sweeet

In general you are not required to say anything, though there are exceptions (such as when arrested or operating a vehicle on a public road) where you are required to provide your name and address. If arrested the cop must inform you why you are under arrest. A mate was placed under arrest earlier this year and would only provide name and address. After being held for an hour he was let go (they were satisfied that he was identified on the police database). He refused to answer any questions other than providing his name and address. He repeatedly asked, "am I obliged to answer your question? by what law am I obliged?" Generally speaking best to keep your mouth shut. If you are filling out a form and signing a declaration, then it must be true or you if caught you may end up being charged. Either a) don't sign, alter the text of the declaration, or in some cases c) sign under duress (write "signed under duress" before your autograph). If you want to know what info the police have on 'your' record then make an FOI request (freedom of information request) to the police. Depending on state laws you can ask a) for the cop's name, badge/ID number, c) station and d) to view the badge. If they are not carrying their badge then they are in breach of their oath - very serious offence. IANAL, DYOR.

To my knowledge 12 months is the limit to commence proceedings. After that there is no limit but law must be administered in a "timely" manner. Note: IANAL.

I attended one of his seminars a few years. IMO best to avoid him if you have legal issues. You'll just make problems for yourself.

IANAL but... Re feet on seat, if there are 3-4 witnesses then I don't see you getting out of that. Now you have made an admission but not sure in what fashion so may be irrelevant, but you're probably best to plead guilty on that charge. Re ticket, you _may_ be able to defend it but it would be on the weight of evidence. If you're asking for advice on this forum then I don't like your chances. A good lesson - NEVER ignore these things or leave them to the last minute. I recently received a letter to the Magistrates' Court and demanded the brief of evidence the next day. I was advised by Legal Aid it must be provided within 14 days. Until you see the brief of evidence it is difficult to know how strong the case is against you. Just be aware that some "infringement enforcement bodies" can claim costs, so if you try and defend the charges you may be hit with a costs order as well as the fine. One last point - ONLY COURTS CAN ISSUE FINES. Have you actually received a summons yet, or just infringement notices/infringement reminder notices?

Eddie Mabo was a gardener. He challenged those in power by the letter of the law. And he won. Don't be so defeatist.

IIRC these two arguments were previously denied by the County Court, so while this particular HCA appeal was rejected the outcome is still a positive one if those two statements are true.

I assume 1) is due to necessary paperwork not being lodged in accordance with the courts requirements...? Or the level of information provided was not enough for the High Court's liking...? From what I saw all the relevant details were provided by the defendants (in the County Court)... not too sure about this... I assume 2) is a consequence of 1). I assume 3) means the High Court wants the case heard through the lower courts first (and then appealed to the High Court) based on Judiciary Act, s 39(2). I don't believe the arguments raised against the illegitimacy of current laws have not been rejected (or even considered) by the High Court... at least that's my reading of the situation. My understanding is that the High Court is saying 'we have not received paperwork how we want it', and 'deal with it in the State courts'. http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/con...903112/s39.html s39 (2) The several Courts of the States shall within the limits of their several jurisdictions, whether such limits are as to locality, subject‑matter, or otherwise, be invested with federal jurisdiction, in all matters in which the High Court has original jurisdiction or in which original jurisdiction can be conferred upon it, except as provided in section 38, and subject to the following conditions and restrictions: (a) A decision of a Court of a State, whether in original or in appellate jurisdiction, shall not be subject to appeal to Her Majesty in Council, whether by special leave or otherwise. Special leave to appeal from decisions of State Courts though State law prohibits appeal © The High Court may grant special leave to appeal to the High Court from any decision of any Court or Judge of a State notwithstanding that the law of the State may prohibit any appeal from such Court or Judge.

I am disgusted with the current advertising campaign for ecstasy (MDMA) and am intending to raise an official complaint due to false and/or misleading advertising of their 'hard-hitting' ads. If those who haven't seen it, there is an ad that shows someone in a hospital bed hooked up to various medical equipment and says something like 'ecstasy can kill'. http://www.health.gov.au/internet/minister...09-nr-nr041.htm Could those willing to assist please provide citations and references that will show that this advertising is utterly misleading at the best and totally false at the worst.

It's not ideal to drag out the case but given the circumstances surrounding legal advice given prior to this week, and the subsequent witnesses required for defence, I believe an adjournment is a positive advancement. Today wasn't a big win but it certainly wasn't a big loss... and with a different judge it may have been. Having witnessed the court system (and the case) over the last two days I must say it has been a massive educational experience! When you wish to challenge the status quo you are met with a stiff wall of resistance at every corner. It's not just about defeating the charges (and defeating the law), it's also about defeating the legal system. I understand lightning will make available additional information about the defence of the charges. I must admit I was at first skeptical when I heard about this case (in this thread), but the defence is extremely comprehensive and I am impressed by the level of research and knowledge. You should read it if/when it becomes available. If you can support lightning and this case I suggest that you do.

Not sure if this has been posted but I thought it was a fairly balanced treatment. Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaZUv8fvWNk Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJTe5Z2ryaA Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKg-_w8h9B0 Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWLjsD5xeeY Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqKtVZJH8mY

Thanks to all those organising the event this year, it looks like it will be a fantastic day... Dr David is worth the price of admission alone. So when is the headliner announced? And are there still plans to produce DVD(s) from last year's event?

Also the first story was an excellent presentation on what drug prohibition can do to a country.

Thanks for the heads up. FYI I was recently in Canada and saw Salvia sold openly... kinda funny to see it in a shop given the situation in Australia.

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/10038...the_same_room_/ What Happens When You Put 300 Experts on Psychedelics in the Same Room? By Steven Wishnia, AlterNet. Posted September 25, 2008. The "Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics" conference in New York presented an older and wiser psychedelic movement. The waves of mass psychedelic utopianism have come and gone, but the hippie movement of the late '60s echoes in the rave scene of the '90s. And there's a small but devoted community of scientists, spiritual seekers, artists and grown-up hedonists exploring the value of these drugs. The "Horizons: Perspectives on Psychedelics" conference, held in New York Sept. 19-21, sought to present an older and wiser psychedelic movement, focusing on medicine, art, spirituality and culture. It drew around 300 people, a mix of academic and hippie types, with the white button-down shirts slightly outnumbering the dreadlocks and the NASA T-shirts. Psychedelics are "the most powerful psychiatric medicine ever devised," said psychotherapist Neal Goldsmith, who curated the speakers. But because the way they work as medicine -- when used in the proper setting -- is by generating mystical experiences, "science has to expand." Solid research, he added, could change government policy, which classifies psychedelics as dangerous drugs with no accepted medical use. The most promising current medical research, said Rick Doblin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, is in coupling MDMA (Ecstasy) with intensive psychotherapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder. Preliminary studies, he said, have had "very encouraging results" with patients who did not respond to talk therapy and conventional medications. The group hopes to win FDA approval within 10 years. But pharmaceutical companies aren't interested -- the MDMA molecule is in the public domain, the number of pills used in the therapy is unprofitably low, and the drug is controversial. So the model for developing it, Doblin said, will probably be along the lines of Planned Parenthood's support for RU486. The lines between disciplines were often blurred at the conference. Purdue University pharmacologist David Nichols called himself a "reductionist scientist" but said it's fantastic that one-tenth of a milligram of a drug can stay in the brain for four hours and permanently change someone's worldview. Artist Alex Grey showed slides of his tripping-inspired paintings and videos of iridescent, morphing eyes, fish and worms, presenting them as signals from a "visionary culture" that seeks to redeem the world, with a "group soul" supplanting a culture that spends $38 billion a second on war. Artists, said animator Isaiah Saxon, can fill the role of the shaman in an industrial society that has no other space for it. Spirituality is a key point for many users. Gabrielle, a 32-year-old mother of two, said tripping makes her lose her ego and become a part of something greater. "Nature wants us to understand we're all equal," she said, recalling an ayahuasca experience in a California forest during which she saw screens of intricate, fine-colored strings and watched the redwoods rejoice when the life-giving fog rolled in. When you realize your part in the universe, said Craig Reuter, 25, you become aware of how responsible you are for your actions, because "everything you do ripples out like drops of water in a giant pond of existence." Sue, a 45-year-old teacher, said psychedelics help her become introspective, to focus on right-brain imagery instead of the language/verbal domain. Canadian psychoanalyst Dan Merkur listed five ways in which cultures have used psychedelics for spiritual transformation: the "mass religious revival" of the hippies; the training of religious specialists such as shamen; group ritual use such as indigenous ayahuasca and peyote ceremonies; initiation rites such as the use of ibogaine by the Bwiti of Gabon; and their more recent Western use in therapy. Some former heroin users have reported success in using ibogaine to treat their addiction. Sasha and Ann Shulgin, the authors of PIHKAL (Phenylethylamines I Have Known and Loved) and TIHKAL (Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved), are cult figures in the psychedelic world. Sasha Shulgin, a white-bearded chemist, develops psychedelics in his lab. Ann, his wife, joins him in taking them, and their books catalog the drugs' effects. They deflected the crowd's adulation with dry humor, saying that while tripping can be great for feeling like one being during sex, they don't see the same images. "I'm not a regular drug user," Sasha answered when asked what his favorite chemical was. "Except for red wine," his wife interjected. Ann Shulgin, a lay therapist, cautioned that taking MDMA more than four times a year undermines the drug's magic. Though it's a wonderful drug for therapy, she said, it's selfish and wasteful for therapists to take it during a session. "You have to pay attention to the patient's insight," she explained. Such caution was a main theme of the conference. Doblin counseled that "patience is the fastest way" to get drugs like MDMA accepted as legitimate medicine. If proponents of psychedelics want to forestall a backlash, he said, they need to avoid the mistakes of the past, such as when Timothy Leary huckstered LSD as a hedonistic cultural panacea. (Leary told Playboy in 1966 that "in a carefully prepared, loving LSD session, a woman will inevitably have several hundred orgasms.") In 1961, Doblin noted, Harvard psychology professor David McClelland warned of several disturbing elements in Leary's psilocybin project. The emphasis on mysticism could lead to withdrawal from society. The initiates often acted superior to those who had never tripped. Their feelings of cosmic oneness with humanity didn't stop them from being insensitive to individuals. Their faith in the omnipotence of thought denied reality. And their spontaneity was a good thing, but not when it also spawned irresponsibility. Saxon, who collaborated on the animation for Bjork's "Wanderlust" video, creating a three-dimensional Arctic dreamscape of grassy tundra, tendril-filled streams and prehistoric-looking bighorn sheep, said he'd taken psilocybin while conceiving the video, but not while actually executing it. And though Alex Grey and his wife, Allyson, suggested using psychedelics in rituals to initiate teenagers into adulthood, they also warned, "you want to have an ego before you try transcending it." Several speakers stated flatly that they were not interested in recreational use. But many people at the conference never would have connected to the more serious aspects of psychedelia otherwise. Brian Jackson, 36, an audio engineer and musician, says he hasn't tripped in a long time, partly because New York City is "not a very conducive environment" for it and partly because he outgrew the rave scene, but that getting high on psychedelics moved him to consider their medical possibilities and act against prohibition. Author Daniel Pinchbeck said the lines between recreational and spiritual use are not necessarily clear, and that rave-style partying can lead to "group bonding." Saxon probably had the most cogent line on the question: "On a large dose, you don't have control of whether it's recreational." What would be the social consequences of a psychedelic renaissance? If Leary was right, religious-psychology specialist Robert Forte posited, drugs like LSD could make people less susceptible to far-right propaganda, because they feel a "sea of love." On the other hand, although washing away your normal sense of reality for a while can be enlightening, abandoning your normal rational skepticism can be dangerous in a society full of capitalist, religious and political mind scams -- especially those that come in a "countercultural" or "anti-Establishment" package. In the conference's closing session, Pinchbeck suggested that the current renaissance in psychedelic culture came about because Saturn was at right angles to Pluto. And when one audience member asked who doubted the "official 9/11 story," more than half the crowd raised their hands. Forte then began spouting a mix of 9/11 conspiracy theory and erroneous Holocaust history -- and confessed that Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who discovered the effects of LSD in 1943, had told him shortly before his death that he thought the Jews had been behind the attacks. While getting out of the verbal, logical realm and into the intuitive can also be stimulating, the advertising industry has spent more than half a century refining ways to exploit people's sensitivity to visual, symbolic stimuli. There are breath-mint commercials that explode in images as trippy as anything in the Fillmore Auditorium light shows of 1968. Ultimately, however, all that just reinforces that psychedelics are a powerful tool, not a panacea. Though the Fender Stratocaster guitar and the Marshall amplifier are masterpieces of sonic technology, buying them isn't going to enable you to play like Jimi Hendrix unless you also have a lot of talent, experience and soul. "I think time evens all this out," said Goldsmith. "There is just as much need for paradigm-breaking, innovative thinking, as there is to rein in the nonsense." In an 2007 essay titled "The Ten Lessons of Psychedelic Psychotherapy, Rediscovered," Goldsmith posited a "poetry science," a "worldview that can accommodate shamanic states and quantum mechanics." Integrating the communal spirituality of tribalism and the objective observations of modernity, this would comprehend human consciousness as a complex synthesis of the quantifiable realm of neurochemical reactions and the ineffable world of thoughts and emotions, a natural miracle far greater than the sum of its parts.

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202424725281 Federal Judge: Socialite Shouldn't Have Been Extradited From India Dan Levine The Recorder September 23, 2008 Printer-friendly Email this Article Reprints & Permissions Stefan Wathne Image: Jason Doiy / The Recorder International socialite Stefan Wathne shouldn't have been extradited to the United States on money laundering charges, according to a federal ruling released Monday. The heir to the Wathne sportswear fortune was nabbed last year on an American indictment when he traveled to India from his home in Russia. Federal prosecutors then agreed to let Wathne litigate extradition in San Francisco district court. Since money laundering was not a crime in India at the time prosecutors allege Wathne broke the law, Indian precedents would have prevented him from being brought here, Northern District of California Chief Judge Vaughn Walker found Monday. But Wathne isn't totally in the clear. Walker didn't dismiss the indictment, and has asked for further briefing on the remedies. It's possible Wathne, who is free in the United States on $5 million bail, may need to dust off the list of countries that don't have extradition treaties with the U.S. Walker could return Wathne to India. From there, Wathne would just need to steer clear of countries with stronger treaties. "Needless to say, the defendant's options may be quite limited," Walker wrote. "But, dismissal of the indictment is not appropriate." Prosecutors accuse Wathne of laundering money on behalf of Leonard Pickard, who at one point worked as the assistant director of UCLA's Drug Policy Analysis Program, according to court filings. Pickard also ran a side business: constructing an LSD factory in Kansas in an old missile silo. Pickard is currently serving two life terms. Wathne met Pickard through a mutual friend, who eventually ratted them out. According to defense filings, the government's theory is that Pickard funded his own $140,000-a-year position at UCLA by giving the money to Wathne, who passed it through Russian businessmen, who in turn sent it to the university as "donations." After his arrest in New Delhi, Wathne's lawyers and the Justice Department came up with a deal, in which Wathne would return to the U.S. before having his case decided by an Indian court. Instead, the Northern District of California was called upon to decide Wathne's extradition rights under Indian law. In a unique hearing before Walker last month, the defense called a former chief justice of the Indian Supreme Court, as well as that country's former solicitor general, to testify via videoconference. And while Assistant U.S. Attorney S. Waqar Hasib contended that money laundering was a crime in India at the time of extradition -- and thus Wathne could be removed -- Walker went with the defense experts' take. Whatever Walker's decision on remedies, Wathne's attorney, San Francisco solo Karen Snell, said she expected the government to ask for a stay of his ruling, pending an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The defense would then cross appeal, asking for an outright dismissal. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office declined to comment. But Snell still holds out hope of persuading Walker to toss the case. "I'm firmly convinced he has the authority to dismiss the indictment," she said, "and that's the remedy he should choose. And I need to do a better job providing him a legal framework for that decision." The defense also tried to get the indictment voided by arguing that former Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Steskal committed misconduct. Steskal, Snell argued, should have told the grand jury that the government was presenting evidence gathered in Russia, a barren land in terms of civil liberties. Walker didn't go for it. "While defendant presents evidence of severe injustices in the Russian law enforcement system as a whole," he wrote, "there is very little evidence of coercion of the witnesses who provided testimony used in grand jury proceedings in this case."