Australian Muslims on US Terror List

Melanie Brown, ex Australian soldier, wife of Willie Brigitte

WikiLeaks has published the names of 23 Australian-based citizens who are on a US "terror list". The secret cable lists 11 individuals for the NO-FLY list and twelve for the SELECTEE list. Attorney General Robert McClelland is furious and has called the release of the cable "incredibly irresponsible" and that it compromises ASIO investigations into terror suspects. I don't agree, we need to know who these people are and now we know their names.

Rabiah Hutchinson is an Australian woman who was once married to a confidant of bin Laden and lived in Afghanistan under the strict rule of the Taliban on September 11, 2001. She has been tracked by ASIO for twenty years. Now 58 years old, her daughter Rahmah Wisudo 28, and her two sons are not only on the "no-fly" list but mentioned in some detail.

Hutchinson was born in Mudgee and converted to Islam while travelling to Indonesia as a 19 year backpacker and became a supporter of Islamic clerics Abu Bakar Bashir and Abdullah Sunkar who later formed the group Jemaah Islamiah and were responsible for the 2002 Bali bombings. She was brought back to Australia from Iran by ASIO in 2003 and has lived in Lakemba ever since. It's alleged that she has links to radical Yemini cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi who has ties to al-Qaeda. Ms Hutchinson has never faced terrorism charges and says she is innocent but the Americans aren't convinced and are concerned that she could be involved in recruiting females for future terror attacks. The cable reads "While we have every confidence Australian authorities can and will monitor her activities, her past history and association with al-Aulaqi, merits her being on our no-fly status." Her two sons, Abdullah and Illias were arrested in 2006 in Yemen along with Sydney man Marek Samulski and accused of being part of an al-Qaeda cell running guns to Somalia. They were held in a Yemini jail for eight weeks until they were cleared and deported back to Australia. Marek Samulski is also on the list.

French authorities have warned that Lakemba cleric Sheik Abdel Salam Zoud is an important contact to French terrorist Willie Brigette but the Sheik says he has never had any connection to terrorism and only met Brigette once. Nevertheless, he's on the list. Brigitte, another Islamic convert, tried to get information from his new Australian wife Melanie Brown who was an ex soldier. He wanted to know about the transmission systems and low frequency electronic transmitting antennae the US installed in Pine Gap. He also forgot to tell her that he had two wives and three children back in France.

I notice there have been quite a few "Engish-sounding" surnames involved in making unsavory headlines lately, people who have a burning desire to convert to Islam. David Hick for one, Carnita Matthews another, the mother of six who falsely accused a policeman of trying to rip off her veil. Only recently, a man broke into a convert's house and flogged him because he had a few drinks with his mates and we can go back even further to Jill Courtney, Shane Kent and Joseph Terence Thomas. All these people are converts to Islam.

Why is it so?

Wind Farms Banned in Victoria

Robin and Glenn Brew

Blind Freddy could see it coming - wind farms are a good idea as long as you don't live near one. Yesterday Victoria’s tough new guidelines on wind farms came into effect - they give residents the right to veto the turbines if they are within 2 kms of their home and are banned within 5 kms of major regional towns and some scenic areas.

At least three proposed wind farms that have taken years to develop have now been dumped and others are in limbo. I’m happy for the people of Victoria, they are now safe from these ugly monsters but what about the rest of us - that investment will be redirected to other states, like mine. Before they went ahead with these multi-million dollar projects, they should have asked us what we thought about them and the answer is clear - we don’t want a bar of them – not now, not ever!

Last week, Moyne Shire Council, in Victoria’s westwest, voted to block wind giant Fenosa from receiving permit extensions for two wind farms and Hawkesdale and Ryan Corner developments are now in serious doubt. Spanish company Acciona Energy announced in May that it would drop its plan to develop a wind farm with up to 40 turbines near Evansford, 158km northwest of Melbourne. It cited unspecified environmental reasons and lack of wind as making the project unviable, but local opponent Robyn Brew said it would have been impossible under the new laws anyway.

In June this year, Ruth Corrigan who lives near Capital Wind Farm near Bungendore, just outside of Canberra, says wind farms are bad for your health. Experts have recently discovered something they call “lower frequency vibration.” She can’t sleep and it’s slowly driving her crazy. Further turbines are being erected every week and she has had no help from Infigen Energy who are very proud of their Capital Wind Farm.

Robin and Glenn Brew, organic farmers who live near the Waubra wind farm in Victoria were originally in favour of wind energy until they reported similar health problems. The 128 turbine development triggered a Senate inquiry that recommended firmer noise limits and urgent research into damaging health effects on nearby residents.

Clean Energy Council chief executive Matthew Warren said yesterday the new policy signaled future wind development was "closed for business" in Victoria.

Gypsy Caravans of Crime

from UK TV's My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding

Gypsies have branched out from Britain and Europe to North America and Australia and according to police, these people are due back from overseas holidays any minute, ready to cause havoc with another spate of cheating elderly people out of their life savings.

They are the modern gypsies, described by the NSW government as organised criminals about to be targeted. The “gypsy season” is about to start in NSW, they operate from September to April every year. Thirty families with 1000 members have been under scrutiny by police as they carried out multi-million dollar scams picking on the most vulnerable – the elderly – promising to fix their roof, concrete their driveway or exterminate pests around their home. They insist on being paid in cash and drive their elderly victim to their bank to get it.

They pay cash for everything, including their custom-built, triple axle caravans and Range Rovers. Because their caravans are so big, they can only go to certain caravan parks and police know most of them. They use parks as a base in country or coastal towns and work a perimeter of about four weeks. They know how long they can stay before complaints start filtering in and in the dead of night, they suddenly vanish.

Investigators have records of 770 vehicles and 450 mobile phones they can link to the gypsies. They know who their family members are, where they live and how they operate. They use false names and addresses, swapping these names among themselves. And money is no object. English gypsies have incredible wealth and spend holidays in Palazzo Versace on the Gold Coast and travel to weddings and holidays around the world. They enjoy the Calgary Stampede in Canada and when our investigators told Canadian border police about three gypsies going from Sydney to the Stampede festival, they were stopped and had $55,000 in cash seized and denied entry.

Many are now Australian citizens and growing numbers are applying for permanent status. Officials say the gypsies they know about would earn at least $30 million a year from their Australian operations and this is a very conservative estimate.

Alex Johan, 69, a self-confessed thief and gypsy, appeared in a Sydney court last week to plead guilty to stealing from a number of old women after scamming his way into their homes with a female accomplice. Johan uses the name Sterio which is a member of a gypsy clan well known around Sydney. "They prey on the vulnerable and are cunning thieves," said Detective-Sergeant Trent Atkins, who arrested him. "They may be illiterate but they are rat cunning and it gets handed down from generation to generation."

The UK TV show My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding gives us an insight into Gypsy life. Although the women and young girls dress rather provocatively, because the women are very religious, their daughters are virgins when they get married, usually very young. The boys know very well that the only way to get into bed with their favorite girl, is to put a wedding ring on her finger.

But something here doesn't add up, surely scams involving elderly people alone didn't produce wealth such as this, there has to be something else we don't know about. Whatever it is, it's working very well.

Kathy Jackson not afraid of union threats

Placing a dirt-covered shovel on whistle-blower Kathy Jackson’s front door at 3.30 am in the morning gives us an insight into union mentality - it means ‘We are going to bury you”. But Kathy Jackson is talking tough and has vowed to take on the “scumbags” who left it there.

If a female union boss is being offered police protection from her own union, it says a lot about that union. They are obviously unhappy with her decision to refer allegations that Craig Thomson spent $150,000 plus of union funds on prostitutes and other personal items to police.

But she has refused police protection and said she won’t lock herself away. “If they think this is going to stop us, then they have picked the wrong girl.”

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Kathy Jackson deserves a medal

Kathy Jackson, National Secretary HWU

The Craig Thomson scandal continues to torture the Labor party and now the union he once represented is tearing itself apart. The last thing National President of the Health Workers Union, Michael Williamson wanted was to refer this sordid matter to Police but when he was away in Newcastle last Wednesday, National Secretary Kathy Jackson got together with a few other rebels and successfully pushed the motion through. Mr Williamson, a former ALP President, had no plan to get the police involved and intended to reiterate what Labor spokespeople have been saying all week - that the matter is before Fair Work Australia, and leave it at that.

I wouldn’t like to be in Ms Jackson’s shoes right now, and hope she is up to the job of coping with Mr Williamson’s wrath. He is a major figure in the dominant NSW right faction of the Labor Party and rumour has it that crucial ALP members thought he had the Thomson matter “in hand”. On the other hand Ms Jackson is a junior figure who is now viewed by the heavyweights of her party, as a person who gave ammunition to the Opposition. Yesterday she was still standing and said “I am responsible and have a fiduciary duty to each and every member of this union in ensuring that their funds are used correctly.”

It sounds so simple, it’s obviously the right thing to do, yet the Gillard government is hell bent on trying to cover it up. Their only logical way out of this mess is to bite the bullet and throw him to the wolves. If they don’t, with every day that passes, the Labor Party and the union movement’s reputation only gets worse. Hang in there Kathy Jackson and hold your nerve, don’t let Mr Williamson bully you, the workers you represent need you now, like never before.

Craig Thomson Must Resign

It doesn't seen right that the Prime Minister be allowed to close down question time to avoid answering tricky questions. But that's what happened yesterday - rather than face the music and deal with questions about Craig Thomson, Julia Gillard walked out. Now that the Health Services Union have dobbed him in and given everything they have on him to police, things will only get worse and the Prime Minister can't keep running away forever. This is a scandal of mammoth proportions.

The media won't let this one go, they will pursue him to the bitter end. There is nothing more newsworthy that a member of parliament behaving badly and this one takes the cake - a member of Parliament who spent thousands of dollars to maintain a lifestyle he had grown accustomed to, using his union credit card, it was just so easy.

But is he arrogant or just plain dumb? He used his own name and phone number for the services of prostitutes and left a trail behind him a mile wide. What was the Labor Party thinking when they nominated this man to represent their party? I hope the media will pursue this angle and find out how he ever got to Canberra in the first place.

I hope the Honourable Member isn't planning a trip to hospital any time soon, I'm sure the nurses he represented would make his stay a very pleasant one.

Norfolk Island

Residents of Norfolk Island are not represented in the Commonwealth Parliament, the Australian government maintains authority over the territory through an Administrator who is appointed by the Governor General. The brochure says they "enjoy a large degree of self-governance", but after spending a week there, all I can say is that it's not working very well. On the 6th November 2010, the Chief Minister of Norfolk, David Buffett said that the island would voluntarily surrender its self-governing status in return for a financial bailout from the Federal Government to cover significant debts. And it shows. The roads are a disgrace but there's no money to fix them. They don't pay tax but the wages are pitiful. A few locals I spoke to are frustrated by the island's lack of progress, no one wants to do anything, people seem resigned to survive on tourism.

Norfolk Island was colonised by the British as part of the first settlement in 1788 and became a vital source of food for the new colony back in Sydney who had not yet established areas for agriculture. As well as supplying food, they also ran sheep and sent their wool over to Sydney which was most welcome. Later Norfolk became a penal settlement for the worst convicts - a place to send re-offenders - stubborn men who refused to be rehabilitated. The cruelty and depravity that went on was beyond belief and tour guides won't tell you details of the treatment prisoners had to suffer, it's not fit for genteel ears. But at its worst, when there were no women on the island, the cruelty and inhuman punishments inflicted by the British justice system turned men into beasts and the island descended into a hellhole of homosexuality and bestiality where men longed for death. When word got back to England, they were appalled and closed it down.

When the Japanese were moving into the Pacific during World War II, American General MacArthur decided to build an airstrip on the island and it became a vital airbase for the allies. Today, that same airstrip is the life-blood of the island, bringing hundreds of tourists every week.

But for many Australian tourists, including myself, it's the romantic tale of Fletcher Christian and the wicked Captain Bligh in the movie "Mutiny on the Bounty" that brings people to Norfolk. Only it's not a romantic tale at all, far from it. When Christian decided to look for an island on which to live for the rest of his life he asked the eighteen mutineers "Who is with me?" But only eight agreed to go with him, the rest wanted to stay in Tahiti. And according to Hollywood, the beautiful Tahitian women went willingly with the mutineers to embark on a new life, but in reality, they were kidnapped and heart-broken.

When Christian entered Bligh's cabin on that fateful day and forced him on deck in his nightshirt, Bligh pleaded with him to be reasonable to which he replied "I am in hell, I am in hell." Of the 42 men on board, aside from Bligh and Christian, 18 joined the mutiny, two were impassive, and 22 remained loyal to Bligh. But the question needs to be asked - could Christian have been a little "thin skinned" and over-reacted to Bligh's bullying? It's been documented that Bligh once called him a coward which in those days was extremely offensive, but was his treatment bad enough to warrant a mutiny?

Golf Club

When Captain Bligh and 18 loyal crew were set adrift in a 23ft boat with four cutlasses, food and water, a quadrant and a compass, but without charts, sextant or marine chronometer, he still managed to sail to Timor and eventually made his way back to England. This gives us an insight into his capabilities and resolve and it's not surprising that fifteen years later, he was appointed Governor of New South Wales with orders to clean up the corrupt rum trade of the NSW Corps which resulted in the Rum Rebellion.

The mutineers and the Tahitians eventually found and settled on the tiny island of Pitcairn but life was far from idyllic. Because there were more men than women, bitter feuds developed and the Polynesian men eventually killed Fletcher Christian and threw his body off a cliff. They also murdered Martin, Mills, Brown and Williams. After Christian's death, Young and Adams became the community leaders and separated the community from troublemakers Quintal and McCoy. When McCoy discovered how to make alcohol from a local plant, the situation worsened. While in a drunken stupor McCoy comitted suicide and when Quintal threatened to murder the entire community, Adams and Young had to kill him. Young taught Adams to read using the Bounty's bible and when he died in 1800, John Adams was the only mutineer left on Pitcairn. He became deeply religious and set up a school for the children in which the teaching of Christianity was an important part and he became known as "father" to everyone.

In the mid 1850's, the Pitcairn community was outgrowing their small island and they appealed to Queen Victoria for help. She offered them Norfolk and on the 8th June 1856, the entire community of 193 people landed on the island. But not everyone was happy and after 18 months, 17 returned to Pitcairn and five years later, another 27 went back and their descendants still live there today.

Norfolk Island is an interesting place to holiday with lots of history and only 2 hours flying time from Sydney. At this time of year, air fares are cheap and package deals are good value. We found the accommodation pretty good, you get a little car to run around in even though the island is only 8 kms x 5 kms, and the scenery is beautiful. If you get a chance, go on the progressive dinner put on by three families who live there and get to know the locals. Treat yourself to a special dinner at Norfolk Blue, an excellent restaurant who run their own cattle on 100 acres and serve steaks that melt in the mouth. Oh, and I didn't see Colleen MacCulloch, but I know where she lives.