardware — a back door means nothing because there's a front door that's open every day through software,” he said. “Huawei’s software updates can push whatever code they want into those machines, whenever they want, without anyone knowing.”

That characterization is a “fantasy,” said Huawei’s Suffolk. “There is not a general software update mechanism, patches are not pushed at will and Huawei has no control or say when an operator decides to upgrade or patch their network,” he said.

In Australia, after nearly a decade of hostility with the government, Huawei has abandoned many of its operations. Last year, the company revealed a $100 million financial cut to its Australian investment and more than 1,000 local job losses, according to the Financial Review. A key factor behind that 5G ban, the Sydney Morning Herald reported, was an intelligence assessment that the vulnerabilities associated with Huawei products were so severe that more than 300 separate risks would need to be mitigated in order to use it securely.

In Huawei’s statement to Bloomberg, the company said that former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull publicly stated that “no evidence had been provided to demonstrate that Huawei had undertaken anything untoward in Australia.” In his memoir, which was published in 2020, Turnbull wrote that his administration's 5G ban against Huawei was a “hedge against a future threat, not the identification of a smoking gun, but a loaded one.”

Turnbull, in a statement to Bloomberg, rejected Huawei's characterization. “That is not what I have said — I made no comment as to whether evidence of untoward conduct by Huawei had been presented or observed,” he said. “So I was, if you like, deliberately making no comment on that point at all.”

Turnbull declined to comment about the 2012 incident or any other intelligence matters related to Huawei.

Australia continues to deal with the fallout from challenging China on a range of issues, including Huawei.

China has imposed damaging one-sided tariffs on Australian commodities, and Chinese hackers have targeted Australian institutions with relentless attacks since the country called last year for an independent probe into the origins of Covid-19. Australia also announced a pact in September with the U.S. to build nuclear-powered submarines, a challenge to China’s growing military presence that has further heightened tensions in the region.

Flournoy, the former Defense Department official under Obama, said China continues to punish Australia in part because of it longstanding position on Huawei, which was informed in part by the breach the country discovered nearly a decade ago.

“They didn’t do the typical thing of trying to hide the vulnerability; they talked about what happened with their closest allies and took a public stand,” Flournoy said. “They are still taking a hit for it.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-16/chinese-spies-accused-of-using-huawei-in-secret-australian-telecom-hack

‘Australia has lost its way’: Keating flays both leaders

In a no-holds-barred interview, Paul Keating has savaged Scott Morrison for wilfully surrendering our sovereignty and lashed Anthony Albanese for his complicity.

TROY BRAMSTON - December 17, 2021

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When Paul Keating wrested the prime ministership from Bob Hawke 30 years ago, he came to the nation’s top job with an audacious philosophy of political leadership and an ambitious agenda to turn Australia in a new direction.

He viewed the prime ministership as an agency for action, saw leadership as the combination of courage and imagination, and understood how to gain and use power. He dreamed big dreams, challenged Australians to reconsider their country’s past and future, and coupled elevated oratory with slashing attacks on his opponents to achieve his aims.

In his only interview to mark three decades since he became Australia’s 24th prime minister, sworn in on December 20, 1991, Keating discusses leadership, “the big picture” and contemporary policy issues. At age 77, he remains visionary, unbowed and, as ever, indignant.

“I saw the prime ministership as a chance to move away from the economic reconstruction of Australia to Australia’s geo-strategic repositioning in the region,” Keating tells Inquirer. “I had thought about these issues all my political life. When I became prime minister, I knew exactly what I was doing, what I wanted to do and how to achieve it.”

On December 19, 1991, Keating defeated Hawke in a Labor leadership ballot by 56 votes to 51. The great political duo had terminated six months earlier, when Keating first challenged Hawke after reneging on a secret agreement to hand over the leadership made at Kirribilli House in 1988.

He had long coveted the prime ministership – not to preside but to lead. His two decades in parliament had been a study in power. Now, having seized it, he reshaped the government. Hawke’s profound belief in consensus politics gave way to Keating’s crazy-brave, thrilling, highwire conviction politics.

“While the modalities of the process of government between the Hawke government and mine were pretty much the same, I knew any government that I would lead would have a wholly different set of objectives,” Keating explains.

“We had to have a new approach to leadership, one where there was a political premium for good policy and one which was able to convince the public that good policy brought its own reward. If you look at my approach to public life, it has always been about instructing the public – about educating them to the problems; to bring them with me.”

He communicated bold ideas with intensity and passion. He viewed parliament like a gladiator viewed the coliseum: blood sport. His verbal assaults were legendary. But so was his oratory, such as that honouring the unknown Australian soldier in 1993. That speech is engraved on the Australian War Memorial.

Although recognised as the architect of Australia’s modern economy as treasurer (1983-91), Keating’s achievements as prime minister have often been overlooked. His “big picture” framework encompassed economic, social and foreign policy between 1991 and 1996.

“The big picture is shorthand for talking about the large geo-strategic and geo-economic forces,” Keating explains. “Those forces are now virulent and therefore command the thinking of a national government about how one pilots a society through and in the face of those forces. The big picture does change nations but there are relatively few artisans in the craft of nation building.”

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First, was reckoning with Australia’s past. He gave the original apology to Aboriginal Australians in the landmark Redfern address in 1992. This was followed by the legislative response to the High Court’s Mabo judgment with the Native Title Act in 1993.

Second, he put the republic on the agenda and won majority support for it in the polls. In 1993, he briefed Queen Elizabeth II on his republican plans. And in 1995, he presented a model to the parliament. And he supported a new Australian flag, without the Union Jack.

Third, he continued the economic reforms with privatisation of Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank; universal superannuation, now worth $3.4 trillion; enterprise bargaining, which energised productivity, and minimum award rates of pay; national competition policy, which boosted growth; trade liberalisation, which turbocharged competitiveness; and the Working Nation policy, which introduced mutual obligation in the provision of welfare.

Fourth, he deepened relations with Asia. He engaged in shuttle diplomacy to establish the APEC leaders meeting, an idea he presented to George HW Bush in Sydney in 1992 and then won support from other regional leaders. He negotiated a security treaty with Indonesia, the manifestation of his belief in finding security in, rather than from, Asia.

Fifth, he articulated a new identity for Australia, promoted arts and culture, recognised 60,000 years of Indigenous heritage, celebrated multiculturalism, and envisaged Australia as an outward-looking, confident, independent republic blazing its own path.

Keating saw politics and leadership as inexorably linked, as two sides of the same coin. He outlined his ambitions for leadership in an off-the-record address at the National Press Club in 1990, when he waxed lyrical about “doing the Placido Domingo”, trying to marry politics and policy.

As the former prime minister surveys Australia today, he sees a nation with unlimited potential but held back by lacklustre leadership and lack of ambition.

“Australia has lost its way,” Keating says. “We are at odds with our geography. We are the only nation in the world given an island continent and we have had choices about what we do with this great gift.”

He is a strong critic of the AUKUS partnership with the US and the UK to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. It is not simply a pro-China and anti-US view. It is about Australia’s independence and sovereignty, and a realpolitik approach to the region. He wants the US to remain engaged in the Asia-Pacific.

“I don’t believe that the US is able to maintain strategic hegemony in Asia with the rise of China,” Keating says. “So, I’ve taken the view, as far back as 20 years ago, that the US should be the framer and guarantor of the Atlantic but not of the Pacific. In Asia, it should be the conciliating and balancing power. And we need it to be.

“Scott Morrison, a pass-through prime minister of no policy account, wilfully and secretly alienated the sovereignty of his own country to that of another state – the US, a country his limited strategic vision cannot see beyond. His secret negotiation delivered to the US military effective strategic control of Australian naval forces, the sovereign policy options of the Australian nation.

“The most effective weapon you can have is not another bunch of submarines or missiles but a competent foreign policy. We are a frightened country. We continue running to a strategic guarantor – it used to be the UK and now it is the US. The fact that this has happened is a terrible indictment upon us and, of course, broadly they have had the complicity of the Labor Party.”

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It would have been far better, Keating argues, to build the relationship with Indonesia rather than seek refuge in great and powerful friends and follow the US into Iraq and Afghanistan half a world away.

“The ANZUS-worded security agreement I put together with Indonesia was a golden asset for Australia, but John Howard lost it over East Timor,” he says. “We could have spent the last 25 years building a security and military relationship with Indonesia, a country that is centrally important to us strategically. How much more productive than the commitments to Iraq and Afghanistan by Howard. And how much safer would we be.”

This is an ex-prime minister still in the arena. This year, effectively solo, Keating waged a campaign to ensure the legislated increase in the superannuation guarantee to 10 per cent, and 12 per cent by 2025, was not jettisoned. It was a victory due to Keating’s relentless advocacy – nobody within Labor, the unions or industry packs a bigger punch.

In 1993, Keating led Labor to a fifth term, winning endorsement for his “big picture” program. He demolished John Hewson’s Fightback! package in an election that was also a judgment on the Coalition. Labor’s primary vote and parliamentary majority increased. No government has won a fifth term since.

Although he never scaled the heights of personal popularity, and could be polarising and divisive, Newspoll showed Australians respected Keating for his strength and vision. After 13 years in power, longer than any government since 1972, Labor was heavily defeated at the 1996 election.

Had he won in 1996, Keating argues, Australia would be a republic with a new flag. He would have taken control of the Murray-Darling Basin and restructured water pricing. Superannuation would have increased to 15 per cent, substantially lifting retirement incomes. He would have apologised to the stolen generations. He favours a treaty, which has “uprightness and power”, as the principal instrument for reconciliation.

“We would have been a radically different country,” he imagines. “With the economic changes and the competitive, open economy Labor created, we would have been a cosmopolitan republic finding our way in the Asian construct.”

Labor’s true believers remain spellbound by Keating’s approach to politics. But the parliamentary party has been more circumspect. While the 20th and 30th anniversaries of Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke’s governments were celebrated with gala events and commemorative dinners, no approach was made by the party to Keating for his anniversaries.

The party has, since 1996, never fully embraced the Hawke-Keating model. “Philosophically, Labor is moving towards the Hawke-Keating model,” Keating judges. “Anthony Albanese’s views about aspiration record a shift in sentiment inside Labor whereas the Bill Shorten model was essentially redistributive, taking economic resources from higher-income groups and distributing them to lower-income groups.

“Bob and I wanted to make the place wealthier, richer and do things to improve the creation and distribution of wealth, and at least provide a level playing field for everybody. We always had the sunny uplands in the policy. The sunny uplands, the notion where everybody found a place, disappeared at the last election and is reappearing somewhat now.”

Keating is the most respected of Labor’s living former leaders. His appeal transcends generations, as voters look for leadership and find both major parties wanting. Keating has admirers on the other side of politics, who regularly seek his counsel. Thirty years on, “the big picture” still resonates with many Australians.

“Politics today works within a narrow political spectrum of thoughts and policies,” Keating says. “There is no radical conception of policy now, partly because there is an absence of imagination. Imagination carries no premium, including in those most likely to profit from its power.

“What has happened with public life today is that the political professionals have taken over and now it is about playing a game within a bubble. Both the Coalition and the Labor Party have played into that bubble in a way, of course, that I absolutely shunned.”

Troy Bramston is the author of Paul Keating: The Big-Picture Leader (Scribe)

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/labors-leading-man-lays-out-the-big-picture/news-story/8e3cccd15b73e405f812ed0c50c4f9e5

>>15175352

Australia's new COVID-19 cases hit record high

Sonali Paul - DECEMBER 18, 2021

MELBOURNE (Reuters) - Australia reported record high new COVID-19 cases on Saturday for a third day, with outbreaks growing in the two most populous states, however Prime Minister Scott Morrison continued to downplay the risks as the country eases pandemic curbs.

New South Wales state reported 2,482 new cases, Victoria state reported 1,504 new cases and Queensland state reported 31 new cases on Saturday, together topping Austalia’s previous high of 3,820 cases a day earlier.

Morrison reiterated on Saturday the focus should be on hospitalisations and cases in intensive care and on ventilators rather than actual case numbers as the country learns to live with the virus.

So far, he said the rising case numbers in New South Wales were not translating into pressure on hospitals, with only 26 people in intensive care.

“I wouldn’t agree that Australians are complacent about it. We take this incredibly seriously. It’s best addressed with a calm head and a clear plan,” Morrison said at a media conference in Hobart in the island state of Tasmania.

He said Australia was not in the same situation as the United Kingdom, Europe or North America, where cases are soaring.

In the latest easing of pandemic curbs, fully vaccinated international travelers arriving in Sydney and Melbourne will no longer need to isolate for 72 hours, the governments of New South Wales and Victoria said on Friday.

Incoming travelers will still need to get a PCR test within 24 hours of arriving, but only need to isolate until they receive a negative test result.

“We know it has been a challenging time for international travel with new rules and the emergence of the Omicron variant, but this announcement is about simplifying the process and making sure Australia’s two biggest cities have a consistent approach,” New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet said in a statement.

Australia slammed its borders shut soon after the pandemic hit in 2020, which kept COVID-19 cases down relative to other rich nations. The country has so far recorded about 239,000 cases and about 2,130 deaths.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-australia/australias-new-covid-19-cases-hit-record-high-idUSKBN2IX01V

>>15206914

Ghislaine Maxwell: Trial thrown into disarray as defence struggle to find witness: ‘Our client’s life is on the line’

‘I have a rule, you have your next witness or you rest,’ judge says

Bevan Hurley and Gustaf Kilander - 18 December 2021

Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers begged the judge for more time to locate witnesses, saying “our client’s life is on the line”.

Defence attorney Laura Menninger told Judge Alison Nathan on day 12 of the socialite’s sex trafficking trial that they were struggling to find a witness named Kelly whom they had issued a subpoena to testify.

“I understand that your honour runs a tight ship,” she said. “We are flying people across the country, across the pond, our client’s life is on the line, and we are given only a half a day to put on a witness.”

Prosecutor Maurene Comey said the defence had ample time to arrange their witnesses during a five-day break in the trial.

“We strongly disagree with the suggestion that the defence counsel has been unduly rushed here,” she said.

Judge Nathan said she would not allow a delay in the defence’s case to wait for more witnesses to be found, including one who could only fly in from the UK on Monday.

“I have a rule, you have your next witness or you rest,” she said.

Ms Maxwell has been charged with two counts of transporting individuals across state lines for illegal sexual activity, one charge of sex trafficking of a minor and one charge of sex trafficking conspiracy. She also faces two charges of perjury that will be tried at a later date. She has denied all wrongdoing.

Jeffrey Epstein, Ms Maxwell former partner, died by suicide in August 2019 in his Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on sex crimes charges.

The judge’s scolding of the defence for not having their witnesses ready came after one of the witnesses became infected with Covid-19, and another witness has chosen to plead the fifth, The Miami Herald reported.

The 81-year-old man was identified as the owner of the Nags Head pub, located across from Ms Maxwell’s former London townhouse. The defence was hoping to have him push back on the memory of one of the accusers who said she met Ms Maxwell at that address.

The defence could rest either on Friday or on Monday and has indicated that they will call three women to take the stand. Called Eva, Michelle, and Kelly, they’re all women who the accuser referred to as “Jane” has said were present during “orgies” that she says she was forced to take part in at a time when she was underage.

Kelly has been subpoenaed but has not responded. The defence wants the US Marshals to step in to force her to testify, but Judge Nathan has appeared to be sceptical of providing the defence with more time.

Epstein’s ex-girlfriend Eva Dubin, a Swedish doctor and former model is expected to testify for the defence on Friday. She dated Epstein for 11 years. Ms Dubin’s husband, hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, has been publicly accused of having sex with Virginia Roberts when she was an underage teenager – a claim Mr Dubin has forcefully rejected.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/ghislaine-maxwell-trial-witnesses-epstein-b1978178.html

>>15206914

‘There is no reason to testify’: Ghislaine Maxwell refuses to take the stand

Patricia Hurtado, Mary Biekert and Akayla Gardner - December 18, 2021

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New York: Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein who was charged with sex trafficking after the financier’s death, has refused take the stand in her own defence.

US District Judge Alison Nathan asked the 59-year-old British socialite to stand in court on Friday afternoon (Saturday AEDT), explaining that Maxwell had the right to either testify in her own defence or to decline.

“Your Honour, the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, so there is no reason for me to testify,” Maxwell responded, attitude defiant.

After 12 days of testimony over three weeks, jurors have now heard from all the witnesses for the prosecution and the defence.

Closing arguments are now set for Monday (Tuesday AEDT) in the trial, in which Maxwell is accused of helping the wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse four teenage girls.

Maxwell’s lawyers have offered a spirited defence, portraying her as a scapegoat targeted by the government because prosecutors could no longer bring Epstein to justice after he killed himself at a federal lockup in August 2019 while awaiting his own sex-trafficking trial.

Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to sex-trafficking charges stemming from her interactions with four teenage girls from 1994 to 2004. During that span, Maxwell was romantically involved with and then later worked for Epstein.

While she refused to testify before the jury, Maxwell has seemed active in her defence throughout the three weeks of the trial, frequently writing notes to her lawyers and hugging them as she enters and leaves court each day. As Maxwell declared her intention not to testify, lawyer Bobbi Sternheim’s arm was wrapped around her lower back.

The loyal ex

Her defence called another of Jeffrey Epstein’s one-time paramours to the stand earlier Friday: a former Miss Sweden, New York City doctor and tabloid fixture who told the jury that she trusted the financier with her young daughters and denied taking part in a group sexual encounter with a key accuser.

Eva Andersson-Dubin, 60, testified that she dated Epstein “off and on” from 1983 to the early 1990s, before he dated Maxwell.

Epstein and Andersson-Dubin remained friends after breaking up and, in 1994, she married another moneyed financier, Glenn Dubin, with whom she had three children.

One of the key accusers in the Maxwell trial, identified in court only as “Jane” to protect her identity, testified that a woman named “Eva” joined a group sexual experience with Epstein.

On Friday, Andersson-Dubin was asked by one of Maxwell’s attorneys if she had ever been in a group sexual encounter with Jane.

“Absolutely not,” she responded.

Asked if she had ever been in a group sexualised massage of Epstein with Jane, she responded: “I have not.”

Later, Andersson-Dubin acknowledged having issues with her memory upon cross-examination.

“It’s very hard for me to remember anything far back,” Andersson-Dubin said. “My family notices it, I notice it. It’s been an issue.”

The Dubins have denied knowing anything about Epstein’s sexual misconduct, but were publicly supportive of Epstein when he initially was prosecuted and convicted of sex crimes in Florida in 2008.

Another Epstein accuser whose allegations are not part of Maxwell’s trial, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, has said that she was trafficked to Glenn Dubin, among other powerful men, all of whom have denied her accounts.

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Uncle F

Pagliuca showed Andersson-Dubin photos Palm Beach police recovered from Epstein’s Florida estate after a 2008 search, including two of young girls with Epstein. She identified one photo of Epstein with her youngest daughter and a second with her eldest daughter.

The lawyer asked if she’d ever seen the photos before, prompting her to say both times, “I have never seen this photo before”.

“Did they have a nickname for Mr Epstein?” he asked.

“They called him Uncle F,” she said.

A woman who said she had been Epstein’s “sex slave” years earlier claimed she’d been forced into an encounter with the Dubins. The couple called the allegations “demonstrably false”.

When Andersson-Dubin was asked by a defence lawyer if she ever witnessed any inappropriate conduct between Epstein and teenage girls, she responded: “I did not.”

Deliberations could start next week

The testimony came on the second day of Maxwell’s defence presentation, which could be completed as early as today. Nathan has said closing arguments could begin on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) and the jury might receive the case by the end of that day to begin its deliberations.

Setbacks to defence

Earlier, at a hearing before the jury arrived in the Lower Manhattan courtroom, the defence lost a bid to question federal investigators about the steps the government took in its investigation of Epstein and Maxwell. US District Judge Alison Nathan denied its request to question an FBI agent about the agency’s investigation of the sex-trafficking scheme Maxwell is alleged to have helped lead.

Nathan told defence lawyer Christian Everdell that he couldn’t question the agent about why the government didn’t pursue certain tips about others involved in the alleged scheme.

The defence also got pushback when Everdell told the judge it hoped to continue its case on Monday. He said it would allow the defence to call a witness from the UK who could testify that Maxwell didn’t live in a London townhouse when the accuser known as Kate said she visited the British socialite there and that Maxwell forced her into a sexual encounter with Epstein.

“Our client’s life is on the line and we are given one day” to make our arguments, defence lawyer Laura Menninger told Nathan.

Prosecutor Maurene Comey said the defence had “an extraordinary amount of time” to prepare, after the government gave Maxwell’s lawyers notice that the US would end its own case early, and that the defence had five business days to collect its witnesses. Nathan agreed.

“I have a rule,” she said. “You call your next witness or you rest.” She said that “if the case closes today, it closes today”.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/ghislaine-maxwell-s-lawyers-call-epstein-ex-girlfriend-as-witness-in-sex-abuse-trial-20211218-p59in0.html

>>15206914

Wife of billionaire Glenn Dubin denies having group sex with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell as the British socialite's defense wraps its case

Jacob Shamsian and Ashley Collman - 18 December 2021

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Eva Andersson-Dubin, an ex-girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein's, on Friday denied suggestions of group sex with a woman who alleged that Ghislaine Maxwell facilitated orgies when the accuser was 14.

Maxwell's attorneys rested their case on Friday after just two days of testimony. Maxwell told the judge she would not testify.

"Your honor, the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, so there's no need for me to testify," she told US District Judge Alison Nathan on Friday afternoon.

Closing arguments are expected to take place Monday, after which the jury will begin deliberations.

Dubin, who is married to billionaire financier Glenn Dubin, was called to the witness stand to address allegations from "Jane," a pseudonym for the first accuser who testified against Maxwell for the state. Prosecutors have accused Maxwell of sex-trafficking girls to Epstein and sexually abusing them herself, often through massages. The allegations in the indictment against Maxwell focus on activity between 1997 and 2004, and concern misconduct against four accusers, who were as young as 14 at the time.

In her testimony earlier in the trial, Jane said Maxwell facilitated sexual massages and group sexualized encounters with Epstein. Maxwell sometimes participated in these encounters herself, Jane testified. She also said that women named Eva, Michelle, Kelly, and Sophie sometimes participated in those orgies, which she said happened at Epstein's Palm Beach, Florida, home in the 1990s. Jane didn't reveal the last names of those women in her testimony.

Dubin, who said she dated Epstein "on and off" between 1983 and 1991, was presented a photo of Jane on Friday. She testified that she had never met Jane before, and "absolutely" never participated in group sex with Jane.

Maxwell's lawyers made a last-minute request to get US Marshals to force a woman to testify

Before Dubin testified Friday, a woman named Michelle Healy told the court that she worked in Epstein's office from 1996-1999 and glowingly referred to Maxwell as a "fantastic" boss. But Healy testified that she'd never visited Epstein's Palm Beach home.

And in cross-examination, Assistant US Attorney Alison Moe pointed out that Dubin primarily lived in Paris during the time the alleged abuse of Jane took place. Dubin and Healy each testified that they were not the only people with the names "Eva" and "Michelle" in the entire world, and that they didn't know every single person in Epstein's life.

"It's a very common name in Northern Europe," Dubin said.

Defense attorneys made no move to call a woman named "Sophie" to the stand, although on Friday, Dubin looked at flight records from Epstein's private jets that showed she was on the same flight as a woman named Sophie Biddle. Dubin told the court she recognized Biddle as Epstein's masseuse.

Maxwell's defense attorneys told Nathan Friday morning that the person named "Kelly" who Jane identified had never responded to a subpoena, which was first issued more than a month ago. In a last-ditch effort, they asked Nathan to order US Marshals to bring Kelly into the courthouse before the end of the day, but withdrew the application in the afternoon.

Maxwell's attorneys also abandoned plans to call a British man named Alexander Hamilton, who they said had knowledge of property records related to Maxwell, to testify. They hoped to get an 81-year-old man who owns a pub across the street from Maxwell's London townhouse to take the stand, arguing that he'd testify Maxwell wasn't living there during periods of alleged abuse in the home, before dropping the issue.

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Dubin remained friends with Epstein after their breakup

In her testimony, Dubin — a medical physician and former model and Miss Sweden who was known as Eva Andersson before her marriage — gave a handful of new details about her relationship with Epstein.

The two remained friends after breaking up in 1991, she testified, and she visited his Palm Beach home a handful of times every year on average in the following decade.

Dubin's three children — all born in the 1990s — saw Epstein as an avuncular figure, she said. She identified a couple of photos found in Epstein's Palm Beach home that depicted her children spending time with the pedophile. The children called Epstein "Uncle Eff," she said, which was short for "Jeff." Insider has previously reported that the Dubin family remained closed with Epstein even after his jail stint for soliciting a minor for prostitution, in the late 2000s.

Dubin did not say whether she was testifying in Maxwell's defense in response to a subpoena. And Dubin did not address allegations previously reported by Insider that Epstein considered marrying Dubin's then-24-year-old daughter in order to leave his vast fortune to her without paying estate taxes.

Dubin also told jurors that she was being treated for a medical issue that involved memory loss, and had trouble remembering specific events.

She testified that Epstein's relationship with Maxwell was ambiguous in the 1990s, and when asked if they had an open relationship, Dubin said she didn't know.

"It's hard to define their relationship," she said. "But they were living in the same house."

Maxwell's attorneys have tried to cast doubt on the most serious allegations against her

Over the course of two-and-a-half weeks in a Manhattan federal courtroom, prosecutors presented four accusers who said Maxwell was instrumental in their sexual abuse at the hands of Epstein. The accusers also alleged that Maxwell and Epstein intimidated them by referencing their connections to powerful people, and dangled attractive promises like scholarships or career advancement before them.

However, Nathan has directed jurors not to consider testimony from the third and fourth accusers as evidence of "illegal sexual activity," as charged in the indictment against Maxwell. The judge has scheduled a Saturday conference to finalize instructions for what jurors would need to find in order to consider Maxwell guilty.

Throughout the trial, Maxwell's defense team had sought to paint her accusers as motivated by money. They targeted Jane with this theory on Friday afternoon, reading a statement to the jury from Robert Glassman, an attorney who helped Jane get $5 million from a compensation fund set up for Epstein's victims. In the statement, Glassman said that before prosecutors charged Maxwell, he told Jane it would "help her case" if she agreed to testify in a criminal trial.

Prosecutors had also presented testimony from Epstein's former employees — including the pilots of his private jets and household managers — who detailed his vast wealth, and how Maxwell oversaw the operation of his properties. Numerous documents and photographs presented to the jury, obtained through FBI raids, demonstrated how integrated Maxwell was in Epstein's life. The state ultimately slashed its planned testimony by a week, however, significantly abbreviating a trial that was expected to last up to six weeks.

For their part, Maxwell's attorneys offered little affirmative defense, and focused on presenting testimony that might sow doubt for jurors. Defense attorneys spent half a day on Thursday presenting testimony from Elizabeth Loftus, a decorated psychologist and semi-professional defense witness whose scientific work focuses on how memories can be unreliable. Prosecutors sought to draw attention to the fact that Loftus was a defense witness at Harvey Weinstein's trial, but the disgraced Hollywood producer's name was never brought up again after Maxwell's lawyers objected and had a sidebar with the judge.

(continued)

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The first defense witness on Thursday was a woman who worked as an office assistant for Maxwell for six years and had little of relevance to say about the case, but who praised the British socialite as an inspiration for her career. The office assistant, Cimberly Espinosa, worked briefly for Epstein's legal team in 1996 before working as Maxwell's executive assistant from 1996-2002.

In a civil lawsuit unconnected to Maxwell's criminal case, Jennifer Araoz, another Epstein accuser, named Espinosa as a defendant. Araoz accused Espinosa of scheduling visits where Epstein had sexual contact with her when she was 14 and 15 years old; Espinosa has denied wrongdoing.

Espinosa testified that almost all of her work took place in Epstein's office in midtown Manhattan, where she said the financier frequently had teenage girls visit. Espinosa never witnessed any sexual abuse while in that role, she said, and none of the accusers in Maxwell's trial said they were sexually abused at the midtown office.

Much of Maxwell's work involved managing Epstein's properties, according to Espinosa, including shipping palm trees and sand to his private island in the US Virgin Islands because "he wanted more sand on the beach." Espinosa gushed about Maxwell, who she said inspired her to become the professional executive assistant she is today. Espinosa also vacationed in Maxwell's London townhouse as late as 2019, she said.

Epstein and Maxwell appeared to be in a relationship in the early years of Espinosa's role working for Maxwell, she testified, but their relationship transitioned into a more professional one. Over time, Espinosa said Epstein and Maxwell drifted apart.

"They just kind of went their separate ways," Espinosa said.

https://www.insider.com/ghislaine-maxwell-defense-wraps-up-with-eva-andersson-dubin-testimony-2021-12

White House promises Australia’s nuclear subs will arrive ‘at earliest possible date’

ADAM CREIGHTON - DECEMBER 19, 2021

Australia is on track to receive a nuclear-powered submarine at the “earliest possible date”, according to the White House, as the three signatories to the AUKUS security pact seek to further expand the scope of their three-month old agreement.

Officials from the three nations have agreed to find areas “for future collaboration” by early 2022 beyond the original four, which were cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, and Australia’s nuclear submarine capability, according to a statement by the White House on Friday.

They promised to “to bring the Australian [nuclear submarine] capability into service at the earliest possible date”, dismissing away growing speculation from experts the promised capability would be later and more expensive than the originally contracted, conventionally powered French-designed submarines.

“The delegations agreed on the next steps over the 18-month consultation period to define the optimal pathway for Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines,” the White House said, revealing two high level meetings among the three allies took place at the Pentagon earlier in December.

The AUKUS pact, which became public in September after up to a year of secret negotiations, provides for Australia to obtain eight nuclear-powered submarines, without specifying the suppliers, timeline or what proportion of the submarines would be built in Australia.

Former Prime Minister Paul Keating slammed the deal for a second time last week, claiming the promised submarines would make the Australian navy a “unit of any US naval force”.

“What the US has connived in is the effective expropriation of Australia’s strategic sovereignty through the AUKUS program,” Mr Keating told The Weekend Australian.

Sam Roggeveen, a foreign policy expert at the Lowy Institute, said the pact carried no risk for the US but could require Australia to “to contribute to operations that a future Australian government would rather avoid”.

“[And] this project is so wildly ambitious that it may be cancelled long before the first steel is cut,” he wrote in a national security journal on Thursday, echoing concerns from other analysts.

New analysis by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute estimated the submarines could cost more $120bn, or around double the original cost of the French-designed submarines.

“The challenges, costs and risks will be enormous. It’s likely to be at least two decades and tens of billions of dollars in sunk costs before Australia has a useful nuclear-powered military capability,” its report, released earlier this week, said.

Separately, the Biden administration named AUKUS one of its top three foreign policy achievements this week after an awkward two-day delay after a question from a journalist about the President’s foreign policy successes.

Jen Psaki, who, when asked, said she would prefer to think about the answer, cited “new platforms like AUKUS” and the Quad as one of the Biden administration’s top three foreign policy achievements, along with restoring alliances with Europe and “reclaiming leadership” of global institutions.

“We are working more closely with our allies and partners in the region on defence, security, and economic interests while deepening connections between our European and Indo-Pacific allies,” she said, in a series of reply tweets.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Jakarta on a tour of Southeast Asia last week, said the AUKUS pact “advanced our strategic interests”. “It will … uphold the international rules-based order, and promote peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific,” he said.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/defence/white-house-promises-australias-nuclear-subs-will-arrive-at-earliest-possible-date/news-story/de0d42ebbcd54d7d151c6b2e346adfd0

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/17/readout-of-aukus-joint-steering-group-meetings/

>>15175352

Australia says it is well prepared for mounting COVID-19 cases

Sonali Paul - December 19, 2021

MELBOURNE, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Australian officials on Sunday said there was no need to clamp down on Christmas festivities even as new COVID-19 infections climbed in Sydney, with the country's high vaccination rate helping keep people out of hospital.

Health Minister Greg Hunt said he was confident Australia would not need to follow the Netherlands, which has reimposed a strict lockdown over the Christmas and New Year period to curb the spread of the highly contagious Omicron variant.

"We're going into summer, we have one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and a very different set of circumstances. So we don't see that's a likely situation in Australia," Hunt told reporters in a televised media conference.

The Netherlands, he said, has suffered vastly higher infections and deaths than Australia over the pandemic and is now in the depths of winter when cases were more likely to climb sharply.

"We're well prepared and people are overwhelmingly … continuing to do an amazing job," Hunt said, referring to the more than 90% of Australians over 16 who have been fully vaccinated.

Australia's most populous state, New South Wales, on Sunday reported 2,566 new cases, up from 2,482 on Saturday. Cases in intensive care remained low at 28, which state premier Dominic Perrottet said was "incredibly positive."

Pressed by reporters on whether the state was being complacent in the face of mounting cases, Perrottet said the key metric was the number of cases in intensive care.

"It's a time for calm. But it's also an important time to go out and get your booster shot, because vaccination has been key to New South Wales' success," he said.

In Victoria state, new infections fell to 1,240 on Sunday from 1,504 a day earlier, with 81 cases in intensive care. Tasmania reported three new cases.

Health officials said it was not clear yet what the split was between Omicron and Delta cases among Australia's new infections.

Australia has fared much better than other countries in the pandemic after shutting its borders in March 2020, with around 247,000 total cases and 2,142 deaths.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australia-says-it-is-well-prepared-mounting-covid-19-cases-2021-12-19/

Victim of a Perth children’s home paedophile receives $1 million settlement

Sarah Brookes - December 19, 2021

A $1.1 million settlement has been granted to a survivor of sexual abuse at the notorious Warminda Hostel.

Law firm Maurice Blackburn said the settlement is believed to be the largest compensation figure publicly reported for a survivor of abuse at Warminda.

It follows a civil claim made on behalf of survivor AJ Coutts against the Uniting Church and the state of Western Australia.

Mr Coutts was a 15-year-old ward of the state when he was placed at the Warminda Hostel in East Victoria Park in 1978.

While at Warminda, he suffered significant abuse at the hands of hostel worker Martin Cooper, who was convicted and jailed for child abuse in 2018.

Mr Coutts, now aged 58, said the settlement was an important step in overcoming the trauma that happened to him as a child.

“I want the world to know what really happened to me at Warminda,” he said.

“And I want people to understand you can’t let kids be treated like this and get away with it.

“This settlement has given me closure. I just want to close the book on what happened and move on with my life.”

Cooper was employed as a “cottage parent” at Warminda Hostel in Perth in 1978.

Originally a home for Aboriginal girls, the hostel was run by the Methodist Church before being taken over by the Uniting Church, who took in both male and female wards of the state.

Cooper and his wife Nancy ran the hostel, which accommodated girls and boys ranging in age from 11-14, into the mid-80s.

In 2016, the former cottage parent was extradited from New South Wales to face 43 charges - including multiple counts of rape - relating to children who had been under his care.

The charges were laid following investigations prompted by responses to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

It took a confronting and distressing trial, and five days of deliberation for a jury to find Cooper guilty of 30 counts of child sexual and physical abuse.

The jury heard claims Cooper forced boys to perform oral sex on him and encouraged them to grope a teenage girl’s breasts.

One described Warminda under Cooper’s charge as a “place of many horrors”, while another said “we were just absolutely scared shitless”.

Cooper was also said to have plied children under his care with alcohol and cigarettes, and forced them to engage in sexual activities with him, and with each other.

Maurice Blackburn lawyer Keziah Holdsworth, who acted for Mr Coutts, commended him on his courage in seeking accountability for what happened.

“No amount of financial compensation will ever erase the harm caused by the horrific abuse he experienced at Warminda, but this money will help him to put a roof over his head and achieve some financial stability for himself and his family in the coming years.

“We know there are many Warminda survivors out there that are still too traumatised to come forward.

“We hope this result sends the message that it’s never too late to seek justice and receive recognition through the civil system.”

https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/victim-of-a-perth-children-s-home-paedophile-receives-1-million-settlement-20211219-p59ism.html

>>15206914

Miss Sweden and Bugs Bunny add up to a bad day in court for Ghislaine Maxwell

The former socialite had nothing to say after the prosecution in her New York trial dispensed quickly with defence witnesses

John Sweeney - 19 Dec 2021

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Defending a client charged with crimes modern society finds more terrible than murder, who might face the rest of her life in prison, Ghislaine Maxwell’s defence in New York opened with a nice lady who hadn’t seen anything, a travel agent who booked flights years after they mattered and a professor of BugsBunnyology – and none of them cut the mustard.

At the end of the defence’s first day, Maxwell was seen holding her hands up in despair at her fancy attorneys who have cost her, according to her own estimate, some $7m. Juries in US federal trials must be unanimous and there are legal grounds for knocking out some of the charges, but it looks bleak for Maxwell.

First on was Cimberly Espinosa, who had worked in Jeffrey Epstein’s Madison Avenue office from 1996 to 2002. But the key witnesses, “Jane”, who says she was then 14, “Kate”, then 17, Carolyn, then 13 or 14, and Annie Farmer, then 16, who say they were groomed by Maxwell leading to sexual abuse by her paedophile one-time lover, Epstein, never said anything happened in that office. Much of it was in his Palm Beach house, one he shared with Maxwell for years. In their cross examination, the prosecution asked Espinosa: “Have you ever been to Palm Beach?” “No.” “No further questions.”

The second witness was a travel agent who booked flights for team Epstein from 1999 onwards. Jane, Kate and Farmer all flew on Epstein’s dime in the mid-1990s – ie, his evidence could not knock out what they had to say. (Carolyn never flew because she was, in her mother’s view, too young at 14 to get a passport.) So the travel agent was irrelevant to the killer point a good defence would seek to make, that the victims and/or Epstein and Maxwell were in a different place when the abuse was supposed to have taken place.

The third witness was Professor Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist and specialist in false memory. An expert witness in perhaps as many as 300 trials, she asserted that fake facts could be implanted in people: “False memories … can be very vivid, detailed. People can be confident about them, people can be emotional about them, even though they’re false.” She told the jury “emotion is no guarantee that the memory is authentic”.

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Prosecutor Lara Pomerantz noted that Loftus was being paid $600 an hour by the defence and that she’d written a book, Witness for the Defense.

“You haven’t written a book called ‘Impartial Witness’, right?” said Pomerantz, whose voice is so high-pitched she sounds like a very scary bat.

“No,” said Loftus, glumly.

Pomerantz moved on to Loftus’s research. She got the professor to cite the catchphrase of a figure in one of her studies– “What’s up, Doc?”. Loftus had shown that 16% of people said they’d seen Bugs Bunny at Disneyland, a false memory because the fictional rabbit is a Warner Bros character, correct? Correct, the witness had to agree. Hanging in the air was the thought that 84% didn’t see Bugs Bunny at the wrong theme park. Next, we were on a second study, where Loftus and co had tried to implant the false memory of people having had a rectal enema. No one did so, the point being that people remember trauma clearly. False memory did not have a good day in court. No wonder Maxwell seemed distraught.

The second day was no better. The key witness for the defence was Eva Dubin, a former Miss Sweden, ex-girlfriend of Epstein and still good friend of Maxwell.

Jane had said that she had taken part in orgies with a woman called Eva. One of Maxwell’s lawyers, Jeffrey Pagliuca, asked: “Have you ever been in a group sexual encounter with the person that we are calling Jane?”

“Absolutely not,” Dubin replied.

Prosecutor Alison Moe asked, her voice oozing sarcasm: “Do you know the first names of everyone Jeffrey Epstein has ever met?” No, she replied.

Maxwell spoke to the court to say that the prosecution had not proved their case beyond reasonable doubt, so there was no reason for her to testify. And that was the end of the defence case.

In the lift on the way out, I was holding forth to some other reporters, saying that the reason there is no defence is because there is no defence: that is, Ghislaine Maxwell is guilty. Then the lift door opened and her sister Isabel Maxwell got in and we all fell silent. The trial – and the tragedy – continue.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/18/miss-sweden-and-bugs-bunny-add-up-to-a-bad-day-in-court-for-ghislaine-maxwell

>>15206914

Ghislaine Maxwell requests she be called ‘Ms. Maxwell’ instead of ‘defendant’

Ben Feuerherd - December 18, 2021

She’s Ms. Maxwell, if you please.

Ghislaine Maxwell’s defense attorneys want their controversial client referred to as “Ms. Maxwell,” rather than “the defendant,” when the judge in her case instructs the jury on the legal nuances they need to take into account while deliberating.

Maxwell attorney Christian Everdell made the request during a rare Saturday morning hearing, as her defense team and prosecutors argued over the language that will be included in Judge Alison Nathan’s instructions to the jury.

Prosecutors did not object to her being referred to with the honorific in a number of instances in the proposed charge.

Everdell said the team picked out specific points in the proposed charge where they wanted to swap the language.

“For clarity’s sake, your Honor, we’re not replacing every instance of the word ‘defendant’ with ‘Ms. Maxwell.’ We tried to pick the ones which made sense,” he said.

Seasoned defense attorneys described the request as “unusual” — and likely done as a subtle attempt to humanize Maxwell to the jury deciding her fate.

“I am not sure that I have ever seen such a request,” attorney Julie Rendelman, who is not connected to the Maxwell case, told The Post.

“We saw the opposite happen in recent trials such as Rittenhouse, where the judge prevented the prosecution from using the word ‘victim’ to describe those shot,” added Rendelman, who worked for years as a prosecutor in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office.

Attorney Jeffrey Lichtman, who has repped Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman and John Gotti Jr., said the request could also be an attempt to distance Maxwell from a criminal label.

“They’re trying to make her appear human. As a person instead of the cold description of ‘defendant,’ which also makes her sound defensive, as a criminal,” Lichtman told The Post.

“I wouldn’t say it’s rare. It’s unusual,” he added. “At the end of the day it’s a subtle way to influence the jury. But no one is acquitting or convicting due to it. Nevertheless, anytime a defense lawyer labors over every possible minute detail to win a case is a good thing.”

Maxwell’s trial is expected to draw to a close early next week, with prosecutors and defense attorneys scheduled to give closing statements Monday.

Her defense team rested on Friday after two days of calling witnesses in an attempt to poke holes in the testimony of her accusers.

Maxwell said Friday that she will not testify in her own defense.

“Your Honor, the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt and so there is no need for me to testify,” Maxwell told Judge Nathan.

Prosecutors called some two dozen witnesses in their two-week case against the disgraced socialite, including four accusers who detailed how they were groomed by Maxwell and, in some instances, abused by her.

One accuser, who testified using her first name, Carolyn, told jurors that Maxwell groped her as she was setting up a massage table at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion when she was 14 years old.

“She came in and felt my boobs and my hips and my buttocks,” Carolyn told jurors on Dec. 7.

Maxwell has maintained her innocence since she was first arrested. She faces a maximum of 70 years in prison if convicted on all counts.

https://nypost.com/2021/12/18/ghislaine-maxwell-requests-she-be-called-ms-maxwell-instead-of-defendant/

>>15206914

Ghislaine Maxwell verdict likely this week

WILL PAVIA and KEIRAN SOUTHERN - DECEMBER 19, 2021

As build-ups to a landmark birthday go, it is not perhaps what Ghislaine Maxwell would have planned in better times.

Jurors at her child sex-trafficking trial in New York could be sent out as early as Monday and come back with a verdict before Christmas Day, when the British socialite also happens to turn 60.

If found guilty of all six charges she faces, Ms Maxwell could be jailed for almost 80 years. She has ­denied all the charges.

Yet even before she knows her fate, her lawyers have started plotting a potential fightback.

Central to any appeal is likely to be the impact of the conditions she has endured on remand at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Centre since her arrest 18 months ago.

Ms Maxwell’s older brother, Ian, believes her incarceration in virtual solitary confinement while having a torch shone into her tiny cell every 15 minutes at night by guards “weakened” her “physical and mental state”, and made it difficult for her to give evidence in her own defence.

Ms Maxwell told the court in Manhattan on Friday that she would not be taking the witness stand, claiming the US government had not proved her guilt “beyond reasonable doubt”.

Speaking shortly before the development, her brother said: “The fact that Ghislaine might not be able to take the stand in such circumstances … on account of the torturous conditions she has been subjected to for over 530 days is tantamount to a denial of justice.”

He added that her inability to testify was “yet another – and perhaps the most egregious – such instance in a lengthy catalogue”.

Ms Maxwell’s lawyers and family had feared that her “fragile” mindset would allow the prosecution to run rings around her in any cross-examination.

They have also consistently argued that Covid restrictions in prison, limiting face-to-face contact with her lawyers, have hampered Ms Maxwell’s ability to prepare for a trial in which prosecutors have produced nearly three million pages of evidence.

If she is convicted this week or if the jury fails to return a verdict before the court rises for the festive break, she could face Christmas Day – and her birthday – alone.

The trial was scheduled to last six weeks and continue into January, but prosecutors went through their witness list faster than anticipated.

The case for the prosecution hangs on the testimony of two ­alleged victims, referred to in court as Jane and Carolyn, who say they were sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein, the late billionaire pedophile, when they were 14. They say Ms Maxwell helped to arrange it, and, to varying degrees, that she was involved in it.

Ms Maxwell’s defence team has argued that she is being made a scapegoat after Epstein, 66, killed himself in custody in New York in 2019 while awaiting trial for multiple child sex offences.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/world/the-times/ghislaine-maxwell-verdict-likely-this-week/news-story/c33534d65720696adf356602d47d504f

>>15206914

Jury may weigh whether Ghislaine Maxwell avoided knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's acts, judge says

ABC/wires - 19 December 2021

The jury in Ghislaine Maxwell's sex abuse trial will be allowed to consider whether the British socialite "consciously avoided" knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's alleged encounters with teenage girls, the judge in the case said in a rare weekend hearing on Saturday.

US District Judge Alison Nathan scheduled the hearing — held in an otherwise closed courthouse and with jurors absent — in an effort to keep Ms Maxwell's trial on a fast track that will have her case reach a jury early next week.

The closing arguments and Judge Nathan's reading of about 80 pages of instructions are set for Monday.

Prosecutors and Ms Maxwell's attorneys spent the morning in federal court in Manhattan sparring over the exact wording the judge will use to describe to jurors the legal elements that must be proven to convict Ms Maxwell on six criminal counts, including sex trafficking of a minor.

A request that she be referred to as "Ms Maxwell" rather than "the defendant" was approved.

Ms Maxwell's defence objected to a proposed instruction that the jury may convict her if they conclude she deliberately ignored any criminal behaviour by her former partner Jeffrey Epstein

Prosecutors say Ms Maxwell recruited and groomed four teenagers to have sexual contact with the late financier between 1994 and 2004. Three of the accusers testified at the trial that Ms Maxwell herself inappropriately touched them when they were teenagers.

The defence argued that since prosecutors elicited testimony from women who said Ms Maxwell was directly involved with Epstein's alleged acts, the jury could not also be told that "conscious avoidance" was proof of guilt.

"This seems to be here as some sort of back-up option," Ms Maxwell's attorney Christian Everdell said.

"The theory they're proceeding on is that she's an active participant. They can't have it both ways."

But Judge Nathan said that since the defence had implied in its November 29 opening statement that Ms Maxwell, despite her closeness with Epstein, was unaware of his alleged behaviour, it would be fair to include the instruction to the jury.

An attentive Ms Maxwell sat at the defence table, sometimes taking notes.

Her brother and sister, ever present at the trial these past three weeks, were among the spectators.

The 59-year-old has pleaded not guilty to charges that prosecutors say show that she and Epstein were involved in a scheme to groom teenagers to have sexual encounters with him.

The defence has countered by claiming she has been made a scapegoat for 66-year-old Epstein, who killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell in 2019 as he awaited his own sex trafficking trial.

The defence rested its case on Friday after Ms Maxwell told the judge she would not testify.

"Your Honour, the government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, so there is no reason for me to testify," Ms Maxwell said.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-19/judge-finalizes-jury-instructions-at-maxwell-sex-abuse-trial/100711928

>>15195832

Prince Andrew fails in bid to have newspaper cuttings describing his accuser Virginia Giuffre as a 'money-hungry sex kitten' taken into account by New York judge considering her sex claim against him

EMER SCULLY - 18 December 2021

Prince Andrew has failed in his bid to have newspaper cuttings describing his accuser Virginia Giuffre as a 'money-hungry sex kitten' taken into account by the New York judge who is considering her claim against him.

District Judge Lewis Kaplan dismissed the request as a PR stunt and refused to consider the press reports or a 139-page manuscript written by Virginia Roberts Giuffre about billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

Judge Kaplan said there was 'no proper basis' to look at the articles or Ms Giuffre's manuscript The Billionaire's Playboy Club - published in 2011 - which he added 'appear to have been submitted for whatever public relations purposes the defendants advisers may have had in mind'.

Ms Giuffre, 38, has claimed she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew three times in 2001, when she was just 17.

The judge did agree to consider a 2009 settlement deal between Ms Giuffre and Epstein, that the Duke's legal team previously said releases him from any responsibility, reported the Daily Telegraph.

Ms Giuffre's legal team say the settlement was 'irrelevant' because the Duke was not part of the proceedings and not covered by the release. They also said the Duke used the newspaper articles to 'smear' Ms Giuffre.

The Duke's lawyers want the civil action to be dismissed, said it was 'baseless' and added that 'sensationalism and innuendo have prevailed over the truth'.

Ms Giuffre seeks unspecified damages.

In October the Duke's lawyers submitted a rebuttal of the 'threadbare' complaint, attaching media reports and Ms Giuffre's manuscript as evidence.

In one of the media reports a US newspaper quotes former friends who slammed Ms Giuffre for bragging about her money.

In another her ex-boyfriend Philip Guderyon, who was with her during the time she spent with Epstein, claimed she 'was like the head b***h' at Epstein's Palm Beach mansion.

'She'd have nine or 10 girls she used to bring to him. She never looked like she was being held captive,' he added.