Santos Bonacci

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Jeffrey

44, male

Posts: 6

Santos Bonacci

from Jeffrey on 04/17/2015 01:09 AM

bmx asked me to do a little overview on Santos just to get discussion going.

Santos Bonacci first becomes popular in the alternative sectors of the internet with his Astrotheology videos, which I won't go into because it's outside the scope of this forum. Where Santos really enters the fray of the Freeman movement is with his arrest in January 2014.

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/fine-toll-dodger-faces-jail/story-fni0fee2-1226813202374

The full story behind the arrest goes back a few years. As far back as 2013 or probably further back Santos had been absorbing Freeman ideas from Dean Clifford and Kate of Gaia, a relationship that took place over the internet (Santos being in Australia, Kate and Dean being in Canada).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmSDR8wEpow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlKqmrV8C3k

Where the Freeman beliefs led to problems for Santos was the "Right to Travel" aspects. Santos lives in Melbourne and in 2008 they got a brand new Freeway that allowed drivers to get from point A to point B a lot faster. In order to fund it however, the road charges a toll for users, which was the topic of political controversies down there as explained in the Wikipedia article and different newspaper articles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EastLink_%28Melbourne%29

Now, Santos drove on those toll roads but didn't pay the toll. The Freeway uses automatic passes that charge you everytime you drive on it, same system used in the US. In Australia they're called Breeze Passes, in New York and a few other states they call them EZ Passes, Florida calls them Sun Passes, etc. Problem being, if you drive through the road without a pass, cameras record your license plate and send you a bill in the mail. Santos ignored those letters, and because of late fees, a trip that cost a few dollars became $144 per trip because of late fees and so at the time of the arrest, Santos owed $132,000 total.

Santos was arrested in January, had a hearing, got released on bail then had a second court date in July. Santos however decided not to show up to court in July at which point a bench warrant was issued. Santos claimed he did not have to go to court in July because he had paid off the debt with some stamps, a Freeman type "Accepted for Value" scheme which did not work.

Now the Herald Sun reported that Santos was facing 900 days in jail for the fines which might deserve some explanation. In Australia they have legislation that sets the ratio of fines to jail time. So for every $144 in fines, you can instead do 1 day in jail or, more interestingly, you can do 5 hours community service for each $144 in fines. Based on internet reports, the judge allegedly gave Santos the option of doing community service and spending no time in jail, but Santos chose instead to go on the run.

http://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/Domino/Web_Notes/LDMS/PubStatbook.nsf/f932b66241ecf1b7ca256e92000e23be/422B065241C9D35DCA25714D00222A7D/$FILE/06-012a.pdf

Since July Santos has been in hiding from police, successfully so far. He has made a number of internet radio appearances.

The latest news is that Santos was found guilty of contempt by the Victoria Supreme court. This was unrelated to the fines situation and in fact dates back to 2013. Santos basically tried to intervene on behalf of two guys who were growing and selling marijuana, both later pled guilty. I'll quote from the court decision:

The context, constituted by the Facebook page, the internet radio broadcast, and the seven emails, collectively, reinforces my conclusion that the specific purpose and intention of the respondent, in publishing each of those matters, was to interfere with the criminal proceedings before the County Court. In that way, each of them formed part of a campaign by the respondent to place pressure on and intimidate the court in the conduct by it of the criminal proceedings against Marks and Oleyar.



http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/law-order/abusive-fine-dodger-guilty-of-contempt-of-court-after-attacking-judge/story-fni0fee2-1227294527030
www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/sinodisp/au/cases/vic/VSC/2015/121.html

So that's the basic state of affairs right now. Santos has warrants out for the traffic situation, not clear what the result of that will be. He also has a warrant out over the contempt of court conviction, not clear how much jail time that involves either. The Austlii link contains some information about how they tried to track Santos down, but he appears to be either hiding at an unknown location or moving from place to place. Australia is a big place so plenty of places to hide.

Reply

bmxninja357
Admin

51, male

Posts: 14

Re: Santos Bonacci

from bmxninja357 on 04/17/2015 01:53 AM

thanks for the recap on the current santos situation. when i get some spare time im going to go back and see if i can find what lead santos(sam) down his current path and at what point people started listening to him and why. he is kind of an anomaly to me as he has flocks in other fields of 'astrotheology', ufology and flamenco guitar.

good recap and im sure more will be added as time passes. so far he has gotten further convictions in his absence so when he is caught he has made it worse for himself.

but again its a case of 'its unfair to me' instead of what it should be, 'its unfair to the people'. he should have fought the legislation itself (for the good of all involved if that is what he truly belives) without getting into very expensive trouble.

peace,
ninj

Don't piss up my back and tell me its raining

Reply Edited on 04/17/2015 01:53 AM.

k1w1

55, male

Posts: 4

Re: Santos Bonacci

from k1w1 on 08/14/2015 02:47 PM

"Where the Freeman beliefs led to problems for Santos was the "Right to Travel" aspects."

No, what led to problems for Santos was that he didn't pay the toll or the fines. His beliefs for doing that are actually irrelevant to what happened to him for not doing that. Lots of people don't pay toll when they're supposed to: That doesn't make them a Freeman-on-the-Land.

There was a similar story here in NZ a while ago, a guy regularly used a toll road without paying, ended up with fines of around $70,000, got taken to court... What happened to him afterwards, whether he paid the fines or whether he went on the run, I don't know because unfortunately (or should I say, fortunately) he doesn't have cultish followers like you to report on his every move. As for his personal beliefs in the matter, the court would have cared less since those have no bearing in the facts of the matter -- it just applied the law.

All you've done here, Jeffery, is tell us a story about a person who didn't pay the toll on a road, didn't pay the fines for not paying the toll, who ended up with a warrant out for his arrest. You've then linked that to Freeman-on-the-Land to make some sort of point. Which point is what?

You say you wrote the OP with the intention of starting a "discussion". A discussion about what?

You say the reason Santos refused to pay the toll was his Freeman belief about Right to Travel. Yet apparently his Freeman beliefs about right to travel don't extend to travelling in an unregistered vehicle, which is a big feature of that particular Freeman belief, and as the Wikipedia page you linked mentions, there are many people who believe they shouldn't have to pay a toll on that road. This would suggest the person in your story (Santos) may have had other reasons for not paying the tolls, reasons that have nothing to do with Freeman-on-the-Land beliefs. Or are you trying to suggest all those other people have Freeman beliefs, too?

But even if the reason he didn't pay the tolls had to do with his beliefs about right to travel, the point is what he believes is actually irrelevant... at least to the courts it is, if not to his followers.

If you intended this as some sort of cautionary tale about Freeman and their belief about right to travel (using as your example someone who you perceive to be a "guru") then you've obviously failed to understand the mentality and motivations of people who are prepared to go out and act on their Freeman beliefs in the way you claim Santos has done. Rather than deterring or warning away those people, a story like this simply reinforces their beliefs: Santos is a martyr to them. They already know they're supposed to pay a toll, so you're your story about Santos (or any one else) getting in trouble for not paying a toll is hardly enlightening to them -- they wont be doing it because they're unaware of that any more than Santos himself was unaware of the fact. So your post about your "guru" Santos is hardly instructive in that respect.

If you intended your post to initiate a discussion about Freeman and their wrongful beliefs about right to travel then most of what you've written is irrelevant.

What are the Freeman beliefs about right of travel and why are they wrong? Do you even know? The fact that you've put the term right to travel in quotation marks would seem to suggest that you believe that there is no such thing as a person's right to travel, that "right to travel" is just a figment of Freeman imagination. If that is what you believe then I'd say you're as ignorant as any Freeman... perhaps more so.

Or perhaps you recognise that humans do indeed have a right to travel but it's enough for you to simply say the Freeman interpretation about it is wrongful without bothering to explain why. It's one reason why I find you Quatloosian/anti-Freeman types so tedious: You lot are neither instructive or constructive; just a bunch of bores slapping each other on the back.

By the way: I think you'll find there's a limit to how much community service a court will give a person (in NZ the limit is 400 hours and for paying off fines it is worked out at about $50/hour) and using the $28.80/hr figure you've given for Australia, for Santos to pay off his $132,000 fine in community service he would have to do almost 5600 hours. I doubt it was ever going to be an option.

Reply Edited on 08/14/2015 03:24 PM.

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