OPPORTUNISM KNOCKS
At an Indictment hearing on 25 November 2024, the
Defendant's lawyer did not attend.
A substitute lawyer - whom the Defendant had never
met, identified only by her first name, who showed no interest in the topic of
the case, asked no questions before or during the hearing, and who attended
purely to perform a paper-shuffling exercise - was accompanied by the
Defendant's lawyer's not-quite-qualified colleague.
She seemed nervous.
The purpose of this substitution was to make it look
as if the Defendant was represented.
161 days after an eight day deadline for objecting to
the Indictment had expired, Slovenia's Court had finally sent its translation.
The Court now retrospectively claims a second
Indictment deadline began with the delivery of the translated version, which
they sent after the Easter and summer holidays, and some other religious or
political holidays and drinking days.
But nowhere was this explicitly stated in the message
itself, and the translation bears the original date, of the March 2024 Slovene
version, contradicting its own delivery date. The validity of the second
deadline is undermined by its own abandonment of the first.
The Court, however, did not specifically invalidate
the first deadline. How many deadlines to object to the Indictment has the
Defendant had? Two, one, or zero?
It is a case in which
Slovenia is pretending it cares about what people in Ptuj
inhale, about the health consequences of
cannabis and psychedelics. Yet it plans for superstitious reasons to not hear
any evidence about their positive effects (see below).
The Court tried to make it look like it cared about the Defendant's ECHR,
Constitutional, and domestic law rights to translation and prompt explanation of
the charges, but only produced translations of limited documents after four
years.
And although its nature is clear, the Defence found no
explanation of the cause of the alleged offence. An offence in which 354,845
Slovenians expressed no belief in 2024.
With a substitute lawyer present to make it look like
he was represented, Slovenia tried to make it look as though access to a
translation was being provided - by having a judge yell in the Defendant's face
in Slovene, while a quiet, stumbling interpretation of some words was provided
which he could not hear because of the yelling and inevitable difficulties with
audio discrimination.
With similar outcome, the judge gave no opportunity to
raise the objection about the missed right to object or lack of cause,
repeatedly yelling over the Defendant before he could finish one sentence, and
without listening to the translation.
Since it is obvious the
judge can do English perfectly well there is no distinction between patriotic
Slovenian language assertion and discriminatory language weaponization. They are
essentially the same thing from different points of view.
Instead of being delivered passages in chunks, the
interpreter was expected to convey meaning with no pauses allowed, as the judge
chuntered in a hostile, monotonous manner. An exchange of information was not
achieved in terms of a meaningful or useful result. Rather, everyone's stress
level was elevated for no particular reason.
As a result, we got a
trial in which Slovenia plans: to evade hearing any evidence to the benefit of
the foreign Defendant; to make it look as though he was legally represented; and
to make it look as though a translation was provided.
A written one is expected. But communication is simplex (unidirectional) only,
i.e. the yelling, in a trial based on a discriminatory law Slovenia has copied
from other countries to make it look like it was doing what it was supposed to
do, and to make it look like it was their own idea and someone knew what they
were talking about.
Which of course they
didn't. Like the Defendant's lawyer, the owner of the
imaginary wisdom of banning a 114x safer alternative to alcohol, or anything
that helps
Slovenia's alcoholics cut down or quit, is always going to be too busy
somewhere else at the moment.
Using a deep methodology Lachenmeier and Rehm (2015)
[852] find
that cannabis is 0.0088 times as dangerous as alcohol. Alcohol also causes a
lot of yelling.
How was the Defendant truly represented? In the foyer,
the absent lawyer's business partner courageously guessed cannabis was
0.8/0.0088 i.e. 91 times more dangerous than the estimate of these researchers
of the Epidemiological Research Unit, Technische Universität Dresden, Klinische
Psychologie & Psychotherapie, Dresden, Germany; Chemisches und
Veterinäruntersuchungsamt (CVUA) Karlsruhe, Germany; Social and Epidemiological
Research (SER) Department, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH),
Toronto, Canada; Institute of Medical Sciences, University of Toronto (UofT),
Toronto, Canada; Dalla Lana School of Public Health, UofT, Toronto, Canada;
Dept. of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, UofT, Toronto, Canada; and the
PAHO/WHO Collaborating Centre for Mental Health & Addiction, Toronto, Canada.
Probably just amateurs. The translator guessed
cannabis was 5.0 times more dangerous than alcohol, making her folklore estimate
568 times the scientific one.
The "substitute" lawyer refused to commit, wisely
perhaps given her lack of experience of anything, except law school.
But on the suggestion of the Defendant and to shut up her non-client, she agreed to do what Slovenians do to avoid individualism, and take the average of the other two natives' guesses. Which being 2.9 puts her estimate at 330 times the harmfulness rating of Lachenmeier and Rehm, as she headed into Court.
The Defendant hopes
persuading the Court will be this easy.
The Defendant's lawyer also missed an earlier appearance, so this was the second
time in the trial process that Slovenia had had to make it look like he was
represented. Nor in the earlier instance did the stand-in have any connection to
the Defendant or his case.
We don't know what his guess would have been, but it
is already looking like the only participant whose beliefs on its topic bear any
resemblance to reality is the Defendant alone. His so-called advocates are all
emotionally biased by folk myth, as badly as the Prosecution, which has so
far fielded three different front-persons.
As for the paper being shuffled, the Defendant is
probably grateful to his law firm, but not for being left to decipher his own
side's objections for himself, rather than receiving a Court-certified
translation.
Thus, Slovenia's imagined high ideal of the right to
legal representation has been reduced to a translation-fee-saving,
attendance-fee-collecting enterprise, and an opportunity to yell at people who
are not Slovenian enough.
This sausage-machine
situation shows that accuracy and meeting quality standards were more important
for the Prosecution material than for Defendants not proficient in Slovene, whom
Slovenia is only interested in pretending to look interested in teaching.
The Court will recall that in Ptuj no Anglophone
students of Slovene are allowed - only Albanian ladies; that there is no modern
curriculum or consensus approach, and no linguist to teach it. The problem being
that many Slovenians themselves aren't any good at their language, many don't
understand how it works, and many hold it in low esteem.
In 2022's NPZ (National Knowledge Test) in secondary
schools the average in Slovene was 45.5%, and 63.5% in English.
Teaching organisations responded that this proved the
exams were too difficult.
Surprise surprise! The Slovenian educators wanted to
make it look like they are worth paying more. They wanted to make their
performance appear better without actually having to do so. And their educated
suggestion was
exams that fewer can fail.
Official statistics show it will take
3,365,726,026 years to impart Slovene to the
non-Slovenophone population at typical local velocities.
All of Slovenia is just too busy making it look like
they're doing something, to someone.
Long ago, the translator gave up teaching Slovene,
describing it as "the worst job in the world".
Court-certified translations of Defence material
should be available in the Defendant's language well prior to hearings, to avoid
Defendants becoming passengers in their own defence, where actors can come and
go to profit out of racism and anti-health discrimination.
Cannabis, as a substitute for the 114 times more toxic
official national drug of Slovenia, and cannabis and psychedelics, as
life-prolonging exit drugs from its alcohol and other addictions, do not
constitute harms at all when provided in a responsible way.
They are, in these and most other respects, health
benefits. Of course an alcoholic can only ever decide for himself when it is
time to quit. Slovenia is being suicidal as usual.
If Slovenians want to dial down alcohol-related crime
they can abandon their superstitious beliefs and legalise these less harmful
substitutes and exit drugs. Then perhaps their resources will more closely match
their egalitarian aspirations.
Lawyers will then have time to attend all their cases
in person. And substitution with cardboard cutout lawyers for the sake of
protocol will not be required or tolerated.
Henceforth, if the Defendant's own lawyer can't attend
- perhaps he has a medical emergency and has to see a substitute doctor, or is
busy substituting for another lawyer in a more profitable case - the Defendant
will not be attending either.
Sorry, Slovenia. It's not a football match.
The Englishman
30 November 2024
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The Englishman stands
for the rights of everyone disadvantaged, discriminated against, persecuted, and
prosecuted on the false or absent bases of prohibition, and also believes the
victims of these officially-sanctioned prejudices have been appallingly treated
and should be pardoned and compensated.
The Englishman requests the return of his
CaPs
and other
rightful property, for whose distraint Slovenia has proffered no credible excuse
or cause.
The Benedictions represent both empirical entities as
well as beliefs. Beliefs which the Defence evidence shows may be reasonably and
earnestly held about the positive benefits of CaPs at the population level, in
which the good overwhelmingly outweighs the bad. Below, the latest version of
this dynamic list.
THE BENEDICTIONS
REFERENCES
TIMELINE OF DRUG LAW v. SCIENCE