'All we need is love, concludes retiring judge'

Justice Michael Kirby:

"I refer to love. Love for one another. Love for our community. Love for others everywhere in the world," he said. "Love transcends even scholarship, cleverness and university degrees. It is greater than pride and wealth. It endures when worldly vanities fade."

Whole article from The Age, here.

Samuel Hill 5's trial

The Samuel Hill 5 had their trial in Yeppoon yesterday, for trespassing into a military training area during the Talisman-Sabre Australia/US war games, so they could play frisbee with the soldiers, and encourage them to play peace games instead of war games.
While we were doing lunch in Credo, there were people handing out free frisbees around the city and telling people about the Samuel Hill 5, and after lunch we met at Alexandra Gardens to play frisbee.





I got this message from Simon Moyle at about 2 o'clock yesterday:

Unbelievable. 6 month
good behaviour bond
only! Commended on
our "exemplary lives".
Many thanks 4
prayers & support!
Had a great hearing -
judge was fantastic.

There is more info about the Samuel Hill 5 here.

Pine Gap Four charges dropped!

Got this message from Simon about an hour ago:

Pine gap 4's
convictions quashed
and retrial refused!
Woo hoo!

(Me and Simon and the other Simon went and visited the US Consulate last year during the initial trial, to talk with them about the Pine Gap military base.)

Media coverage:
'Christian activist 'curious' about jail' - ABC News
'Pine Gap activists to appeal convictions' - ABC News
'Court hears appeal from Pine Gap protesters' - ABC News
'Australian Christian anti-war activists appeal prosecution' - Ekklesia
'Pine Gap protesters' convictions quashed' - Herald Sun
'Court finds in favour of Pine Gap protestors' - ABC Darwin

Pine Gap 4: guilty on all counts

Just got this from Jess:

Guilty verdict on all counts. sentencing hearing today but she'll rule at 11:30 tomorrow. Crown asked that they all do time!

Pine Gap 4 verdict to be made tomorrow

Jess SMSed me this about an hour ago:

Court adjourne til 9 tomorrow. Judge has 5mins left of summation, then jury goes to deliberate. Please pray. Love jess

Pine Gap in the news #10

Jess reckons the Pine Gap case is going to be finishing today, and says that yesterday the Pine Gap Four's defences were ruled as inadmissable. (I don't really get what that means though.) Jess's written about it here.

Also:
'Break-in was reasonable, Christian pacifist tells court' - ABC News Online
'Pine Gap invader cries in court' - ABC Radio Australia

Pine Gap in the news #6

This is from ABC News Online, and is particularly interesting, so I thought I should repost it here:

Pine Gap break-in trial stalls
A Supreme Court trial in the Northern Territory for four people accused of breaking into the Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility near Alice Springs has stalled.
A lawyer representing the Commonwealth is applying for public interest immunity to stop the defendants eliciting details about the facility's operations.
Bryan Law, Donna Mulhearn, Adele Goldie and Jim Dowling are facing up to seven years' jail over their alleged unauthorised entry into Pine Gap in December 2005.
Law has cross-examined the facility's deputy chief Michael Burgess about who he reports to and which agencies are involved in a daily joint management operational meeting.
The Crown prosecutor objected, saying it was not relevant to the charges.
But Law told the court he was trying to prove a link between the operation of Pine Gap and the committing of war crimes in Iraq by US and Australian forces.
He said his group was acting against the alleged war crimes.
The jury has been stood down while Michael Maurice QC applies for public interest immunity on behalf of the Commonwealth, in response to Law's line of questioning.

Father Abraham had many sons...

This morning I went to the appeal of the Islamic Council of Victoria versus Catch the Fire Ministries case. (This was the first case based on the Religious and Racial Tolerance Act 2001.) The ICV was saying that Danny Naliah and Danny Scot from Catch the Fire had been saying at a conference in 2002 that the Islamic community is trying to take over the country, that they are in control of immigration, that they are demons and that they make money from illicit drugs. They were also saying that the Q'uran promotes violence and that terrorists are true Muslims. In 2004 the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal decided that they had breached the Religious and Racial Tolerance Act. Today the appeal was accepted, so the case is going to be sent back to VCAT.
I think it's really tragic that Christians and Muslims have been unable to resolve this conflict outside of court. I hope that we can find more of the things to unite us rather than divide us.

Media coverage:
'Court orders vilification retrial' - The Age
'Church race case back to tribunal' - Herald Sun

'Field notes from the underground'

Just read this article from the Boston Globe, about America's underground economy.

ON A COLD FEBRUARY DAY on Chicago's South Side, two men are having an argument in a church parking lot. One is a local hustler who fixes cars and does his work wherever he can. This month, he is paying a local pastor to use the church parking lot. The week before, he paid a nearby store owner to work in a back alley.
On this day, he has just fixed the car of a local resident who is not happy. His customer thought the cost to repair his rusty 1986 Cutlass Ciera was $20, but the mechanic insists that his estimate was $30.
The dispute quickly gets out of hand. The mechanic refuses to return the keys to the car. The car's owner throws the mechanic to the ground, punches him repeatedly, takes the keys and drives away in his repaired vehicle. Bloodied and angry, the mechanic pursues him.
The mechanic makes his way to his customer's apartment building, where he begins yelling for him to come out. In full view of the neighbors, as well as the local block club president, he grows frustrated, breaks into the apartment, and walks out with a TV and VCR in hand. He utters a profanity, shouts "You better believe I get my money," and marches off.

It's interesting to hear how the conflict is resolved.

Australia calling Washington

This week George Bush is trying to get a bill through the American Congress which will stop Guantanamo Bay detainees (including David Hicks, an Australian citizen) from being able to respond to witnesses, or even told what evidence is being sued against them. The changes will also mean that evidence that has been obtained through torture can be used against them, and that they won't be able to give evidence about being mistreated while in prison. There's an article about it here, from the Des Moines Register.
GetUp! are running a campaign trying to get people to write to George Bush, Senator John McCain (a former prisoner of war, possibly the next US president) and Senator John Warner (Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee) asking them to to let the bill through. Click here to find out how you can get involved.

Court

Went into court with someone this morning. This time it was really wierd, because the magistrate was quite brutal during the hearing, gave the lawyer a good dressing down, but then she let my friend off all charges. He'd originally been worried he'd have to go to gaol for over a month. It was almost like the magistrate was trying to make the hearing so painful that it would be punishment enough, or like she was just playing a game.

Commonwealth Games legislation

Thanks to Vic from Empire Games, I've been able to find some of the legislation that's been passed just for the Commonwealth Games:

• Commonwealth Games Arrangements (Games Management Areas) Regulations 2006
• Commonwealth Games Arrangements (Amendment) Act 2003
• Commonwealth Games Arrangements (Further Amendment) Act 2004
• Commonwealth Games Arrangements (Governance) Act 2003
• Commonwealth Games Arrangements (Miscellaneous Amendments) Act 2005
  

Melbourne, Commonwealth Games, legislation, Commonwealth Games legislation

Green & Gold Slurpee controversy

As you may or may not know, there is a Commonwealth Games Act (which I've found impossible to access online), which prohibits people from carrying certain items at Commonwealth Games venues, including skateboards, unauthorised recording equipment and voice amplification devices.
Something you may be more likely to know, (considering how hot it was in Melbourne today) is that 7 Eleven are giving 15c from every Green & Gold Slurpee they sell to our Commonwealth Games heroes.

However, 7 Eleven are also encouraging their customers to breach the Commonwealth Games Act by turning their Slurpee cups into megaphones, in order to 'cheer on our Aussies'!

Jesus breaks the law

Last night at church we had alook at a story in which Jesus heals a guy with a skin disease:

A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, 'If you are willing, you can make me clean.'
Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. 'I am willing,' he said. 'Be clean!' Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.
Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning: 'See that you don't tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.' Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.
(Mark 1:40-45)

Every time I've read this passage recently I've wondered whether Jesus was joking when he told the guy not to tell anyone.

Where it says that Jesus was 'filled with compassion', apparently some of the manuscripts actually say that he was angry, except that it's hardly ever translated that way, because Jesus is supposed to be nice and civilised.
But it makes sense for Jesus to be angry. According to Moses' law, people with infectious skin diseases had to stay away from everyone else, and yell out, 'Unclean! Unclean!' wherever they went, so people would know to avoid them (Leviticus 13). Only a priest could say that someone was clean again.
So it's quite a serious thing for this guy to ask Jesus to heal him. He was asking Jesus to break the law. When it says that Jesus was filled with compassion, the Greek word used is splagchnizomai. It means something like, 'His stomach was churning,' or, 'He felt like he'd been kicked it the guts.' (Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary) So it's as though Jesus' body is pumping with adrenaline as he chooses to break the law by touching the sick man and declaring him to be healed. He says not to tell anyone, but to go and see a priest, and get declared legally clean. He doesn't want to be executed just yet.
But the guy starts telling everyone, and Jesus has to go out into the desert and hide, just like he would have if he'd caught the man's disease himself.

Street rights and the Commonwealth Games

The Homeless Person's Legal Clinic at PILCH has put out a special newsletter (Word document) about people's rights when dealing with police, security guards and ticket inspectors during the Melbourne Commonwealth Games.
(Before the Olympics in Atlanta, and later Sydney, there were big capaigns to 'clean up' by getting rid of the street people, and something similar appears to be going on here in Melbourne.)

Melbourne, Commonwealth Games, homeless, homelessness, police, arrest, law, rights

How's the serenity!

When I moved in the weekend before last, the first few nights it was really difficult to get much sleep.To much background noise, particularly the fan just outside my window. And I'd get woken by the street cleaners at far too early o'clock in the morning.
After a couple of nights I got some earplugs, then I slept fine.
The last few nights I've been able to sleep fine without the earplugs, because I've gotten used to the noise.

But tonight I was planning to go to sleep early due to tiredness, due to it having been so hot today. But there's been so many people in town, making heaps of noise, because tomorrow's Australia(n Invasion) Day, so they won't have to go to work. So I haven't been able to sleep.
So I ended up going down to the Flinders Street steps to see if anyone I knew was around. There was one guy I know from Credo, sitting on the steps with two other guys I didn't recognise, so I hung around with them for a while.
So these two policemen came up to us and asked the younger one of the guys that I hadn't met before if he had any ID, because there was a Smirnoff bottle sitting next to him, and they didn't believe that he was eighteen. He gave him a Health Care Card, and they asked him what his name was, and his date of birth. He told them his name, but said he didn't know what his date of birth was. Because he wouldn't tell them his birthdate they said they'd have to arrest him for sitting on the steps (apparently against the Transport Act), although the two other guys were also sitting on the steps, and there were about a dozen other people sitting on the steps. He still wouldn't tell them, so they arrested him.
He came back about ten minutes later and told us that he'd given them his brother's Health Care Card because he was sacred of them, and thought he'd have to go to court for underage drinking. The cops came back again and the older guy that I didn't know told them the kid had given them his brother's card because he was scared. So the cops got the kid to come back into the station. They said he probably would be let off though.
I realise they probably just want to scare kids out of breaking the law, but if they hadn't tried to intimidate him he probably would've been more likely to tell the truth, although it probably still wouldn't have been likely. I don't know if what they did would just make him resent police officers and be less likely to trust them.