Garra, you make a lot of sense, I hardly think the kingpins will be caught and quite frankly, pissant little drug traffickers are not the problem, just part of the trickle down effect. That's not condoning them by the way. There's a difference between being a knowing criminal where trafficking is a career and some stupid git that's caught up in it and should know better. Shooting the lot without any background knowledge is a bit wild west and offers no solution. After reading the latest in Shapelle's case, I am absolutely disgusted about Indonesia's narrow field of jursidiction (and they call it law). Schapelle would have a better chance of justice if she was busted in Salem two centuries ago with a black cat and a cauldron in her boogie board bag. I'm not only blackbanning going to Bali again (this is worse than the bombs in Kuta for an anti tourist ad), but I won't go OS again until I know that the scum baggage handlers in AUSTRALIA have been sacked, then hung, drawn and quartered and had their faces plastered on national TV. They are as much crims as the kingpins and much more accountable than idiot kids that should have known better. Who's more the organised crim?

Di,I totally agree.Scapelle Corby was hung out to dry,both by the Foreign Affairs Dept and the AFP.The moral of the story is that ,don't depend upon your Govt if you are in trouble in a foreign land.

We should all boycott Bali until the Indonesian Govt reforms not only their legal system,but also how their police collect evidence.

If Schapelle is convicted and goes to a Bali prison,I will gladly donate money to her mother to help in her appeal to in the Indonesian High Court.All her mother has to do is to give us a post office box and a name to whom the cheque be drawn.

I guess it comes down to understanding and giving agency to the relationships that exist between two sovereign countries and specifically on how their respective sovereignty’s interface politically.

We are faced with a classical situation whereby the evidence of crime is substantive and another where the evidence appears to be un-substantive and where contemporary notions of social justice differ between two nation states and is articulated through their legal jurisprudence.

It is in the interface between how each nation state recognizes their rightful place to administer laws that are made on behalf of their citizens to protect these same citizens to those within their boundaries to those that they find defying these laws within and without of their jurisdiction.

This confusion points to a need for a system of law to exist and arbitrate between nation states on civil matters. It is because of the total absence of this apparatus that we now find ourselves confused and perplexed.

The police and the foreign affairs department are now revealed for their obvious inadequacies in protecting the rights of citizens abroad, or those they have mistakenly deported. (see: Vivian Alvarez)

Garra says, "the recent dope dramas just reinforce in me my belief that we would be much better off if recreational drug use was legalised and regulated. The genie's out of the bottle, folks - there is no way that prohibition stops the production, distribution or consumption of drugs anywhere."

Not too much responsibility here - I can think of a number of people I either know personally or know of through others who are now schizophrenic as a result of marijuana usage.

Its not prohibition that will stop the distribution or consumption of drugs. The problem in the first instance is not one of production and distribution of drugs at all but that people choose to use them and therefore create the market for them.

All that can be hoped for, is public revulsion against drug usage (sadly, a long way off), and the disruption of the production and distribution cycle, which may save some lives from addiction and the consequential health problems. Actually, a pretty depressing scene all round.

I know this is slightly off-topic, but David's deployment of the marijuana/schizophrenia chestnut warrants a response. Correlation is not causation, and I'm yet to read an authoritative study that definitively establishes a causal link between marijuana use and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is also strongly correlated with alcohol abuse, but that fact isn't nearly as widely promoted as its correlation with marijuana use. Perhaps schizophrenics simply seek to tame their demons with whatever substance is available?

On the other hand, to return to my earlier theme, imagine our society where the entire edifice of the drug black market and its futile prohibition apparatus is removed in one rational sweep. Imagine the radical reduction of petty crime that is currently committed to feed drug habits, the emptying of our gaols and the unclogging of our judicial system, the disappearance of junkie prostitutes from our streets, the demise of needle-borne diseases such as HIV and HCV.

I know this scenario has a snowflake's chance in hell of coming about - due mainly to the curious alliance of vested criminal and legal interests with right wing wowserism - but it's nice to imagine a better world that would actually be quite possible to achieve.

Garra, love your sentiments. It is curious how right wing wowserism does (no doubt inadvertantly) assist organised crime. No drug lords if drugs legal and controlled and the Bali nine - hapless sods - wouldn't be facing the death penalty.

Of course the Aust Fed Police could've done more, however it appears there is tacit approval for the death penalty and indeed torture by our government if it is applied on foreign soils. Guantanamo Bay springs to mind.