More Leftist violence

Would-be Bolsheviks. From the French revolution on, Leftism has always been thuggish and violent. They would kill you if they could. They have killed millions in the past and their ilk are still among us. Any excuse to vent their hate will do



Violent anti-G20 protesters unleashed mayhem in Melbourne yesterday, rioting in the streets and attacking police as pedestrians fled in fear. A hardcore mob wrecked police vehicles, smashing windows and panels with rubbish bins, bottles, rocks and steel signposts. Police are braced for more clashes as the economic summit ends today. In what police described as the worst outbreak of violence since the 2000 S-11 protests:

THUGS hiding behind bandannas hurled flares, horse manure, fake blood and urine-filled balloons.

FRONTLINE police officers were battered, one suffered a broken wrist and two rioters were arrested.

THE estimated damage bill was tipped to go into the millions.

CHILDREN took part in the chaos.

Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon blamed a hardcore group of 100 anarchists she said were from Europe and interstate. She promised more arrests after video footage was analysed. "We're expecting the worst -- and we will plan for it," Ms Nixon said, warning peaceful protesters to stay away.

At the height of the violence, protesters hurled bins, bags of rubbish, rocks and bottles at police in full riot gear, who yelled "back off" as they beat batons on the barriers. Tension reached fever pitch when demonstrators armed with steel pickets threw flares behind police lines and challenged officers to fight. The chaos started about 11.30am when wire barricades surrounding the G20 summit venue in Russell St were attacked by protesters in white-hooded jumpsuits and wearing bandannas across their faces. The group, known as the Arterial Bloc, overturned water barriers then ran up Swanston St, storming a McDonald's restaurant and Nike outlet. Police endured a barrage of crude verbal taunts as demonstrators splashed officers and journalists with fake blood.

Activists denounced capitalism during a rally at the State Library from where the formal march began about 1.15pm. Protesters danced, chanted and unfurled banners as they marched back towards the Hyatt, but the peaceful demonstration soon exploded in violence. Bloc members charged up Russell St, where 20 mounted police and about 120 officers waited behind water-filled barriers. After a tense 15-minute standoff key agitators fled around the corner to converge on the police cordon from Collins St. There, the mob up-ended barriers, hurled milk crates and used industrial rubbish bins as battering rams against the police. They looted rubbish bins for ammunition and spread the violence.

The mob stopped traffic in Exhibition St, destroyed a police van, sent police ducking for cover and smashed a window of a nearby parked car. Later, they ran riot as police charged at them from Exhibition St, where plainclothes police wrestled some to the ground. Graffiti was scrawled on the ANZ building and as thugs tried to shatter its window with steel pickets, passers-by ran for shelter amid exploding glass bottles. Plainclothes police filmed the riot with hand-held video cameras.

By 2.15pm, protesters advanced on police from Flinders Lane and Exhibition St. Officers retreated in Flinders Lane until protesters stormed the mesh barricades, climbing and rattling the cages. Last night, as the standoff continued with protesters pelting police horses with bottles and rotten fruit, the CBD was locked down -- causing havoc for commuters.

Ms Nixon cancelled plans to sing at a charity function last night. Instead she visited officers on the frontline. The police chief was due to sing Raining Men at the Starry Starry Night event at Crown Palladium to help raise money for the Alannah & Madeline Foundation.

Treasurer Peter Costello, who chaired the G20 meeting, said the agitators were highly organised. "There is a hard-core militant and violent element among these protesters who have come organised for violence," Mr Costello said. "They want to trash the reputation of Australia. We won't stand for that. These people do not represent Melbourne, they do not represent Australians and they will not be successful in their attempts to trash Australia and its reputation."

An Arterial Bloc spokesman, calling himself Barry, said: "We wanted to make it clear that the streets are our streets. We wanted to show the world, united as a bloc, that we oppose the G20 and to show police we are not scared." Protester Sam Quilty, 13, said at the rear of the Hyatt: "It's big business taking over small family businesses which I don't think is fair."

Source




MORE MUSLIM GANG RAPE

Four youths of Middle-Eastern background have pleaded guilty to charges that include the rape and sexual assault of two 14-year-old Caucasian girls near a Melbourne train station. It is alleged a gang member later threatened to kill the victims for reporting the attack to police. Four of the six boys in the gang faced 21 charges, including rape, indecent assault, procuring sex by threats and intimidation, making threats to kill and sexual penetration of a child under 16. All four entered guilty pleas in a Children's Court. One, charged with four counts of indecent acts, was placed on probation for a year. The other three are to be sentenced in January.

It is believed the six, aged 16 and 17, staged an elaborate stunt to lure their victims to an isolated industrial area where they took it in turns to violate the girls. The mob allegedly jeered and laughed as they forced themselves on their terrified victims, demanding sex and sexual favours for the return of a mobile phone they stole from the girls. One of the gang later vowed to find and kill the victims for reporting the attack to police. It is believed one of the boys raped another girl two months before the gang attack, which happened in April last year in Brunswick. He was found guilty of the first rape count and pleaded guilty to the alleged gang rape. The law forbids the Sunday Herald Sun naming the under-18 attackers.

Police allege the girls, from country Victoria, boarded an Upfield train at Flinders St station about 5.30pm. One of the youths began a conversation with one girl and touched her inappropriately. When the girls got off at Anstey station, the gang followed. Police allege one attacker put his hand up one victim's skirt and also touched her breasts before stealing her mobile phone. The girls escaped, but soon after one of them received a call from a gang member saying he had the other victim's mobile phone. He said they could get it at Anstey train station if he got "something in return". The girls returned to the station from where the group led them away and demanded sex for the stolen property. The victims escaped and told their parents, who alerted police. A gang member was heard threatening to find the victims and "f--ing kill them".

Source





Extraordinary (Leftist) Tasmanian government negligence

Mass murderer Martin Bryant has been moved out of a maximum security prison into a lower security psychiatric unit. The Tasmanian Government has refused to confirm or deny the transfer of Australia's most notorious murderer. Bryant, now 36, shot 35 people dead and wounded many others at Port Arthur in 1996. He was moved into Hobart's Wilfred Lopes Centre, a secure mental health unit run by the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services, on Monday. There are no guards inside the 35-bed unit for inmates with serious mental illness, just doctors, nurses and other support staff. Inmates are never locked down and can come and go from their cells as they please, day and night.

The only security at the facility, a few hundred metres up the hill from the old Risdon prison where Bryant was kept, is provided by private contract guards who patrol the three-wall perimeter. When the $12 million centre was launched early last year the then Tasmanian health minister, David Llewellyn, said: "It isn't part of the prison." That day it was made clear that Bryant, then a withdrawn and unpopular resident of the old Risdon prison's hospital, would not be moving in. Tasmanian Forensic Mental Health Services clinical director John Crawshaw said the new unit would be "definitely a hospital, a therapeutic environment".

Mr Crawshaw said Bryant did not meet the criteria for admission to the new facility. Keith Moulton, whose daughter, Nanette Mikac, and two granddaughters, Alannah and Madeline, were slain in the massacre, said he wanted Bryant to stay locked up. "I want him under lock and key for the rest of his life," Mr Moulton said. "That was the judge's sentence. It was repeated 35 times. "I'd hate to think of him being given the chance to lead a normal life."

Bryant has spent the past 10 years in the old Risdon prison hospital, hardly speaking and spending most of his time alone in his cell. Authorities had not considered him sick or mentally ill, but the jail hospital has been considered the safest place for him. Many of the other inmates say they want him dead and he has been the target of assaults from other inmates. But the old Risdon jail is now minimum security and more serious criminals have moved into a new Risdon prison next door. A place had to be found for Bryant, who was jailed for life with no chance of parole for the world's worst massacre by a single gunman. When Mr Llewellyn opened the centre in April he said it would be the first time in Tasmania inmates with serious mental illnesses would be cared for in hospital, rather than jail.

Source





Extraordinary (Leftist) South Australian government negligence

Bail restrictions put in place to protect the community from alleged offenders are being breached in record numbers, prompting the new victim's commissioner to demand the law be toughened. Police figures obtained by The Advertiser show the number of bail breaches has almost doubled to 8202 over the past two financial years. The state's new Victims of Crime Commissioner, Michael O'Connell, is now demanding changes to the law which will force people who allegedly breach bail to prove they deserve to remain free and not be put in prison.

Mr O'Connell, who was appointed last month as the state's first victims of crime commissioner, said that under current legislation, the onus was on the prosecution to justify why an offender charged with a breach of bail should not be granted bail again. His proposal, which he has lodged with the Attorney-General's Department, is particularly aimed at alleged offenders who repeatedly breach bail while awaiting trial, often for serious crimes such as murder or rape.

People are given bail after being charged with a crime and have to adhere to various conditions, which can include not consuming drugs or alcohol, curfews, regular reporting to police and not contacting witnesses. If people breach these conditions, they face the court and, under the current law, have a presumption of innocence until proven guilty in relation to the bail breach. Mr O'Connell now wants amendments to the Bail Act to remove this presumption of innocence and place the onus on the alleged offender to prove they are worthy of another chance at bail and should not be jailed. "If an offender has breached conditions intended to protect victims, then the assumption they should receive bail should no longer exist," Mr O'Connell said. "The offender should have to prove why they deserve bail again."

At present, judges can, at their discretion, take into account alleged breaches when determining if someone should continue to remain on bail but it is not mandatory. Under Mr O'Connell's proposal, it would be mandatory.

Chief Superintendent Tom Osborne said most breaches of bail were committed by repeat offenders. In 2004/05 there were 5729 breaches of bail, compared with 4612 in 2003/04 and 2394 in 2000/01. Police attribute the increase to the tighter bail requirements now imposed as well as more active policing of those on bail.

Mr Osborne said bail requirements on alleged offenders had increased in recent years to try to curb their criminal behaviour. He said bail conditions, which varied between alleged offenders, included home detention, regular reporting to police and bans on attending specific areas. Police also had targeted bail-jumpers, employing such tactics as randomly visiting their homes to ensure they were complying.

Victim Support Service chief executive Michael Dawson said the rapid rise in bail breaches was concerning. "Such a dramatic increase is extremely worrying from the victim perspective - we are most concerned about victims' actual and perceived sense of safety which may be under threat by some bail absconder," he said. He said an investigation needed to be undertaken to look at why there was a sudden increase and what could be done to stop it.

Law Society of SA spokesman Michael Abbott QC said Mr O'Connell's proposal would not affect outcomes. "The Bail Act says they (judges) can take into account any factor," he said. An alleged breach of bail would be a relevant factor, he said.

Source





Extraordinary (Leftist) New South Wales government negligence

As Sydney's rental crisis deepens, public housing worth millions is being left to rot or sit empty in a prestigious city location with harbour views. The number of available rental properties - at a six-year low - is still dropping, forcing househunters to offer 20 per cent above advertised rents. In other cases, landlords are demanding huge rent increases from established tenants, leading to a surge in complaints to the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal.

And yet four of the historic terraces in this picture of Lower Fort Street in Millers Point, each worth $1.5 million or more if nearby sales are a guide, have been empty for more than three years. The properties were renovated by the Department of Housing in 2003 but remain boarded up against vandals. There are many other examples of this waste, say residents who fear they are being targeted for removal under a secret government plan to sell 190 of these properties to private investors, using 99-year leases. In Windmill Street there are at least eight empty properties, according to residents, a number of which have been vandalised and are boarded up, with piles of rubbish on the front porch. In Argyle Street there are several more, one a huge double-fronted terrace. There are similar sights in Kent and Merriman streets.

The department says it has leased 24 properties recently but shies away from questions about its plans. The department insists its vacancy rate is lower than in private housing, although there are 70,000 people on the waiting list for public housing. Figures obtained by the Herald show that the number of unlet rental properties in inner Sydney plunged from about 4570 in January to 1990 last month. The figures, from the Real Estate Institute of NSW and the department, show that across middle suburbs, such as Burwood and Willoughby, the number of available leases dropped from about 2730 to 1790. In outer suburbs, the number dived from 4770 to 2700.

Rents rose sharply over the year to June. The median cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Sydney's middle suburbs climbed by almost 11 per cent to $260. One real estate agent, who asked not to be identified, said a renter had recently offered $60 more than the $300 asking price for a city apartment. Anita Campbell, a policy co-ordinator at the Housing Industry Association, said tenants were at the mercy of landlords. "When you've got a vacancy rate this low, the landlord can say, 'This tenant's painful, the other's willing to pay me more, this one's causing me more trouble, so what am I waiting for?,"' she said. "The tenant can always go to the [tenancy tribunal] but that's after they've been turfed out or after they've been saying for six months, 'Please fix the toilet."'

Michael McNamara, a spokesman for Australian Property Monitors, said the outlook was grim for renters. "It wouldn't surprise me if rents rose a further 5 to 10 per cent over the next 12 months in all capital cities." Vanessa Sheehan, a rental property manager at the Angus Levitt agency in the eastern suburbs, said there were "astronomical" numbers of people looking at a handful of rental properties. Tenants were offering above the asking price. "They are very eager, saying, 'We can move in as soon as the owner wants,' that sort of thing," Ms Sheehan said.

Source