Flabbergasted about courts' treatment of NAP activists

Its been a busy last few days, meaning i haven't posted this sooner, but at any rate i think it has taken me that long to work up a good head of angry/astounded at the treatment of activists of the Network Against Prohibition (Northern Territory).
With Ema already doing a fortnight in Berrimah, and Gary facing a custodial sentence on monday, the final straw of injustice has broken a very fucked up donkey's back.

I had the good fortune to attend the 1st International Conference on Using Direct Action to End the War on Drugs, staged by NAP in Darwin in September 2003.
My friend Bronwen and I had a mad road trip of 14000km over seven weeks - from Wollongong to New England Tablelands to Nimbin to inland South central QLD, to Hervey Bay, to Cairns & the Barrier Reef, to the Daintree, and then across to Mt Isa, 3 Ways, Mataranka & ElseyNational Park, and then to Katherine where my dad lives.

We'd planned a week in Kakadu but i called Gary from Katherine and they clearly could use a coupler of extra pairs of hands for the week leading up to the conference, so we headed straight up and arrived nine-days before the conference kicked off.
The comrades had been working their arses off - they were already being harassed with criminal charges - and they were trying to do it all without even a car.
It was an honour to help out - being able to drive them to court so that they could get that bit extra sleep; and i had heaps of fun, paste-ups , spray ups.
Two comrades from the Thai Drug Users Network were subsidised to make it out here; and we had two wonderful trips to the gorgeous Howard Springs - surely one of the most beautiful swimming holes in the country.
2000 for the 14000 kilometres we did just running around Greater darwin in the two weeks i was there. :)

The doof we'd planned - Equinox - for the conference close had some technical difficulties; the car that was going to tow the gennie (which was itself fucking massive and had big floodloghts attached) had its engine catch fire, then when we did eventually get it to the site a dickhead fiddled around with the generator and we ran out of power at 3am. but i'd been able to play some great tunes 'til then, there were almsot enough eck-ies for everyone that i had brought up from sydney; in the morning a longgrasser family came out from where they were camped nearby aand thanked us for the music, the young kids were practising their spear-throwing - experiences you just don't get down here in the souther styates.
Although it was a difficult time for me personally - among many other things, Bronwen, in a speed-psychotic episode unintentionally broke one of my ribs :( - i was amazed and inspired by the dedication, the creativity, the selflessness displauyed by NAP. They were open and loving, their politics was spot-on... i loved it there in Darwin and in the big NAP house, and i loved Nap as a group, and the Napatistas as individuals.
Gary and I have communicated very regularly since that time, and i feel very much a part of nap. its taken me a while to get my shit together, but i've finally got the ball rolling on a fraternal anti-prohibition, drug-user driven organisation here in Vic.
Tamsin's favourite track at the moment is Spearhead's "Oh My God" from Stay Human. I've played it on radio a few times, its a great track.
Readers who are familiar with it will no doubt be able to here Michael's tone when he sings "Oh my God!"
He gives voice to the almost undescribeable emotion of looking at what is going on in the world around us and just... shaking your head. Its part curse, part exclamation, part prayer - for me not a really prayer to a greater being, but to humanity, to the random forces of the universe itself. Or if there is a greater being, well then, a prayer to it, but also a demand that it get off its fucking arse and do something.
It describes how i feel about the harassment and imlprisonment of the napatistas -

Oh-my, oh-my God!
in my mind they got us livin' suicide
singin' oh-my, oh-my God!in my mind they got us livin' genocide
oh my my...
Slam bam I come unseen/
but like gasoline you can tell I'm in the tank/
like money in the bank/
I smell appealing, /
but I'm toxic, can send ya reeling/
without an inklin', /
keep ya thinkin/
''cause you gave cash to the feds, left your school district for dead fucked you up in the head,/
but still they sayin' nothin's wrong sellin' firewater but outlawing the bong/
still believing the system is workin/
'while half of my people are still outta workin'/
anonymous notes left in the pockets and coats/
of judges and juries/
from 'Frisco to Jersey/
threats and protests politicians mob debts/
trumped up charges and phoney arrests/
stage a lethal injection, the night before the election/
'cause he got donations from the prison guard's union/
Oh-my, oh-my God!/
in my mind they got us livin' suicide/
singin' oh-my, oh-my God!/
in my mind they got us livin' genocide /
oh my my.../
Listen in to my stethoscope on a rope/
internal lullabies, human cries/
thumps and silence, the language of violence/
algorithmic, cataclysmic, seismic, biorhythmic/
you can make a life longer, but you can't save it/
you can make a clone an then you try to enslave it?/
stealin' DNA samples from the unborn/
and then you comin' after us' cause we sampled a James Brown horn?/
scientists who's God is progress/
a four-headed sheep is their latest project/
the CIA runnin' like that Jones from Indiana/
but they still won't talk about that [Jim] Jones [People's Temple mass suicide] in Guyana/
This ain't no cartoon/
no one slips on bananas/
do you really think that that car killed Diana?/
hell I shot Ronald Reagan, /
I shot JFK/
,I slept with Marilyn [Monroe] she sung me happy birthday!/
singin'Oh-my, oh-my God!/
in my mind they got us livin' suicide/
singin' oh-my, oh-my God!/
in my mind they got us livin' genocide /
oh my my...
Well politicians got lipstick on the collar/
the whole media started to holler/
but I don't give a fuck who they screwin' in private/
I wanna know who they screwin' in public/
robbin', cheatin', stealin'white collar criminal/
McDonald eatin', /
you deserve a beatin'/
send you home a weepin',/
with a fat bill for yourCaribbean weekend/
for just about anything they can bust us /
false advertising sayin' "halls of Justice''/
you tellin' the youth don't be so violent/
then you drop bombs on every single continent/
mandatory minimum sentencin'/
cause he got caught with a pocket fulla medicine/
do that again another ten up in the pen/
I feel so mad I wanna bomb an institution/
singin'Oh-my, oh-my God!/
in my mind they got us livin' suicide/
singin' oh-my, oh-my God/
!in my mind they got us livin' genocide
oh my my
and we say nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah