Mission & Justice

2/5/08

Charges of sabotage will not be laid against three protesters accused of damaging a protective dome over a satellite dish at the Waihopai spy base, police confirmed today. Dominican friar Peter Murnane, 67, along with farmer Samuel Land, 24, and organic gardener Adrian Leason, 42, were arrested after allegedly breaking into the Marlborough base early on Wednesday morning. The group, calling themselves the Anzac Ploughshares, said they had broken into the spy base to protest against the war on terror. They were charged with intentional damage and entering a building with the intent to commit a crime.

(more…)

Geesche Jacobsen; 3/5/08

Robert Black Farmer denies he hurt Lauren Huxley, even claiming he had never met her. On the afternoon the 18-year-old TAFE student was attacked in her Northmead home, he says he was at a nearby bowling club, drinking beer and losing $900 on poker machines. The Supreme Court was told the club no longer had CCTV footage or sign-in books for November 9, 2005, the day in question. The court has heard Ms Huxley got off a bus near her home shortly after 2pm that afternoon. Farmer said he was at home that morning with his girlfriend before going to the Northmead Bowling Club about 2.30pm, where he stayed for about two hours.

(more…)

Jarrod Booker; 1/5/08

A Catholic priest who took in and kept tabs on freed Algerian asylum seeker Ahmed Zaoui is one of three people charged with inflicting an embarrassing blow to a top-secret spy base. Dominican friar Peter Murnane joined organic gardener Adrian Leason and Hokianga farmer Sam Land in yesterday’s early-morning raid on the Waihopai satellite communications interception station, near Blenheim. They used sickles to puncture one of two 30m rubber balloons that protect radar aerials from the weather. Prime Minister Helen Clark called the raid “a senseless act of vandalism”, and the head of the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) ordered an urgent investigation into the base’s security.

(more…)

They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift sword against nation; and there shall be no more training for war. Isaiah 2/4 This morning, 30 April 2008, we entered the Waihopai Spy Base near Blenheim. Our group, including a Dominican Priest, temporarily closed the base by padlocking the gates and proceeded to deflate one of the large domes covering two satellite dishes. At 6am we cut through three security fences surrounding the domes - these are armed with razor wire, infrared motion sensors and a high voltage electrified fence. Once inside we used sickles to cut one of the two 30-metre white domes, built a shrine and knelt in prayer to remember the people killed by United States military activity.

See: http://ploughshares.org.nz/

18/4/08

When Lauren Huxley was discharged from intensive care she was so badly injured she was immobile, and a full recovery remains unlikely, a court has been told. Ms Huxley, 21, suffered multiple skull fractures and was on life support for 23 days after being bashed with a pair of metal fibro cutters at her home in Northmead in November 2005. The marketing student, who was 18 at the time, was left to burn in a pool of petrol after her attacker set the house alight. Robert Black Farmer, 39, a construction worker, of Northmead, is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court for attempted murder and arson. Ms Huxley’s rehabilitation doctor, Joseph Gurka, yesterday told the jury she was “minimally responsive” when she was discharged to Westmead Hospital’s brain injury rehabilitation unit from intensive care in December 2005.

(more…)

16/4/08

Lauren Huxley nearly died after being so severely beaten that the middle of her face was completely detached from her skull, a jury has been told. The marketing student, then 18, was bashed with a pair of metal fibro cutters and left to die in the garage of her family’s Northmead home on November 9, 2005. She was doused in petrol and the house was set alight. A Northmead man, Robert Black Farmer, 39, is on trial in the NSW Supreme Court accused of her attempted murder and arson.

(more…)

Bellinda Kontominas; 9/4/08

The family of Lauren Huxley confronted the man accused of bashing her, dousing her with petrol and leaving her for dead for the first time yesterday. Lauren’s parents, Christine and Patrick Huxley, and her sister Simone, yesterday told the NSW Supreme Court they had never seen Robert Black Farmer before the November 2005 attack that left the then 18-year-old fighting for her life. Simone, Lauren’s older sister, also said Lauren had been harassed by a young man who wanted to date her in the year before she was attacked.

(more…)

Bellinda Kontominas; 5/4/08

Lauren Huxley’s family was not in court to see graphic images of their home after the attack in which she was repeatedly beaten with a pair of fibro-cutters, doused in petrol and left for dead.A police forensic team had filmed the crime scene about 11pm, just hours after the then 18-year-old Ms Huxley was found lying semi-conscious in the garage of her Northmead home, which was in flames.

(more…)

Lauren Wilson; 4/3/08
Fifteen days after a Sydney teenager was beaten with fibro-cutters, doused with petrol and left for dead in the garage of her family home, DNA found on the lid of a petrol tin allegedly identified her attacker. Yesterday, as the red petrol-tin lid police found in the garage was passed around a 12-person jury in the NSW Supreme Court, the man whose DNA was linked to it remained composed and highlighted notes in a folder of evidence. Robert Black Farmer, 39, from the northwest Sydney suburb of Northmead, has pleaded not guilty to charges including causing grievous bodily harm with the intent to kill Lauren Huxley. An 18-year-old TAFE student at the time of the attack on the afternoon of November 9, 2005, Ms Huxley was beaten with a large metal cutting tool in her Northmead family home. The house was then set on fire, allegedly by the attacker to destroy evidence of the assault.
(more…)

Christopher Pearson; 15/3/08

The Latin, in Lonsdale Street, was a much-loved Melbourne restaurant. It closed in 2001 but there’d been an establishment trading under that name on the site, or thereabouts, since 1924, enjoying a consistently high reputation for Italian food. It attracted a motley clientele, including prosperous Italians, bon vivants, bohemians, several generations of the Catholic undergraduates’ club, the Newman Society and the inner circle of B.A. Santamaria’s National Civic Council. Many of the patrons ate there regularly for more than 50 years and the idiosyncrasies of some longstanding customers meant that only seasoned staff were allowed to wait on certain tables. On my first encounter with Peter Knowles, the subject of this brief memoir, I invited him to dinner at the Latin. Having heard about his connections with the Newman Society and the NCC, I wanted to see him on his home ground. It was a late winter evening in 1999 and he arrived wearing a suit and tie, wrapped in a once splendid but slightly seedy vicuna overcoat.

(more…)