This edition of Divorcing The Feds responds to the outrage that the majority of Australians are presently feeling about the joke of a system that passes for justice in Indonesia.

However there is no tirade here against the judges and prosecutors as individuals. When the process that Schapelle Corby has been subjected to is described as STUPID or even EVIL it is not the Indonesian officials and lawyers that are so described. It is something far more fundamental than the illogical trial and conviction of Schapelle that is at issue. It is the very concept of the Rule of Law that is in question here; as well as the prevailing notions of federated governments and international treaties that exclude ordinary people and contemptuously trample their rights and freedoms.

Schapelle's Courage Could Change Australia Forever
To her great credit this young Australian woman, who was the unwitting victim of crime and corruption in the aviation transport system of her own country, has emerged from her trial ordeal unbowed and full of fight. The customs officers and police who seized 4.1kg of marijuana from her baggage upon her arrival at Nagurah Rai Airport would have thought that Schapelle was an easy mark, another easy conviction on their list of successes against Westerners. Instead, they now seem to have jailed someone who is fast becoming a national heroine in the eyes of many of her fellow Australians, and some Indonesians as well.

If the Indonesian court system expected an offender who would admit quilt and quickly plead for leniency (anything to escape the horrors of the Bali prison and get back to Australia) they were mistaken. Schapelle Corby steadfastly asserted her innocence, even though her judges did not understand English and did not trouble too much with translations. When the judges read their verdict and patently unjust sentence, Schapelle looked directly across the courtroom to where the star prosecutor sat, and he averted his gaze. This man who has sent so many to their deaths or life imprisonment for drug offences lost a battle of eye contact with the young Aussie woman who, despite being far from home and well out of her legal depth, made him look away in shame at what he had done.

And that's why it isn't over yet. Schapelle Corby is showing immense courage and determination, and the Australian populace is forming up behind her.

Despite having Schapelle 'on toast' in their particular legal system, in which she won't even get a chance to appear in person to plead her appeals to higher courts; and despite seeming to have her at their non-existent mercy, the Indonesian customs, police and judiciary have not heard the end of her yet. Nor have the Indonesian and Australian governments.

From her cell, after her conviction, Schapelle Corby appealed directly to Australian 'people power' for help. Not to the dishonest and manipulative Australian officials and politicians, but to the people. And they have heard her loud and clear. The ramifications of Schapelle Corby's arrest and conviction could change Australia forever.

The Scales Are Dropping From Aussie's Eyes
The injustice of the proceedings against Lindy Chamberlain, who was jailed for the murder of her infant daughter Azaria in 1982, took some time to permeate the consciousness of Australians. At the time of the Chamberlain trial most believed her to be guilty, this is not the case with the Corby matter. More and more Australians are becoming absolutely convinced that she is innocent, and they are outraged at what has happened to her since she flew to Indonesia on 8 October, 2004.

The assassination of John. F. Kennedy, in 1963, is still remembered by almost everyone in Australia who was old enough to comprehend it at the time. People still remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of President Kennedy's death. It will be the same for the conviction of Schapelle Corby. People will always remember how and where they learnt the news, and how totally outraged they were.

There is no logic in hating the Indonesian people for what their justice system has, so far, done to Schapelle Corby. Many Aussies already recognise that fact and see that the major causes of her plight originate in Australia.

Soon, because of Schapelle Corby's steadfast refusal to bow to federal government advice to admit guilt and seek a presidential pardon, all the Australian people will see the reality, and the extent of the betrayal of this young woman by her own government, its police and customs agencies, and QANTAS - the Australian airline.

Aussies will increasingly come to see four realities.

1. That the Rule of Law is flawed, not just in Indonesia but everywhere.

2. That federal governments are the cause of our problems, not the solution.

3. That international treaties advantage governments rather than citizens.

4. That Australia has a serious crime problem within its airports and police.

As Schapelle Corby continues to assert her innocence and fight for justice these realities will come into sharp focus for most Australians. Whether she eventually wins by mobilising 'people power' (which we must all strive for) or she is imprisoned for the best part of her life, or even executed, her unjust treatment will cause all Australians to think differently about the federal system of government and its increasingly obvious deficiencies.

How An Innocent Australian Traveller Was Abandoned To Her Fate
Schapelle Corby's troubles began from the minute she handed over her boogie board bag at the QANTAS check-in at Brisbane Airport. She only became aware of her life-threatening problem when she presented her baggage to Indonesian customs, many hours later. But the events that were to place her life in jeopardy began in Brisbane.

• The machine used to scan bags for drugs had been turned off, to "save money".
• QANTAS then failed to secure CCTV footage of her bags being checked in. These images might well have shown that there was, at that point, no bulge in her boogie board bag due to a package containing 4.1kg of marijuana. Such evidence could have quickly cleared Schapelle because her defence could have shown that the drugs had not been in her luggage when she handed it over to QANTAS.

• Both in Brisbane and in Bali QANTAS failed to secure the weight of Schapelle Corby's boogie bag, which could have shown a 4.1kg increase in weight after she had checked it in.

• Again, to Schapelle's bad luck, the presence or absence of marijuana in her bag could not have been detected by sniffer dogs in Brisbane, because they were "off duty" that day.

Schapelle's flight flew via Sydney, so there was an opportunity for the package of marijuana to be placed in her boogie bag while it was being transferred to the international flight bound for Bali. Since marijuana has a far lower street value in Bali than it has in Australia it seems likely that a mix-up occurred. The person or persons who placed the drugs in Schapelle's bag were possibly alarmed when they became aware that police were at the airport that day, to apprehend operatives involved in a large importation of cocaine. They might then have put the package of marijuana anywhere, just to get it out of sight.

• Police and Customs were aware that a criminal gang was importing a suitcase of cocaine from South America to Sydney Airport on the day that Schapelle Corby's baggage was transferred from one flight to another in that very same airport; on 8 October, 2004.

  Authorities were well aware of the problems with passenger's baggage being transferred from the domestic to the international terminal, by men with criminal records and known criminal associates.

  None of this information was made available to Schapelle Corby's defence team. It was only revealed once certain journalists probed for clues to what might have happened to the boogie board bag. By then it was too late for Schapelle, she was judged guilty and sentenced to 20 years in a Bali prison.

• QANTAS flat out refused to provide the Corby defence team with the names of the baggage handlers who had been on the particular shift at Sydney airport on 8 October. Given the logistic and cost constraints involved it was impractical for Corby's lawyers to subpoena the entire roster of baggage handlers, so she was left without any witnesses from that area at all.

  Schapelle's lawyers became aware of the problems in the baggage handling areas at the airport after a prisoner in a Victorian jail came forward to testify that he had overheard other inmates discussing the Corby case within the prison. They allegedly named the person who had placed the marijuana in Schapelle's bag, but the witness was not believed by the Bali judges because he was unwilling to reveal the name of the baggage handler; for fear of his life.

  The potential evidence regarding baggage handlers at Sydney airport was then publicly discredited - before it was offered to the court in Bali - by none other than the Federal Police Commissioner himself. He stated that the evidence was "hearsay" and "valueless". This was a highly improper thing for him to have done, particularly as it subsequently become clear that the Australian Federal Police were well aware of the activities of corrupt baggage handlers and would appear to have withheld their own, far more credible, information from the Corby defence team and the Bali court.

• The highly disturbing truth is that all along QANTAS has known the names of the baggage handlers on the shift that transferred Schapelle Corby's baggage, but they would not reveal them. One of those people is the one who is alleged to have been discussed by prisoners in a Victorian jail as having placed a package of marijuana in her bag.

  Legal experts in Australia and Indonesia say that the only evidence that can set Schapelle free is proof that somebody else placed the package in her boogie bag, and thus she knew nothing of it until she opened the zipper in front of Indonesian customs officers (who subsequently lied about her admitting that the drugs were hers).

  It is an outrage that QANTAS knows the name that might go a long way to clearing Schapelle Corby but they have not made it available to her legal team. A single individual in a Victorian prison had enough conscience and sympathy for Schapelle's plight to testify that there was a corrupt baggage handler on the shift on 8 October. But QANTAS, an organisation with large financial and legal resources to protect itself from organised criminals, does not care enough to help her. They took her fare readily enough, but they have shown they are too cowardly to use the undoubted corporate muscle they possess, to help her defend herself in the foreign land they flew her to. Shame on them !

• It is also an outrage that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) refused to send an officer to Bali to testify regarding historical corruption in baggage handling at Sydney and Brisbane airports involving drug smuggling.

  There is now no doubt at all that there has been tampering with baggage at Australian airports in areas designated as 'airside'. These cover baggage handling on the apron and in non-public transfer halls. The airside security at Australian airports is largely, but not exclusively, the responsibility of the Australian Federal Police.

  It's the AFP that is supposed to prevent corrupt baggage handlers causing innocent Australians like Schapelle Corby from arriving in overseas destinations with drugs in their bags that they know absolutely nothing about.

  Shame on the AFP for covering up the problem and shirking their responsibility to speak up on Schapelle's behalf.

The existence of serious criminal activities involving the high volume movement of drugs through Australian airports under the noses of federal agencies such as Customs and the AFP is an absolute disgrace. In earlier days, when Australia was still a democracy in which elected representatives were accountable to the people, a number of federal ministers would already have resigned over the revolving crime scene that is called Sydney Airport. However, Australia is now a totalitarian state, and the people are held in contempt by federal bureaucrats and politicians.  Now the sorry plight of Schapelle Corby - and her courageous refusal to accept official advice to admit she is guilty and seek a pardon - is causing this reversal of accountability to be noticed by more and more Australians. And they don't like it one little bit.

• Millions of Australians have been truly concerned to learn of an earlier case of two Aussies, Steve and Dee, who had arrived in Bali in 1997 with a loaf-sized package of marijuana in one of their bags, which had not been there when they had personally packed it. Luckily for them, the Indonesian customs had not inspected their luggage and they only found the airtight package after they arrived at their hotel.

  When Steve and Dee got over their shock they sought the advice of the Australian Consulate in Denpasar. They both swear that they were told to flush the marijuana down their hotel toilet. The official they spoke to told Steve:

  "If you get caught with that mate you will be eating nasi goring for the rest of your life in jail".

  After they heard about Schapelle Corby, Steve and Dee went to an Australian TV channel and told their story. A spokeswoman for the Foreign Affairs department admitted that the Vice-Consul in Bali remembers the call, but denies using the above phrase. Commenting on Australian radio, shortly before Schapelle Corby was found guilty, the Minister stated that her defence team had been aware of the incident but had not bothered to present evidence based on it. He thought that they might have considered that it had happened too long ago and would not have been admissible in court.

  But surely that's the whole point, drug smuggling through Australian airports has been going on for years and the Feds seem to have done nothing about it. Not a thing. Not any tightening of security at Sydney. Not any screening of baggage handlers or security managers. Not even a travel advisory to tell Australians that they should secure their luggage to prevent drugs being inserted by criminals working freely at our airports. As Schapelle Corby has rightly observed,

  "My crime was to not lock my bag."

The Corby legal team gained some inkling of what was going on at Australian airports from events that unfolded in Sydney while her trial was in progress in Bali.

• On 8 April, 2005, when the issue of airport baggage handling was well and truly in the spotlight, a baggage handler at the domestic terminal at Sydney Airport was driven across the tarmac wearing the top half of a camel suit that he had removed from a passenger's baggage. He was seen by the owner of the suit and reported to QANTAS officials.

• Schapelle's lawyers attempted, unsuccessfully, to have this evidence of prevailing rifling of baggage at Sydney Airport admitted as evidence. But, all the time, there was far better information that was deliberately withheld from them by authorities in Australia.

An Australian Customs report into corruption and drug smuggling at Sydney Airport had been completed in September, 2004, the month before Schapelle Corby flew to Bali, but kept classified. Although Australian officials in Customs, the AFP, airport management, and QANTAS, would have been aware of the following facts revealed in the report, the Corby legal team was not told of it. Evidence of the existence of such a damning study could have helped her plead her innocence. But the Feds didn't care enough to help her.  In similar circumstances they wouldn't have helped you or I either.

Here are a few findings from the report. It is taken from the Sydney Morning Herald of 31 May, 2005, and The Age of the same date.

• "Baggage handlers diverted bags containing large amounts of drugs from incoming international flights to domestic baggage carousels."

• "Baggage tags were sometimes changed to avoid customs checks."

• "Baggage handlers are suspected of large-scale pillage and may use the roof area to gain illegal entry to the passenger baggage." (A large quantity of padlocks that had been cut open were discovered in the roof space of Sydney Airport.)

• "The crimes were made easy by baggage handlers using the roster system to get their 'mates' working in the same gangs."

• "Thirty-nine out of 500 security screeners employed at Sydney Airport had a serious criminal conviction.

  Another 39 had been convicted of minor matters and 14 had questionable immigration status."

• "... investigators were continuing to uncover numerous 'black spots' in the maze of baggage tunnels beneath Sydney Airport which cannot be captured by surveillance cameras. Baggage handlers and other employees allegedly used the 'black spots' as drop-off and pick-up points for drug importations."

• "Senator Ellison said intelligence within the report had already been referred to law enforcement agencies, and in some cases action was ongoing. The information had no relevance to Schapelle Corby who on Friday was convicted of drug smuggling in a Bali court, he said." [Many clear thinking Aussies would disagree with him on that score.]

• "A OANTAS spokeswoman said she could not comment on the report's claim that Asian-recruited QANTAS crew may be involved in the importation of drugs. But customs checks of air crew were relatively rare, despite evidence showing they were "an extremely high risk", the report said."

On 5 March the Sydney Morning Herald detailed how Schapelle Corby's boogie bag had been handled at Sydney Airport. The following excerpts make it clear just how vulnerable the unlocked bag was.

• "At 6am, the travellers flew to Sydney, arriving 90 minutes later. Their bags were taken by baggage handlers to Bay 5 at the QANTAS domestic terminal, where they were loaded onto a trolley for transfer to the international terminal. When there was a full load for Australian Airlines flight AO7829 to Bali they were hauled two kilometres to Pier B at the international airport, where handlers scanned them to check they had been cleared for their scheduled flight. The three suitcases went through the security X-ray and onto a conveyer which delivered them to the loading bay in Pier C designated for AO7829.

  The boogie board, however, was too big for the conveyor. It was put on a trolley, hauled to Pier C and then, at 8.18am, put into a baggage canister, DQF60342QF, which contained two other bags. Its loading sequence was 70, making it one of the last items put into the canister, placing it near the front. It would be one of the first bags taken out when the canister was unloaded in Bali.

  The canister was closed by a canvas flap but not locked. It was held at Pier C for 97 minutes until half an hour before the Bali flight's departure.

• All the baggage transfers in Brisbane, at Bay 5 in Sydney and at Piers B and C at the international terminal were monitored by closed-circuit cameras. There are no other security measures - all are big, open areas accessible to anyone with an airside security pass.
  [The 2km tunnel linking the domestic and international terminals at Sydney did not have any security cameras. It was a black spot where baggage handlers could do whatever they wanted with the boogie board bag.]

  Not one of the security camera tapes recorded in these areas on the morning of October 8 [while police and customs authorities were mounting an operation against a major cocaine importation from South America] was checked for images of the boogie board or for any unauthorised approach to the boogie board. The images recorded by the QANTAS security cameras were wiped after a month, those on the cameras at Piers B and C, controlled by the Sydney Airports Corporation, after 72 hours. Thus Corby's lawyers were denied evidence which might have proved her innocence."

• "There are no inspections of bags or vehicles to check what staff with Aviation Security Identification Cards carry in and out of the airport."

  Separate reports in the media allege that there are 30 access points to the airside of Sydney Airport and many are unmanned. All anyone had to do was swipe the gate with a pass obtained from the airport authorities. The process of obtaining a pass was not subject to stringent security checking. Just about anyone could have been in the area where Schapelle Corby's boogie bag sat unattended for 97 minutes; on the day of the big cocaine importation.

There are, of course, many honest baggage handlers as well as an Airport Security Union that continues to highlight the inadequacies of the systems at Sydney Airport. Here are some excerpts from an article on the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union's web site. Annie Owens is the NSW Secretary of the Airport Security Union.

• "At almost exactly the same time that the Customs Report was being completed our union activists were working with The Australian newspaper to outline how pyramid contracting was creating a security screener's nightmare at Sydney Airport." Annie Owens said.

  "We argued then, as we argue now, that the Federal Government should consider re-negotiating the contract with the current security company, SNP, if they won't meet all their obligations to supply permanent specialist security screening staff to protect travellers at Sydney Airport."

• "The LHMU Airport Security Union has for a long time complained to Sydney Airport, QANTAS and the Federal Government about the use of labour-hire firms to supply our security screening needs - without proper checks and balances.

  The problem that I see with the current subcontracting arrangements are that SNP subcontract to a company popularly known as 'Frank's Boys'," Annie said.

  "They're known around the industry as 'Frank's Boys' and we've been pursuing that company for years because of a variety of workplace problems."

  "The problem is the use of this subcontracting company does not provide the balances and checks needed to ensure all security is ridgy-didge."

  "Basically they are a labour-hire company who just provides bodies to SNP for them to use whenever they want."

  "These guys are working just on day passes, which the ordinary public can obtain from SACL (Sydney Airport Corporation Limited), so in our opinion there's no balance and checks on exactly who is working on the security side at this important workplace."

  "Our union has consistently argued - and appeared with these arguments before Parliamentary inquiries - warning that we need a permanent full-time airport security workforce."

On 1 June, 2005, a Security Manager for QANTAS at Sydney Airport was sacked due to his known association with the alleged masterminds of the cocaine importation that took place at Sydney Airport on 8 October, 2004. This was, of course, the same day that Schapelle Corby and her companions transited that airport en route to Bali. In its coverage of this development the Sydney Morning Herald (of 2nd and 3rd June 2005) made the following points.

• "A disgraced former drug detective who was mentioned adversely during the [NSW] police commission in 1996 has been sacked as a security manager at QANTAS.

  In evidence before the commission, Alan Conwell, a former officer with the Drug Enforcement Agency, was caught on phone taps trying to help a criminal associate of fugitive Michael Hurley avoid prosecution.

  An international search is under way for Hurley and his associate, Les Mara, over allegations they used QANTAS baggage handlers to smuggle cocaine into Australia from South America. "

  "The 1996 commission heard intercepted calls of a criminal, Norm Beves, organising a meeting with Mr Conwell after police had questioned him about the theft of perfume worth $8000 from a duty-free shop.

  It also heard evidence that Mr Conwell, then a detective on a salary of $30,000 a year with an $800 a-month mortgage and three children, was able to pay for $13,000 worth of renovations to his house - most of it in cash. He was also able to take his family on an overseas holiday and a cruise around the Pacific.

  Mr Conwell said he had been able to afford his lifestyle because of gambling successes and money borrowed from his father, Keith, who was also a policemen and also mentioned adversely at the commission.

  Also mentioned in passing at the commission was Beve's friend, Greg Cusack, who was then a fellow wharf worker but who is now employed as a QANTAS baggage handler. "

• "Since December a major figure in the drug cartel has been supplying information to a taskforce of federal and state police and the crime commission.

  According to this man, who is now in witness protection, Hurley was involved in smuggling almost 10 kilograms of cocaine on October 8 [2004] - and a QANTAS baggage handler code named Tom was involved in collecting the briefcase from the drug mule.

  It has been alleged in court that the smugglers were about to bring in another 20 kilograms when they discovered police were on to them."

• "The head of security for QANTAS, Geoff Askew, told the Herald yesterday that the airline had been unaware of adverse comments about Mr Conwell during the 1996 police royal commission.

  Meanwhile, a senior federal police officer was stood down on Friday in relation to allegations of misconduct. It is understood that the misconduct relates to the failure to document a previous meeting with Hurley."

What Indonesian Justice Did To An Innocent Australian
Before reviewing what happened when Schapelle Corby and her friends arrived at Denpasar's Ngurah Rai Airport it is appropriate to face an unpleasant reality: corruption is rife in Indonesia. Corruption is the way of life there, not an exception to an otherwise blameless code of conduct. The Indonesian people won't like this assertion but, whether they admit it or not, the great majority will know in their hearts that it is true.

It is not the role of outsiders like myself, or other Australians, to judge the morality of Indonesian culture. That is really none of our business. But we need to understand the realities of Bali and its justice system in order to know the extent of the predicament that Schapelle Corby now faces.

A report filed from Denpasar by Matthew Moore appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald of 30 May, 2005. It deals with the routine practice of 'buying' reduced prison sentences, and suggests that this is what Schapelle Corby must do. Here are some excerpts.

• "With all the calls to help Schapelle Corby by boycotting QANTAS, staging a national day of protest or recruiting QCs, it is worth remembering what has normally helped others in Indonesia in similar predicaments: wads of money."

• "Australian yachtsman Chris Packer did not want to talk about what it might have cost him to get out of jail after spending three months in custody after being caught with undeclared firearms on his vessel."

• "Demands of amounts of $200,000 are not unheard of in cases involving large quantities of drugs like the Corby case, and the stories of $30,000, $50,000 and $100,000 payments for possession charges are routine."

• "As anyone who knows anything about the drugs trials of foreigners caught in Bali [knows], there is always a negotiation about the likely sentence that invariably involves large sums of cash.

  That doesn't mean you can buy your way out you can't, at least once the prosecutors are involved in a case with a large quantity of drugs. But you can pay to reduce the sentence from death to something a little lighter. Twenty years in jail might seem unspeakably harsh but, in this part of the world, it is moderate."

• "Australians might be appalled, but it is the way life has evolved in a country where public servants don't get enough to provide for themselves and their families and to pay back the loans they all must take out to buy their jobs.

  Bribes are part of the wages system and the tax system. It is in that environment that Corby's lawyers will mount their appeal."

• "Those who think that there is too much publicity and scrutiny of the case for any bribes to be paid should remember it was just last month that her financial backer, Ron Bakir, went on radio to say that was exactly what had been happening.

  He named Corby's prosecutor, [Ida Bagus Wiswantanu], and said that despite the publicity there had already been four or five meetings with someone acting on his behalf, and called it an absolute disgrace. He was talking about bribes, but did not use the word, and was certain the person in the meetings was acting for the prosecutor - 100 per cent was how certain he was.

  When the Indonesian Government threatened legal action, Mr Bakir retracted everything he said, but that has not changed the reality of how these matters are resolved."

We should bear these realities in mind when considering the account of Schapelle Corby's arrival and subsequent treatment in Bali. The following excerpts are from Australian news articles. The story might be quite different in the Bali newspapers.

• "After a seven-hour flight, they landed in Bali about 2.30pm local time, stepping out of an air-conditioned cocoon into what seemed like a steam bath.

  Spirits were high. Now all the travellers had to do was collect their bags and take them to their hotel where they had pre-paid rooms and Mercedes [Schapelle's sister] would be waiting.

  After their bags were unloaded from the canister they passed through an X-ray machine before moving onto the baggage carousel.

  By the time Corby's party got through security and immigration, their bags were on the carousel. But not the boogie board. It had been set apart on the floor. Corby was struggling with her bag, so McComb told James to help his sister with the boogie board. Together they took it to the customs counters where they would exit."

Two points to note here are the X-ray and the setting aside of the then suspicious boogie bag, awaiting a claimant.

Unlike the machine at Brisbane Airport which had been switched off to save money, the X-ray at Ngurah Rai Airport was operating and capable of detecting the marijuana in the bag. The Bali Customs officers had evidently set a trap for whoever claimed the boogie board, and in Bali a 'guilty until proven innocent' presumption applies. The person who claimed the bag was going to be in big trouble, and the underpaid officials were in line for a share of any bribe that the accused might be persuaded to pay to avoid a firing squad.

At the customs counter the stories of what happened are conflicting. Igusti Ngurah Nyoman Winata and another customs officer claim that Schapelle Corby admitted to owning the boogie board and the bag of marijuana that had been found inside it. She strenuously denies that. This is where the lack of a confirmatory X-ray at Brisbane, to show that the bag was without the pack of marijuana, was so damaging to Corby. She had nothing to prove that she had checked in only the boogie bag and a pair of flippers.

• "Winata was the first witness called by the prosecution when Corby's trial opened last month in The Denpasar District Court ... Winata testified that when he told Corby to open the bag, she instead opened a front pocket, saying "Nothing in there." He again ordered her to open the main flap. "The suspect [appeared] to panic. when I opened the bag a little she stopped me and said, 'No' I asked why. She answered, 'I have some ...' she looked confused."

• "Winata said he opened the bag and saw the flippers, the plastic bags with the marijuana and the boogie board. "I asked the suspect what was in the plastic bags. she said it was marijuana. I asked her, 'How do you know?' She said, 'I smelled it when you opened the bag." A second customs officer supported this testimony.

• "Asked for her response in court, Corby got to her feet and angrily declared: "He's lying." In a strong voice, she said: "I opened the bag at the customs counter. He did not ask me. I opened it myself. I saw a plastic bag inside. It had been half opened." Corby made a gesture of recoiling. "Oh! That smell!" She repeated the denial several times."

• "Winata testified that Schapelle and James Corby were taken to an interview room, where the contents of the boogie bag were removed in front of Corby, who identified each item, including the drug bag, as belonging to her. Corby denied this several times. 'Never, ever. Never.'

  James testified ... that the customs officer had ordered him to carry the boogie board to the interview room while Corby remained outside. Corby had not been present when the customs officer ordered James to remove the drug bag, which he did. Corby said the bag was on the floor when she was taken into the room. She recoiled in shock.

  When McComb was allowed to join them about half an hour later, she saw it on the floor. 'Oh, my God," she said, appalled."

• "The marijuana was in a brand-named Space Bag, which has a nozzle through which air is extracted, compacting the load. Photographs taken by customs officers at the airport clearly show that this bag was inserted upside down into another Space Bag. Other photographs show customs officers handling the marijuana through the bottom of the internal bag.

  Yet, for some reason, the customs officers - when questioned by the defence - denied opening the boogie board bag after the X-ray machine detected the drugs, and denied inspecting the drugs and then zipping the bag shut again.

  But Corby said the bag had been unzipped and zipped shut. She indicated how the two zips now met in the middle, whereas she always zipped it shut from right bottom to left bottom with a single zip."

• "Questioned by Corby's lawyers, Winata denied that customs officers had slit open the internal drug bag before Corby collected the boogie board. Her lawyers, who inspected the bag, said it had been partly cut open by a blunt instrument, perhaps a key.

  When the bags were presented in court, four months after Corby's arrest, the internal bag was instantly noticeable because the bottom was sealed with black tape.

  Asked to show the position of the drugs bag when he found it , Winata placed it upright in the outside bag, with the taped end down - reversing the position shown by the customs photographs. Questioned by defence lawyers, he insisted he had not made a mistake.

  Winata might not have been aware of the photographs. But the prosecutor, Ida Bagus Nyoman Wiswantanu, was. They are contained in the brief of evidence submitted by the police. He did not question Winata's answers."

While it would be unfair to categorically implicate Wiswantanu and other officers and justice officials in a plot to convict Schapelle Corby and share any bribes related to a lighter sentence, their various behaviours and testimonies do suggest this might have been so. Similar doubts arise in regard to the failure of police to fingerprint the Space Bags containing the marijuana. There is a likelihood that some Bali officials saw Schapelle Corby not as a confused tourist protesting her innocence, but as a simple meal ticket - a way to make some income on the side.

• "From the outset the customs officers neglected four basic investigative procedures.

  They handled the outside drug bag with unprotected hands, taking no precautions against contaminating the only item of evidence. They handled the bottom of the internal bag when they took out the marijuana.

  First McComb and then Mercedes, when she got to the airport interview room, protested, demanding the bags be fingerprinted. They got the same reply. "too late. Too many people have touched them." Mercedes said she replied. "Well stop it right now." They laughed at her.

  But Corby's lawyer, Lily Sri Rahaya Lubis, and her assistant, Vasu Rasiah, insist that most of the bag that actually contained the drugs was still clean because in had not been removed from the external bag. Only the bottom of the internal bag had been handled."

• "The fingerprint evidence is important. If Corby's prints are on either bag, she is condemned. But if they are not, it is strong evidence for the defence, although not conclusive. Corby told the lawyers to press hard. "They won't find my fingerprints." she said."

• "In late December, almost three months after Corby's arrest and after repeated requests to have the evidence fingerprinted, the lawyers confronted the director of the Bali narcotics bureau, Senior Commissioner Bambang Sugiarto, who was in charge of the investigation.

  Sugiarto had the bags brought to his office in Lubis's presence. "He confirmed the inside bag had not been removed. He said he would have it fingerprinted," Lubis said. But still it was not done.

  She says the bag remained uncontaminated when it went to the prosecutor with other evidence on January 6.

  But that changed on February 3, when Corby made her second court appearance. In front of the three judges, the internal bag was taken out of the external bag and handled freely by a number of court officials, including customs officer Winata, prosecutor Wiswantanu and assistant judge I Gusti Lanang Dauh.

  At the close of court that day, the frustrated defence lawyers made a formal application to have the bags fingerprinted. Chief Judge Linton Sirait said he would consider it. "There's still plenty of time," he said. Two court sittings later, the lawyers are still waiting for his decision. ..."

• "A second basic procedure was overlooked at the airport. Two hours after Corby was detained, customs were aware that there were four baggage tags in her name. The bags were only a few metres away, with Katrina Richards, who was anxiously guarding them.

  The moment Corby claimed that the marijuana had been put in her boogie board bag during transit, the weight of the bags became crucial evidence. If the bags weighed 4.1 kilograms - the weight of the marijuana - more than they did in Brisbane when they were checked in, then she was telling the truth. If the weights were the same, she was lying.

  No attempt was made to search or weigh the bags, even though Corby demanded it. Later, when Corby had lawyers, it was too late. The bags had left the airport. The prosecution made no mention of this or of the failure to take fingerprints."

• "The third overlooked procedure is even more basic. The customs area at Ngurah Rai Airport is monitored by closed circuit cameras which observed Corby's actions. They could corroborate or contradict her account. But the prosecutor said they were not checked. ..."

• "There was a fourth failure. The X-ray machine that detected the marijuana is not equipped to take photographs. So no image was available to show the location of the marijuana in the boogie board bag before it got to customs."

It should be noted that not all the Indonesian officials acted to make Schapelle Corby seem guilty. A report on 8 May, 2005, on the ABC News Online website reported that the head of the Balinese Drug Squad commented on the case as follows.

• "On Indonesian television, Colonel Bambang Sugiarto has singled out the lack of television footage at Bali airport when she arrived last October as one weakness.

  In comments aired on Channel Nine, Colonel Sugiarto said there were other gaps in the prosecution case.

  Colonel Sugiarto said the prosecution case was only half there because of difficulties with fingerprinting."

However, the prosecutor, Ida Bagus Wiswantanu, insisted that he would not accept that Schapelle Corby was innocent unless there was proof, either visual or by weight, that the marijuana was not in the boogie board bag when she checked it in at Brisbane Airport. Or there was visual evidence of someone putting the drugs in the bag.

• "Any chance of getting that evidence is gone. The security tapes which might have helped ... have been wiped. The luggage was not weighed at Bali.

  QANTAS says the tapes were wiped on November 2, two weeks before they received a letter from the lawyers officially requesting copies. After the letter, dated November 16, QANTAS got forensic experts to see if any images could be recovered but this was not successful.

  But Corby's lawyers say their first request for the tapes was made on October 14, six days after Corby's arrest, and was repeated a number of times.

  The lawyers say that in the last week of October, the QANTAS security official told them the tapes were going to be destroyed within a week. On October 28, they sent the security official a email, noting this and requesting copies of the tapes before they were wiped. This did not happen."

Given the fact that a major heroin importation was undertaken through Sydney Airport on the day that the Corby party transited it, there is a distinct possibility that the video surveillance tapes were destroyed because they showed one or more corrupt baggage handlers moving the briefcase of cocaine about.

It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that such persons, if they were identified from the tape, could name more senior players in the importation scheme; perhaps including members of Customs and the AFP. There could have been strong reasons to wipe those tapes that were quite unrelated to the Corby matter.

Some Further Commentary
The following excerpts are from an article titled 'Trouble In Paradise' on the New Zealand Virtual Critic website; 13 May, 2005.

• "Recent high-profile cases of young Australians incarcerated on drug trafficking charges in Bali have highlighted the serious inadequacies of the Indonesian justice system, and raised questions about the Australian government's surprising refusal to intervene. Hannah Morgan looks at a corrupt system and the dangers to those who get on the wrong side of it."

• "Indonesia has been a transit point for international drug smuggling syndicates for years, due to its lax border controls, rampant corruption and poor law enforcement. Recently, the growing number of drug users in Indonesia has provided another reason for it to be a major destination for syndicates. As a result, the Indonesian Government revised its drug laws in 1997 to include the death penalty for convicted drug traffickers. There are currently 54 people on death row in Indonesia, 31 of them were convicted of drug charges, 20 of them are foreigners."

• "In October last year, three foreign drug offenders - an Indian and two Thais - were executed by firing squad after being convicted of smuggling 12.29 kilograms of heroin into Indonesia. In a blatant violation of their democratic rights, they were refused access to interpreters and lawyers during the investigation that preceded the trial. After conviction, the Indian prisoner was denied a final request to see his family before his execution and his lawyers were not informed of his death until after the fact."

• "Over the past months, the Indonesian government has received a lot of unwanted press over the severity of their drug trafficking laws, especially with the amount of publicity covering the detainment of ten Australians, including 27 year old beauty therapist Schapelle Corby and, more recently, 'The Bali Nine', aged between 18 and 29, from the cities of Sydney and Brisbane."

• "'The Bali Nine' have been arrested and charged in Denpasar for allegedly attempting to smuggle heroin out of the resort island. The eight men and one woman were arrested on Sunday 17 April after a ten-week operation involving both Australian and Indonesian police. It is now well known that the nine were caught at Denpasar's Ngurah Rai International Airport attempting to smuggle 11.25 kilograms of heroin to Australia, with 10.9 kilograms of it strapped to four of the nine's torsos and thighs. The remaining five were arrested in various locations around the island. After much interrogation by Balinese police, most of the nine claim that they were merely pawns in a bigger drug syndicate and feared for their lives if they did not carry out the task. ...

  Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has stated that the Australian government only has the power to provide the nine Australians with consular assistance. He went on to say that the government does not have the power to change the laws of another country and the nine will be tried according to Indonesian law. ..."

• "... Corby is accused of smuggling marijuana into Indonesia in early October last year. The 4.1 kilograms of marijuana was found by Indonesian customs in her body-board bag. From the outset, Corby, with no criminal record or history of drug use, has denied any knowledge of the drugs in her bag, arguing that it must have been planted there at Sydney Airport. The Corby case has outraged the Australian public, who are angered that the Australian government has not intervened."

• "... Because of this extraordinary lack of assistance in compiling essential evidence, Corby's main defence has rested on attempts to establish that Australian traffickers planted the marijuana in her bag. During the case, John Foster, an Australian remand prisoner, was allowed to travel under escort to Bali to testify in Corby's defence. He told the court that while awaiting trial in Australia he overheard two prisoners discussing how the marijuana shipment of another criminal had been placed in Corby's bag but mistakenly not removed when it reached Sydney. ..."

• "While both the Indonesian and Australian governments claim to have increased security measures following 9/11 and the 2002 Bali Bombing, the Corby case has exposed the fact that these measures are largely cosmetic, X-ray machines at Bali customs do not keep photographs of the bags they scan, nor is there closed-circuit television (CCTV) coverage of the baggage handling area. In Australia QANTAS staff did not individually weigh or X-ray Corby's bag at Brisbane airport before her flight to Sydney, nor was it weighed before its journey to Bali. Brisbane airport has CCTV in the check-in area and some baggage-handling areas, as does Sydney. But, while video records should have been available to provide evidence of the original size of the body-board bag, the CCTV tapes were erased on 2 November. ..."

• "Australian Justice Minister Chris Ellison has declared that the Australian government "will go into overdrive" if Corby is sentenced to death, pleading for clemency.

  Yet, the reality is that the Howard government has refused to condemn the serious irregularities in the police investigation or utter a word of protest against Indonesia's repressive drug laws and death penalties. This is in line with Howard's new-found friendship with Indonesian President Yudhoyono, which is aimed at further cementing Australia's economic and strategic interests in the Indonesian archipelago. Claims that the Howard government cannot speak out about Indonesia's legal system are bogus and thoroughly hypocritical.

  Following the Bali Bombing, Washington and Canberra pressed the Indonesian government for the arrest of the Islamic extremist Abu Bakir Bashir, even before a criminal investigation had begun. When Bashir was eventually charged with involvement in the bombing, he was sentenced to a mere three years imprisonment. The Australian government had no qualms telling the court of its disapproval of the verdict. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer even told Indonesian officials it was far too light.

  The fact that a terrorist conspirator can get away with three years imprisonment when petty drug smugglers frequently face execution should be reason enough for the Howard government to intervene. Yet it remains determined that nothing should upset its diplomatic manoeuvres with the Indonesian government."

• "All around the world stories have been told of violence and destruction as a result of drug abuse in Indonesia. While there is no doubt that drugs have tragically ruined many lives, Indonesia needs to take a more rational look at its history, culture and failure of current policies to formulate a solution to combat the problem. Although it is almost impossible to know just how many of the 200 million Indonesians are addicts, an estimated statistic suggests that 1.3 million users were seeking drug treatment in 1995, most of them aged between 13 and 25.

  Part of the immediate problem is the accessibility of drugs to the young. Street-grade heroin is often sold at roadside stalls, malls and [by] street vendors. Primary school children can buy heroin from the man who sells bottled water in front of their school (the drugs are taped to the bottom of the bottle). A strip of ecstasy pills only costs a few cents - less than the price of a movie ticket. Many youths are drawn to the excitement of using heavy-hitting drugs like cocaine and crystal methamphetamines, especially when they see the voice of authority as hypocritical and corrupt.

  Many of those in "respectable" positions in society, including police and military officers, have tested positive for drugs in their urine and admit with no embarrassment that they use and sell confiscated drugs. The former president's grandson, Ari, and his wife, Maya, have been accused of trafficking. Assorted Generals and leaders are also widely recognised for "backing" drug traffickers and distributors. It is, therefore, no surprise that major dealers get no more than one year in prison - if any time at all."

• "None of the current"solutions" raised by various Indonesians; advertise drug prevention and education, self-restraint versus responsible use, drug education versus denial, treatment versus incarceration, legalisation versus execution, and especially the various methods of harm reduction, have ever been given any serious thought. Instead, the lack of political will and the general state of social breakdown lead to a propagation of excesses: emotional responses of violence on the one hand, and helplessness and silence on the other. Public dialogues emphasise the problems, never the solutions.

  These flaws are no news to the Australian government, or any other government for that matter. And the exposure of these flaws to the general public will certainly not save Schapelle Corby, 'The Bali Nine' or many others on death row. Regardless of these shortcomings, the question still needs to be asked:

  How many more people must suffer at the hands of this corrupt system before something is done about it?"

The Straw That Broke The Camel's Back
Angst over the situation described above has been building up for many decades. It is not just ordinary Australians who are fed up with the murderous antics of the Indonesian Generals and the flood of drugs that are pouring into their country from Indonesia. People in India are not at all impressed with the treatment meted out to their nationals by Indonesian courts. They don't see the "justice" of one or two year sentences for Indonesian drug traffickers who are backed by the Generals, compared to the arbitrary death sentence handed out to the Indian national Ayodhya Prasad Chaubey for supposedly the same offence.

The Schapelle Corby case could finally bring things to a head. It could become 'the straw that broke the camel's back'.

People in Canada and the US, people in New Zealand, and in Europe are already rightly concerned about travelling to Indonesia, and of their children doing so. The obvious innocence of Schapelle Corby and the vile and unjust treatment handed out to her by Balinese officialdom could tip the balance of world opinion against Indonesian "justice". If that happens it will be no bad thing, and the world will owe a debt of gratitude to the young Australian woman who stood up for her right to real justice, instead of 'joke' justice.

The Schapelle Corby case is now bigger than Bali. The attention of the world is being drawn to what is happening in the Indonesian justice system. Attention is also being focussed on Asia in general, where the use of the death penalty for drug offences is very prevalent.

Real justice must happen or nobody is going to travel to Asia, not just Bali. This is globalisation of justice. The Corby case is deciding how Asian justice is seen by the rest of the world. It is the Bali justice system, and the Rule of Law itself, that is really on trial.

In Australia there are already ramifications for QANTAS and the OzFeds concerning Schapelle Corby's abandonment to a severe and knowingly unjust system of prosecution and sentencing that is routinely applied to foreigners in Indonesia. The Schapelle Corby matter is not an issue that is likely to go away any time soon. Even if she were to be acquitted on appeal - which is highly improbable - the travelling public have now been alerted to the presence of powerful organised crime cartels operating through Australian airports.

The Mob will face increasing scrutiny as a result of what happened to Schapelle. So will federal agencies such as the Australian Federal Police and the US Central Intelligence Agency some of whose members have close connections to organised crime cartels throughout Asia. Ordinary Australians will become aware of the danger of these unseemly alliances between the underworld of crime and the overworld of government. And they will quickly realise that they are not it their interests, nor those of their children.

Ordinary people will increasingly wonder why they just don't divorce the Feds. And so they should. Divorce is a common feature of Australian society, and the century-old document that is the Australian Constitution cannot be binding in a globalised world where state and geo-corporate interests are coming into direct conflict with those of ordinary folk.

As as already been noted, Aussies will increasingly come to see four realities.

1. That the Rule of Law is flawed, not just in Indonesia but everywhere.

2. That federal governments are the cause of our problems, not the solution.

3. That international treaties advantage governments rather than citizens.

4. That Australia has a serious crime problem within its airports and police.

While the Bali Nine have admitted involvement and been caught with drugs they don't deserve the death sentence. Not when the Colonel who oversaw the East Timor massacres got 3 years in prison.

Schapelle is a different case - she is patently innocent. And her conviction shows the Rule of Law in Indonesia to be a complete farce.

The Rule Of Law Is Fatally Flawed
The Australian public is well aware of the truism that "the law is an ass" but now the plight of Schapelle Corby is bringing home to them the fact that the much touted Rule of Law is fundamentally unjust.

1. The Rule Of Law In Bali
In Indonesia the Rule of Law is highly corrupt and degenerative. It's an obscene joke that is extremely biased against foreigners like Schapelle Corby and the Bali Nine. As more and more Aussies come to see this reality in the clear light of day they will have to choose whether to remain quiet and let it go, or come together in support for all foreigners imprisoned in Asian jails.

Despite their recent apathy over the treatment of genuine refugees and asylum seekers by the Howard government, and their misguided support for the bogus 'war on terror', Australians do not have a history of 'letting injustices go'.  Like Schapelle Corby, they will be inclined to fight for what is right - and that's not the Rule of Law, not in Indonesia or anywhere else.

The approach taken by the prosecution in Schapelle Corby's case has been that she is guilty unless she can prove the marijuana found in her boogie board bag was not hers. But what if she is innocent but simply can't prove it?  Well then, being a foreigner, she faces life imprisonment or death by firing squad. There was no presumption of innocence. The prosecution did not succeed in proving that Schapelle is guilty, she and her legal team were unable to prove that she is not !

There are many aspects of Schapelle Corby's conviction that are completely illogical. Here are some excerpts from an analysis in the Sydney Morning Herald of 5 March, 2005.

• "Why, if Corby was smuggling the drugs into Bali, did she not take the basic precaution of putting a lock on her boogie board bag?"

• "Why did she not try to conceal the contents of the plastic bags by giving them a protective wrapping? Instead the marijuana was easily visible through clear plastic?"

• "Why would anyone risk a death sentence smuggling marijuana from Australia to Bali, where it will sell for much less than they could get it for in Australia?
  This is not only the biggest marijuana importation into Bali intercepted by customs.
  It is the only one."

• "Where is the police evidence that Corby or any of her family had connections to drug traffickers? Bali police say they investigated her "network" in Bali - meaning Mercedes and her husband - but found nothing incriminating."

  [Corby also tested negative for drugs on arrival in Bali. Since marijuana can be detected in urine for some months following use, she had not been using drugs!
  A long-term friend of the Corby family, Jodie Power, stated that she had never known Schapelle to use marijuana in 13 years of close acquaintance.]

• "The Australian Federal Police confirm Corby has no criminal record. Queensland police have no intelligence to connect her to drugs. The wholesale price for good quality hydroponic marijuana in Brisbane is $4,000 for a half kilogram. Where [if the marijuana was for her own use or that of her friends] did a woman who works in a fish and chip shop get the money to buy 4 kilograms?"

Schapelle Corby summed up these and other aspects of her arrest and trial in a statement that she delivered to the court. Some of what she told the three Balinese men sitting in judgement on her was as follows.

• "Firstly, I'd like to say to the prosecutors I cannot admit to a crime I did not commit."

• "And to the judges, my life at the moment is in your hands but I would prefer that my life was in your hearts."

• "And I say again that I have no knowledge of how the marijuana came to be inside my bag, and I believe the evidence shows (that), one, there is a problem in Australia with security at airports and baggage handling procedures."

• "Two, my own mistake is not putting a lock on my luggage."

• "Three, I have never at any stage claimed ownership of the plastic bag and its contents."

• "Four, had the police weighed all of my luggage for the total weight, it would have proven to show a difference from the total weight at check-in at Brisbane airport."

• "I am not a person involved in drugs and I am not a person who might become involved in a drug smuggling operation."

• "I am the innocent victim of a drug smuggling network."

• "I swear that as God is my witness, I did not know that the marijuana was in my bag."

• "I believe the seven months I have been in prison is severe enough punishment for not putting locks on my bags."

• "I don't know how long I can survive in here."

• "Please look to your God for guidance in your judgement for me. For God only speaks to justice, and your Honours, I ask for you to show good judgement and send me home."

Schapelle Corby delivered her address in English, a language that her judges did not understand. During the delivery one of the three Balinese judges was seen to read a book !

The Chief Judge, Linton Sirait, when sentencing Schapelle Corby to 20 years imprisonment likened her defence to a "crying competition".

Responding to the assertion by Schapelle Corby's mother, after the trial, that the judges "would never sleep", Linton Sirait declared to the media that he had slept very well that night.

While refraining from commenting on the performance of Corby's legal team (unlike the Australian Attorney General, who publicly criticised them and attempted to shift the whole blame for her sentence onto her defence) the Chief Judge remarked that he had never before sat on a case in which the defence lawyers had openly wept in court.

In responding to a question regarding his feelings towards Schapelle Corby he said:
"A judge is not allowed to bring his emotions to the case. The judge decides in accordance with the law."
Many people, around the world, not just in Australia, believe that he got it terribly wrong.

Judge Linton Sirait said that his only reaction to the Australian public's outrage at his verdict was to point out that the case had been decided solely according to law.
Many people would say that this was precisely the problem - the law is an ass !

Linton Sirait is said to be a devout Christian. He told the media:

"I am responsible to God for my verdict, not the people."

He got that one right !

Every religion, including Christianity, recognises that besides defining good and evil God also defines the quality of mercy. Although it obviously did not occur to Linton Sirait, who has sent numerous convicted persons to their deaths by firing squad, it was mercy that was required in Schapelle Corby's case. Sirait should reflect on his judgement and ask himself:

"In my place, what would Jesus do?"

Then he might no longer sleep so soundly.

No human, not even a judge, has the right to play God. Those who try to do so will, ultimately, answer to God for their actions.

Having been the presiding judge at the trial of the Bali Bombers, and having pronounced two death sentences in that case, Linton Sirait will have to answer to God in that matter as well. It is totally implausible that the atrocity at the Sari Club and Paddy's Bar, that killed at least 202 people, including 88 Australians, was planned and executed by Amrozi bin Nurhasyim and Imam Samudra using crude fertiliser bombs !

Indonesian 'justice', and Linton Sirait, have effectively 'closed the case' on the Bali Bombing and taken true justice off the trail of the real perpetrators of that horrific attack on innocent civilians.

The judgement in the trial of Amrozi and Samudra lent credence to the patently fallacious findings of the Indonesian Police and the Australian Federal Police that a simple motorcycle mechanic could have the skills and resources to kill so many people, inflict such terrible burns, and destroy reinforced concrete structures. It disregarded assertions made in the Indonesian Parliament, by the Speaker, Amien Rais, and the Deputy Speaker, A. M. Fatwa, that the number of deaths and the enormous damage caused by the blast were more indicative of a minature nuclear device (a mini-nuke) than the explanations coming from the police investigators.

Thus, despite the findings of Linton Sirait's court, many thinking people in Indonesia and other parts of Asia believe that a mini-nuke was responsible, and that it had to have been delivered by a skilled team of attackers.

Misinformed, or denied information by their media, the majority of Australians continue to think that Islamic terrorists killed so many of their countrymen and women that terrible night.

As a consequence of the Bali Megablast, Australians at large came to support the involvement of Australian armed forces in the invasion and subsequent destruction of Iraq. They did so because they were led to believe that there was a connection between the regime of Sadam Hussein and Islamic terrorist groups responsible for the Bali attack. The real motive of that attack was not to kill 'decadent' Westerners, but to align public opinion in Australia with the goals of the Coalition of the Willing (CoW). It is most unlikely that Islamic fundamentalists would have wanted to achieve such a public opinion outcome in Australia or the US.

In the trial of Amrozi and Samudra the Balinese court headed by Sirait accepted the guilty admission of the accused, and ignored many indications to the contrary. In the Schapelle Corby case the court of Sirait did not accept the innocent plea of the accused, but it again ignored basic logic and contrary indications of guilt.

The questions that were not answered in connection with the Bali Megablast, for which Amrozi and Samudra were convicted are these.

• How could a van bomb made up of the chemicals and explosives found to have been used by Amrozi and his associates cause the large crater in the road in front of the Sari Club?

• Why did the Indonesian authorities quickly excavate the crater and dump the material from it far out to sea? If this was really a Hindu 'cleansing ceremony' where is the documentary evidence of such a practice? What do the traditional Balians say about the existence of such a ceremony? If there really is such a ceremony, is it usual to excavate the site?

• How could a bomb of the type found to have been constructed and detonated by Amrozi cause such enormous blast damage to nearby reinforced concrete structures? How can an explosive mixture that is only capable of generating an overpressure of between 2 PSI and 10 PSI do damage that required an overpressure of some 3,500 PSI?

• Why were the said reinforced structures immediately demolished and the rubble disposed of by dumping it far out to sea?

• How could the relatively low powered explosive mixture cause such horrific burns to the victims of the bombing - injuries that one Australian burns specialist described as the worst she had ever seen in 20 years of medical practice? The constituents of the bomb said to have been made by Amrozi were not exactly napalm-like - were they?

• What sort of device could produce such a combination of searing heat and high-velocity debris that terrible 70 to 90 per cent burns were produced in many of the victims, including their throats and lungs?

• What sort of device could cause some victims to disappear without trace; to in effect vaporise? How could a simple motorcycle mechanic from a rural village, such as Amrozi was, acquire the expertise to build such a terrible weapon?

• The type of bomb that Amrozi is alleged to have built would not affect the power in Kuta Beach. At least, not unless it was detonated in a sub-station instead of a van parked in the set-down area outside the Sari Club. But there was a power outage. It was widespread, and it occurred between the first and second blasts. What caused this phenomenal coincidence of a power outage seconds before the main blast? What could explain it?

• Why did a few people who were, from reliable reports, quite close to the second explosion survive (such as an Australian Army Officer, Captain Rodney Cocks, who was on leave in Bali from a posting as a UNMO in East Timor), while others seem to have been completely vaporised?

Neither the joint investigation by Indonesian and Australian (AFP) police or the Bali Court were prepared to seek answers to these crucial questions.

If you are interested in what the answers might be you should refer to the first freesite in this 'Divorcing The Feds' series or to the 2nd Renaissance freesite. There are grounds for divorce right there.

As he rightly observes, Linton Sirait will answer to God for his judgements in this and all other cases that he has tried. May It have pity on him !

Having said that, it is the premise of this freesite that the problem with the Rule of Law does not lie with individual judges or other officials. The problem lies in the attitudinal framework that has developed around the concepts of laws, crime, and punishment. No offence is intended to Linton Sirait, I accept that he did what he thought he should do. The focus of my criticism is the thinking that surrounds the law as we know and observe it. When followed, this thinking led to Sirait's judgements.

2. The Rule Of Law Globally
The Rule of Law is not just failing people in Indonesia, it is failing them all over the world. The case of Schapelle Corby has refocused attention on the injustice that would appear to have been done to a number of Japanese tourists to Australia, one of whom was Chika Honda.  In 1992 she was arrested in similar circumstances to Corby, when drugs (13kg of heroin) were found in the lining of the suitcases of her and her four travelling companions, when they arrived at Melbourne Airport.

Unable to understand the language used by Australian police and Australian courts, and at a loss to explain how the drugs got into their luggage, all five were sentenced to terms of imprisonment, amid a media beat-up about "a Japanese Mafia syndicate". Chika Honda was released on parole in 2002 and deported back to Japan. She is now fighting for her conviction to be overturned, based on evidence that a tour operator in Kuala Lumpur who replaced the group's 'stolen' luggage with new suitcases (containing the heroin) had a criminal record and a likely involvement in drug trafficking.

After more than 10 years in an Australian prison Chika Honda faced great shame on her return to Japan and pressure, particularly from her mother, to say nothing about what had happened to her and "just forget it". However, much like Schapelle Corby, this Japanese woman who had suffered greatly in her early period of imprisonment - from panic attacks and a suicide attempt - is made of sterner stuff. She went public on her return and Japanese lawyers are now pursuing her case, to get Australia to redress the wrong that was done to her and her companions.

There are undoubtedly striking parallels between the Schapelle Corby matter and that of the so-called 'Melbourne Case' that involved Chika Honda. Both women would seem to be innocent victims of organised crime syndicates that traffick drugs through Australian airports, and have apparently been doing so with impunity for decades. Both were faced with difficulties in making their case under a foreign justice system and in an unfamiliar language, Chika Honda spoke absolutely no English at all. Neither of the two women had any history of drug use or criminal convictions and, in both cases, scant regard was paid to the logic of their motives or to the possibility of their denials of any knowledge of the drugs found in their bags being the truth. The police in Melbourne and the police in Bali botched their respective investigations, and the nature and process of the Rule of Law let both defendants down.

The media in Bali wrote Schapelle Corby up as "the Ganga (Marijuana) Queen" and possibly affected the way she was viewed by investigators and prosecutors. The media in Melbourne wrote Chika Honda up as a member of a "Japanese Mafia syndicate" and this probably prejudiced her case as well.

Eerily, Schapelle Corby worked in the retail food industry and was training as a beauty advisor. Chika Honda worked as a waitress and was studying to become a makeup artist. No, it doesn't seem that Chika got justice, anymore than Schapelle did. But, yes, the kitten Ai (Love in Japanese) that was given to Chika shortly after she attempted to take her own life, was allowed to go to Japan with her when she was deported from Australia. That Aussie cat helped her to keep her sanity during her long stay in prison. Chika deserves justice and compensation; Ai deserves a medal.

With Friends Like These Who Needs Enemies?
The OzFeds are concentrating on 'hosing down' the Corby affair. They're hurriedly negotiating a prisoner exchange with Indonesia (but Schapelle would still have to serve her full 20yr sentence in Australia), and they're floating the possibility of a pardon (but Schapelle would have to admit guilt to receive that). Two Australian 'silks', or Queen's Counsels, were introduced by the OzFeds to 'assist' Schapelle's appeal. Whether by intention or accident, their intervention seems to have cast her local defence team in a poor light, thus shifting the blame for Corby's plight from the Australian government's inaction to apparent mishandling, incompetence and corruption on the part of the Indonesian lawyers who defended her. Funny that.

Now, Schapelle Corby's appeal is likely to result in an even harsher sentence; possibly death. Prime Minister Howard will then wring his hands on national TV, cry crocodile tears, and say how deeply he feels for the plight of  "the poor young woman".  But, he will say, the Corby family was foolish not to have accepted assistance from the Australian government at an early stage. In fact, no offer of assistance was received by the family until just prior to Schapelle's sentencing - after her trial was effectively over.

Schapelle Has Appealed To People Power - Back Her!
However, through all this, Schapelle Corby will hold firm. She has appealed to 'people power' for help, rather than yielding to pressures to 'fold' and accept 20 years in an Australian jail. Schapelle Corby wants real justice. She wants her name cleared, and she wants something done to fix Australian airports so that what happened to her will never happen again to other innocent people. Chika Honda would not keep quiet when she returned to Japan, Schapelle Corby won't back off and plead guilty. She isn't seeking a presidential pardon - she's innocent and she wants the world to know it.

Plead guilty? She will never do that. Schapelle Corby is, as we say in Australia, dinky-di. She's an Aussie coal miner's daughter, and there is nothing tougher on this planet. The Indonesian justice system and the OzFeds have a fight on their hands, and it is not just with Schapelle and her family, but with all truth-seeking, freedom-loving people in Australia and around the world. She's innocent and we all want her out. What will we do? BACK HER all the way !

One of the few positive outcomes of Schapelle Corby's mistreatment by the Indonesian justice system and the OzFeds is that public attention is being drawn to the shortcomings of both.

The initial reaction will be to seek, somehow, to free Schapelle and reform the system so that others don't suffer the same injustice that she has. But people can be informed and encouraged to look more deeply - at the fundamental flaws that underpin the Rule of Law. When that happens the question will change from "What can we do to fix the system?" to "Why do we tolerate this system at all?"

The real problem lies in the assumptions and thinking behind the Rule of Law, and the real question is not how to reform it but whether to abandon it altogether.

Laws For Everything But Precious Little Mercy
People will come to the point of questioning the role of the law in 21st century societies by various routes of contemplation. The following is how I, personally, came to that position, and what facts and thoughts influenced my own conclusion about the flawed nature of law-making and law enforcement.

I came to see that the concept of punishment, whether it is by imprisonment or death, is fundamentally at odds with all mainstream religions, and with the example set by humanity in the Golden Age that existed before the Great Flood.

Legends from almost all cultures and information from a few ancient texts that have survived through the ages (albeit transcribed and copied from originals that have long ago been lost or destroyed) tell us that the worldwide civilization that flourished until 12,000 years ago had only ONE law ! It was a simple but all encompassing guide to how we should relate to each other and all other living things on this Earth. It said plainly but in several variations:

This was a law not of punishment, retribution or revenge, but of understanding and mercy.

Today, just about every single law on the statue books violates the above principle, because every one of them specifies some form of punishment for wrongdoing.

Instead of focusing on the rectification of harm suffered by the various victims of wrong doing, as ancient tribes did, modern laws concentrate on deterring and punishing offenders. It is back to front compared to what happened before the cosmic catastrophe that almost exterminated our race; at a time we have now almost forgotten.

These days there are also layers and layers of laws to do with just about every aspect of life. None of them are really effective as a means of preventing wrongdoing or of redressing the harm done to the victims of wrongdoing. In Australia, for example, the Federal parliament has been making laws for more than one hundred years. Every sitting leads to even more laws and there are whole departments dedicated to drafting and amending laws. Few laws are ever repealed, and the question must be:

The answer is that, under the prevailing mindset of Australian officialdom there will never be enough laws !  And almost none of the multitude of laws that exist will afford real protection to potential victims of crime, nor will the judicial process offer satisfactory redress for those people who have been harmed. All the laws are about punishing offenders.

Judges and lawyers are members of a punishment profession, not a justice system.

Politicians are not solely to blame for the overuse of legislation and the harsh nature of the deterrents written into many of the laws of the land. They make these laws, and they make them harsh, because people want revenge.  Victims and their families want the people who robbed or harmed them to be severely punished.  In many cases they would like to see them condemned to death for their crimes. (For the moment, in Australia, there is no death penalty.)

The notion of punishing those who 'deserve' to be punished follows from our profound lack of spiritual understanding - including the nature of death and the purpose of life.

In the present civilization, religion is everywhere but true spirituality is almost nowhere. During an interview the author and Gnostic, John V. Panella, was asked what he considers to be the biggest problem on this planet. His reply:

Once we had it, then we lost it, and we've been on a path to self-extinction ever since. Where did we go wrong? How do we find the right path again? These vital questions are seldom asked or pursued, yet they are crucial to our survival.

The Law Of The Jungle Is A Fallacy
Modern states and corporations follow what can only be described as 'the Law of the Jungle'.  But if we ask what does Nature do in regard to laws about how living things treat each other, we find that the assumed Law of the Jungle is a fallacy. If it were not, there would not be any stable ecosystems, and every species would be under threat.

Here is how the prize-winning author and 2nd Renaissance thinker, Daniel Quinn, describes the fundamental law of nature. The excerpt is from his novel, The Story of B, and the character speaking is B himself.

"During the Great Forgetting it came to be understood among the people of our culture that life in 'the wild' was governed by a single cruel law known in English as 'the Law of the Jungle,' roughly translatable as 'kill or be killed'.  In recent decades, by the process of looking (instead of merely assuming), ethologists have discovered that this 'kill or be killed' law is fiction. In fact, a system of laws - universally observed - preserves the tranquility of 'the jungle', protects species and even individuals, and promotes the well-being of the community as a whole. This system of laws has been called, among other things, the peacekeeping law, the law of limited competition, and animal ethics.

Briefly, the law of limited competition is this: You may compete to the full extent of your capabilities, but you may not hunt down your competitors or destroy their food or deny them access to food. In other words, you may compete but you may not wage war on your competitors.

The ability to reproduce is clearly a prerequisite for biological success, and we can be sure that every species comes into existence with that ability as an essential heritage from its parent species. In the same way, following the law of limited competition is a prerequisite or biological success, and we can be sure that every species comes into existence following that law as an essential heritage from its parent species.

Humans came into existence following the law of limited competition. This is another way of saying that they lived like all other creatures in the biological community, competing to the full extent of their capacity but not waging war on their competitors. They came into existence following the law and continued to follow the law until about ten thousand years ago, when the people of a single culture in the Near East began to practice a form of agriculture contrary to the law at every point, a form of agriculture in which you were encouraged to wage war on your competitors - to hunt them down, to destroy their food, and to deny them access to food. This was and is the form of agriculture practised in our culture, East and West - and in no other."

Leavers and Takers
"We have at last arrived at a point where we can abandon this vague and clumsy way of talking about 'people of our culture' and 'people of all other cultures'. We might settle for 'Followers of the Law' and ' Rejectors of the Law', but a simpler pair of names for these groups has been provided by a colleague [Ishmael], who called them Leavers and Takers. He explained the names this way, that Leavers, by following the law, leave the rule of the world in the hands of the gods, whereas the Takers, by rejecting the law, take the rule of the world into their own hands. He wasn't satisfied with this terminology (and neither am I), but it has a certain following, and I have nothing to replace it with.

The important point to note is that a cultural community exists among Leaver peoples that extends back three million years to the beginning of our kind. Homo habilis  was born a Leaver and a follower of the same law that is followed by the Yanomami of Brazil and the Bushmen of the Kalahari - and hundreds of other aboriginal peoples in undeveloped areas all over the world.

It is precisely this cultural continuity that was broken in the Great Forgetting. To put it another way. After rejecting the law that had protected us form extinction for three million years and making ourselves the enemy of the rest of the biological community, we suppressed our outlaw status by forgetting that there ever was a law."

Good News and Bad News
"If you know even a little about me, you'll know I'm called by many bad names. The reason for this is that I'm a bringer of good news, the best news you've had in a long time. You might think that bringing good news would make me a hero, but I assure you this isn't the case at all. The people of our culture are used to bad news and are fully prepared for bad news, and no one would think for a moment of denouncing me if I stood up and proclaimed that we're all doomed and damned. It's precisely because I do not proclaim this that I'm denounced. Before attempting to articulate the good news I bring, let me first make crystal clear the bad news people are always prepared to hear.

Man is the scourge of the planet, and he was BORN a scourge, just a few thousand years ago.

Believe me, I can win applause all over the world by pronouncing these words. But the news I'm here to bring you is much different.

Man was NOT born a few thousand years ago and he was NOT born a scourge.

And it's for this news that I'm condemned.

Man was born MILLIONS of years ago, and he was no more a scourge than hawks or lions or squids. He lived AT PEACE with the world ... for MILLIONS of years.

This doesn't mean he was a saint. This doesn't mean he walked the earth like a Buddha. It means he lived as harmlessly as a hyena or a shark or a rattlesnake.

It's not MAN who is the scourge of the world, it's a single culture. One culture out of hundreds of thousands of cultures. OUR culture.

And here is the best of the news I have to bring:

We don't have to change HUMANKIND in order to survive. We only have to change a single culture.

I don't mean to suggest that this is an easy task. But at least it's not an impossible one."

In this story Daniel Quinn pins down the thinking that causes the much touted Rule of Law of our present civilization to be irrevocably flawed.  It is Taker thinking. It is the principle of the Law of the Jungle, of taking the rule of the world into human hands and playing God by sitting in judgement on other humans and living creatures.

Just as Schapelle Corby was judged and condemned by three Balinese judges, and punished because she could not prove that the marijuana in her bag was not hers, so the rainforests of Indonesia are 'taken' and they are being exploited to extinction by opportunistic Indonesian Generals and their business partners. The smoke from the destruction of the forests by these outlaws from the natural law of limited competition has reached to Malaysia and Thailand, making cities there appear to be blanketed in a dense fog.

The thinking that shapes the Rule of Law and the thinking that ignores the law of limited competition and exploits the environment to the point at which many species are exterminated forever, is Taker thinking.  And unless we change the Taker culture, that is the rarely acknowledged philosophical centrepiece of our civilization, its thinking will inevitably lead to the extinction of our own species.

The good news it that we don't have to change the Rule of Law, we just have to abandon it and go back to the thinking of the Leavers which does not involve humans playing the role of God, or punishing each other.

If the Leaver notion of law had been in operation in Bali, Schapelle Corby would not have been harshly judged. The marijuana would have been confiscated and destroyed (not used or on-sold by corrupt police) and she would have been returned to Australia with a note on her passport to indicate that she "might" have attempted to import and traffick marijuana. The rectification process would have extended to Australia in the form of an Indonesian government request for tighter surveillance of baggage handling in our airports and far better observance of the procedures for scanning and weighing all luggage. The approach would have been remedial rather than punitive, and nobody would have presumed to judge Corby's guilt or innocence. That would have been left to the divine process that all religions, including Christianity and Islam, profess to believe in.

It is worth noting that the oldest continually surviving culture on this planet, with some sixty thousand years of unbroken history and legends behind it, is a Leaver culture. The Australian Aboriginal clans, before the European invasion of their land only two hundred years ago, did not have any judiciary, nor any parliament to churn out layer upon layer of new laws and regulations. Their means of rectifying and redressing the harm caused to the victims of wrongdoing, including harm to the land, was not characterised by judgement and punishment, but by reason and mercy. Offenders were often driven out, but these Leaver peoples seldom executed wrongdoers. They believed, as do our modern religions, that the role of judgement and punishment is in the hands of the Great Spirit. And they were not so presumptuous as to take that role upon their own shoulders. These people were, and still are, deeply spiritual, at ease with the metaphysical realm and conscious of the divine order of existence.

Lethal Memes - A Legacy Of The FALL
In my search for the reasons for our loss of spirituality and metaphysical adroitness I took notice of Daniel Quinn's ideas about lethal memes, and the dire consequences of retaining them. I also drew on the research and writing of the noted scientific revisionist and mythologist, Joseph Christy-Vitale.

The following excerpts from Daniel Quinn's book Beyond Civilization explain the concept of memes.

• "... Every cell in your body contains a complete set of all your genes, which Dawkins likens to a set of building plans for the human body - your body in particular. ... A culture is also a collection of cells, which are individual humans. You (and each of your parents and all your siblings and friends) contain a complete set of memes, which are the conceptual building plans of our culture. Dawkins coined the word meme (rhymes with theme) to apply to what he perceived to be the cultural equivalent of the gene."

• "Every culture is a collection of individuals, and each individual has in his or her head a complete set of values, concepts, rules, and preferences that, taken together, constitute the building plans for that particular culture. Whether you call them memes of marglefarbs is irrelevant. There can be no question whatever that they exist."

• ""Which memes do we need to change? This question is a lot easier to answer than might be expected. The memes we need to change are the lethal ones.

  Richard Dawkins puts it with irreducible simplicity:  "A lethal gene is one that kills its possessor."  It might well strike you as unfair and somehow unreasonable for such things as lethal genes to even exist. You may wonder how lethal genes manage to remain in the gene pool at all. If they kill their possessors why aren't they eliminated? ... Lethal genes that come into play in early adolescence are of course quickly eliminated from the gene pool because their possessors are unable to pass them on by reproduction. Lethal genes that come into play early in adolescence also tend to be eliminated, but those that come into play in middle or old age remain in the gene pool, because their possessors are almost always able to pass them on through reproduction before succumbing to their lethal effect.

  ... A lethal meme is one that kills its possessor. For example, the Heaven's Gate cultists possessed a lethal meme that made suicide irresistibly attractive to them - but I'm not much interested in memes that are lethal to individuals. I'm interested in memes that are lethal to cultures (and to our culture in particular).

  ... The memes that made us the rulers of the world are lethal, but they didn't have a lethal effect ten thousand years ago - or five thousand or two thousand. They were at work, turning us into the rulers of the world, but their deadliness didn't become evident until this century, when they began turning us into the devastators of the world."

It seems to me that the notions of judgement and punishment that are the foundation of the Rule of Law are what make it a lethal meme.

The Origins of Takerism Are Twelve thousand Years Old
Some explanations of the origin of the Taker culture and its lethal memes are to be found in a ground-breaking book, Watermark, by Joseph Christy-Vitale.

I am not concerned here with the main subject of Watermark, which is the theory that a fiery fragment that resulted from a super-nova of the star, Vella, resulted in a cataclysm on Earth that nearly caused humankind to become extinct.  It is the consequences of this trauma on our species, from whatever cause, that is the focus of my interest.

What exactly was The Fall?  What still lies deep in our sub-conscious memories?  And how did a worldwide cataclysm lead to the self-destructive culture that we have today?  The answers to these questions can explain the Taker culture and its Rule of Law, and show us why we must abandon them both.

If we consider the enormity of the sudden change that shattered the Earth and human civilization 12,000 years ago, it is clear where the notion of 'kill or be killed' arose, and why.

The following excerpts from Watermark describe what it was like before the cataclysm, and shortly after it.

• "Our ancient ancestors, more than 12,000 years ago, lived in a world where night and day were of equal length, the climate was uniformly temperate , and plant and animal life was abundant.  According to the myths, they lived in a world society founded on reverence for all life, a Golden Age."

• "... many skills are attributed to our ancestors who lived during this age. They spoke a single world language, had the ability to communicate with animals, and were, for the most part, vegetarians living in harmony with all things. In addition, they were luminous, long-lived, and wise."

  Note that the above passages are based on extensive analysis of myths and legends from all over the world. The conditions described were not dreamt up by Joseph Christy-Vitale, but painstakingly drawn together from numerous sources. They are substantiated by the geological record around the world and recent discoveries in the sciences, including those of human language, and of present-day human communication with dolphins, apes, chimpanzees, and parrots.

• "Two basic flood myths exist. The first and most destructive is the mountain-topping flood. Many of these begin with a war in heaven, followed by a worldwide conflagration, fire and ice raining down from the sky, appalling storms that made hurricanes look like gentle spring showers, cataclysmic uphevals of land and sea, and a flood, in many instances boiling hot, roaring over Earth. They conclude with a time of such severe cold that rivers and lakes freeze and do not thaw in summer.

  The second type of flood myth is one that swells up from the sea. A number of these floods follow a period of intense cold, and all describe how portions of the world sink below the rising waters. Humans and animals are sent fleeing in all directions. These floods are generally found alone in myths, unaccompanied by other disasters. ..."

  In Watermark, Christy-Vitale documents common themes in legends and myths, as well as other forms of evidence, that lead to the conclusion that our ancestors saw the cataclysm coming. The evidence strongly suggests the existence of an advanced civilization, with astronomic observation skills, and a worldwide communication network, before the Great Flood, around 12,000 years ago. According to Plato, who took his knowledge from the ancient Egyptians, the date of the earth-shattering event and subsequent inundation was 9500 BC.

  Christy-Vitale describes what happened as follows.

• "The ground quaked. As the gravitational fields of the combatants locked, Earth's spin began to slow, which sent winds howling. Earth's waters responded to Phaeton's call and started to flow north to the strongest point of gravitational attraction. Below the crust the viscous seas of magma moved north too. Earth started to wobble on its axis. Earthquakes multiplied in number, each more powerful than the preceding one.

  Humanity's buildings and structures snapped like matchsticks, and crumbled like toy blocks. People and animals sought shelter where they could, sometimes huddled together in terrified groups. For some an inner realisation opened the door to shock. They sat or stood with horrified gazes, each robbed of clarity of vision and presence of mind. Fear vibrated in their veins and they locked tightly into paralysis. They no longer reacted to the frantic pleas of family and friends."

• "The death toll of plants and animals increased as cathedral-like forests burned and twisted in the winds, and skeletons of ruined cities disappeared under rock, lava, and flame. Once great and graceful herds of mammoth, impala, horse, and llama, broken by exhaustion, stopped, stood together, and perished. Seeking refuge in caves, people and animals were buried alive under collapsing mountains. As waters rose in the north, arks, on the lower hills, lifted from their moorings."

• "Mastadons, sloths, great bison, birds of all species, humans, and vegetation, ripped from where they fell or hid, were sucked into these winds like pieces of straw. Brutal currents jerked victims back and forth across the sky, helpless puppets on invisible strings. Within the crumbled bodies of those discarded, external flesh held the smashed bones and organs together, to be buried with other debris and create the drift deposits around the world."

• "Earth's crust split and shifted under Phaeton's unrelenting pressure. Like giant furnace doors thrown open, the great fracture zones buried today at the bottom of the oceans split apart. Abysses opened around the globe, swallowing land and sea. Some closed in a gasp, others filled with migrating waters in vast cascading falls or with millions of tons of falling rock and soil. Fists of stone punched through the crust with horrifying sound and heat; their razor peaks stretching toward a sky streaked by lightning. From the bottoms of the seas, scalding heat and gases bubbled upward, lowering the water's density. Anything floating above lost buoyancy: plants, animals, people, and arks sank like stones. Across the landscape clouds of gases from deep within the planet burst to the surface. Some inrighted into fireballs. The North American Zunis remember these heated blasts that brought the blood flowing in the veins of humans and animals to the boil. The blood then exploded from their bodies like magma from the earth. A primeval smell of destruction and creation shrouded the planet.

  Life was overwhelmed, everything dying in great numbers. Yet others, still clinging to life, were hiding in arks on the heaving waters, in caves or hidden canyons overlooked by the chaos sweeping over them.

  The Southern Hemisphere drained of water as the oceans and massive rain clouds followed the pull of Phaeton's and Kingu's gravity fields north. The northern skies darkened above, and the waters climbed upon one another, rising like a mountain into the sky. This water mountain was held fast by Phaeton's cosmic grip. From Lapland, Sami tradition recalls the seas gathered "up into a huge towering wall." Land in the Northern Hemisphere disappeared.

  Arks built on the higher slopes now floated free upon the waters. Lions, wooly rhinos, goats, snakes, and people fled up hills and mountains. Others of countless species, drenched by the water's blinding spray, dodged the living and the dead, great and small, carried by the raging wind. They heard the cries of their kin and climbed higher to the last pieces of solid land."

• "In the north, upon a towering, drunken sea, the arks floated. How many were lost to wind, waves, and meteors, disappearing forever under the waves? Within those fragile walls were our past and hope of a future, helpless. Waiting. In an alliance of soul-shattering trauma, humans and animals around the world, hidden in caves and wherever else they found shelter, waited."

• "After the Flood subsided and the waters rested in their new basins, Utnapishtim, the Mesopotamian inspiration for Noah, opened a window of his ark and looked out upon the world. Everything was the colour of mud. corpses, human and animal, thick as seaweed floated on the water. Utnapishtim sat down and wept.

  A new world now existed, born at an incomprehensible cost. Massive new continents, our continents, stretched mostly north and south, instead of east and west as they had a few short days ago. New oceans and seas, our oceans and seas, broke their waves on virgin shores. Fresh-faced mountains reached toward the skies, some continuing to rise while others still glowed red from their ardent and violent birth. In North America Zuni myths describe that, after the disaster, earthquakes still shook a world covered by "vast plains of dust, ashes and cinders, reddened as in the mud of a hearth-place."

  Some arks found land quickly. Utnapishtim made landfall in seven days. South American myths tell of survivors, high in the Andes, seeing five arks resting on the slope of a mountain after the waters had retreated. Out of one emerged Paricaca, a cultural hero who taught irrigation to the survivors. Native North American mythology records how western mountains became resting places for arks following the disaster. The Namaqua people together with their cattle arrived in an ark on the southern African coast and settled there."

• "Many arks did make landfall, beached alongside monstrous rafts. Wading ashore, the survivors, whipped by the stench of decomposing flesh and bones, saw fish, whales, birds, humans and, uncounted animals great and small, all mangled and broken within a wooden maze of shattered trees, rotting vegetation, and seaweed.

  Earth's higher latitudes, particularly in the northlands, felt the lash of freezing rain. With the dark skies and planet's altered axis, temperatures grew colder and colder, and exhausted survivors found themselves in nearly hopeless situations.

  Volcanos continued to erupt across the world, producing heat that evaporated the waters that condensed into vapor, which fell as rain and snow. Fog, cooled by winds and abetted by freezing drizzle and rain, formed clusters of ice and rime, layer upon layer. The Yamaha Indians of the Andes recall that after the Flood  "a coat of snow and ice covered the whole country." Stories of the Tongans in the South Pacific tell of Taifatu, the ice-covered ocean.

  Survivors on mountaintops stood and gazed out over a profound desolation and wondered if they were the last of their race. Hunger and thirst drove some, in spite of their fear, down from these heights of salvation. Others stood next to their arks and did not leave the mountaintop. These arks became the first hearths on a new Earth."

• "Starvation constantly lurked and the search for food became a desperate act. The Aztecs remember how "with great toil and weariness" people travelled each day "going by mountain and wilderness seeking their food; so faint and enfeebled are they that their bowels cleave to their ribs... [their] face and body in likeness of death." The Chinese wrote that after the disaster their ancestors "dwelt in caves and desert places, eating raw flesh and drinking blood.

  The Maya tell of  "the great pain [the people] went through; there was nothing to eat, nothing to feed on." Babylonian myths relate that after the Flood, "the womb of the earth did not bear ... vegetation did not sprout ... the broad plain was choked with salt." The abundance of rotting vegetation and flesh provided food for a short time, but food poisoning took a terrible toll in lives. Survivors who were vegetarians before Phaeton found no recourse: meat was the only nourishment. Animal and human meat. Difficult choices were made for survival during those first days."

Human Consciousness Fell Along With The Golden Age Civilization
Humanity survived the cataclysm referred to as the Great Flood by the slimmest of margins. In the course of their descent into cannibalism and warfare the traumatised remnants of the human race forgot their spirituality and reverence for the divine order of things. They evolved lethal memes and became Takers.

The following excerpts from Watermark describe how retrograde changes in human thought and behaviour emerged in the wake of the Flood.

• At first there was a great sense of loss and foreboding. "... The survivors found deep wounds inflicted on their Earth. They knew they would never again see forests at dawn flowing to the horizon like a wave on the water, rolling plains of grass and golden grain, blooming gardens wet with gentle rain, the laughter and the smiles of family and friends, or a life without fear. Never again would they see immense herds of wooly rhino, mastodon, and camel, the sky filled with birds, or hear the joyful first trumpeting of young mammoths in the spring. It was all gone forever."

• "For survivors of Phaeton's violation of our planet, severe emotional shock produced deep psychic numbing, depression and anxiety, and denial that in some cases disappeared into amnesia. Episodes of rage and abuse likely erupted, as well as flashback experiences, insomnia, suicide, and survivor's guilt. Children were particularly vulnerable, revealing signs of damage ranging from apathy to aggression. The newborn entering the scarred world after Phaeton received childrearing grounded in fear and uncertainty, rather than the reverence and security once found in the world before the catastrophe. "

• "During the first 100 years following Phaeton, the spiritual tradition that bound humanity together with their world also disintegrated. As generations followed one another, the spirit of the Golden Age faded and, in places, disappeared. People's faith was lost

  Once, in that wondrous age, our ancient ancestors felt a part of everything, but now people were distant, detached, and fearful. Their physical and psychological struggle for survival separated them from nature and from one another. Survival was paramount. There was little guidance. Over the decades some forgot the One Law of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Others acquired a taste for human flesh."

Not all humans descended to these depths. There were knowledgeable groups who had managed to preserve some animals and seeds with which to build a new civilization. Those people are remembered all over the world in myths and legends that tell of their travels and teachings, including the One Law.

• "Ancient Egypt had Osiris, who began his work by abolishing cannibalism and reintroducing use of domesticated grains. He and his companions also shared their engineering knowledge, particularly of canals and other systems of irrigation. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote how Osiris traveled south to Ethiopia, then across Arabia, and on to india with his knowledge and wisdom, and that he urged mankind to "give up their savagery and adopt a gentle manner of life."

  Teachers also appeared in the Americas. Quetzalcoatl and Kukulcan visited Central America. According to the myths both traveled with companions, stopped cannibalism, introduced corn and agriculture and domestication of animals. They both shared medical knowledge, such as curing blindness and infertility, and taught mathematics, astronomy, architecture, music and art. They introduced the calendar. They were said to have measured the planet during their journeys. Both brought peace and "taught that no living thing was to be harmed." Kukulcan is said to have stayed ten years in the Yucatan region before sailing off into the eastern sun. Quetzalcoatl, who also introduced fire to the people of central Mexico, is said to have departed after a time to the east on a boat made of serpents and birds."

• "Over the thousands of years that followed the Phaeton disaster, heroes and teachers and their followers preserved as much knowledge as they could while rediscovering their world. Quetzalcoatl, Kukulcan, Toth, and unknown others measured the planet on their journeys. Their skills mapped the new landmasses and rediscovered the dragon paths of energy. Circles of stones were constructed around the world to measure the seasons and the movement of the heavens, as well as the movements of Earth's crust, and to track, as described in Uriel's Machine, the courses of comets and warn of future collisions. These people with their knowledge, wisdom, and projects, brought mankind back from the edge of the abyss." [click on the Sources 2R link on the sidebar for details of Uriel's Machine]

The teachings of the Wise Ones, that were so diligently spread during the recovery from the first inundation, the Great Flood, were eroded by further disasters, and memory of the One Law was largely lost.

• "Around 1,000 years after Phaeton, Earth's climate underwent its most dramatic change since the disaster. For a number of reasons, including less solar dust in space and less pollution of Earth's atmosphere, Earth began to warm up, and much of the ice created following the disaster began to melt. ... and over the course of the next few centuries the seas rose 100 to 300 feet. Settlements of seafaring societies along the coasts were submerged. More than half of Sundaland, which included much of Southeast Asia and Indonesia, sank beneath the rising waters. ...

  A whole cycle of new myths came into being that, over time, blended with Phaeton's mountain-topping flood legends to produce the hundreds of flood myths we know today. ... As this new environmental disaster spread over the world, humanity remained ignorant of its original cause, but it reconfirmed their vulnerability to the capricious violence of nature and contributed to the psychological trauma began by Phaeton and passed down to succeeding generations."

Struggling to deal with new inundations and fearful of nature humankind slipped further from the ideals and teaching of the Golden Age.

• "Reinforcing this collective shock were side effects from two gifts brought by the heroes and teachers. The first gift, domestication, was given to a starving people. In a climatically hostile world, domestication prevented mankind from starving to death. Yet it was a double edged sword, offering sustenance at a price. Practicing domestication breaks up the world, sculpting a landscape of fences and fields, creating barriers, both physical and mental, between mankind and the natural world. Over the thousands of years that followed, domestication introduced the roots of wealth, greed, and domination, but in the Golden Age there was a balance to its disruptive side. It was the One Law of doing unto others - including all other life-forms and not just human.

  ... The loss of that spiritual anchor unleashed an insidious, devastating reality on the world. Instead of reverence, respect, and participation in the natural world, mankind now lived with detachment and over time worked to control and dominate the planet."

  Humankind adopted a Taker philosophy and, with the exception of a few tribal cultures such as that of the Australian Aboriginal clans, is still mired in it to this day.

• "The second gift with side effects that helped alter our ancestor's way of thinking was writing and later its offspring the alphabet. Since the end of the 19th century scientists have been studying the differences between the two sides of the human brain. They have come to understand that the right side of our brain houses the traits we know as holistic and simultaneous, concrete and feminine. On the left side are found those characteristics we call linear and sequential, abstract and masculine. A balanced psyche draws from both sides equally, but when one side of the brain becomes dominant, this upsets the equilibrium and can affect individuals and cultures by creating new unbalanced social patterns and new traumas.

  Writing, by its nature, forces the mind into a left-brain pattern of thinking. ... As literacy slowly increased over thousands of years, a balanced way of thinking and existing, personified by the Golden Age and the One Law, slowly gave way to one that was unbalanced. focusing more on linear, abstract, and masculine ways of thought and excluding or vilifying right brain ideas, attributes and values."

• "Is it possible for something that occurred so long ago to still affect us today? Yes. Since Phaeton, societies and civilizations have continuously retraumatised themselves through child-rearing methods, education, social custom, racism, religion, war, predatory economic policies leading to inequity and poverty, and a separation from nature resulting in the destruction of Earth's environment. It is also known that damaging and unbalanced behaviours can become addictive to individuals and cultures, causing secondary addictions through futile attempts to satisfy needs that current belief systems cannot explain or address. Addictions to power, greed, consumerism, sex, drugs, violence, and abusive behaviour are common today in individuals and whole cultures. ... When trauma is passed down from generation to generation you have a recipe for a cultural disease that can become deeply institutionalised within a civilization."

Humanity reached its present crisis by just such a path. Our 'fall' from the high levels of consciousness and spirituality of the Golden Age left us prey to the lethal memes of takerism.

• "The inability of the original survivors to understand and accept what happened to them and to pass this healing down through the generations left their descendants unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with what lay ahead. Without a guiding force humanity was cast adrift. The most catastrophic fork in the road was the loss of the spiritual connection. The Pygmies of Central Africa believe that this separation from God was the worst disaster to befall our species. In worldwide myth it is called The Fall.

  The Fall is the separation of all those after the disaster from those before it. It is the disorientation of being cast out of paradise, losing communion with the spirit, and the pain of not understanding why. To the survivor's descendants, the science behind the "why" was obscured or lost, the peace and plenty before Phaeton were just stories. Whatever explanations were given they were not enough. Like a small child believing it is he or she who is the cause of the parent's divorce, mankind assumed the role of the guilty party. What exactly we did to deserve such punishment varies with the priorities and imagination of the storyteller, religion, or culture. But generally we became wicked and sinful. We fell."

While he freely acknowledges the many good deeds and contributions made to society by present-day religions, Christy-Vitale also pinpoints weaknesses in those belief systems. Before rushing to judgement on his perceptions of your own religion do the man the courtesy of thinking through his arguments. Christy-Vitale's research and conclusions contain explanations of why the flawed ideas of man-made justice and punishment, that underpin the modern Rule of Law, evolved in the first place.

• "Since the spiritual connection during the Golden Age was lost, other connections were needed: Mankind created gods to fill the void. Gods of thunder, gods of storms, sky gods from whose hallowed halls fell comets and shooting stars, snow and rain. They were not gods of an age of peace and plenty. They were dangerous gods molded from a world filled with violence, fear, and deprivation. These gods and goddesses took the forms of humans acting and reacting as their human creators did, displaying not only the virtues but the vices of a psychologically dysfunctional species."

• "As populations grew, conflicts erupted, flowing from the dark currents of domestication and writing. Consuming addictions to power, greed, and self-interest opened like wounds as our ancestors made their way through the world. Increasingly patriarchal societies led by dominator kings marched to war and devastated their neighbours, unknowingly imitating Phaeton's ancient blitzkrieg through the solar system. Yet for thousands of years following Phaeton there was universal toleration to all interpretations of the spiritual connection. There were no religious conflicts."

• "Then the alphabet appeared. According to Leonard Shlain, author of The Alphabet Versus the Goddess,  "When cultures adopt writing, particularly in its alphabetic form, something negative occurs." He goes on, "An alphabet by definition consists of fewer than thirty meaningless symbols that do not represent anything in particular, a feature that makes them abstract."  In order to understand writing constructed with an alphabet, the left side of the brain arranges the individual symbols, letters, into a linear sequence. This process began around 5,000 years ago, 7,000 years after Phaeton's passing. Shlain points out around this time the egalitarian societies began to disappear at an alarming rate. "Whenever a culture elevates the written word at the expense of the image patriarchy dominates."

  Of the thousands of gods and goddesses that were created by man in Phaeton's wake, one has had the most profound effect on the entire planet.  In the beginning known as Yahweh and Jehovah, and later as God the Father and Allah, this interpretation of the spiritual connection took exclusivity and separation to a more menacing level. Here was a new vision of God who shared some of the attributes of his fellow divine inventions: capriciousness, jealousy, humour, and a rage that could become mindless. But he was unique in that he was a singular, all-powerful male god, chaste, frustrated, and lonely as a cloud. He was everywhere. He was abstract. Nowhere was holy. Earth's sacredness was removed from the world and replaced by the written Word of this one new god. He spoke to his special people in a secret language written in an alphabet by the right hand and read in a linear, sequential fashion by the left brain."

Do not worry too much about the views of your particular God expressed above by Joseph Christy-Vitale. His views are his views, you are entitled to hold your own opinions and beliefs about God. What is important in the above excerpts is the notion of imposed abstraction, linearity, and blindness to the whole, being due to an overriding reverence for the written word.

Just as it is with modern religion so it is with what now passes for justice. The law is an ass because it has become detached from spirituality and our feelings for each other. There is no longer a balance. The Rule of Law is entirely a left brain process that operates within a framework of precedents and abstract rulings that ignore common sense and compassion.

Christy-Vitale's final comments on religion following The Fall have an exact parallel in the evolution and application of justice since that time.

• "... Religious conflicts began, and humanity was now forced to seek the spiritual connection outside of itself, to seek it in a book. And in succeeding generations the words in holy books changed subtly in meaning and context as others, with their own agendas, interpreted, edited, or rewrote them. People became separated from the spirit and found themselves mired in a quicksand filled with intolerance and dogma, bigotry and misogyny, hypocrisy and corruption, fear, historical and ecological misconduct, and unfathomable cruelty perpetrated on one another."

Substitute 'the law' for 'religion' and that's pretty much where we're at now. Slowly but surely this fact is dawning on people everywhere, inside the system as well as outside it. The very public injustice done to Schapelle Corby, and her determination to fight for her unconditional release, free of any record of conviction, is sure to increase disquiet about the Rule of Law.

However, it will be a terrible mistake if we seek to 'reform' the justice systems we live under. It is not possible to reform the Rule of Law any more than it is possible to reform what happened to our species after The Fall.

We must, in both cases, go back to the principles of the long-lost Golden Age. We must return to the One Law and discard all the written down laws that human governments and judiciaries have been enacting and interpreting for themselves. We must abandon Taker justice and revert to the ways of resolving wrongs done within Leaver societies.

Schapelle Corby's conviction and her fight to clear her name makes it clear why we need to do this. It is not only Schapelle Corby who has suffered under Takerism's Rule of Law.  Many other unfortunates all over the world are also victims of this meme of the punishment of each other, that stems from the time of The Fall.

During August, 2004, Ateqeh Sahaleh was publicly hanged in the street in the city of Neka in northern Iran. She was allegedly mentally retarded and, being unable to find a lawyer, she was forced to defend herself at her trial. Her conviction and her death sentence, for "acts incompatible with chastity" [in other words having sexual relations outside of wedlock] was upheld by the mullah's Supreme Court and carried out with the approval of the Judiciary Chief of Iran.

This instance of 'justice' under the Rule of Law would have been bad enough if Ateqeh Sahaleh had been an adult woman, but at the time of her death she was only 16 years old. Punishing a teenage girl for 'immorality', by hanging her by the neck in a public place is 'legal' and 'just'? Give me a break !

The notion that one human being, who is a member of a judiciary of some sort, has the right to act as God and punish other human beings for their perceived 'sins' does not need to be reformed. It must be completely abandoned. The publicity that surrounds cases such as that of Schapelle Corby in Bali will do a lot to help people everywhere to realise this fact.

It is not the choice of the various governments on this planet to decide whether to reform the Rule of Law of abandon it completely. It is the people's choice, our choice, your's and mine. We must decide what form justice will take within the Level 4 Civilization that will shortly emerge from the wreckage of the scientific and spiritual dark age that was the 20th century.

There are still remnants of the positive memes that prevailed in the Golden Age to be found in our present-day world. The best forms of tribal justice typically place emphasis on the rectification of wrongs done to victims rather than the punishment of the perpetrators of crimes. Long-lived tribal cultures, such as those found among Australian aboriginals, are also more inclined to mercy than are current Western justice systems that derive from the European Dark Ages and the earlier trauma of The Fall.

We can take these models of Leaver justice and start to work from there, steadily emptying the prisons of the Taker civilization as we go. Schapelle Corby's unjust treatment is telling us that it's time to start that process - right now!

Federal Governments Are The Problem Not The Solution
When it comes to abandoning the Rule of Law and the 'injustice' system that has developed within the Taker culture, there is no role for the Feds. Central governments are a large part of the problem not the solution.

At first, most people won't see governments as the problem, they have become conditioned to looking to governments for solutions rather than finding and implementing them themselves. This is particularly so with 'big' issues, such as saving the environment, crushing the drug cartels, or reintroducing spirituality and compassion into the way we deal with wrongdoing.

At first, people will want to 'fix' what we have rather than abandon it and start again. Daniel Quinn puts it this way,

"People don't want  more of the same. Yet, oddly enough, when they ask me what will save the world, they want to hear  more of the same - something familiar, something recognisable. They want to hear about uprisings or anarchy or tougher laws. But none of those things is going to save us ......What we must have (and nothing less) is a whole world full of people with changed minds."

The predictable reaction by the OzFeds to the wrongful conviction of Schapelle Corby will be to promise new programs: programs to fix airport security, programs to protect passengers baggage from tampering, programs to financially and legally support Australian citizens who are charged with offences overseas, programs to support Australian citizens who are unlucky enough to be held in foreign jails, and so on. Programs to fix everything. Just you name a need and they'll have a program to meet it.

But Daniel Quinn is justly contemptuous of politicians who promise to "fix" the ills of modern society with programs.

In The Story of B, the central character says, "If the world is saved, it will not be by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all." In Beyond Civilization, Quinn writes, "Programs are sticks planted in the mud of a river to impede its flow. The sticks do impede the flow. A little. But they never stop the flow, and they never turn the river aside. .... Programs never stop the things they're launched to stop. No program has ever stopped poverty, drug abuse, or crime, and no program ever will stop them."

Programs are the stock-in-trade of politicians the world over. In Australia, and in many other places, political parties offer citizens a range of new programs or upgrades before every election. The need for, and probable efficacy of, the programs are seldom challenged. Political opponents and tame journalists always ask the question, "Where's the money coming from?" but they don't ask, "Why should we believe that the program will fix the problem?" No one in politics, the media or big business ever asks the latter question, because they fear the obvious answer.

Multiple layers of government in Australia are justified on the basis that they provide protection and solutions to problems through the collection of taxes and the allocation of public funds to a range of programs. If Daniel Quinn is right, and the multitude of programs will never solve the problems facing the Australian public, the whole of government and public administration in the country is a vast misrepresentation of purpose and value. Big government is then simply unjustifiable and unnecessary.

Writing in their book, The Sovereign Individual, James Davidson and William Rees-Mogg argue exactly this point. They assert that in an age of nearly instant global communications the whole idea of representative democracy is outmoded, and that problems should be addressed on an interest basis rather than a territorial one. Thus they say,

"In the new age to come, communities and allegiances will not be territorially bounded. Identification will be more precisely targeted to genuine affinities, shared beliefs, shared interests, and shared genes, rather than the bogus affinities so prominent in the attention of nationalists."

A Second Renaissance Must Save Us - Not Governments
A Second Renaissance is another way of describing what will happen when there is a world filled with people with changed minds; Leaver minds. In speaking about this New Renaissance, Daniel Quinn puts the issue in survival terms. He says,

"The extraordinary thing that's going to happen in the next two or three decades is that a great second renaissance is going to occur. A great and astounding renaissance. Nothing less than that is going to save us."

Quinn explains how people in the Middle Ages took for granted a collective relationship with God that was mediated by the Roman Church. They also took for granted the notion that the universe was only a few thousand years old, and that it was fixed and immovable, with our world at its centre. Before science could progress, and a Level 3 Civilization could emerge, such thinking had to change. To us this is obvious, but to the people of Europe in the Middle Ages, it wasn't obvious at all. Today, Quinn says,

"We're absolutely sure that people will go on thinking the way we think forever, and that people will go on living the way we live forever...We too believe the history of thought has come to an end with us."

But of course human thinking hasn't reached an end, and it never will as long as our species continues to exist. New perspectives in science, and new technologies, are driving us irresistibly towards a 2nd Renaissance. The new civilization will reflect new technologies, a new spirituality, and a new world view. There will be no place for federalism, nationalism, or takerism in the Level 4 Civilization of the 21st century.

International Treaties Advantage Governments Rather Than Citizens
The frenzied activity to put a prisoner-exchange agreement in place so that Schapelle Corby could serve her time in Australia rather than Indonesia is a public relations smokescreen. It is designed to make the OzFeds look as if they are doing something for the young woman whom the Australian media is now referring to as a "drug smuggler". The following points must be made strongly, not to the OZFeds, who don't care a damn about such things, but to our fellow citizens and to the people of Indonesia.

• Schapelle Corby is innocent and she should not spend any time in prison. Not in Indonesia, not in Australia - nowhere.

• Asian prisons are not necessarily worse than Australian prisons, and some prisoners might actually prefer them to the often US-managed jails in this country.

• Imprisonment punishes the families of those who are incarcerated just as much as it does the prisoners. Jailing people who have offended, but who are not a threat to people on the streets is a medieval notion.

  Except in very exceptional cases, imprisonment should be eliminated from the range of sentences imposed by courts. This applies in Indonesia, Australia, and in every other nation state on this planet. But such reform will never happen under the Rule of Law, it can only happen under the Rule of Reason. Taker societies embrace the former while Leaver societies follow the latter approach to justice.

It is time to shake off the trauma our race suffered from The Fall, and begin a return to the compassion and consciousness of the Golden Age of humanity. This must involve the abandonment of Taker memes and philosophies, and the adoption of a Leaver-Giver ethos. (See the 2nd Renaissance freesite for more details about Takers and Leaver-Givers.)

The National Interest Is Not The Public Interest
International treaties are negotiated in 'the national interest' and not necessarily our interest. A prisoner transfer agreement between Australia and Indonesia would simply enable the respective governments to swap wrongdoers from a prison in one country to a prison in the other. Such transfers would not necessarily advantage the victims of the justice systems of Australia and Indonesia.

There is a vast difference between what is in the interests of nation states like Australia and Indonesia, and what is in the public interest - the interest of the people on the streets of those countries. From divvying up the rights to undersea oil fields, to agreements on what to do with each other's felons, the authorities and politicians of nation states decide things in the interests of their government and its relationships with other governments. There is little heed paid to what is best for those like Schapelle Corby or the Bali Nine who are unfortunate enough to be caught up in the blind and often barbaric processes of the Rule of Law, in places far from home.

The Pros And Cons Of Prisoner Transfer
The conditions in Bali's Kerobokan prison are not in the least pleasant. Here is a description taken from a WWW article on news24.com.

• "Those familiar with the Kerobokan paint a grim picture of the cramped and dirty cells, where poor sanitation and a lack of air conditioning against the tropical climate create a breeding ground for disease.

  Kerobokan's prisoners are locked up for 20 hours a day in dark rooms which measure a mere three square metres. Larger 30-metre cells are usually crammed with up to 20 prisoners, according to the prison doctor, Anak Agung Gede Hartawan.

  He said that most inmates sleep on a piece of carpet laid on the concrete floor, although wealthier prisoners are allowed to purchase mattresses and beds. Ablutions are done using a bucket and a ladle - there are no showers.

  Common diseases include respiratory ailments and skin conditions, while many prisoners complain of headaches. Hartawan said 11 prisoners are confirmed carriers of HIV/AIDS but 30 are estimated to have the virus.

  He said food was adequate in the prison, with inmates allowed to receive meals brought from outside by visitors. Many prisoners arrive skinny and leave plump.

  A warder at the prison said that Corby's cell was "ordinary" and that she received no special treatment compared to other female occupants, who are usually required to wear a prison uniform.

  Her lawyer Erwin Siregar said Corby had "never complained to me about her cell condition or its sanitary facilities", adding that it was "quite ordinary".

  "It is not in a bad condition but surely it's a subjective matter to say whether it's comfortable," Siregar said."

More than a few westerners who have been transferred from Asian jails have found the conditions in their home country prisons to be more onerous than those they left behind. One such case is that of Sandra Gregory who was sentenced to a 25-year term in a Thai prison for attempting to smuggle heroin out of Bangkok in 1993. In her book,  "Forget You Had A Daughter", she observes that although the conditions in Yard Lao prison in Thailand were not very comfortable prisoners were able to move around and were not confined in small cells during the day. They were also allowed to have mirrors, cosmetics and other personal items. There were punishments for infractions of the prison discipline that were additional to the overall punishment of incarceration, but there was no culture of harsh treatment.

On being transferred to British jails, such as Holloway, she found that most of her personal items were confiscated and she was locked in a cell alone with no human company. Unable to wander around as she had in Lard Yao, freezing cold, and faced with a regimented and impersonal culture designed to crush her spirit, Sandra Gregory realised that imprisonment in Britain was not going to be any easier than Thailand. The one consolation was that her mother was then able to visit her.

Of course, if Sandra Gregory had been convicted of the same drug smuggling offence in her home country she would most probably have received a sentence of four years and been out on parole in two. The degree of 'punishment' imposed by Thai courts for drug offences is far greater than it is in Britain. Simply transferring Sandra to a British prison while maintaining her 25 year Thai sentence did nothing much for her, apart from making visits from relatives and friends more practical. Thankfully, she was pardoned by the King of Thailand and duly released from prison in 2000.

The Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie, has said that he was stunned and disappointed at Schapelle Corby's conviction an that he has spoken to the Australian Foreign Minister regarding a prisoner transfer agreement with Indonesia. He has offered to accommodate Schapelle in Brisbane Women's Prison for the balance of her 20 year sentence.

How big of him. Here is what Pauline Hanson, founder and former leader of the One Nation party, has said about life inside that particular prison.

The excerpts are from an Australian Sixty Minutes interview by reporter Tara Brown, 9 November, 2003.

• INTRO - TARA BROWN:
  "Now, Pauline Hanson, and a most remarkable interview, her first graphic, emotional account of three humiliating months in jail and her future life, in and out of politics. She says the prison experience has changed her, and it was certainly a different Pauline Hanson I met on the Gold Coast yesterday, somewhat softer, still bitter, but definitely unbroken."

  "I guess you don't realise until you lose it, how much freedom means to you."

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "It's funny you say that, that's really what it was all about."

  TARA BROWN:
  "Pauline Hanson walked out of Brisbane Women's Prison on Thursday, not only a free woman, but cleared of those devastating fraud charges, still deeply affected by the time she spent behind bars."

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "To be dragged off, and what happened was, when I was taken away from the courts and I was taken downstairs and I went through the process of being strip-searched, and I was actually handcuffed, shoes taken off while I sat in the cell downstairs and then you've got ... you've got the bars and other prisoners were in the cells and David was in one, and then to use to loos, so you've got this concrete wall that's halfway up, so you go to the toilet they can't see you, but they know exactly what you're doing. Your dignity is stripped. It was just absolutely so degrading, demeaning. When they gave me that number to stand in front, holding the number here, to have my photo taken, I felt like an absolute, as if I was an absolute criminal."

• TARA BROWN:
  "Do you remember what that number is?"

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "Yep. C70079. Prisoner C70079."

  TARA BROWN:
  "Why does remembering that night make you cry?"

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "Because, probably because, um, my family didn't know what was happening to me. I think it's just, I feel as if I'm reliving it. I don't want to get emotionally upset, but it does."

  TARA BROWN:
  "You say you didn't sleep at all that night. Were you on suicide watch?"

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "Yes. I had no regard for my life and my wellbeing. I was ... terrible. I'm sorry."

  TARA BROWN:
  "What's terrible?"

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "Well, even that, you know, for my kids, here I am always trying to , you know, keep their spirits up and I've always tried to be a positive person, I tell my kids you've always got to be positive and everything like that, and yes, it was probably very weak of me at that time to feel that way, but that's how I felt. ..."

• TARA BROWN:
  "Pauline also gave up any physical contact with the family after refusing to undergo strip searches [which are mandatory following every contact visit]."

  LEE HANSON:
  "We couldn't have that contact with Mum that we needed."

  TARA BROWN:
  "Can you tell me what a strip search is like?"

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "Strip search is that you're in a cubicle after you have a contact visit, that means if you're upfront, you haven't got this perspex in between, you take off your outside clothing, your shirt and your pants, and then you've got to take off your bra, and then each item they check and feel your item and feel your bra, and then you can put your bra back on and then you take your pants off and they will check your pants. I've actually heard from one of the prisoners there that a girl had to take her tampon out and actually show it to them there was nothing in that. You then turn around and you have to bend. there's no touching at all. I was actually asked to squat, squat and say "cough". Lift up your feet, run your hands through your hair, pull your ears forward so ... put your head down, check behind the ears, open up your mouth. Some of the women too will be asked to actually lift up their breasts, so they then check underneath their breasts. So I'm not the only one that wouldn't go through a strip search."

  TARA BROWN:
  "So you just found it too humiliating, too degrading to continue..."

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "Would you like to go through it?"

  TARA BROWN:
  "No, I certainly wouldn't like to go through it."

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "No. Neither would I."

  TARA BROWN:
  "So that was the reason you decided to stop the contact with your family."

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "Yep."

  TARA BROWN:
  "That decision meant Pauline could no longer hug her children or her ailing 84-year-old father, Jack."

• TARA BROWN:
  "Do you feel like you've changed?"

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "I think I'm a lot wiser for the experience. I'm very much more appreciative of it, I know how important family and friends are, I am so, so blessed and humbled by the public support that I have received and what's more important about that, Tara, is that people never gave up believing in me. They trusted me. And how many politicians can say that, from the public?"

• TARA BROWN:
  "Pauline says dirty politics put her in prison. Amongst others, she blames Federal Health Minister Tony Abbot for her downfall."

  "Why do you think the case was brought against you?"

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "Tony Abbot said. He said that he set up the slush fund. He said he had to stop One Nation."

  TARA BROWN:
  "You don't like this man."

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "Heaven help this country if Tony Abbot is ever in control of it. I detest the man."

• TARA BROWN:
  "Do you remember what you said about jail in the past?"

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "You know. I told you I actually went to look through the prisons as a member of parliament. How superficial that was."

  TARA BROWN:
  "Do you think differently now about mandatory sentencing and sending people away to jail?"

  PAULINE HANSON:
  "Yes, I have. I've [found it] totally different when you make your comments and you're on one side, but when you're on the other side of those bars, and you're on the rules and the regulations and guidelines of what it's all about, ..."

So the prisons in Australia are not better than those in Asia. They might be more modern, but they can be far more inhumane in terms of their deliberate crushing of the spirit of each and every inmate. Federal and State politicians who are advocating that Schapelle Corby be 'helped' by way of a transfer from Kerobokan Prison in Bali to the Brisbane Women's Prison in Queensland are not doing her any favour. They are seeking to fool the Australian people into believing that they are 'doing something' about Schapelle Corby's plight, when they are really doing nothing.

If they aren't doing anything for her Schapelle doesn't need federal and state representatives, she's no worse off without them. The federal and state governments aren't doing much for us either, besides wasting our taxes and invading various countries in our name. We would ALL be better of without them. Let's go for a divorce!

Australia Has A Serious Crime Problem Within Its Airports And Police
This should be crystal clear to anyone who takes the least interest in what has happened to Schapelle Corby.  What is less obvious is the reality that, quite apart from not wanting to clean up these areas, the politicians and officials responsible are simply not allowed to clean them up!

If you doubt this, look at the lack of progress in eliminating the use of Australian airports, particularly Sydney, as conduits for the importation of drugs. Despite the fact that Schapelle Corby's fateful episode as a trusting traveller took place early in October, 2004, nothing has been done to stop the same thing happening again. Action has been promised and money has been promised but nothing has been done to stop the mob operating as they like at Sydney Airport. Absolutely nothing!

The Saga Of Task Force 157, Nugan-Hand, And CIA Drug Operations In Asia
It is not necessarily the underworld, the Mob, that continues to run drug importations from Asia and South America through Sydney Airport. The overworld also does so, and it has the connections and organisation support to completely dominate the scene.

This is not the place to go into extensive details of the operation of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Australia, but a general outline and recap of some key events will help readers understand why it is so tough to defeat the criminal gangs within our airports. Schapelle Corby was, most likely, an unwitting victim of their operations. Your own loved ones are also vulnerable it they fly internationally from Australia.

The following excerpts are taken from a transcript of the Watching Brief radio documentary on Public Radio News Services, Melbourne, Australia, October - November 1986. Tony Douglas is the interviewer, Ralph McGehee and Victor Marchetti are former CIA agents, and Brian Toohey and Jerry Aaron are journalists.

• TONY DOUGLAS:
  "Over the years there have been many reports linking CIA activities with the downfall of the Whitlam government. Does Ralph McGehee think they were involved?"

  RALPH MCGEHEE:
  "Well, my views are as though what's the problem?  I mean, we had a whole series of Agency spokesmen said, 'oh, yes, there was an Agency role in the overthrow of the Whitlam government'. I just don't know why Australians can't accept that. ...

  And then the CIA National Intelligence Daily said, 'some of the most incriminating evidence in that period against the ministers of the Whitlam government may have been fabricated.' This is about as strong as you get them to say so. It is quite obvious that information was being leaked about ministers Rex Connor and Jim Cairns and some of it was being forged, which is a standard CIA process.

  Jim Flynn, who was associated with elements who were involved with the Nugan-Hand bank, he said that he was involved in manufacturing the cables and leaking them to the press. Now he would not be a very credible source except that he worked for Nugan-Hand. Admiral Bobby Inman, former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency and Deputy Director of the CIA, said on two occasions that he expressed deep concern that investigations of Nugan-Hand would lead to disclosures of a range of dirty tricks played against the Whitlam government. ...

  You have the statements by Christopher Boyce who was in a relay point for information from the CIA and in his trial he said  'if you think what the Agency did in Chile was bad, in which they spent 80 million dollars overturning the government of Chile there, the Allende government, you should see what they are doing in Australia. ....

  On the Shackley Cable, which was a virtual ultimatum to the head of ASIO [Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation] to do something about the Whitlam government, it is sort of prima facie evidence of CIA interference ..."

• TONY DOUGLAS:
  "What is Task Force 157?"

  JERRY AARON:
  "The Task Force 157 was a group set up by Henry Kissinger and it was set up in a quite strange way. It was a mini-CIA which was actually separate from the CIA and probably was set up by Kissinger so he could deny any connection between what the Task force 157 was doing and the CIA.

  Nevertheless, the personnel of Task Force 157 included Ted Shackley, who was one of the heads of sabotage operations against Cuba, he was Station Chief in Saigon during the Vietnam War, and he was Chief of the CIA Western Hemisphere Division, so with an impeccable CIA record like that it would be very difficult to disassociate him from what the CIA was doing.

  The concept of Task Force 157 seems to have been two-fold: firstly, to set up operations against the Whitlam government. And secondly, to go ahead with using Australia as a base for certain clandestine U.S. operations such as arms dealing and smuggling of contraband goods."

  TONY DOUGLAS:
  "The subsequent inquiries have established the Nugan-Hand bank was to be the organisation used as a cover for the operations of Task Force 157. According to Victor Marchetti, a former CIA officer and author of The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, the Nugan-Hand bank is typical of the organisations used by the CIA in their style of operations."

  VICTOR MARCHETTI:
  "There are actually three kind[s] of organisations that the CIA uses and I think we should keep those in mind as we talk. One is what is called the proprietary organisation. This is an organisation that is owned, operated and controlled by the CIA, such as Air America was and certain other large airlines. China Airlines for example, Civil Air Transport, Southern Air Transport and the like.

  Then there is something that is more of a front organisation. These are usually a lot smaller and have a much more specific purpose and are less tightly controlled, maybe a consulting firm of some sort, that's its cover but it's really used as a firm like the one here in Washington that came up during the Watergate affair.

  There is a third kind of organisation which is really an independent organisation but it is closely allied to the CIA not only in ideology, because many of the people who work for it are ex-CIA people and they have mutual goals in some instances, or at least their goals run parallel in some instances. But on the other hand they operate independently. This is like Interarmco which does a lot of its own work, of course it is an independent organisation, but it's run by a former CIA man. He does favours, or used to do favours for the Agency and vice versa. Nugan-Hand, from what I know about it, seems to fall into this latter category. ..."

• TONY DOUGLAS:
  "The Nugan-Hand bank relationship to the CIA can be traced through its employees, most of whom have an intelligence background. Here top Australian investigative journalist Brian Toohey tells Andrew Phillips about the background and actions of senior Nugan-Hand personnel."

  BRIAN TOOHEY:
  "It turns out that some of the people directly involved with the bank, Michael Hand, an ex-American Green Beret, went on from the Green Berets to work in intelligence work for the US government. Bernie Hawthorn  [or Houghton?]  who ended up as number three in the bank and the manager in Saudi Arabia for the bank and before that had been running restaurants and so forth in Sydney - he has got an intelligence background, US intelligence background, and [is] in fact an ex-member of the British Secret Intelligence Service. Peter Wilcott, who knew of him said both to me and to Australian narcotics authorities, in some recorded interview[s] with the Narcotics Authority, that Hawthorne was working as an undercover intelligence operative in Australia and he had been in Australia since the late 60s. Wilcott says that this was told to him by people like Admiral Yates, who was president of the bank in the United States, and General Black, who was the Hawaii representative."

The Australian Nine MSN website records that:

• "One former Nugan Hand director has stated on oath that Hand warned Bank executives: "If we don't do what we are told, and things weren't handled properly , our wives would be cut into pieces and put in boxes and sent back to us."

  Hand's also on the run from Australian investigators who still want to talk to him about fraud, drugs money and the CIA connections with his obscure Sydney-based Nugan Hand Bank."

Another excerpt about Nugan-Hand is from the SourceWatch site on the WWW.

• "The Nugan-Hand Bank developed in that grey area of the intelligence community involving alumni, assets, allies, and affiliated companies that handle much of the CIA's covert work. Although not a propriety of the Agency like the Castle Bank and Trust of Nassau, Nugan-Hand was started by and filled up with CIA alumni and personnel. Frank Nugan, a drunk, mediocre lawyer from Australia with a wildly exaggerated resume teamed up with ex-CIA operative and Green Beret Michael Jon Hand who had experience in Vietnam and with the Hmong guerrillas of Laos. The third major player in the beginning and direction of the bank was a mysterious expatriate from Texas named Bernie Houghton who was much alive in [the] intelligence community. Many of the actions involved with the bank are shrouded by destroyed records and sudden deaths, but two things remain certain:

  1. The bank employed many retired CIA operatives.

  2. They were heavily involved with drug trafficking.

  Unable to secure all the money needed to wage covert wars around the world, the CIA has maintained front companies, banks, and illegal trades to supply the needed revenue. Connections and leverage in the outlawed world of drugs and weapons allows for factions within the Agency, and like-minded interests, to act outside the confines of laws to influence the futures of countries in the process of defining themselves."

• "The connections sewing the fabric of the bank [together] could not continue. The bank had never made a real profit, rather it ripped people off, laundered drug money coming out of the Golden Triangle (Australia experienced their first heroin epidemic in over fifty years at the height of the bank's activities), and blocked investigations through its connections. Due to increased obviousness, the fabric rotted, Frank Nugan was found dead in his car by apparent suicide, Michael Hand escaped Australia with the help of Thomas Cline an ex-Green Beret James O. Spencer, only after months of pulling funds out and declaring the bank insolvent."

More information comes from a 1991 interview by Paul DeRienzo with Alfred W. McCoy professor of Southeast Asian History at the University of Wisconsin.

• PD:
  "How did you come to write The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity In The Global Drug Trade?

  AM:
  "In 1971 I was a graduate student doing southeast Asian History at Yale University. An editor at Harper & Row, Elisabeth Jakab, read some articles in a volume I had edited about Laos, which made some general references to the opium trade in Laos.

  She decided this would be a great idea for a book and asked me to do a background book on the heroin plague that was sweeping the forces then fighting in South Vietnam. We later learned that about one third of the United States combat forces in Vietnam, conservatively estimated, were heroin addicts.

  I went to Paris and interviewed retired general Maurice Belleux, the former head of the French equivalent of the CIA, an organisation called SDECE [Service de Documentation Exterieure se du Contre-Espionage]. In an amazing interview he told me that French military intelligence had financed all their covert operations from the control of the Indochina drug trade. [The French protected opium trafficking in Laos and northern Vietnam during the colonial war that raged from 1946 to the French defeat in 1954 at Dien Bien Phu.]

  The French paratroopers fighting with hill tribes collected the opium and French aircraft would fly the opium down to Saigon and the Sino-Vietnamese Mafia that was the instrument of French intelligence would then distribute the opium. The central bank accounts, the sharing of the profits, was all coordinated by French military intelligence.

  He concluded the interview by telling me that it was his information that the CIA had taken over the French assets and were pursing something of the same policy."

  AM:
  "... In essence, what appears to emerge from the investigation of the Castle Bank in the late 1970s was that the CIA did not want to move operational funds for covert operations through normal banking channels where they could be uncovered, either by the United States of abroad, where they could come to the knowledge of opponents of the Agency.

  They preferred to work through allied banks. Banks that were secure, that were a little bit loose in their accounting procedures. When the Castle Bank was uncovered, the IRS announced a major investigation of the bank's money laundering activities. Suddenly the IRS cancelled the investigation and the Wall Street Journal was told by informed sources in the IRS that the CIA had blocked the investigation.

  As soon as Castle Bank collapsed, a small merchant bank based in Australia, operating offshore between Australia and Southeast Asia, suddenly mushroomed into a global network of banks, acquiring Latin American and European structures that had belonged to Castle Bank. This bank in Australia called the Nugan-Hand Bank began very quickly in the late 1970s, to acquire a board of retired U.S. intelligence officials, either CIA or various military intelligence services.

  The most prominent example, the former Director of Central Intelligence, William Colby, became the legal counsel of Nugan-Hand Bank. The bank was founded by Frank Nugan, an insecure and incompetent Australian lawyer, and by Michael John Hand, a man with a high school degree who had gone to Vietnam with the Green Berets. He had served in Laos in the 1960s as a contract CIA operative, fighting with the three people who became very prominent in the CIA's privatised operations. Thomas Clines, Theodore Shackley and Richard Secord, all very big names in the Iran-Contra scandal. ...

  We do know the bank was pioneering in the smuggling of heroin between Southeast Asia and Australia. In the late 1970s Australia had very strict banking laws, and anytime you got foreign exchange you had to account for it. The Nugan-Hand Bank helped Australian organised crime figures get their money overseas so they could buy heroin and ship the heroin back to Australia.

  The Australian police investigators documented that Michael John Hand worked very closely with Australia's top criminal drug traffickers to finance the first shipments, the pioneering shipments, of heroin to Australia from Southeast Asia.

  In 1980 that bank went belly-up and it collapsed. Frank Nugan committed suicide, and then a really amazing event occurred. Thomas Clines, the former CIA chief of station from Laos, a man of great prominence in the Iran-Contra scandal, flew to Sydney, Australia and exfiltrated Michael John Hand, who disappeared in the United States and was never seen since."

Some insights into the arms and heroin smuggling that Michael Hand and his associates got up to are drawn from a WWW article on the Nugan-Hand Bank.

• "Australia's Joint Task Force investigating the bank later learned details of the meetings from Dennis Schlachter, a World Marine employee whose evidence as a protected federal witness would lead to Wilson's 1982 conviction for illegal arms sales to Libya. Sometime in 1975 or early 1976 Schlachter first learned of the African arms deal when two CIA agents based in Indonesia, James Hawes and Robert Moore, called on Wilson at World Marine in Washington to discuss "an African arms deal" that, in these agents words, "had to be put together".

  Sometime later, Houghton arrived from Sydney and came to World Marine's offices with the two Nugan Hand men to order the arms. Schlachter recalls chauffeuring Wilson and Hawes out to the agency's headquarters in Langley while the two discussed using Nugan Hand Bank to finance the shipments. Under the "cover of Task Force 157," ammunition, 3,000 weapons including machine guns, M-1s, carbines and others. With an end-user's certificate showing World Marine as the purchaser and an Australian company as the buyer, the arms left the United States from Boston for southern Africa in three separate shipments."

• "After fourteen months in Africa, Michael Hand returned to the bank's Sydney headquarters in march 1976 and dedicated his trade skills to a new constituency - Australia's leading international heroin smugglers. After nearly fifty years without a serious narcotics problem, Australia showed signs of spreading addiction in the late 1970s as Sydney's criminal syndicates began organising regular heroin shipments from Southeast Asia. In a March, 1977 report, for example, Sydney's Crime Intelligence Unit monitored a series of meetings between the city's leading illegal bookmaker, George Freeman, and California crime figure Danny Stein: "Information was received that Stein was here for the purpose of organising a network for the reception of heroin into this country from the Golden Triangle and for subsequent distribution on the local market and in the United States."

  Would-be Sydney heroin smugglers faced Australia's stringent currency control laws that made it difficult to export the hard cash for heroin buys in Bangkok. After two years of active money laundering through Hong Kong, Nugan Hand was becoming known in the underworld as a reliable money mover. Sometime in early 1976 George "the Duke" Countis, an American crime figure who "owned" a gaming table in an illegal Sydney casino, brought Murray Riley to the headquarters of Nugan Hand Limited. A former Sydney constable, Riley had quit the police to become a "patron" in the criminal underworld and a close associate of leading criminals like George Freeman. just back from Africa, Hand quickly developed what the Australian Police Joint Task Force called "a close business and social relationship with Riley".

  Starting in April 1976, only four weeks after his arrival from Africa, Hand made five cash transfers to Hong Kong for Murray Riley totalling $295,000. After each transfer, one of Riley's underlings would call at Nugan Hand's Hong Kong office to pick up the money, later using the cash to take delivery of a heroin shipment. ...
  Studying Hand's memorandum to his Hong Kong office about a $60,000 cash transfer for Riley's October shipment, the Task Force concluded "that Hand was aware that Riley was involved in significant illegal activity". As an indication of their closeness, in late 1986, acting on Riley's advice, Hand opened bank branches in Thailand, in the words of his Chiangmai branch manager, "to attract drug money". Two years later, when a yacht was seized south of Sydney with 4.3 tons of high-grade cannabis and Riley was charged, Michael Hand ordered the bank's Hong Kong office to destroy all incriminating records of Riley's money transfers. ..."

• "In October 1976 Hand decided to leave the Sydney office to Frank Nugan and move to Hong Kong where he could build the bank's international division. Over the next two years, Hand worked with some success to develop a global network of twelve branches that covered Asia, Africa, and the Americas. After months of failure, Hand's break came in June 1976 when the Cayman Islands, a British colonial tax haven in the Caribbean, decided to charter the Nugan Hand Bank, finally giving the company the legal right to advertise itself as a "merchant bank".

  As the bank expanded dramatically in 1977-1978, Michael Hand recruited some of the most famous names in U.S. national security circles to join the bank as employees or associates. The key figure in making these contacts for Hand was Bernie Houghton ... In 1977 Houghton recruited an old friend, Admiral Earl Yates, retired chief strategist for the U.S. Pacific Command, to serve as president of the Nugan Hand Bank. Through the admiral's influence, a succession of such senior appointments followed:

  General Leroy J. Manor, former Pentagon counterinsurgency specialist and chief of staff of the U.S. Pacific Command, manager of the bank's Manila branch;

  General Edwin F. Black, former OSS officer and commander of U.S. forces in Thailand, president of Nugan Hand Inc, of Hawaii;

  Dr Guy Parker, Asia expert for the Rand Corporation, a research firm under contract to the U.S. Defense Department, bank consultant;

  Dale Holmgren, former chairman of the CIA's Civil Air Transport, [a CIA proprietary airline similar to Air America], manager of the bank's Taiwan branch;

  William Colby, retired CIA director, Nugan Hand's legal counsel."

Finally, some further excerpts from the aforementioned radio documentary Watching Brief. Additional participants are Joan Coxsedge, a political activist and Victorian Labor parliamentarian, and Clyde Cameron, a Minister in the Whitlam government.

• TONY DOUGLAS:
  "In early 1973 the United States appointed Marshall Green as ambassador to Australia. His appointment was a sign of US uneasiness over the election of the Labor government. By the time of Green's departure, in September 1975, many in the Labor party felt similar unease over the role played by the master diplomat in destabilising the Whitlam government. One who saw the early signs was Joan Coxsedge, now a Victorian Labor MP, who in 1973 formed the Committee for the Abolition of Political Police.

  JOAN COXSEDGE:
  Well, I think it's important for people to understand that Green wasn't just any old ambassador. First of all, he was the first career diplomat that we had in this country unlike the sort of person we normally get who are rewarded for kicking in money to the Republican or Democratic parties. He was a very very senior man indeed. In fact, he was mentioned in the Pentagon papers as being a high-level policy maker for America in Southeast Asia and he had known CIA connections. So, quite obviously, the alarm bells rang back in Washington with the election of a Labor government. They were worried about policies that we had to close down the bases, to exert more independence generally on our economy and they wanted somebody to not only monitor [but also], I suggest, to lead a destabilisation of the elected government. God knows he had plenty of experience, he had been involved in quite a few coups in Southeast Asia including the very bloody one in Indonesia.

  TONY DOUGLAS:
  Joan Coxsedge's suspicions about Green were shared by Whitlam's Cabinet Minister Clyde Cameron who had many face to face meetings with the American ambassador.

  CLYDE CAMERON:
  Marshall Green was for many many years a top CIA operative who orchestrated the overthrow of the Sukarno government which led to the installation of President Suharto. He was involved in the CIA intrigue in Vietnam and in the overthrow of the government of Greece. He's a very very skilled operative in the art of destabilisation of governments that the United States doesn't approve of.

  TONY DOUGLAS:
  What was his method of operation?

  CLYDE CAMERON:
  Well, his method of operation was to make close contact with the military of a particular country, those who own and control the media, and to generally infiltrate the sections of governments where policy and decision-making takes place. And if he is unsuccessful in getting the right decisions there, well, the next step would always be to get the army to raise a coup. That's what happened in Indonesia, a phony uprising was organised by the CIA in order to give justification for the military coup that followed. And the same happened with the assassination of Deben in South Korea. Where a ruler is unable to bring about the kind of decisions that suit the CIA or where a ruler doesn't even try to do so, then, the next step is to organise some pretence for military action. The same sort of thing happened in Chile in 1973.

  And one of the first people he called on, after visiting the Prime Minister and having already put in his credentials to the Governor General, was me. And as he was walking through the door of my office I saluted him in the normal way. "pleased to meet you your excellency, take a seat," and before he could take a seat  I said "What would you do if our government decided to nationalise the Australian subsidiaries of the various American multinational corporations?" and he'd been caught by surprise, he wasn't accustomed to a minister asking that sort of question whilst he was in the process of taking his seat, and he blurted out: "Oh, we'll move in". I said "Oh, move in? Like bringing the marines in?" He said, "Oh..."  he looked a bit uncomfortable and he said, "Oh no, the days of sending the marines has passed but there are plenty of other things we could do".  I said, "For example?" He said, "Well trade". And I said, "Do you realise that if you stop trading with Australia you would be the loser to the extent of 600 million dollars a year?"  That was the balance of trade figures at that time. He said, "Oh, well there are other things". And he didn't elaborate but, of course, there are other things."

• TONY DOUGLAS:
  "In 1974 the conservative coalition blocked supply to force an early election. The move backfired and Whitlam was comfortably re-elected. The prospect was now a Whitlam government until 1977 with prominent left-winger Jim Cairns elevated to the positions of Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister.  In that time the lease of Pine Gap would come up for renewal and Minerals and Energy Minister Rex Connor would have time to gain control over Australia's vast and mostly foreign-owned basis commodities. It was as this stage that two big players wandered on to the national political stage, offering cheap loans to finance the plans for buying back the farm. It led to the media circus known as 'The Loans Affairs'.

JOAN COXSEDGE:
Well this was the so-called 'scandal' if you like of 1975 and the scandal of the Loans Affairs filled countless pages of newspapers day in, day out, week in, week out, the whole year, and I think the Loans Affairs showed what a tremendous performance the CIA could actually turn on when they really put their minds to it, and it started off in February 1975 when copies of telexes and other documents - some were genuine but some [were] undoubtedly forged - came flooding in from all over the world, you know, like on cue, very highly orchestrated.

And Australians were asked to believe that we were the victims of a monstrous conspiracy in that members of our Parliament were about to sell off our country to the Arabs. And if you actually have a look at the facts - I think they are worth going back to - and that is that the ruling circles in OPEC countries had accumulated huge amounts of money following the great leap in oil prices in 1973 and they certainly invested thousands of millions of dollars privately in the United States and elsewhere and had made loans to British, French, Danish, Italian and Japanese governments without raising a commotion at all.

An Executive Council meeting of the Australian government met on the 13th December 1974 and they authorised Rex Connor, who at that stage was the Minister for Minerals and Energy, to seek loans of up to 4,000 million dollars to deal with, [and] this is a direct quote, "with exigencies arising out of the current situation and international energy crisis and to strengthen Australia's external financial position to provide immediate protection for Australia in regard to supply of minerals and energy,"  [Rex Connor was going to buy back the farm]. This was a very important concept for Australians to have. But the authority wasn't given to Treasury because they were known to be treacherous and they were known to be very hostile to departmental heads of the government and, although this decision was supposed to be secret, it wasn't very long before offers to assist in that search came from some very strange quarters: from a very odd gentleman called T. Khemlani and he was supposed to be a financier from Pakistan. He approached Rex Connor and eventually - and I think that Connor was caught as a fool - he authorised Khemlani to run around all the OPEC countries to seek out funds for the government.

Now it turned out, Khemlani was sent by a Hong Kong arms firm which had very close associations with a crowd called Commerce International, and Commerce International is a very powerful Brussels-based armaments outfit with documented links to the CIA.

And a short time after that, we had a Melbourne businessman by the name of George Harris. He contacted our Federal Treasurer, Dr Jim Cairns, with an offer of overseas loan money. Now Harris's overseas principals were none other than the New York office of Commerce International and they were the same firm that were in Khemlani's background. So there is a whole lot of controversy surrounding the negations between Cairns and Harris and you get different accounts ..."

• TONY DOUGLAS:
  "If the CIA set up the Whitlam government it got great assistance from two quarters. Firstly, the Labor ministers themselves who used go-betweens like Harris and Khemlani neither of whom had the necessary bona fides  to conduct such negotiations and both of whom were dependent on the arms company Commerce International to supply the money, a company with documented CIA links. However, they also received crucial assistance from the Australian media who blew up the story.  Was this done, as Clyde Cameron suggested, by Marshall Green cultivating three of four media owners in Australia or has the CIA penetrated the media itself? That's the question put to former CIA agent Ralph McGehee.

  RALPH MCGEHEE:
  Well, the first thing that the Agency tries to build or create is penetration into the media of the world. They had a worldwide organisation. And this was penetration of media assets around the world and they called it "the world" because that brings a name of an organ and here is an organ which you can play any propaganda you want anywhere in the world. So, from the fact that the media took it up [in Australia] one can suspect heavy CIA involvement.

  TONY DOUGLAS:
  When Green left Australia in September 1975 all the pieces were in place. The Loans Affair had discredited the government and given the Opposition leader Malcolm Fraser the reprehensible circumstances he needed to block supply.  In addition, the complexion of the Senate had been altered by dubious constitutional devices to give the coalition parties the numbers to force the government to the polls. But what if the government refused to go? That pushed the Governor-General Sir John Kerr right to the centre of the political stage. Kerr had been appointed Governor-General in 1974 by Whitlam himself. The appointment was strongly opposed by many in the Labor party including the [later] Prime Minister Bob Hawke."

• When speaking of the involvement of Sir John Kerr in a plot to close out the Whitlam government, the following conversation ensued.

  JOAN COXSEDGE:
  "Well, of course, he had connections with two well-known CIA sponsor outfits. One was the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom. Kerr was very disappointed actually because although he had been a long-time member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom he failed to make the presidency of that organisation, but he did serve as the first president for two terms of Law Asia, from 1966, and that's another well-known CIA front.

  TONY DOUGLAS:
  So how did Kerr behave from the days leading up to the dismissal. One man near the centre of the action was Whitlam Cabinet Minister Clyde Cameron.

  CLYDE CAMERON:
  What I do know is that as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Kerr had been in communication with chiefs of the Armed Forces. I know the Governor-General's office had been in touch with the American embassy. They contemplated the possibility of a general strike in which there would be a revolt of the trade union movement resulting in a complete shutdown of all power or gas supplies or transport, all activity, even the waterworks, the sewage, everything would have been cut off. The country couldn't have lasted any more than 24 hours. So, it was decided that the army would be put on red alert so [that] in the eventuality of that sort of thing happening they would be able to move in. And in the event of the army finding that the whole matter had gone beyond their control ... because what could the army do? They couldn't man the power stations and the water-works and the sewage plants and all the transport facilities with the kind of army we've got. And it was then decided that they would call on the Americans to send in the Pacific Fleet and would stand ready to take and bombard Sydney.

  TONY DOUGLAS:
  For most Australians the dismissal is an uncomfortable reminder of a turbulent period of Australian politics. If they reflect on the events of 1975 at all, the scenario of an Australian Governor-General using the authority of the English Crown to trigger a series of events that would lead to the American Fleet bombing an Australian city to bring about the downfall of a duly elected government is beyond belief. Surely these things only occur in banana republics. Whether or not that is the scenario of 1975 it's evident that the CIA was deeply implicated and that leading conservative politicians knew in advance of Kerr's actions.

  JOAN COXSEDGE:
  There is a very fascinating document that we reproduced, because we thought it was so very interesting.  It involves Andrew Peacock, now at that stage of course he was widely tipped to succeed Malcolm Fraser as leader of the conservative Liberal Party, which he did and subsequently lost.  In 1975 it showed that during a parliamentary debate that was written up in Hansard it was revealed that towards the end of September 1975, almost two months before the coup toppled the Whitlam government, during a visit to Bali Andrew Peacock disclosed amazingly detailed knowledge of the scenario that was to take place on 11 November 1975. One of the crucial things, as far as Peacock is concerned, is that the conversation took place with Bahkin, which is the notorious Indonesian Secret Police. ..."

In Summary
There's enough history of the criminal operations and political intervention of the CIA in Australia in the above to drive home the point that we have a very deep-seated problem in this country.

• Organised crime syndicates in Australia and Indonesia are not acting alone, they have direct links with, and receive protection from, 'the Agency'.

• Drugs entering Australia from South America and Southeast Asia come through our airports under the protection of criminal gangs, ex-police who are sponsoring some operations, unidentified serving police and customs officers who are doing the same, and 'the Agency'- the CIA.  This is why there is little hope of Schapelle Corby getting key witnesses (those who know who really put the marijuana in her boogie board bag) to testify at her reopened trial in Bali.

  The people in Customs, the AFP, Sydney and Brisbane airports, and QANTAS don't want their spouses returned to them in several boxes. Nor do they want their kid's eyes to be burnt out with a butane lighter, or have them suffer some other form of extreme violence practiced routinely by the CIA.

• Drugs and even arms are flowing through and between Australian ports and airports, and this is primarily because of the continuing involvement of the CIA.

  If only organised criminals were involved there might be some chance of the honest elements within the ports and airports organisations, the various police and customs units, and carriers such as QANTAS, being able to bring them to the courts and stop the large-scale trafficking that is occurring. However, this is impossible while the CIA has the level of influence and control that it has over Australian governments, and their overt and covert arms of intelligence and law enforcement.

  When it comes down to it, Schapelle Corby and the so-called Bali Nine are not victims of the corrupt Indonesian justice system, or negligent airlines. They are ultimately the victims of 'the Agency'. So are the thousands upon thousands of young people in Australia and Asia who are having their lives ruined by drug addiction.

  There is, coincidentally, a natural substance that holds the promise of providing a single dose cure for drug addictions ranging from nicotine to heroin, and that is effective in treating the majority of addicts tested so far. This substance, ibogaine and its safer derivative noribogaine, are presently US Schedule 1 prohibited drugs and are similarly banned in Australia and many other countries. We can rest assured that intense pressure will be exerted to maintain such bans and that this pressure will emenate from the CIA, and other quarters. The Agency will not want their lucrative trade in death and suffering threatened by ibogaine or noribogaine.

  You can read more about those substances on the 2nd Renaissance freesite, starting from sub-heading [131].

What Must Be Done About The Problems Revealed By The Corby Case
The initial shock and public outrage at Schapelle Corby's conviction for drug smuggling produced a range of understandable but illogical suggestions about what should be done to let QANTAS and the Indonesians know the intensity of our feelings about the great injustice done to her.

Some of the first responses included actions such as:

• Boycotting QANTAS.
  Which would only harm the people who work for the airline and those who have money invested in it.

• Helping The Corby's to Sue The Airline Or Its Executives For Negligence.
  Which would have much the same impact as the action above.

• Asking For Donations To The Indonesian Tsunami Relief To Be Returned
  This is a completely illogical response and once they get over their initial outrage most Australians will realise that the issues of justice for Schapelle Corby and relief for the victims of the Boxing Day Tsunami are not in any way related. Survivors of the terrible waves that engulfed the coast of Indonesia need our help just as much as Schapelle does. We must help them both.

• Boycotting Bali As A Tourist Destination
  This would only harm the Balinese people and they were not responsible for what happened to Schapelle.

  We should continue to holiday in Bali but we should take precautions to avoid becoming the victim of circumstances such as those that have imprisoned her. The most important precaution is to only take carry-on bags. Do not entrust baggage to the hold of the aircraft, it is simply too risky to do so. Locks and plastic wrapping won't necessarily prevent baggage handlers from putting drugs in your bags. A great many padlocks that had been cut off baggage were found in the roof cavity of one of the baggage areas at Sydney Airport. Plastic wrapping can be removed and disposed of it the same manner. Then, when you get to Bali how can you prove that your unpadlocked and unwrapped bags, that then contain drugs, were secure when you checked them in?

• Denouncing The Judges And Calling Them Names.
  Regrettably, some Australians did this in the heat of the moment. However Schapelle's conviction was not fundamentally the fault of Linton Sirait or his colleagues on the bench. It was a failing of the system - of the Rule of Law itself - that was to blame.  If any of the judges or prosecutors acted unfairly or maliciously in the case they will eventually answer to a higher power than any human justice, and we can leave the matter to rest there.

• Boycotting Garuda Indonesian Airlines.
  This reaction does not make sense in relation to Schapelle Corby, unless she is ultimately given a death sentence. There are no valid grounds for a boycott based on her conviction for drug smuggling. Garuda did not make that call, Linton Sirait and his fellow judges were responsible.

  Garuda is, however, different from QANTAS in that it is the national flag carrier for a state that continues to impose the death sentence.  It can, therefore, be argued that it is valid to boycott the Indonesian airline on these grounds. But, if we do that we must also boycott the following carriers that also operate to and from Australia as flag carriers of nations that continue to execute our fellow human beings.

  Air China

  Air India

  Cathay Pacific

  American Airlines

  Delta Airlines

  Emirates

  EVA Airlines

  Gulf Air

  Japan Airlines

  Malaysian Airlines

  Singapore Airlines

  Thai Airways

  United Airlines.

  It should be obvious that, however justified they might be, such a wide set of boycotts would be rather impractical.

• Putting Pressure On The Federal Government To Obtain Schapelle's Release.
  This approach simply won't work. No amount of demonstrations or petitions will cause the OZFeds to produce direct evidence and witnesses relating to the person who put the marijuana in Schapelle's boogie board bag. It is beyond the power of federal politicians to interfere in the trafficking of drugs through Australian airports because the criminal syndicates are protected by the CIA.

  The pollies simply aren't allowed to close Pine Gap or prevent the flow of drugs through Sydney!

  Even if a multi-agency 'Untouchables' unit of the Federal government was somehow able to close the merchant banking operation that replaced Nugan Hand, and also close the various front organisations and consultancies that are directly owned or closely linked to 'the Agency' and organised crime syndicates, new entities would emerge in no time at all. When the rot has set in to the extent that it has the task of repairing the system becomes hopeless. When a tyre is completely worn through it is best to throw it away rather than try to retread it.

The fact is that none of the initial reactions to Schapelle's conviction are sensible or practical. None would do her any good at all, nor would they fix the problems that led to her unjust imprisonment. We should forget all of these responses.

Instead, we need to address two questions:

• 1. What must we do to support and ultimately secure the release of Schapelle Corby? How will People Power achieve this outcome?

• 2. What must we do as a society to free ourselves and our children from the problematic influence of Taker thinking on our lives and our future? How do we shake off the Old World Order and regain our freedom in a new age of abundance and peace?

Answering Question One
There are a range of obvious and quite practical things that can be done to support Schapelle Corby in her time of need. We must resolve firstly to obtain her unconditional release. Since this might take some time we must also ensure that in the interim she gets direct support and encouragement in the form of letters and care packages. The address to use is:

Schapelle Corby
C/- LPM Kerobokan
JI . Tangkuban Perahu
Kerobokan, Denpasar 80117
Bali, INDONESIA.

The psychological impact of receiving huge and continuing support from the ordinary people of Australia and other countries will be very significant in helping Schapelle to cope with the stress of her situation. Knowing that there is real People Power out there and working for her release will be a great comfort and encouragement to her.

Make sure that the letters and cards come from your children as well as yourselves. The plight of Schapelle Corby is focusing attention on the faults of the Rule of Law and Taker thinking that stretches right back to The FAll.  Her courage in maintaining her innocence and insisting on her rights is helping to initiate new thinking and changes that will make the world a better and far safer place for the next generation on this planet.

Explain this to your kids and let them thank Schapelle in their own words. Get whole classes of children in our schools to write to her.

Money will also be important. We must make generous donations towards supporting Schapelle and running a publicity campaign aimed at the ordinary people of Australia and Indonesia. Send financial contributions to Schapelle's sister Mercedes, as follows.

Please make cheques / money orders payable to:
Account Name: Mercedes Corby
Bank: Commonwealth Bank
BSB: 064401
Account: 10130139

Or post to:
Schapelle Corby
PO Box 5401 West End
QUEENSLAND 4101

Don't Send Donations To Any Other Addresses Or Web Sites.
Scammers Are Cashing In On Schapelle Corby's Plight.

Do send money and keep sending money !  Schapelle's family and their close supporters will face continuing expenses in relation to the campaign to take her case directly to the people. Don't just send one donation, make it a habit to send some money every month until Schapelle Corby is back in Australia as a free person.

Take no notice of the federal spin about the Corby family exploiting Schapelle's plight.  What would you want us to do if it was your daughter or your sister in the Kerobokan prison for 20 years?  That's right, you'd want us to help, no matter what the media said you might be doing with the money. So donate - do it for the Corby's - long and generously.

The second part of this question of support for Schapelle and her family is about how People Power - to which she has appealed directly - can ever FREE HER.
The answer lies in concentrating all our efforts on what we already have the power to do and placing no reliance whatsoever on appeals to the OZFeds or the Indonesian government or legal system.

• In Australia and, to a lesser extent, Indonesia the people have great capacity for self-direction and independent action, but have not tapped that capacity.  Instead we have all gone along with the 'system' believing that, somehow, "the way we live now is the way we were meant to live".

• Now, the predicament of Schapelle Corby has made it clear that the system is irreparably broken. She has appealed to us to not only help her to obtain her freedom and regain a clean criminal record, but to also drive through changes that will prevent what happened to her from ever happening to other Australians flying overseas.

• The answer to the question of how People Power can free Schapelle is that we must tap into and exercise our capacity to work together (like the ants), doing the things that we have the power and will to do, and disregarding all avenues that require governments to act on our behalf. We must act together, on our own behalf, to free Schapelle Corby.

Answering Question Two
Note that the question is framed around TAKER THINKING. It is not about the OZFeds so much as it is about the lethal memes that drive them and their kind to operate as they do.

There is a large freesite devoted to the 2nd Renaissance and why and how we need to abandon the failing Level 3 Civilization that is dominated by centralist governments and rapacious corporations. Click on the '2nd Ren Down' link on the sidebar to download that freesite. Detail that expands the following summary is to be found there, along with lot's of other information.

The thing that we must do is to completely change our thinking. We must do this within the context of a staged, non-violent, abandonment of the old, now failing, civilization and its concept of centralised government and the Rule of Law.

We must be clear that, as long as we remain non-violent, we are doing nothing wrong. Secession is the intrinsic right of every state, region and city within the present federation. Secession is NOT sedition !

A totally new society is going to emerge whatever the dominators of the old civilization or the leaders of a new wave of freedom and spirituality do. The transformation is being driven by new scientific discoveries and the new technologies they are spawning.
No economic, governmental, or societal forces can stop this happening. The transformation can be delayed but it cannot be prevented.

In order to succeed in transforming our society and freeing Schapelle Corby we must help each other both the Australian people and the people of Indonesia to think and act as Leavers rather than Takers.

To most people this seems an impossible task. But it only requires that we all change the way we think about our spirituality and our relationships with others, including the living things that populate the ecosystems that we inhabit.

Changing one's mind requires no money, it consumes no energy, and it can be done very quickly.

This is the reason that totalitarian regimes fear spiritual revival movements. It is the reason that the Chinese government is so intent on suppressing Falun Gong and why it has spies operating for this purpose in Australia.

Falun Gong and Falun Dafa principles are similar to Buddhist and Taoist principles. Although he never wrote anything about Falun Gong or Falun Dafa here is what one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century said about Buddhism:

Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future: it transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology; it covers both the natural & spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. .... Albert Einstein

This description is the antithesis of the Western Taker ethos and what Daniel Quinn calls the 'Mother Culture' that underlies the dominant ideas and thinking of federal governments around the world.  It is quoted here so that readers may better understand what is meant by a Leaver philosophy and ethos.

The abandonment of Taker thinking and the adoption of Leaver thinking will be a crucial part of the transformation from a 20th century industrial culture premised on economic scarcity to a 21st century knowledge culture based on abundance and raised consciousness - a return to the Golden Age that we lost 12,000 years ago.

Such a social and spiritual transformation will not only free Schapelle Corby and empty all the jails in Australia and Indonesia, it will save the human species from its own destruction and the devastation of the planet in the name of 'the national interest' and 'shareholder value'.

During the next year or so, certainly by 2007, we must dialogue and think together until we discover not only how to free Schapelle but also how to save the world for future generations. How we must do this is described in other freesites that have links in the sidebar. But, in essence, the key points are:

• Talk to each other: Us-2-Us. Not Us-2-Them.

• Act like the ants.

• Use the Internet / Freenet and PPDs to communicate.

• Focus on what we can control, not on changing what governments and corporations control.

• Remain non-violent.

• Apply reverse surveillance - if we can't hide they can't hide.

• Think as sovereign individuals, not as the subservient citizens of a nation state.

• Highlight the failures of the outgoing civilization, including the Rule of Law.

• Don't ever give up, don't ever compromise. The power to change things right now exists right now.

Start to think about these changes today. Start to read about them. Begin to talk about them. Discuss them with others. Share understanding and develop a mind-map of how to begin the transformation, and how to keep it moving forward.

Change doesn't happen because of logic or need. Change happens because a growing number of people are discontented with what is happening now. Outrage about the plight of Schapelle Corby is fine, provided it is outrage at the failure of systems and dissatisfaction with the injustice of the Rule of Law. But outrage directed at the Indonesian people or those who happened to officiate at her trial is misplaced. We must be sure to channel the outrage we feel towards real and beneficial changes rather than payback or revenge.

Until next time then.

Lothar, July 2005.

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