Pine Gap, a secret US installation in Australia
by Mary W Maxwell, LLB
What if you want to tell the truth, or “spill the beans”’ about something that you feel should be public knowledge, but are worried that you might be acting disloyally toward your employer?
I am writing this article in the context of the peculiar event of January 19, 2017 in which a man drove his car deliberately into pedestrians in Melbourne, killing some of them.
GumshoeNews.com received an extraordinary number of hits on its January 22 article Who Is The “Blue Man” Waving Instructions Before The Killing Spree?
It appears that may people are looking for the truth of what happened. They are asking Was anyone other than “Mad-man Jimmy” involved? Were the three silvery cars, and a man in a blue jumper, in cahoots with the killer? Are those silvery cars ASIO?
In the Comments to that article I advised anyone who felt bound by “the Official Secrets Act” to NOT feel bound by it if this would prevent them from ratting on someone who is using government disguise to perform horrendous crimes.
Oz does not have a law with the exact name Official Secrets Act, (as does the United Kingdom). However there are laws that forbid various public servants to reveal certain things they picked up from government documents.
Indeed the Commonwealth Consolidated Acts includes statutes on the revealing of secrets – and even on the receiving of those revelations from someone who is not supposed to reveal them. Sec 79 of the Crimes Act 1914 (which is still in force) says:
(5) If a person receives any sketch, plan, photograph, [blah blah] or information, knowing or having reasonable ground to believe, at the time when he or she receives it, that it is communicated to him or her in contravention of section 91.1 of the Criminal Code … he or she commits an indictable offence unless he or she proves that the communication was contrary to his or her desire.
Penalty: Imprisonment for 7 years.
Misprision (Rhymes with Vision)
In my Comments, I relied on misprision. This is a common law concept whereby the citizen has a responsibility to report crime (felonies, not misdemeanors) and can be published if he does not report.
(Just think how many times you have failed to report crimes that you know about. Wow, you could be punished a lot for that!)
In the US the law is statutory where the offense is federal:
Per 18 USC 4:
“Whoever, having knowledge of the actual commission of a felony cognizable by a court of the United States, conceals and does not as soon as possible make known the same to some judge or other person in civil or military authority under the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.”
In Oz, if someone signs a promise not to reveal Official Secrets he may thereby feel bound to protect criminals in government. But in doing so he would be courting a nice big criminal record for himself, right?
To find out if Australia (either Commonwealth or states) has a statutory law of misprision, you can go to the website austlii.edu.au, which is the Australasian Legal Information Institute run jointly by University of Technology, Sydney and University of New South Wales Faculty of Law.
There you will find that misprision is not statutory law but common law. At austlii I see it referred to, for example, in a 2012 NSW case, TB v State of New South Wales.
I also see misprision figuring into an article in a Tasmanian law journal that has the interesting title “The Criminal Suspects Right to Silence: A Hallowed Shibboleth?” by Gim Teh.
We can be assured by a Victorian case, Sykes v DPP, that made it to the House of Lords. There, a unanimous decision of the judges held that the law of misprision still exists. (That was a 1963 case but nothing has changed on misprision since then.)
How Does One Law Override Another?
I had declared “Anyone who feels bound under the Official Secrets Act to cover-up a crime of government is of course relieved of that obligation as there can never be a law that says crime is acceptable. Sorry but that’s the way it is, guys.”
You can see that I meant something more than misprision as my guide.
I had in mind that law comes from the community and if the community clearly wants a fundamental law to stay in force, those who would like to sneak in a contradictory one it had better watch out.
The voice of genius on this belongs to Chief Justice Marshall of the US Supreme Court writing in Marbury v. Madison in 1802. He was really feeling his cheerios on that occasion and I think you would like to read his main idea.
It may seem that he is only talking about the relationship of constitutional law to lesser law, but it’s much deeper than that.
I believe Marshall’s message is: the society knows what it wants (the forbidding of murder, for example). Law belongs to all of us, so don’t think that if a bunch of legislators sit there and come up with something we don’t want that it is now authoritative. We are the authority. Here is the quote from Marbury v. Madison:
…The question, whether an act, repugnant to the constitution, can become the law of the land, is a question deeply interesting to the United States;
That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness, is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected.
The exercise of this original right is a very great exertion; nor can it, nor ought it, to be frequently repeated. The principles, therefore, so established, are deemed fundamental. And as the authority from which they proceed is supreme,… they are designed to be permanent….
…To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained… ? Certainly all those who have framed written constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently, the theory of every such government must be, that an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void…. This theory is… one of the fundamental principles of our society….
…It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is….We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding…intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs.
…[I]t is apparent, that the framers of the constitution contemplated that instrument as a rule for the government of courts… Why otherwise does it direct the judges to take an oath to support it?… How immoral to impose it on them, if they were to be used as the instruments, and the knowing instruments, for violating what they swear to support!
I say let the above make every judge happy and secure. And let it make every cop who knows something about funny business in Melbourne on January 19, come forward and be praised by all citizens.
- Mary W Maxwell is the author of Marathon Bombing: Indicting the Players
Photo credit: smh.com.au
Once again, thank you Mary for explaining in plain language how our Constitutional Laws are there to protect “Us from “Them”.
Look out Government Agents, one day someone with guts and finance will stand up to you in court, and your days will be over.
Mary, as for misprison of felony, look up section 316 of the NSW crimes act. It has been codified in NSW.
Do not know about the commonwealth crimes act. No time.
However we then may have a problem with commonwealth legislation overiding the states, but subject to constitutional problems.
Very interesting, Ned. i always have trouble getting my head around the relationship between two domestic sovereignties. i only recently got the hang of the US 14th amendment but I may lose it again. it’s that hard to hold onto.
Ned, now that you tell me misprision is codified in NSW I’m thinkin’ Lindt Cafe Inquest…. Geez, that could be fun.
BEWDY. Here it is:
“NSW CRIMES ACT 1900 – SECT 316
Concealing serious indictable offence
(1) If a person has committed a serious indictable offence and another person who knows or believes that the offence has been committed and that he or she has information which might be of material assistance in securing the apprehension of the offender [OMG OMG OMG] or the prosecution or conviction of the offender for it fails without reasonable excuse to bring that information to the attention of a member of the Police Force or other appropriate authority, that other person is liable to imprisonment for 2 years.
(2) A person who solicits, accepts or agrees to accept any benefit for himself or herself or any other person in consideration for doing anything that would be an offence under subsection (1) is liable to imprisonment for 5 years.”
By Jingo, I guess I won’t get in trouble after all for my Comment on Fiona Barnett’s situation which can be found here:
https://pedophilesdownunder.com/contact/comment-page-1/#comment-542
Applies with more fun to those who have received reports of sexual abuse. Now that is a game.
Prior to the codification, I was wondrous as to why misprison of a felony was not applied.
Note also the the common law offence of affray was not used from about the 1930’s to the late 1970’s when I succesfully applied it in the late 70’s resulting in a guilty plea in a Darlinghurst court house. His Honour had never heard of it and even questioned the indictment prior to it being read out to the offender.
Thus it was later codified by the NSW parliament with the misprison inclusion.
So Our Ned is the Da of 316. It’s been a happy day at Gumshoe and now it’s even happier.
The radio station I listened to today was doing one of those “the year of 1978” and as short-hand news events included the item of “when Australia experienced its first terrorist attack”. I looked it up as I have never heard of this event. The Hilton Sydney bombing is described, even under Wiki, as being a false flag event. A ruse done in order to bolster the budget and powers of the Australian intelligence service. No further description on the radio. No wonder the elite, or shadow governments, work in plain site as the populace is becoming progressively so fully amnesiac that they have carte blanc to do as they wilt. To somewhat paraphrase Aleister Crowley. I don’t believe the sheep will ever awaken or question their existance. How did this Hilton bombing ever get brushed under the carpet with so many discrepancies??? Then you look at all the other false flags before and after and there is your answer.
Darren you are right about the Hilton Bombing being a false flag.
One of our sources witnessed this event and can confirm this.
“Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t.” In legal jusisdictions based on English Common Law, individuals are apparently under the legal obligation to report felonies (or their renamed descendents) and subject to criminal sanctions if they do not; yet at the same time are prevented by doing so by the strictures of the Official Secrets Act, or whatever approximates to it.
We are all aware of which of these two, power brokers are more concerned to enforce, with such as Snowden, Manning and Assange – the most notable of many more – as living proof. (As an aside, “misprison” features in one of my favourite Shakespeare sonnets, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_87)
Those that seek to fulfill their duties under misprision generally do not fare well (See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_whistleblowers)
We may conclude that government is frequently responsible for illegal activity and persecutes anyone with the audacity to reveal it, even when legally obliged to do so.
Yet the public is generally under a spell, refusing to doubt anything emanating from official sources, or believing that Government itself could institute criminal acts itself to achieve perverse (or even laudible!) objectives. Perhaps slowly the spell is being broken to the advantage of us all.
As to the most recent Melbourne – Melbourne note yet again – incident, it certainly has a strong whiff of fish about it, not least that to a certain extent it mimics the tactics employed at Nice and Berlin, both highly suspect with extraordinary Jewish/Israeli connections. Sadly even in this event, a young Jewish girl was one of the victims, not specifically targeted yet unfortunate enough to be killed. “Thalia Hakin, whose scout troup were also there to pay respects, should have been returning to Beth Rivkah Ladies College in a few weeks, the MPs said. “I think all Victorians can identify … with a girl who was going into grade five, her life all in front of her, robbed by some crazed person,” Mr Danby said.” (Source: http://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/bourke-st-rampage-accused-released-from-hospital/news-story/2d057a50d89fcf458b8a4734a7d765a1)
I have not studied Melbourne as closely as I have others, so am reticent to make firm judgements, but the fact that the driver was able to insinuate himself into the background of a live news transmission is itself suspicious, as is the flamboyant way in which he was caught on camera doing ‘wheelies’ and shouting slogans apparently in support of Muslim terrorism. These have invariably featured in reports of events in America and Europe, whether accurate or not. The treatment and portrayal of the event and its timing are other indicative features of planned deception at some level or other.
And the name of the attacker: Dimitrious Gargasoulas. “Soulless” for goodness sake? Maybe just a coincidence but if you are not convinced just check out the names of other alleged terrorists, a feature I and others have drawn attention to elsewhere. Rather conveniently an image of him conveys all we need to know, or think we know, about such a brazen and ruthless individual. Interestingly it is set against a black and white tiled background that may have significance to some.
US President Trump has un-signed the TPP.
Yay!
Written law can only benefit those who are prepared to put personal security on the line; everything in this world has a cost.
[…] Mary Maxwell – “I am writing this article in the context of the peculiar event of January 19, 2017 in which a man drove his car deliberately into pedestrians in Melbourne, killing some of them. GumshoeNews.com received an extraordinary number of hits on its January 22 article Who Is The “Blue Man” Waving Instructions Before The Killing Spree?“ https://gumshoenews.com/2017/01/23/official-secrets-truth-and-societys-law/ […]
it is no secret that everytime the government says it is going to do something to keep us safe, they just make us more of a target.
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