Blackstar Rising (Taste The Revolution)

I think there are good revolutions and there are bad revolutions. Bicycles, electric cars, solar panels, acoustic guitars, IPhones and Ghandi’s vision for post-colonial India are good revolutions. Now we can add Blackstar Roastery Works and Espresso Bar to the list.

Since 6.30am Monday 15th November 2008, the foolish revolutionaries who believe that fairtrade, social enterprise and true friendship can change the world have been servin’ up freshly roasted organic double-shots down in Thomas St, West End. The atmosphere is good. Sit down on one of their funky retro chairs at the low tables, or if you’re in a bit of a rush just step over to the bench on the left. Whether it’s a quick espresso to kick-start your busy day or somewhere to chill out with friends to sip your latte and your urban worries away.. Blackstar is the place to be right now in Brisbane.

The things I love about BLackstar Roastery Works & Espresso Bar are:

- I have not tasted coffee this good apart from in Italy

- It is a quiet hide-away from the often crowded Vulture St

- The coffee beans are 100% organic, fairtrade, roasted right there at the back of the shop. (Yes you can see the funky Probat roasting machine just over the counter, and I can’t even describe the alluring smell of all those trays of roasted coffee beans).. And you can grab the beans to brew your own at home when you can’t come down.

- Recycled fit-outs including beautiful reclaimed wooden benches, retro furnitue and lights, reducing environmental impact wherever they can

- Funky music to chill out to, and even a wall you can draw on as you wait for your friends to arrive

- They try to employ and train people who are studying, disadvantaged, long-term-unemployed, and/or are struggling with life

- They are focused on the local community, local artists and social justice

Taste the revolution, people! See you down at Blackstar – they’re brewing everyday from 6.30am-3pm.. and have even started doing LIVE MUSIC on Friday and Saturday nights, when they open all day til abour 10.30pm

Here’s the LIVE Music @ Blackstar gig guide

And here’s the Blackstar Coffee Website where you can order fresh coffee beans online!

These are two letters I read this week. I think it is important to look at news story from various perspective, especially ones that don’t get airtime.. to me they tend to be more believable.

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Aborigine Killed in Custody, Whitewash Attempted, Cop Acquitted & Promoted, Elder to be Sentenced, Bravery Awards to be Handed Out, Jesus Wept!

I was born and raised in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.  The city evolved out of the brutal British penal colony of Moreton Bay. It was built on aboriginal genocide and Irish and other convict slavery.  The original tribe that occupied the area had been totally liquidated before I got there!

When I was 8 years of age, aboriginal Australians were not citizens of Australia, they did not have the vote.  When I was 11, the Queensland state government declared a “State of Emergency” to facilitate the racially selected South African Rugby team to play a game of footy in Brisbane. When I was 13, it was still illegal to cohabitate with a native under the Vagrancy Act, the specific Qld Black Acts were legislation ruling the aboriginal population and restricting their freedom. When I was 17, the state government suspended civil liberties to faciltate the extraction and export of uranium from traditional aboriginal lands.

When I was 22 I went to jail for the first time as a political prisoner - 30% of the jail population in the state were aborigine. There is still not one aboriginal police officer in the state (they had one in the ’80′s but he was driven out by the imbeded culture of racism in the force!), aboriginal death in custody at the hands of cops and screws were/are not unusual. I have been in custody twice when aboriginal prisoners were killed by staff violence or set up, on another occasion I was in population for the predictable suicide of a minor from Groot on the youth wing. I find myself at 48 with not much changing back at home when it comes to the death of aboriginal prisoners in custody, bureaucatic cover ups, acquitted authority, colonial bravery awards handed out, essential oppression remaining unaddressed.

In 2005 Senior Segeant Hurley became the first police officer, to be charged with an aboriginal death in custody in the history of the state of Queensland following the killing of Mulrunji Doomadgee in Palm Island watchhouse.

After several years of fully paid leave while awaiting trial on manslaughter charges (at which he was acquitted) Snr Sgt Hurley has since received a promotion, and is now an Inspector of police working on the Gold Coast. He received a $100,000 compensation payout from the Queensland Government for property lost in the fire, and his legal bills were covered by the Queensland Police Union, and fundraising efforts by QPS members.

Last week, Palm Island local councilor Lex Wotton was found guilty by an all-white Brisbane jury of ‘rioting with destruction’. Wotton was convicted in Brisbane in relation to the events in which a police station, adjoining courthouse, a police residence and a vehicle were destroyed by fire that followed attempted white cover up of the killing of Mulrunji Doomadgee.  Doomadgee was a 36-year-old Palm Island man who had been arrested for “public nuisance” by Senior Sergeant Chris Hurley, the officer-in-charge of the Palm Island police station. Within an hour of his arrest, Mulrunji lay dead on the floor of a police cell, a victim of massive internal injuries, including a ruptured spleen, four broken ribs and a liver that had been ‘almost cleaved in two’ from a huge compressive force.

A subsequent coronial inquest found that Snr Sgt Hurley was responsible for the death. It also uncovered numerous breaches of procedures by Queensland Police in the ensuing investigation.
The community erupted on November 26 – a week to the day after the death – after they were told at a town meeting than a pathologist’s report had found Mulrunji’s death was “an accident”.
Palm Island Councilor Lex Wotton is presently imprisoned in Queensland being transferred from Brisbane to Townsville for sentencing this coming Friday.  In the same week, back in Brisbane, 22 members of the Qld Police Riot Squad will receive “bravery awards” for arresting Lex during their militarised occupation of Palm in the aftermath the uprising that followed the initial cover up of  the killing of Mulrunji Doomadgee.

Police claim local councilor Lex Wotton led the riot and he was arrested while his children were present by armed police with dogs at 4am in the morning. He has since been found guilty  for ‘rioting with destruction’. Wotton’s lawyers claim he was the one who called off the riots so police could escape unharmed. He is now being held in custody and awaits sentencing this coming Friday November 7th, in Townsville.

Jesus wept!

Ciaron O’Reilly

Dublin, Ireland

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I would just like to add briefly to Ciaron’s report.

I have great respect for some police. I am sure our local Dayboro cop Ken would no more bash someone in custody that he would his own mother.

That said, there can be little doubt from any objective reading of the events on Palm Island, that Sgt Hurley bashed Mulrungi Doomadgee to death.

So how did we end up where we are, with Hurley rewarded and Wotton jailed?

I think a lot has to do frightened racist white population which is prepared to accept a criminal justice system in which people like Wotton and Doomadgee are seen as  unfortunate collateral damage.

For those unfamiliar with the criminal justice system here is an indisputable fact:

In court, the police are habitual liars.

I do not to say this with any malice or bitterness. It is merely an objective fact observed from over thirty years of going to court. Everyone involved in the criminal justice system knows it. The police, the “crims”, the defence lawyers, the prosecution lawyers, the judges and magistrates all know the police generally have no respect for the truth in court.

In September 2005 my face was a bloody mess after Constable Bruce Jennings ground it into the concrete, in a vicious act of senseless and totally unprovoked violence. Naturally I had to be charged with something, andI was charged with obstructing police.

Police and two security guards all lied outrageously in court. I had nine witness including a number of lawyers who contradicted their evidence. Nothing could have been more obvious to anyone in the court room that they were “lying through their teeth”,  to use the phrase used by Wotton’s lawyer used referring to the police in his case.

I was found not guilty.  But “liberal” magistrate Kerri McGuiness failed to make any comment regarding police behavior in her summing up. She failed to condemn the police assault, or comment on my evidence that they had lied even copying one another’s witness statements, right down to the same spelling mistakes.

I would suggest that like the vast majority of Queenslanders, she accepts police violence, police lies, and police victims, as unfortunate collateral damage. I am sure she feels strongly (even if it is not acknowledged intellectually) that she needs police to protect her power and privilege and all that her $150,000 a year salary will buy.

As Ciaorn points out, this week police will receive bravery awards while Lex Wotton gets sentenced. In Lex Wotton’s case,the picture was painted of 19 police hiding in terror of rioting aboriginal people on Palm Island. I do not know all the details or if this is part of the “lying through their teeth” referred to. Most likely it was, as most of the police involved have applied or compensation payment as well. None of  them were hurt, but this picture will do much to maintain or increase the racist fear necessary to keep such a ‘filthy rotten” criminal justice system going, and to ensure that many otherwise sympathetic whites will continue to accept he “collateral damage” such as deaths in custody as the price (someone else has to pay) for their safety.

Jim Dowling

“Eat bread and salt and speak the truth.” – a great Russian saying

There are only two feelings, love and fear
There are only two languages, love and fear
There are only two activities, love and fear
There are only two motives, two procedures, two frameworks, two results

Love and fear
Love and fear.

Michael Leunig

“Fear not!” – Jesus Christ

A fragile justice

November 08, 2008

Article from: The Australian

The Palm Island cases raise serious questions

WHEN Lex Wotton was jailed yesterday for his role in the Palm Island riots, the real victim was the Queensland justice system. The conduct of the Wotton trial is not in question, but it crystallises concern about whether everyone in that state is truly equal before the law.

The Wotton case will forever be linked to the event that triggered the riot: the violent death in police custody of Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee. The question needs to be asked: why is it that the justice system can move efficiently to punish Wotton, but cannot find anybody who was responsible for Doomadgee’s death?

The destruction of property during a riot is an extremely serious offence. It challenges the basis of civil society, and because of that, nobody should be surprised that Wotton has been given a tough sentence of six years. But what about Doomadgee? A man’s death is infinitely more serious than an offence against property. Yet the initial police investigation of Doomadgee’s death was so casual as to amount to a disgrace. And the final result? The criminal justice system of Queensland holds nobody responsible.

In the long run, the different outcomes of these linked cases will do nothing to engender respect for the police and the justice system. And without respect, law and order in any community will remain fragile.

Both these cases raise the same issue of principle: the law is above everybody and must be administered in a way that gives the appearance — as well as the reality — of impartiality. In Queensland, that principle is under serious strain.