Smokin Moose
Fallen Cannabis Warrior & Ex Moderator
The passion of Corby. What the Indonesian smuggling case really means.(2005)
Schapelle Corby, 27, is a telegenic symbol of the global drug war's ultimate goal: to kill people who use plant drugs, and to kill their plants.
The Aussie surfer chick says baggage handlers put kilos of vacuum-sealed marijuana in her surfboard case while she was in transit from Brisbane through Sydney to Bali on October 8, 2004.
Indonesian prosecutors said her baggage handler alibi was bunk, and charged her with a cannabis smuggling crime that carried with it death by firing squad as a possible penalty.
A hostile judge, in a courtroom under siege by Indonesian anti-drug activists who wanted her dead, found Corby guilty on May 27th, 2005, sentenced her to 20 years in prison, and fined her $15,000. If she can't pay the fine, she'll spend an extra half year in prison.
Unless Corby successfully appeals the conviction and sentence, she will be 47 when she gets out of prison – if she survives that long. Indonesian prisons are places of horror, disease and corruption.
Corby's case generated worldwide media coverage, apparently the first time that millions of people finally, fully understood that the drug war is a real war, a war that kills.
Corby, a former beautician, is now an unwitting high priestess and sacrificial lamb held hostage in the unholy war against plants.
Her ascent to media marijuana martyrdom was assisted by her being a very attractive young white babe from Australia, the third rail of the US-UK axis of Angloil Empire.
Still, the sight of a white person facing injustice in an Asian country is a bit of a turnaround: the "land down under" is usually doing bad things to brown people, such as the decimation of its aboriginal population. Or the sad incident of October 19, 2001, when the Australian Navy refused assistance to a sinking vessel full of illegal immigrants bound from Indonesia to Australia.
The result: 353 people drowned, including 142 women and 146 children.
In the elaborately scripted stage shows that masquerades as international relations these days, Australia and Indonesia traded angry words regarding the boat people's death, just as they did in October, 2002, when bombs killed 202 vacationers and locals in two tourist bars in Bali.
The result: 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians (mostly Balinese), and 26 British among the dead.
The arguments between governments are mere stagecraft, however; even if one country kills a bunch of the other country's boat people, and the other country threatens to kill a cute girl for carrying a bag of dried plants, Australia and Indonesia are business partners who can't afford to sever diplomatic ties.
Indeed, the Australian and Indonesian government share responsibility for the 2001 boat drownings, and for lack of punishment of those responsible. Police agents from both countries staff Indonesia's People Smuggling Disruption Program (PSDP), which is jointly administered by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the notoriously brutal Indonesian National Police. The AFP and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service work the PSDP in Indonesia and elsewhere, and were involved in the tracking and decision-making regarding the vessel that sank. The human-smuggling captain of the capsized boat is in an Indonesian jail, but unlike Corby, has not been charged with any crimes. Neither have any members of the Indonesian police, who are reported to have provided armed escort for the five-bus convoy of illegals that traveled 300 kilometres across three Indonesian provinces, from Bogor to Bandar Lampung in Sumatra. The police used armed force to coerce 421 terrified people onto the decrepit boat, which was obviously unseaworthy.
The Corby case is more than just an isolated example of a hapless Aussie smuggler running afoul of super-harsh drug laws in a Muslim foreign country. The woman's arrest and trial are an international circus, like a riot at a World Cup soccer match, or a bombing, or mass drowning: it's the Aussies versus the Indos again, with ominous overtones of racism, geopolitics, religious sectarianism, and sexism.
Plant jihad
Corby's fate is entwined with three global systems that oppose marijuana. These systems are a trinity of religion, repression, and greed.
The foundational system of this triad is industrial capitalism, which views medicinal, intoxicating and sacramental plants as market threats to manufactured commodities such as pharmaceuticals and alcohol.
Another anti-cannabis system is an institutionalized perversion of Judeo-Christian and Islamic beliefs, woven into the fabric of cultures, national governments, and drug laws. This system's theology is antagonistic to nature and "mother earth," and is partially based on a patriarchal misinterpretation of the Bible's book of Genesis. Of particular significance is the section of Genesis that blames a "tree" and the "fruit of the tree" in the Garden of Eden for the introduction of "sin" and "knowledge" into human experience.
Another much-cited section of Genesis commands humans to "subdue" the earth. In the minds of power-hungry people who want to dominate nature and people, these words of Genesis provide justification and comfort.
It is not our purpose to veer into arcane theological topics, but it's useless to report the "news" without reporting context behind the news. The fate of beautiful, doomed Corby is all about systemic societal context, about a centuries-old war against the type of plants that give us altered consciousness and create personal evolution via internal realization of "god."
Mystical, internal realizations, which can often be achieved through plant drugs, fasting, music, drumming, dancing, sex, prayer, meditation, yoga, or suffering, offer competition for religious traditions that worship a vindictive Father God who lives in the sky, a God who wants to punish.
Unlike the bliss, revelation, inner peace, euphoria, and healing offered by marijuana and other plant drugs, the Father God religions offer externalized spirituality, forcing people to look up to heaven and the leaders of churches and mosques.
Spiritual practices based on mystical traditions do not look to the sky or to church hierarchies; they often look to ingestion of a hallucinogenic "fruit" from a tree, a mushroom, a flower top from cannabis, and other entheogens.
Modern religious scholars say the war on drugs is part of the unrelenting war humans wage against mother earth and her gifts, the war that Father God religions wage against mystical spirituality, against plants that create new consciousness.
This particularly anti-natural religious worldview has produced the long series of teachings, laws, treaties, taboos, and punishments now embodied in the global war on plant drugs, initiated and led by the US and the UN, most enthusiastically waged by Indonesia, Singapore, China, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, India, China, and other non-Western nations.
In the Dark Ages, fertile, attractive women who used cannabis and other herbal "medicaments" by inserting them into their vaginas were burned at the stake as witches. In 2005, a woman who allegedly carried cannabis with her on a surfing trip can face a firing squad. It's the same holy war, going on for centuries and like a vampire, immortal.
Plant-hating religions cloud the minds of otherwise sane people, causing young Indonesian women to scream for blood outside Corby's courtroom, demanding that Corby be shot to death because she allegedly carried nine pounds of plant material into their country.
The drug war religion of plant haters as revealed in the Corby case and also seen when a 38-year-old Malaysian hash smuggler was recently strangled to death by his government- this religion is a death cult, and has the backing of every country in the world, except Holland.
Drug Warriors and their prey
World nazis
The third system at work in the Corby case is what I call "globalized Nazism."
The first Nazi state was just one country, Germany, that demonized and genocided target cultures inside and outside its borders, repressed "pure-blood" Germans, and simultaneously invaded its neighbors.
Watch the fascinating movie Downfall to see a great documentary about Nazi Germany, but know this: Nazism didn't die when Hilter died. As Richard Lawrence Miller points out in his must-read books, Nazi Justiz and Drug Warriors and Their Prey, the German Nazis used a five-step destruction process that gradually convinced people that their harmless neighbors were despicable demons who deserved to be hunted down and killed. These five steps are today utilized against the cannabis community.
The five steps are: identifying the target victims, ostracizing them from society, confiscating their possessions, concentrating them in prisons and ghettos, and then annihilating them.
The drug war Nazis of today use this same five step process and with it they've succeeded in making people want to kill you as punishment for pot.
When Miller debuted his books, critics said he was exaggerating and using false analogies. In the USA, they pointed out, the drug war follows only some of Hitler's five steps, but usually not all five. US drug users are demonized, Miller's detractors admit, some lose homes and families, they're put in prison, they're inadvertently killed in drug raids or die because they are deprived of medical marijuana, but they aren't all being rounded up en masse and murdered in concentration camps. "It isn't anywhere near as bad as what happened to the Jews."
Well, not yet. The mistake Miller's critics make is they look only at America when seeking evidence for the five step Nazification of the drug war. It's more accurate to look at the entire world as one huge Nazi apparatus, with individual countries implementing some or all of the five steps with varying degrees of intensity and totality.
In the globalized Nazi drug war, a country like the US relies primarily on identification, ostracism, and confiscation, while countries like Indonesia and Thailand eagerly employ steps four and five: concentration and annihilation.
On a planetary scale, the Nazi's five steps are in place, codified by national laws, the United Nations, and international treaties. Drug users, producers and smugglers are 21st century Holocaust candidates. Global drug war Nazis are unified across cultures, across political systems, across economic systems- using "kill the druggie" strategies as much as they can get away with in their specific sociopolitical settings.
Proof? Saudi Arabia recently beheaded two drug smugglers in public.
A Saudi government spokesman explained that, "We apply the laws of God, and don't pay attention to whoever says anything about that."
Of course, they don't yet behead or shoot drug smugglers in the US, they just put them in prison for 15 years, where they die of poor health and broken hearts. In places like Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, the drug warriors are religiously efficient, and empowered to embrace Nazi steps four and five.
If Corby wasn't a hot-looking white lady with an enthusiastic media and cadre of supporters, if she was just some impoverished male smuggler, the Indonesian government would shoot shot her to death, all in the name of protecting Indonesians from the evil power of plants.
Witch hunt
There's an endless supply of druggie witches to burn. The Indonesians recently arrested a 42-year-old Australian expatriate named John Pyle after searching his home and finding 1.8 grams of hashish. He faces 10 years in jail.
Nine young and apparently clueless young Aussies (the media calls them "The Bali Nine") were busted in a coordinated series of raids several weeks ago. Four of them allegedly had ****** strapped to their bodies, and more was found in their hotel rooms. They're facing the death penalty. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) assisted in their arrests, despite an Australian policy that forbids Aussies from assisting investigations that could lead to execution.
The ****** allegedly transported by the Bali Nine was discovered and tracked by the AFP, which provided intelligence data that led to the arrests of four co-conspirators in Australia.
Cooperation between Australian and Indonesian law agencies has ramped up since the Bali bombings; last year the two countries opened a unified police agency in Jakarta dedicated to combating drug trafficking and terrorism.
Across Indonesia, the number of arrests for drug trafficking rose from just over 1800 in 1999 to more than 9700 in 2003. Amnesty International says 30 of 54 people facing execution in Indonesia are drug criminals; 20 of that 30 are foreigners, and six are women.
There are at least 105 Australians on drug charges in foreign jails; two face almost-certain execution in Singapore and Vietnam, and a third of them are eligible for execution.
Former Indonesian President Megawati Sukarno reinvigorated Indonesia's drug war death penalty in 2002.
"For those who distribute drugs, life sentences and other prison sentences are no longer sufficient," she said. "No sentence is sufficient other than the death sentence."
Indonesia's current president, Susilo Yudhoyono, also advocates executing druggies. In a country suffering from forest fires, global warming, overpopulation, collapsing fisheries, Muslim extremism, poverty, disease and globalization, the Indonesian government describes marijuana as public enemy number one.
"Heavier punishments have been legislated because drug activities are very dangerous for the nation and the people," said Indonesia's Attorney-General. "Drugs have infiltrated all layers of Indonesian society, from soldiers and the police to elementary school children. If drug dealers are not heavily punished, with the heaviest sentences, there is grave danger: this country will be destroyed because of drugs."
Criminals, all
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a rabid foe of marijuana and a partner in the war on drugs and the war on Islam, belatedly directed his foreign minister to provide legal assistance for Corby, but he also said that Australians had to accept the laws and decisions of foreign governments, no matter how brutal.
No surprise in that. Howard's military is a proud participant in the illegal US war in Iraq, and he gets away with as much drug war as he can at home, blocking medical marijuana laws, sending helicopters and attack dogs to pot haven Nimbin, harassing hippies and other malcontents, especially if they're driving VW vans and wearing hemp clothing.
And the Indonesian government is so very concerned about the health of its citizens, that's why it has to protect its people from marijuana and other drug plants. But while protecting its citizens from the "terrible harms" of marijuana smoke, the Indonesian government has built a soul-destroying industrial capitalist society that is injuring and killing its citizens with smoke from cars, factories, and deforestation.
From outer space, Indonesia looks like a depressing science fiction movie. Grayish-black clouds of toxins shroud the entire region. Instead of strengthening enforcement of environmental protection, the Indonesian government has partnered with land rapists and polluters, dismantling its Environmental Impact Control Agency.
Logging is destroying Indonesia's rainforests and the endangered flora and fauna that dwell in them. Deforestation causes incessant floods and landslides, including a landslide that buried alive 200 people in November, 2003. While the Indonesian government wages war against marijuana, which never killed anybody, it is in bed with loggers who create deadly disasters.
Marijuana smoke maybe hurts the lungs of Indonesians who smoke 20 joints a day, but car exhaust is bad for Indonesians too. So why has the Indonesian government encouraged a rapid increase in use of cars and trucks, creating air pollution that causes at least half a billion dollars worth of direct economic losses per year, along with fatal damage to people's respiratory systems that kills thousands of Indonesians each year? World health organizations say Indonesia's air is among the world's most deadly, with extremely high concentrations of soot, carbon dioxide, lead, hydrocarbons, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide.
Has the government responded with a war on air pollution? Do the directors of companies that pollute face the death penalty? Hell no. Indonesian officials have rejected mandates for catalytic converters and emissions controls; the country has refused to completely ban leaded gasoline and inferior diesel fuels, which create deadly concentrations of airborne lead. Up to a third of Indonesian children have brain damage caused by lead air pollution. Why does the Indonesian government not do more to protect kids from automobile-produced toxins? Perhaps because the government runs Pertamina, the state-owned petroleum company.
People can't breathe safely in Indonesia, nor can they drink the water or eat the fish. The Indonesia Environment Monitor notes that Indonesia ranks among the worst countries in Asia in sewerage and sanitation coverage. Few Indonesian cities possess even minimal sanitation systems. A 2002 World Bank report says less than 3% of Jakarta's households are connected to sewer systems. The absence of sanitation services forces most households to rely upon leaky septic tanks, or to send their feces and urine and menstrual blood directly into rivers and canals. This has resulted in massive contamination of Indonesia's surface water and groundwater, as well as repeated, deadly epidemics of gastrointestinal infections. As of 2001, an estimated 90% of Jakarta's wells were polluted by human waste.
Indonesia's State Minister for the Environment acknowledges that factories dump liquid toxins into rivers. Indonesia's mining companies destroy hundreds of miles of mountains and rivers. Indonesia's coastal waters are poisonous, and its fishing industry uses a technique called blastfishing, in which fish and coral reefs are blown up with explosives. According to a 2002 report by the World Resources Institute, 86% of Indonesia's reef area (19,700 square miles) is at risk.
The Indonesian government is also in league with animal hunters and traders who violate the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES).
In the capital city of Jakarta, endangered siamang gibbons, baby orangutans, tigers, birds and other rare animals are openly and illegally sold at Pramuka Market. Bribes and other corruption keep the animal traders in business; the Indonesian government does nothing to stop the destruction of the last of these protected species.
"The illegal trade of endangered animals is rampant here," says Bill Smith, a spokesperson for the Gibbon Foundation.
In light of the fact that the corrupt Indonesian government has created a society that makes its citizens sick and dead, the government's hysterical assertion that Indonesia "will be destroyed by drugs" is revealed as utter nonsense.
It's not marijuana, poppies and their derivatives that are destroying Indonesia, its industrial capitalism, and the Indonesian government itself.
State terror
People of conscience have pointed out that the Indonesian government's enthusiasm for killing drug criminals is no surprise, given the government's history of systematic violation of human rights.
Sydney-based Catholic nun Sister Susan Connelly is demanding that the Australian Government ensure that Corby is freed from Indonesian prison.
"It is disgusting and barbaric in this day and age that a 'death penalty by firing squad' law even exists, and that an Australian citizen should be subject to it," the nun said. "This law is out-dated and inhumane, and considering that convicted Bali bombing terrorist Abu Bakar Bashir has only been sentenced to two years and six months jail with the prospect of appeal for his proven conspiracy participation in the Bali bombings that killed 183 people, it is inconsistent and absurd that a person should face the death penalty for allegedly smuggling cannabis into the country."
Human rights violations are nothing new in Indonesia.
In 1975, the former Portuguese colony of East Timor (located 400 miles north of Australia) was invaded by the Indonesian military, which was funded, equipped, and trained by the US military.
The day before the invasion, guess who was in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta with Indonesian President Suharto? None other than US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger!
Kissinger has long been accused of war crimes relating to Vietnam and elsewhere. Reports say there's little doubt that Ford and Kissinger gave Suharto approval to invade, with Kissinger telling reporters soon after that "the United States understands Indonesia's position on the question of East Timor."
Since that time, the U.S. has provided Indonesia with hundreds of millions of dollars in economic and military assistance, greatly facilitating the forced colonization of East Timor. The US has repeatedly blocked United Nations' action on East Timor.
Former UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan openly bragged in his book A Dangerous Place, about how he carried out with "no inconsiderable success" the American policy of rendering the UN "utterly ineffective" on East Timor.
An estimated 200,000 people died in the East Timor invasion and subsequent 18 years of occupation. In 1979, an Australian parliamentary report described the Indonesian military's actions in East Timor as "indiscriminate killing on a scale unprecedented in post-World War II history."
Regardless, the US, Japan and other nations provided hundreds of millions of dollars and military hardware to Indonesia while the occupation and killings continued.
On November 12, 1991, with international journalists as witnesses, the Indonesian army opened fire on a peaceful crowd in Dili, the capital of East Timor. The people were gathered at a cemetery for the memorial service of a young pro-independence activist slain by the military two weeks earlier. Over 200 people died as a result.
Yet, Indonesian media and government, and their allies in Western governments and media, falsely portray the East Timorese as guerrillas and insurgents, just like they describe Iraqi citizens who resist US occupation.
When President Bush announced he was considering a restoration of military assistance to Indonesia, human rights groups pleaded with him not to provide assistance until the Indonesians purged their military of officers and soldiers who abuse and kill civilians.
"We find troubling ongoing human rights violations by Indonesia's security forces, especially in conflict areas, widespread impunity for crimes against humanity and other serious violations," a human rights groups said in a letter to Bush published by the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network.
The activists said military abuses continued in Aceh and West Papua, provinces where separatists are fighting the government. And Jakarta has never punished military personnel who committed atrocities in East Timor when the country voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999, they said.
Bush didn't listen. He recently restarted an International Military Education and Training (IMET) program with Indonesia that had been suspended since the early 1990s because of military killings in East Timor; Indonesian President Lieutenant General Yudhoyono went back home bragging that his country would soon be in full military partnership with the US again.
Yudhoyono was in charge of Territorial Affairs, commanding armed forces personnel in 1998 and 1999; human rights groups say he is likely guilty of war crimes for his role in human rights abuses in East Timor.
The Indonesian president is a career soldier who received training at the infamous School of the Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning, Georgia in 1976 and 1982, along with Command and General Staff College training at Fort Leavenworth, Texas in 1991. There have been persistent rumors that Yudhoyono is a CIA operative.
The School of the Americas is widely known as a terrorism training center responsible for teaching death squad tactics, counterinsurgencies, assassinations and other illegal actions to US and foreign military personnel. It was renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" in 2001. Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 and reopened in Georgia.
Former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca says the School of the Americas was the "biggest base for destabilization in Latin America." The school is often called the "School of Assassins." In its 59 years of operation, SOA trained more than 65,000 soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper methodology, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. SOA graduates use their skills to wage a war against their own people, or against people like the East Timorese.
Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and advocates who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of people have been tortured, raped, assassinated, "disappeared," massacred, and forced into refugee status by SOA-trained soldiers.
Yudhoyono benefited greatly from his US military training, and he often expresses his gratitude for it.
"I love the United States. Even with all its faults, I consider it my second country," he said last year.
Pointer ... Yatala on the Gold Coast
The chapel of Schapelle
While renowned Aussie actor Russell Crowe and thousands of other people campaign for Corby's release, the imprisoned woman's cell has become a religious shrine.
"The photographs of Schappelle Corby broke my heart," Crowe said. "I don't understand how we can, as a country, stand by and let a young lady rot away in a foreign prison. That is ridiculous. It is Indonesia, fine and dandy, but we need to find a rational platform to save this girl's life. We gave Indonesia how many hundreds of millions of dollars in tsunami relief?"
Tourists visiting Bali head to Kerobokan Jail where Corby shares a hellishly hot, humid cell with eight other female prisoners. The women sleep side by side on the floor. There is one toilet and one bucket and water tap for all of them. Food and medicine are in short supply. Guards are abusive. There lights are on 24 hours a day.
Schapelle pilgrims bring gifts, toiletries, food, books. Missionaries line up with the tourists to see Schapelle.
Corby's mother Rosleigh Rose and her terminally ill father Michael are among the visitors.
Schapelle's treatment in Bali is not always full of such support and warmth.
During her trial, representatives of Granat, an Indonesian anti-marijuana group, invaded the trial courtroom holding signs that demanded Corby be sentenced to death. Corby's mother almost came to blows with the pro-death activists, and the trial judge, Linton Sirait, told Granat sign-holders they would be banned from his courtroom. Sirait let them know that he shared their concerns, however, saying he had presided over at least 500 criminal trials and had never issued an acquittal for a drug defendant.
A few days later, Granat activists were back, this time holding signs outside the courtroom. The signs said that if Corby was innocent she should be freed, and if guilty she should be condemned to death.
Their threats prompted Bali police to assign 100 officers to guard the courtroom and Corby, especially after counter-threats were made by Corby supporters, who allegedly threatened to bomb the Indonesian embassy in Australia and do physical violence to Indonesian officials if Corby was sentenced to death.
After Corby was sentenced to 20 years in jail, the prosecutor said he would appeal the sentence to make it longer; Corby's defense team said they would appeal the conviction and the sentence.
Prosecutor Ida Bagus Wiswantanu said Judge Sirait had made an error in giving only a 20 year sentence.
"We should not tolerate people dealing narcotics and we have to take stern action. For us, justice is life in prison for anyone who imports that much marijuana," Wiswantanu said.
After a tumultuous courtroom finale in which Corby broke into tears, her mother cursed the judge, and Granat activists cheered from outside, the 27-year-old convict was sent back to jail.
As the verdict was announced, Corby's mother screamed at Judge Sirait, "She's not guilty, you bastard. You took the word of a lying customs bastard. It's all lies. You judges will never sleep, never sleep. Schapelle, you will come home."
When family members tried to get her to stop screaming, the distraught mother shouted, "I will not fucking shut up."
There will be no bail for Schapelle while she is appealing the ruling. Legal experts say she will be in an Indonesian prison until at least 2007, even if the Australian government is successful in arranging a prisoner swap that would allow her to serve time in an Australian prison.
Corby's attorneys said they have new evidence that will be presented during the appeals process. They also said they'd demand that the appeals court place more weight on testimony by an Australian prisoner held in Australia, John Ford, who flew to Bali and testified at the trial that he heard baggage handlers discuss the placement of cannabis in Corby's luggage.
According to Ford, the baggage handlers were part of a domestic marijuana transport operation that placed drugs in Corby's luggage in Brisbane and intended to retrieve them in Sydney, where her baggage was transferred for its final flight to Bali.
Ford testified that the baggage handlers admitted they sometimes forgot to get the drugs out of the baggage they'd put it in, and that Corby was one of the unfortunate people who became a victim of Indonesian laws due to the baggage smugglers' mistake.
When Ford returned to prison, he was attacked by another prisoner, and cut with a knife. The Australian government later admitted that police had already been investigating reports that Sydney baggage handlers were involved in smuggling cocaine.
Corby's lawyers will file an appeal with Indonesia's High Court, which will then have 150 days to hear it. If that appeal is unsuccessful, they will appeal to the Supreme Court, which has an unlimited amount of time to review the case. Two sets of judges will consider the facts of the case in the Supreme Court process.
The only other option for Corby, if she loses in the Supreme Court, is to appeal for clemency to President Yudhoyono. To do so, however, she would have to admit her guilt.
Citizen nazis
In a world where the US is killing hundreds of people per month in an illegal war, and where injustice and cruelty seem to everywhere increase, the fate of one woman might be eventually forgotten.
But for members of the marijuana culture, the lessons of the Corby case need to be learned well, and never forgotten.
It's the same lesson that survivors of the German Holocaust spoke of- when they first realized that Hitler was turning others against them, they didn't see where it would lead to. They didn't realize there would come a time when the world would watch passively while Germans put them on trains to death camps and killed them by the millions.
It can happen again, and marijuana people are on the firing line.
In the aftermath of the Corby case, journalists interviewed "normal Balinese citizens" concerning the Australian woman's fate.
In a Balinese coffeeshop, a waitress said, "People who sell drugs should pay a lot of money, or have the death penalty." A 21-year-old agrees, saying the sentence Corby should receive ought to be "As hard as you can go. The maximum."
Indonesians cheered last year when a 32-year-old Thai woman and a 62-year-old man were tied to oil palm trees in northern Sumatra and shot for drug trafficking.
Indonesians express hatred for drug-using tourists and domestic drug users. An 18-year-old says, "Drug dealers are putting drugs in candy and selling drugs at primary schools and secondary schools."
A Balinese man complains that Australian tourists haven't been as plentiful in Bali after the 2002 terrorist bombings, and that the Corby case will result in another drop in tourism.
"The Australians are angry and their travel agents are boycotting us because of this drug woman," he says.
An Australian travel magazine reported that 65 per cent of the nation's travel agents planned to direct customers elsewhere if Corby was convicted.
But that loss of tourism revenue is of little concern to true believers in the drug war religion. For them, Corby and all drug users are devils.
As an Indonesian woman commented on a Jarkarta television station, "It's time we responded to marijuana terrorists the way the US has responded to the Iraqis. We should kill them all."
Help free Schapelle Leigh Corby:
1) Contact the Australian Prime Minister and the Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, asking them to place pressure on the Balinese Government to release Schapelle Corby.
• Australian Prime Minister: John Howard, House of Representatives, Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600, Australia
• Australian Foreign Affairs Minister: Alexander Downer: a.downer.mp@aph.gov.au
2) Contact the Indonesian Consulate in Australia and demand that they set Schapelle Corby free. Threaten to boycott all travel to Bali until they grant Corby her freedom.
• Consulate General – Republic of Indonesia, 72 Queens Road, Melbourne, Victoria 3004, Australia; kjri@kjri-melbourne.org
3) Anyone who has ever experienced a problem with their luggage being tampered with at any Australian or Indonesian airports or has dealt with corrupt customs officials in Indonesia, please email your experience to: hfs_inc@hotmail.com
The passion of Corby
Source: Cannabis culture
Schapelle Corby, 27, is a telegenic symbol of the global drug war's ultimate goal: to kill people who use plant drugs, and to kill their plants.
The Aussie surfer chick says baggage handlers put kilos of vacuum-sealed marijuana in her surfboard case while she was in transit from Brisbane through Sydney to Bali on October 8, 2004.
Indonesian prosecutors said her baggage handler alibi was bunk, and charged her with a cannabis smuggling crime that carried with it death by firing squad as a possible penalty.
A hostile judge, in a courtroom under siege by Indonesian anti-drug activists who wanted her dead, found Corby guilty on May 27th, 2005, sentenced her to 20 years in prison, and fined her $15,000. If she can't pay the fine, she'll spend an extra half year in prison.
Unless Corby successfully appeals the conviction and sentence, she will be 47 when she gets out of prison – if she survives that long. Indonesian prisons are places of horror, disease and corruption.
Corby's case generated worldwide media coverage, apparently the first time that millions of people finally, fully understood that the drug war is a real war, a war that kills.
Corby, a former beautician, is now an unwitting high priestess and sacrificial lamb held hostage in the unholy war against plants.
Her ascent to media marijuana martyrdom was assisted by her being a very attractive young white babe from Australia, the third rail of the US-UK axis of Angloil Empire.
Still, the sight of a white person facing injustice in an Asian country is a bit of a turnaround: the "land down under" is usually doing bad things to brown people, such as the decimation of its aboriginal population. Or the sad incident of October 19, 2001, when the Australian Navy refused assistance to a sinking vessel full of illegal immigrants bound from Indonesia to Australia.
The result: 353 people drowned, including 142 women and 146 children.
In the elaborately scripted stage shows that masquerades as international relations these days, Australia and Indonesia traded angry words regarding the boat people's death, just as they did in October, 2002, when bombs killed 202 vacationers and locals in two tourist bars in Bali.
The result: 88 Australians, 38 Indonesians (mostly Balinese), and 26 British among the dead.
The arguments between governments are mere stagecraft, however; even if one country kills a bunch of the other country's boat people, and the other country threatens to kill a cute girl for carrying a bag of dried plants, Australia and Indonesia are business partners who can't afford to sever diplomatic ties.
Indeed, the Australian and Indonesian government share responsibility for the 2001 boat drownings, and for lack of punishment of those responsible. Police agents from both countries staff Indonesia's People Smuggling Disruption Program (PSDP), which is jointly administered by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the notoriously brutal Indonesian National Police. The AFP and the Australian Secret Intelligence Service work the PSDP in Indonesia and elsewhere, and were involved in the tracking and decision-making regarding the vessel that sank. The human-smuggling captain of the capsized boat is in an Indonesian jail, but unlike Corby, has not been charged with any crimes. Neither have any members of the Indonesian police, who are reported to have provided armed escort for the five-bus convoy of illegals that traveled 300 kilometres across three Indonesian provinces, from Bogor to Bandar Lampung in Sumatra. The police used armed force to coerce 421 terrified people onto the decrepit boat, which was obviously unseaworthy.
The Corby case is more than just an isolated example of a hapless Aussie smuggler running afoul of super-harsh drug laws in a Muslim foreign country. The woman's arrest and trial are an international circus, like a riot at a World Cup soccer match, or a bombing, or mass drowning: it's the Aussies versus the Indos again, with ominous overtones of racism, geopolitics, religious sectarianism, and sexism.
Plant jihad
Corby's fate is entwined with three global systems that oppose marijuana. These systems are a trinity of religion, repression, and greed.
The foundational system of this triad is industrial capitalism, which views medicinal, intoxicating and sacramental plants as market threats to manufactured commodities such as pharmaceuticals and alcohol.
Another anti-cannabis system is an institutionalized perversion of Judeo-Christian and Islamic beliefs, woven into the fabric of cultures, national governments, and drug laws. This system's theology is antagonistic to nature and "mother earth," and is partially based on a patriarchal misinterpretation of the Bible's book of Genesis. Of particular significance is the section of Genesis that blames a "tree" and the "fruit of the tree" in the Garden of Eden for the introduction of "sin" and "knowledge" into human experience.
Another much-cited section of Genesis commands humans to "subdue" the earth. In the minds of power-hungry people who want to dominate nature and people, these words of Genesis provide justification and comfort.
It is not our purpose to veer into arcane theological topics, but it's useless to report the "news" without reporting context behind the news. The fate of beautiful, doomed Corby is all about systemic societal context, about a centuries-old war against the type of plants that give us altered consciousness and create personal evolution via internal realization of "god."
Mystical, internal realizations, which can often be achieved through plant drugs, fasting, music, drumming, dancing, sex, prayer, meditation, yoga, or suffering, offer competition for religious traditions that worship a vindictive Father God who lives in the sky, a God who wants to punish.
Unlike the bliss, revelation, inner peace, euphoria, and healing offered by marijuana and other plant drugs, the Father God religions offer externalized spirituality, forcing people to look up to heaven and the leaders of churches and mosques.
Spiritual practices based on mystical traditions do not look to the sky or to church hierarchies; they often look to ingestion of a hallucinogenic "fruit" from a tree, a mushroom, a flower top from cannabis, and other entheogens.
Modern religious scholars say the war on drugs is part of the unrelenting war humans wage against mother earth and her gifts, the war that Father God religions wage against mystical spirituality, against plants that create new consciousness.
This particularly anti-natural religious worldview has produced the long series of teachings, laws, treaties, taboos, and punishments now embodied in the global war on plant drugs, initiated and led by the US and the UN, most enthusiastically waged by Indonesia, Singapore, China, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, India, China, and other non-Western nations.
In the Dark Ages, fertile, attractive women who used cannabis and other herbal "medicaments" by inserting them into their vaginas were burned at the stake as witches. In 2005, a woman who allegedly carried cannabis with her on a surfing trip can face a firing squad. It's the same holy war, going on for centuries and like a vampire, immortal.
Plant-hating religions cloud the minds of otherwise sane people, causing young Indonesian women to scream for blood outside Corby's courtroom, demanding that Corby be shot to death because she allegedly carried nine pounds of plant material into their country.
The drug war religion of plant haters as revealed in the Corby case and also seen when a 38-year-old Malaysian hash smuggler was recently strangled to death by his government- this religion is a death cult, and has the backing of every country in the world, except Holland.
Drug Warriors and their prey
World nazis
The third system at work in the Corby case is what I call "globalized Nazism."
The first Nazi state was just one country, Germany, that demonized and genocided target cultures inside and outside its borders, repressed "pure-blood" Germans, and simultaneously invaded its neighbors.
Watch the fascinating movie Downfall to see a great documentary about Nazi Germany, but know this: Nazism didn't die when Hilter died. As Richard Lawrence Miller points out in his must-read books, Nazi Justiz and Drug Warriors and Their Prey, the German Nazis used a five-step destruction process that gradually convinced people that their harmless neighbors were despicable demons who deserved to be hunted down and killed. These five steps are today utilized against the cannabis community.
The five steps are: identifying the target victims, ostracizing them from society, confiscating their possessions, concentrating them in prisons and ghettos, and then annihilating them.
The drug war Nazis of today use this same five step process and with it they've succeeded in making people want to kill you as punishment for pot.
When Miller debuted his books, critics said he was exaggerating and using false analogies. In the USA, they pointed out, the drug war follows only some of Hitler's five steps, but usually not all five. US drug users are demonized, Miller's detractors admit, some lose homes and families, they're put in prison, they're inadvertently killed in drug raids or die because they are deprived of medical marijuana, but they aren't all being rounded up en masse and murdered in concentration camps. "It isn't anywhere near as bad as what happened to the Jews."
Well, not yet. The mistake Miller's critics make is they look only at America when seeking evidence for the five step Nazification of the drug war. It's more accurate to look at the entire world as one huge Nazi apparatus, with individual countries implementing some or all of the five steps with varying degrees of intensity and totality.
In the globalized Nazi drug war, a country like the US relies primarily on identification, ostracism, and confiscation, while countries like Indonesia and Thailand eagerly employ steps four and five: concentration and annihilation.
On a planetary scale, the Nazi's five steps are in place, codified by national laws, the United Nations, and international treaties. Drug users, producers and smugglers are 21st century Holocaust candidates. Global drug war Nazis are unified across cultures, across political systems, across economic systems- using "kill the druggie" strategies as much as they can get away with in their specific sociopolitical settings.
Proof? Saudi Arabia recently beheaded two drug smugglers in public.
A Saudi government spokesman explained that, "We apply the laws of God, and don't pay attention to whoever says anything about that."
Of course, they don't yet behead or shoot drug smugglers in the US, they just put them in prison for 15 years, where they die of poor health and broken hearts. In places like Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, the drug warriors are religiously efficient, and empowered to embrace Nazi steps four and five.
If Corby wasn't a hot-looking white lady with an enthusiastic media and cadre of supporters, if she was just some impoverished male smuggler, the Indonesian government would shoot shot her to death, all in the name of protecting Indonesians from the evil power of plants.
Witch hunt
There's an endless supply of druggie witches to burn. The Indonesians recently arrested a 42-year-old Australian expatriate named John Pyle after searching his home and finding 1.8 grams of hashish. He faces 10 years in jail.
Nine young and apparently clueless young Aussies (the media calls them "The Bali Nine") were busted in a coordinated series of raids several weeks ago. Four of them allegedly had ****** strapped to their bodies, and more was found in their hotel rooms. They're facing the death penalty. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) assisted in their arrests, despite an Australian policy that forbids Aussies from assisting investigations that could lead to execution.
The ****** allegedly transported by the Bali Nine was discovered and tracked by the AFP, which provided intelligence data that led to the arrests of four co-conspirators in Australia.
Cooperation between Australian and Indonesian law agencies has ramped up since the Bali bombings; last year the two countries opened a unified police agency in Jakarta dedicated to combating drug trafficking and terrorism.
Across Indonesia, the number of arrests for drug trafficking rose from just over 1800 in 1999 to more than 9700 in 2003. Amnesty International says 30 of 54 people facing execution in Indonesia are drug criminals; 20 of that 30 are foreigners, and six are women.
There are at least 105 Australians on drug charges in foreign jails; two face almost-certain execution in Singapore and Vietnam, and a third of them are eligible for execution.
Former Indonesian President Megawati Sukarno reinvigorated Indonesia's drug war death penalty in 2002.
"For those who distribute drugs, life sentences and other prison sentences are no longer sufficient," she said. "No sentence is sufficient other than the death sentence."
Indonesia's current president, Susilo Yudhoyono, also advocates executing druggies. In a country suffering from forest fires, global warming, overpopulation, collapsing fisheries, Muslim extremism, poverty, disease and globalization, the Indonesian government describes marijuana as public enemy number one.
"Heavier punishments have been legislated because drug activities are very dangerous for the nation and the people," said Indonesia's Attorney-General. "Drugs have infiltrated all layers of Indonesian society, from soldiers and the police to elementary school children. If drug dealers are not heavily punished, with the heaviest sentences, there is grave danger: this country will be destroyed because of drugs."
Criminals, all
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a rabid foe of marijuana and a partner in the war on drugs and the war on Islam, belatedly directed his foreign minister to provide legal assistance for Corby, but he also said that Australians had to accept the laws and decisions of foreign governments, no matter how brutal.
No surprise in that. Howard's military is a proud participant in the illegal US war in Iraq, and he gets away with as much drug war as he can at home, blocking medical marijuana laws, sending helicopters and attack dogs to pot haven Nimbin, harassing hippies and other malcontents, especially if they're driving VW vans and wearing hemp clothing.
And the Indonesian government is so very concerned about the health of its citizens, that's why it has to protect its people from marijuana and other drug plants. But while protecting its citizens from the "terrible harms" of marijuana smoke, the Indonesian government has built a soul-destroying industrial capitalist society that is injuring and killing its citizens with smoke from cars, factories, and deforestation.
From outer space, Indonesia looks like a depressing science fiction movie. Grayish-black clouds of toxins shroud the entire region. Instead of strengthening enforcement of environmental protection, the Indonesian government has partnered with land rapists and polluters, dismantling its Environmental Impact Control Agency.
Logging is destroying Indonesia's rainforests and the endangered flora and fauna that dwell in them. Deforestation causes incessant floods and landslides, including a landslide that buried alive 200 people in November, 2003. While the Indonesian government wages war against marijuana, which never killed anybody, it is in bed with loggers who create deadly disasters.
Marijuana smoke maybe hurts the lungs of Indonesians who smoke 20 joints a day, but car exhaust is bad for Indonesians too. So why has the Indonesian government encouraged a rapid increase in use of cars and trucks, creating air pollution that causes at least half a billion dollars worth of direct economic losses per year, along with fatal damage to people's respiratory systems that kills thousands of Indonesians each year? World health organizations say Indonesia's air is among the world's most deadly, with extremely high concentrations of soot, carbon dioxide, lead, hydrocarbons, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide.
Has the government responded with a war on air pollution? Do the directors of companies that pollute face the death penalty? Hell no. Indonesian officials have rejected mandates for catalytic converters and emissions controls; the country has refused to completely ban leaded gasoline and inferior diesel fuels, which create deadly concentrations of airborne lead. Up to a third of Indonesian children have brain damage caused by lead air pollution. Why does the Indonesian government not do more to protect kids from automobile-produced toxins? Perhaps because the government runs Pertamina, the state-owned petroleum company.
People can't breathe safely in Indonesia, nor can they drink the water or eat the fish. The Indonesia Environment Monitor notes that Indonesia ranks among the worst countries in Asia in sewerage and sanitation coverage. Few Indonesian cities possess even minimal sanitation systems. A 2002 World Bank report says less than 3% of Jakarta's households are connected to sewer systems. The absence of sanitation services forces most households to rely upon leaky septic tanks, or to send their feces and urine and menstrual blood directly into rivers and canals. This has resulted in massive contamination of Indonesia's surface water and groundwater, as well as repeated, deadly epidemics of gastrointestinal infections. As of 2001, an estimated 90% of Jakarta's wells were polluted by human waste.
Indonesia's State Minister for the Environment acknowledges that factories dump liquid toxins into rivers. Indonesia's mining companies destroy hundreds of miles of mountains and rivers. Indonesia's coastal waters are poisonous, and its fishing industry uses a technique called blastfishing, in which fish and coral reefs are blown up with explosives. According to a 2002 report by the World Resources Institute, 86% of Indonesia's reef area (19,700 square miles) is at risk.
The Indonesian government is also in league with animal hunters and traders who violate the Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species (CITES).
In the capital city of Jakarta, endangered siamang gibbons, baby orangutans, tigers, birds and other rare animals are openly and illegally sold at Pramuka Market. Bribes and other corruption keep the animal traders in business; the Indonesian government does nothing to stop the destruction of the last of these protected species.
"The illegal trade of endangered animals is rampant here," says Bill Smith, a spokesperson for the Gibbon Foundation.
In light of the fact that the corrupt Indonesian government has created a society that makes its citizens sick and dead, the government's hysterical assertion that Indonesia "will be destroyed by drugs" is revealed as utter nonsense.
It's not marijuana, poppies and their derivatives that are destroying Indonesia, its industrial capitalism, and the Indonesian government itself.
State terror
People of conscience have pointed out that the Indonesian government's enthusiasm for killing drug criminals is no surprise, given the government's history of systematic violation of human rights.
Sydney-based Catholic nun Sister Susan Connelly is demanding that the Australian Government ensure that Corby is freed from Indonesian prison.
"It is disgusting and barbaric in this day and age that a 'death penalty by firing squad' law even exists, and that an Australian citizen should be subject to it," the nun said. "This law is out-dated and inhumane, and considering that convicted Bali bombing terrorist Abu Bakar Bashir has only been sentenced to two years and six months jail with the prospect of appeal for his proven conspiracy participation in the Bali bombings that killed 183 people, it is inconsistent and absurd that a person should face the death penalty for allegedly smuggling cannabis into the country."
Human rights violations are nothing new in Indonesia.
In 1975, the former Portuguese colony of East Timor (located 400 miles north of Australia) was invaded by the Indonesian military, which was funded, equipped, and trained by the US military.
The day before the invasion, guess who was in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta with Indonesian President Suharto? None other than US President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger!
Kissinger has long been accused of war crimes relating to Vietnam and elsewhere. Reports say there's little doubt that Ford and Kissinger gave Suharto approval to invade, with Kissinger telling reporters soon after that "the United States understands Indonesia's position on the question of East Timor."
Since that time, the U.S. has provided Indonesia with hundreds of millions of dollars in economic and military assistance, greatly facilitating the forced colonization of East Timor. The US has repeatedly blocked United Nations' action on East Timor.
Former UN Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan openly bragged in his book A Dangerous Place, about how he carried out with "no inconsiderable success" the American policy of rendering the UN "utterly ineffective" on East Timor.
An estimated 200,000 people died in the East Timor invasion and subsequent 18 years of occupation. In 1979, an Australian parliamentary report described the Indonesian military's actions in East Timor as "indiscriminate killing on a scale unprecedented in post-World War II history."
Regardless, the US, Japan and other nations provided hundreds of millions of dollars and military hardware to Indonesia while the occupation and killings continued.
On November 12, 1991, with international journalists as witnesses, the Indonesian army opened fire on a peaceful crowd in Dili, the capital of East Timor. The people were gathered at a cemetery for the memorial service of a young pro-independence activist slain by the military two weeks earlier. Over 200 people died as a result.
Yet, Indonesian media and government, and their allies in Western governments and media, falsely portray the East Timorese as guerrillas and insurgents, just like they describe Iraqi citizens who resist US occupation.
When President Bush announced he was considering a restoration of military assistance to Indonesia, human rights groups pleaded with him not to provide assistance until the Indonesians purged their military of officers and soldiers who abuse and kill civilians.
"We find troubling ongoing human rights violations by Indonesia's security forces, especially in conflict areas, widespread impunity for crimes against humanity and other serious violations," a human rights groups said in a letter to Bush published by the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network.
The activists said military abuses continued in Aceh and West Papua, provinces where separatists are fighting the government. And Jakarta has never punished military personnel who committed atrocities in East Timor when the country voted for independence from Indonesia in 1999, they said.
Bush didn't listen. He recently restarted an International Military Education and Training (IMET) program with Indonesia that had been suspended since the early 1990s because of military killings in East Timor; Indonesian President Lieutenant General Yudhoyono went back home bragging that his country would soon be in full military partnership with the US again.
Yudhoyono was in charge of Territorial Affairs, commanding armed forces personnel in 1998 and 1999; human rights groups say he is likely guilty of war crimes for his role in human rights abuses in East Timor.
The Indonesian president is a career soldier who received training at the infamous School of the Americas (SOA) in Fort Benning, Georgia in 1976 and 1982, along with Command and General Staff College training at Fort Leavenworth, Texas in 1991. There have been persistent rumors that Yudhoyono is a CIA operative.
The School of the Americas is widely known as a terrorism training center responsible for teaching death squad tactics, counterinsurgencies, assassinations and other illegal actions to US and foreign military personnel. It was renamed the "Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation" in 2001. Initially established in Panama in 1946, it was kicked out of that country in 1984 and reopened in Georgia.
Former Panamanian President Jorge Illueca says the School of the Americas was the "biggest base for destabilization in Latin America." The school is often called the "School of Assassins." In its 59 years of operation, SOA trained more than 65,000 soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper methodology, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics. SOA graduates use their skills to wage a war against their own people, or against people like the East Timorese.
Among those targeted by SOA graduates are educators, union organizers, religious workers, student leaders, and advocates who work for the rights of the poor. Hundreds of thousands of people have been tortured, raped, assassinated, "disappeared," massacred, and forced into refugee status by SOA-trained soldiers.
Yudhoyono benefited greatly from his US military training, and he often expresses his gratitude for it.
"I love the United States. Even with all its faults, I consider it my second country," he said last year.
Pointer ... Yatala on the Gold Coast
The chapel of Schapelle
While renowned Aussie actor Russell Crowe and thousands of other people campaign for Corby's release, the imprisoned woman's cell has become a religious shrine.
"The photographs of Schappelle Corby broke my heart," Crowe said. "I don't understand how we can, as a country, stand by and let a young lady rot away in a foreign prison. That is ridiculous. It is Indonesia, fine and dandy, but we need to find a rational platform to save this girl's life. We gave Indonesia how many hundreds of millions of dollars in tsunami relief?"
Tourists visiting Bali head to Kerobokan Jail where Corby shares a hellishly hot, humid cell with eight other female prisoners. The women sleep side by side on the floor. There is one toilet and one bucket and water tap for all of them. Food and medicine are in short supply. Guards are abusive. There lights are on 24 hours a day.
Schapelle pilgrims bring gifts, toiletries, food, books. Missionaries line up with the tourists to see Schapelle.
Corby's mother Rosleigh Rose and her terminally ill father Michael are among the visitors.
Schapelle's treatment in Bali is not always full of such support and warmth.
During her trial, representatives of Granat, an Indonesian anti-marijuana group, invaded the trial courtroom holding signs that demanded Corby be sentenced to death. Corby's mother almost came to blows with the pro-death activists, and the trial judge, Linton Sirait, told Granat sign-holders they would be banned from his courtroom. Sirait let them know that he shared their concerns, however, saying he had presided over at least 500 criminal trials and had never issued an acquittal for a drug defendant.
A few days later, Granat activists were back, this time holding signs outside the courtroom. The signs said that if Corby was innocent she should be freed, and if guilty she should be condemned to death.
Their threats prompted Bali police to assign 100 officers to guard the courtroom and Corby, especially after counter-threats were made by Corby supporters, who allegedly threatened to bomb the Indonesian embassy in Australia and do physical violence to Indonesian officials if Corby was sentenced to death.
After Corby was sentenced to 20 years in jail, the prosecutor said he would appeal the sentence to make it longer; Corby's defense team said they would appeal the conviction and the sentence.
Prosecutor Ida Bagus Wiswantanu said Judge Sirait had made an error in giving only a 20 year sentence.
"We should not tolerate people dealing narcotics and we have to take stern action. For us, justice is life in prison for anyone who imports that much marijuana," Wiswantanu said.
After a tumultuous courtroom finale in which Corby broke into tears, her mother cursed the judge, and Granat activists cheered from outside, the 27-year-old convict was sent back to jail.
As the verdict was announced, Corby's mother screamed at Judge Sirait, "She's not guilty, you bastard. You took the word of a lying customs bastard. It's all lies. You judges will never sleep, never sleep. Schapelle, you will come home."
When family members tried to get her to stop screaming, the distraught mother shouted, "I will not fucking shut up."
There will be no bail for Schapelle while she is appealing the ruling. Legal experts say she will be in an Indonesian prison until at least 2007, even if the Australian government is successful in arranging a prisoner swap that would allow her to serve time in an Australian prison.
Corby's attorneys said they have new evidence that will be presented during the appeals process. They also said they'd demand that the appeals court place more weight on testimony by an Australian prisoner held in Australia, John Ford, who flew to Bali and testified at the trial that he heard baggage handlers discuss the placement of cannabis in Corby's luggage.
According to Ford, the baggage handlers were part of a domestic marijuana transport operation that placed drugs in Corby's luggage in Brisbane and intended to retrieve them in Sydney, where her baggage was transferred for its final flight to Bali.
Ford testified that the baggage handlers admitted they sometimes forgot to get the drugs out of the baggage they'd put it in, and that Corby was one of the unfortunate people who became a victim of Indonesian laws due to the baggage smugglers' mistake.
When Ford returned to prison, he was attacked by another prisoner, and cut with a knife. The Australian government later admitted that police had already been investigating reports that Sydney baggage handlers were involved in smuggling cocaine.
Corby's lawyers will file an appeal with Indonesia's High Court, which will then have 150 days to hear it. If that appeal is unsuccessful, they will appeal to the Supreme Court, which has an unlimited amount of time to review the case. Two sets of judges will consider the facts of the case in the Supreme Court process.
The only other option for Corby, if she loses in the Supreme Court, is to appeal for clemency to President Yudhoyono. To do so, however, she would have to admit her guilt.
Citizen nazis
In a world where the US is killing hundreds of people per month in an illegal war, and where injustice and cruelty seem to everywhere increase, the fate of one woman might be eventually forgotten.
But for members of the marijuana culture, the lessons of the Corby case need to be learned well, and never forgotten.
It's the same lesson that survivors of the German Holocaust spoke of- when they first realized that Hitler was turning others against them, they didn't see where it would lead to. They didn't realize there would come a time when the world would watch passively while Germans put them on trains to death camps and killed them by the millions.
It can happen again, and marijuana people are on the firing line.
In the aftermath of the Corby case, journalists interviewed "normal Balinese citizens" concerning the Australian woman's fate.
In a Balinese coffeeshop, a waitress said, "People who sell drugs should pay a lot of money, or have the death penalty." A 21-year-old agrees, saying the sentence Corby should receive ought to be "As hard as you can go. The maximum."
Indonesians cheered last year when a 32-year-old Thai woman and a 62-year-old man were tied to oil palm trees in northern Sumatra and shot for drug trafficking.
Indonesians express hatred for drug-using tourists and domestic drug users. An 18-year-old says, "Drug dealers are putting drugs in candy and selling drugs at primary schools and secondary schools."
A Balinese man complains that Australian tourists haven't been as plentiful in Bali after the 2002 terrorist bombings, and that the Corby case will result in another drop in tourism.
"The Australians are angry and their travel agents are boycotting us because of this drug woman," he says.
An Australian travel magazine reported that 65 per cent of the nation's travel agents planned to direct customers elsewhere if Corby was convicted.
But that loss of tourism revenue is of little concern to true believers in the drug war religion. For them, Corby and all drug users are devils.
As an Indonesian woman commented on a Jarkarta television station, "It's time we responded to marijuana terrorists the way the US has responded to the Iraqis. We should kill them all."
Help free Schapelle Leigh Corby:
1) Contact the Australian Prime Minister and the Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, asking them to place pressure on the Balinese Government to release Schapelle Corby.
• Australian Prime Minister: John Howard, House of Representatives, Parliament House, Canberra ACT 2600, Australia
• Australian Foreign Affairs Minister: Alexander Downer: a.downer.mp@aph.gov.au
2) Contact the Indonesian Consulate in Australia and demand that they set Schapelle Corby free. Threaten to boycott all travel to Bali until they grant Corby her freedom.
• Consulate General – Republic of Indonesia, 72 Queens Road, Melbourne, Victoria 3004, Australia; kjri@kjri-melbourne.org
3) Anyone who has ever experienced a problem with their luggage being tampered with at any Australian or Indonesian airports or has dealt with corrupt customs officials in Indonesia, please email your experience to: hfs_inc@hotmail.com
The passion of Corby
Source: Cannabis culture
