“If you're against the death penalty, be against it for everybody. You can't be a little bit pregnant.”
— Derryn Hinch, explaining why he thinks the celebrities campaigning against the Bali Nine executions are hypocrites
Home | The name is Powers. Maritime Powers.
THE GIST. The High Court has ruled that the government is legally in the clear for locking up 157 asylum seekers for a month on a customs boat last year.
THE FACTS. Last June, an Australian 'border protection vessel' intercepted an Indian boat carrying 157 asylum seekers, after it entered Australian territory. The government at first tried to take them back to India, but when that proved too hard, ended up taking them to Nauru instead - after keeping them detained on board a government ship (named 'Ocean Protector') for a month.
THE CHALLENGE. Lawyers for the asylum seekers argued that the government A) didn't have the power to take them outside Australian territory; B) couldn't keep them detained there; and C) denied them 'procedural fairness' - essentially by robbing them of the opportunity to challenge the 'turn-back' in court.
THE DECISION. The seven-person High Court split 4-3, but the majority decision rejected all the challengers' arguments. Basically, laws under the Maritime Powers Act let the government do just about whatever they want when it comes to asylum seekers - including take them outside Australia and detaining them there.
THE GIST. Argentinian President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is trying to dissolve the country's domestic intelligence agency, in another strange development in the investigation of the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman.
CONTEXT. Nisman was planning on appearing before the Argentinian congress and accusing Kirchner of covering up the country's worst ever terrorist attack - the 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. But just hours before he was scheduled to appear, Nisman was found shot dead in his home.
ALIBI-BYE. Kirchner says that Nisman's death was not suicide - she says that he was killed as part of a plot to undermine her government and amplify his claims about the cover-up. Kirchner has accused a spy called Diego Lagomarsino of plotting against her, a man who was also apparently the last person to see Nisman alive. He has now been charged over Nisman's death - not for killing Nisman, but for lending him the gun with which he was killed (but by whom, it's not clear). Got it? Neither.
BACKLASH. President Kirchner's worries about being undermined have come true, whether or not as part of a conspiracy: much of the Argentinian media is all over her, accusing her of trying to "pin the blame" on Lagomarsino, and of having "No self-criticism [and] no evidence." However, others welcome her reform of the intelligence agency, saying an overhaul is long overdue.
Serve and protect. Emergency dispatch operators in San Francisco have asked distressed residents to not call 911 when Facebook goes offline, as it temporarily did yesterday. Several concerned citizens rang emergency services during that dramatic hour of social-network downtime, with one apparently accusing an operator of rudeness for suggesting that it was not a "life-threatening" emergency.
Red flags. Bart Jansen, the Dutch artist who stuffed his cat and made it into a flying drone, has announced his latest installation: a submarine made from a dead badger. Jansen says his art-work is inspired by the "old masters" - presumably Charles Manson and Ivan Milat. Seriously, someone put this guy on a watch-list.
Higher education. The University of Pennsylvania is planning on running a Lit subject next semester called "Wasting time on the internet." Students will be forced to undergo periods of "distraction, multi-tasking and aimless drifting." Finally, a literature degree that prepares its students for life after graduation.
Obloquy Noun. Strong public condemnation: English cricketer Stuart Broad has invited obloquy from all sides for suggesting that English minimum wage-earners should be more humble.
