Schapelle is a political pawn

Any doubts in peoples minds that Schapelle Corby is a sacrificial political pawn,
rather than a drug courier should be expelled after reading the following post,
written by DJ Wolf of Perth WA. It is well known that the Australian Govt.will go to almost any lengths to avoid upsetting Indonesia, demonstrated by their complicity in aiding and abetting the cover up of the murder of the Balibo Five journalists.
In failing to demand that the drugs found in Ms Corby's bag be identified as being of Australian origin, the Howard Govt.effectivly announced to the world, something that was (and remains)untrue: that Australia is a drug exporting nation!
Howard diverted the public's understandable rage at his cowardice by effecting an almost complete media blackout concerning the case ; followed by an orchestrated demonising of Schapelle and her family; where the most outlandish claims were allowed into print, radio and TV. The fact that all of these claims proved to have no foundation was (and still is)ignored by the mainstream media, with the result that the Australian public remain appallingly ignorant of the facts of the case.
This is manifest in the dreadfully callous comments posted whenever the tabloid magazines run yet another 'Schapelle article' and invite 'opinion'!



by DJ Wolf on Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:58 pm
When Schapelle was first arrested everyone in Australia and I mean EVERYONE thought she was innocent. We knew nothing about her but that would not have mattered. She could have been a known drug criminal and it would have made no difference because NO ONE takes marijuana to Bali. For our American readers I want you to imagine someone arrested at Columbia's airport taking cocaine into Columbia. I'm quite sure the arresting officers would be asking the guy if he was a dissatisfied customer and explaining that they don't take returns. NO ONE takes marijuana to Indonesia from anywhere and even according to the Indonesian authorities no foreign marijuana has ever been siezed in Indonesia - no foreign drug dealers have been arrested there and Indonesia is regarded as one of the major seed baskets for marijuana. At the same time, Australia has never exported any illegal drugs to anywhere. We neither import nor do we export marijuana since the cost structure of the marijuana market in Australia makes any transnational trafficking prohibitive. And, Australia cannot produce any other drugs at a price that would make export a profitable enterprise. Everyone knew Schapelle was innocent because the crime itself had no motive.

I really think people lack a proper understanding of what exporting illegal drugs entails. It is not just a drug crime. Everyone knows that Columbia exports cocaine but we also know that the Columbian government is not at fault. Being a Columbian politician takes bravery since opposition to the cartels can get them dead very quickly. The Columbian government does what it can and they get a lot of foreign support and aid to fight the War on Drugs. However, imagine if the Columbian government turned about face and taxed the Cartels claiming that cocaine was a legitimate business and they didn't care that cocaine was being exported. And, if Americans and other foreigners were being poisoned by this drug it wasn't their concern. If this were to happen, the Columbian government would not be guilty of a 'drug crime' but rather of an act of war. If the cartels were merely poisoning other Columbians this would be regarded as a local criminal issue - a drug crime. However, by exporting cocaine the cartels are committing treason by attacking other nations with poison without their government's sanction.

With the ruthlessness and discipline exercised by these cartels I'm certain that they could transport and distribute their cocaine in the buyer countries far more efficiently than leaving it to the domestic underworld of these countries but the cartels don't do this. Columbians DO NOT import cocaine into the USA. They sell the cocaine but it is American citizens who import the stuff and it is distributed to the American public by other Americans. What's more, this principal applies to all transnational trafficking. Afghani warlords and their 'men' are not walking the streets of Sydney selling heroin nor do any Afghan citizens courier or sell any heroin anywhere but in Afghanistan. In almost every transnational trafficking case, the courier is either taking the drugs through the country in which they were caught or they are a citizen of the country to which they are importing.

Within hours of Schapelle's arrest the Australian government went into damage control and what we got from the very beginning was spin. This would not have happened had our government thought there was any possibility that she could be guilty. They didn't knock down the front door of the Corby home and in fact never searched or investigated the Corbys ever. If our government thought there was even the possibility that an Australian citizen had orchestrated or was somehow involved in being the first person ever to export illegal drugs from Australia and the first person ever to import marijuana into Indonesia which set a new trend in International trafficking the Australian Federal Police would have arrived at that person's home the moment they heard of the arrest - time would be everything. They would not have shown disinterest saying "It's an Indonesian matter" since such an attitude would be interpretted by the international community as being indifferent to the War on drugs and not caring that an Australian citizen had attempted to poison the youth of Indonesia. Not only would the Australian authorities investigate the Corbys, their home, their assets, their friends, their connections and their finances but they would do this publicly with continuous updates to the media so that the world would see that the Australian government takes attacks by its citizens upon other nations very seriously. And, to label this crime as just another drug crime would be much like catching a terrorist with a bomb in his luggage and charging him with a customs breach of importing a prohibited explosive material without the proper paperwork, labels and declaration. It is the intent that defines the crime.

Even if our government didn't know if Schapelle was guilty or not they still needed to find out. Since it involved another nation, Schapelle's guilt or innocence was a matter for national security and diplomatic intelligence. For ASIO, our intelligence service, to rest on "We don't have a clue" would not be a good career move and we can assume that they did what they do until they were completely satisfied. So we can estimate that the Australian government knew the truth or suspected it and went about confirming it from the time they heard that an Australian had been arrested in Denpassar.

Some people have suggested that Australian baggage handlers were responsible but this doesn't fit at all. If any Australians played a part, it would not have just been the Queensland Police or the New South Wales Police who investigated this crime. It would be a matter of national security and no criminal organisation would cover for anyone involved since the intense investigation would shut down any airport criminal activity and the drug world would suffer from a level of scrutiny never witnessed before. If any Australians were involved there would be no reason to not investigate the Corbys since the Indonesians would have no reason to care if the guilty Australian was Schapelle or someone else. In addition, if any Australians were involved then it became Australia's responsibility to investigate and was no longer an "Internal Indonesian matter" as Chris Ellison called it.

So when you decide who you think is responsible don't forget to judge by the reactions of those involved. Howard had the opportunity to use his rhetorical "outrage" as he did with the 'white powder' attacks to say that no Australian would ever be allowed to believe that attacking Indonesia and poisoning their children was ever a good idea whether it was Schapelle or another Australian. The fact that he didn't and the AFP didn't even search the Corby home tells us not just that they knew Schapelle was innocent but rather that they knew she was innocent because they knew who was guilty and this completely rules out any chance that the marijuana arrived in Bali as a result of an unpredictable, unknowable mistake by unimportant, unobserved blue collar workers in Sydney or Brisbane.

The reason why Howard and Rudd did nothing (and you can lump in the Greens, the other parties and the independents) is because the Indonesian authorities had a vested interest in convicting Schapelle and ONLY Schapelle. My criticism of all our parliamentarians (as well as the USA who whitewashed the murder by Indonesian troops of two American aid workers) is that they could have feigned ignorance of who committed the crime and acted as if Schapelle or other Australians were guilty. In such a case, the Indonesian's refusal to hand over a sample of the drugs to enable an investigation here should have been brought up at the UN in regards to Indonesia's sincerity concerning the war on drugs and their desire to see the possible flow from Australia to Indonesia stamped out. What they should not have done is to make this case about Schapelle and her rights in a case being tried in a foreign country but rather about the necessary assumption within the charges that Australians, any Australians are deliberately exporting drugs to Indonesia in what could only be called an attack upon their sovereignty.