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Tag Paul Gregoire

The Best of 2022: Northern Territory Government Continues Youth Detention Torture Regime at Don Dale

Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog: Paul Gregoire. Six years after Four Corners exposed the atrocities being perpetrated upon children at Darwin’s Don Dale Youth Detention Centre – and the subsequent push for reforms in its wake – the Northern Territory government has successfully… Continue Reading →

Best of 2022: PayPal Blocks Multiple Alternative Media Figures Critical of US Empire Narratives

By Caitlin Johnstone In what appears to be yet another escalation in Silicon Valley’s redoubled efforts to quash dissident voices since the beginning of the Ukraine war, PayPal has just blocked the accounts of multiple alternative media voices who’ve been… Continue Reading →

Australian Government and Opposition in Bed On National Security

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. The twilights years of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison government were marked by the realisation that the framework of national security and terrorism laws passed over the last decades had become so broad that the much-warned-of… Continue Reading →

Inside Bangkok’s Legal Cannabis Café

Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. Bangkok’s backpacker mecca Khao San Road has gone through a lot of changes over recent decades. The slick neon-lit bars lining much of the street are a far cry from the more down-home establishments… Continue Reading →

Prosecution for Profit: New South Wales Government Expands Power to Seize Unexplained Wealth

Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. Acting NSW police commissioner David Hudson flagged the scenario of his officers pulling up a young person driving a luxury sports car and questioning them as to how they came to be behind the… Continue Reading →

Governments Benefit From Drug Prohibition to the Detriment of Public Health

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. Politicians across the globe choose to disregard the overwhelming and mounting evidence that drug prohibition has been an abject failure. The century-old experiment of outlawing most popular psychoactive drugs, with the major exception… Continue Reading →

The Destruction of the Pilliga: Australia’s Most Fabled Forest

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog Much of Sydney’s housing of the 1950s was built from the region’s prized cypress pine; before the timber industry was progressively, and controversially, closed down through environmental activism and safety regulations impacting the… Continue Reading →

Julian to the Slaughter, as UK Moves Towards US Model of Killing Press Freedoms

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog The Westminster Magistrates Court approved the extradition of journalist Julian Assange to the US on 20 April. The proceedings were a mere formality, as the High Court had overturned its original decision not to… Continue Reading →

“Quiet Australians” Are Realising Morrison Doesn’t Care About Them

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. Australia is now in an election year, and the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison must face a dispirited, disillusioned and disengaged electorate sometime before June, most likely in May. The nation’s already absurd… Continue Reading →

A “Totalitarian Regime With a Sunny Climate”: David McBride on Australia’s Whistle Blower Persecution. The Best of 2021.

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog “I am appalled by what our country has become,” said former Australian Defence Force lawyer David McBride. “I grew up in the shadow of the Second World War. I believed all that. And… Continue Reading →

COVID-19 and the Global Shift Towards Authoritarian Governance. The Best of 2021.

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. Despite recurring lockdowns globally, COVID-19 continues to plague the planet. The pandemic toll on 29 January 2021 stands at 101 million cases worldwide, 56 million recoveries, and 2.19 million deaths as a result… Continue Reading →

Why Are Australian Governments Constructing the Surveillance State? The Best of 2021.

By Paul Gregoire with Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. Originally Published 4 January, 2021. Peter Dutton saw his ASIO Bill passed on the last parliamentary sitting day for 2020. The home affairs minister most likely had a rare smile upon his face whilst… Continue Reading →

Doctors Warn Assange’s Health Can’t Take Anymore State Sanctioned Torture

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. The US and the UK governments have been slowly torturing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for the last decade via a range of measures, including the deprivation of liberty, prolonged isolation, medical neglect and… Continue Reading →

Yet Another Supreme Court Challenge Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates Has Failed

By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog Days following the lifting of the Sydney lockdown, the NSW Supreme Court handed down its judgment in the case commonly known as Kassam versus Hazzard, which saw plaintiffs challenge aspects of… Continue Reading →

New South Wales Is Incarcerating First Nations People for Fishing in Their Own Waters

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. “They’ve been prosecuting our people down here for cultural fishing,” said Wally Stewart. “There is a law that gives us a right to fish, which is section 211 of the Native Title Act. And it’s… Continue Reading →

Unfolding Catastrophe: Journalist John Stapleton on the Government’s COVID Response. The Best of 2021.

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog Tensions are high in the Sydney region as the population looks towards its tenth week in lockdown, without any clear understanding of when it will be coming out of the home confinement it’s… Continue Reading →

COVID Restriction Breaches Were Driven by Police Enforcement, Report Finds

BY Paul Gregoire. Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. The measures that were set in place by the Berejiklian government in NSW in response to the outbreak of the Delta strain of COVID-19 were extreme. Designed to prevent the mass death that… Continue Reading →

With No Australian Bill of Rights, Freedom Fighting Anti-Vaccine Mandate Case Kassam v Hazzard Was Bound to Fail: An Interview With Professor George Williams

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog NSW Supreme Court Justice Robert Beech-Jones delivered his ruling on the Kassam versus Hazzard case, which raised close to a dozen grounds contesting the validity of public health order restrictions, as well as vaccine mandates,… Continue Reading →

As Lockdowns Lift, the COVID Policing Hangover Is Coming

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog Soon the lockdowns will end. The disparities in the enforcement of public health measures will disappear. Most who have been forced to stay at home will return to work. The vaccination drive will… Continue Reading →

“We Should Be Outraged”: Interview with Australian War Power Reform’s Dr Alison Broinowski on the AUKUS Pact

By Paul Gregoire, Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. “G’day,” said the prime minister as he addressed the nation on 16 September. Scott Morrison then went on to reveal that he’s been busy committing us to a tripartite defence alliance – known as… Continue Reading →

The Political Flouting of Pandemic Restrictions Is Anti-Democratic

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. In case you haven’t noticed, there are fast growing divisions within the community between those in favour of the use of pandemic border closures and lockdowns and those who oppose their imposition. Yet,… Continue Reading →

Ever-Expanding COVID Rules are Making Criminals Out of Law-Abiding Citizens

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog Just so we’re all clear, a virus is an infectious agent that only replicates itself within the cells of living organisms. A virus is too small to be seen under a microscope. And… Continue Reading →

Proposed Law Seeks to Prohibit ‘COVID Passports’

By Sonia Hickey: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog A Private Member’s Bill introduced in Federal Parliament aims to prohibit the introduction of COVID passports for use in Australia. The No Domestic COVID Vaccine Passports Bill 2021 has been put forth by Craig Kelly,… Continue Reading →

Heavy-handed Covid Policing: The Discriminatory Sweep of Southwestern Sydney

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. On 3 July, the initial, and thought to be only, Saturday of the “soft” Sydney lockdown, premier Gladys Berejiklian at her 11am announcement, jovially empathised with locals about the weather being “great” and asked… Continue Reading →

Australian Government Prosecutes Those Who Expose Corruption, While the Real Criminals Walk Free

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog As the prosecutions of prominent whistleblowers are slowly proceeding through the courts in Canberra, a growing number of citizens are questioning why this nation’s authorities persecute and penalise those who expose corruption, while… Continue Reading →

“They Say Accident, We Say Murder”: Australia’s First Nations’ Custodial Deaths

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. “This shows how our government facilities and systems will treat you if your skin colour is black,” declared Dunghutti activist Paul Silva at the 10 April Stop All Black Deaths in Custody Rally in Sydney…. Continue Reading →

Calls for Justice as the System Fails Mhelody Bruno: An Interview With Artist Bhenji Ra

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog The 20th November is Trans Remembrance Day. And on this date last year, it was announced that 350 trans and gender diverse people had been killed globally over the course of the 12 months prior…. Continue Reading →

The Fear of Terrorism Does Not Justify the Wholesale Removal of Citizens’ Rights

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog Home affairs minister Peter Dutton slid through his ASIO Bill 2020 with bipartisan approval on the final sitting day of parliament last year. The usual suspect, the fear of terrorism, was cited as justification for the passing… Continue Reading →

Morrison Drafts Laws to Placate Murdoch, as Google Threatens to Pull the Plug

By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. Since the advent of the internet, data has increasingly risen in worth to the point that these days it’s the most valuable resource on the planet. Over that same time frame, consumers have become increasingly… Continue Reading →

Noam Chomsky on the Plight of Assange: “The Complicity of Many Governments”

The Best of 2020. By Paul Gregoire: Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. British Judge Vanessa Baraitser is currently deliberating on whether Australian journalist Julian Assange should be extradited to the United States, as he’s currently being remanded in her country on American espionage… Continue Reading →

Assange’s Momentary Reprieve Opens Way for More Torture and US Extradition on Appeal

By Paul Gregoire with Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog For a brief moment, the globe was shocked that a UK court ruled against the extradition of Australian journalist Julian Assange to the US, where he would face an 18 count Virginia District Court indictment,… Continue Reading →

“It Should Put all Australians on Notice”: Andrew Wilkie on the Unjust Assange Extradition Trial

By Paul Gregoire. Sydney Criminal Lawyers Blog. The judge presiding over Julian Assange’s extradition case, Judge Vanessa Baraitser, indicated last week that she wouldn’t be making a decision on whether the Australian journalist and publisher will be sent to the United States,… Continue Reading →

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