Free Marc Emery

On her way to visit Marc, Jodie brings us up to date on his situation and guitar learning progress. Check out http://treatingyourself.com for the upcoming Expo in Toronto where you can meet Jodie and many others in the marijuana movement. Write to Marc at:
MARC EMERY #40252-086
FCI YAZOO CITY – MEDIUM E-1
P.O. BOX 5888
YAZOO CITY, MS
39194
Go to http://freemarc.ca/ for all the details how you can help keep his spirits up and spread his message of hope and inspiration.

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Marc does a exclusive interview with High Times magazine – on newsstands now. Go to http://www.sensiblewashington.org and find out how you can help with the marijuana legalization initiative in Washington State. Jodie also shows us Megaphone street magazine with an article about "The Princess of Pot".

Write to Marc at:
MARC EMERY #40252-086
FCI YAZOO CITY – MEDIUM E-1
P.O. BOX 5888
YAZOO CITY, MS
39194
Send him some greatest hits guitar instruction books with tablature to help with his lessons and keep him busy while locked up for the next three years.

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Just back from the Toronto Freedom Festival, Jodie tells us of her experiences there and Marc's latest update from Mississippi prison, and also about the upcoming Treating Yourself Expo June 3rd-5th in Toronto. More info at http://medicalmarijuana-hempexpo.com/index.html

Stop by the BC Marijuana Party Headquarters on Tuesday nights for our Jams in the Key of Green, and help a worthy cause when we donate 50% of the admissions to a different charity every other week.

Write a letter to Marc! Go to http://freemarc.ca/ for the address and guidelines.

MARC EMERY #40252-086
FCI YAZOO CITY – MEDIUM E-1
P.O. BOX 5888
YAZOO CITY, MS
39194

Watch Toronto Freedom Festival videos at the Cannabis Culture YouTube page and SUBSCRIBE! http://www.youtube.com/cannabisculturemag

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Jodie is off to Toronto for the Toronto Freedom Festival and Global Marijuana March on Saturday, May 7th with others from Vancouver too! She tells of her first visit with Marc in Yazoo City, Mississippi where you can write to him at:
MARC EMERY #40252-086
FCI YAZOO CITY – MEDIUM E-1
P.O. BOX 5888
YAZOO CITY, MS
39194
Go to: http://freemarc.ca for all the details
Jodie also talks about the Conservative majority government that was voted in a few days ago and what it means to the Cannabis Culture.
Visit http://www.cannabisculture.com/ and http://whyprohibition.ca/ to get involved today!

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VOTE in Canada on MONDAY, May 2nd! Go to http://www.elections.ca for info on HOW to vote, and use the websites http://www.ProjectDemocracy.ca http://www.catch22campaign.ca and http://www.whyprohibition.ca to find out who to vote for to SAVE CANADA and the cannabis culture from evil Stephen Harper.

Meet Jodie and other Vancouver, BC activists (plus 40,000 other people!) at the Saturday May 7th Toronto Freedom Festival and Global Marijuana March! http://www.torontofreedomfestival.com

Marc is in Yazoo City medium security prison in Mississippi. Write to Marc at:
MARC EMERY #40252-086
FCI YAZOO CITY – MEDIUM E-1
P.O. BOX 5888
YAZOO CITY, MS
39194

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Dearest Sweet Wife: Today, April 16th, I have 1,188 days to go until my release date of July 9th, 2014. That includes my 235 days good time credit, so I have to hope I can maintain that good standing to get out by then. That's 38 months and 3 weeks away, a long time, no doubt, but it was once 60 months. And before that there was five years where you and I anticipated the inevitable extradition and incarceration with anxiety and unspoken dread.

All our time together since you and I became intimate exactly seven years ago this week has been tinted with the certain knowledge I would be going to jail. When you and I got involved in April of 2004, I was facing charges of passing one joint in Saskatoon, a charge that kept me in jail five days just to obtain bail the month before, March 2004. I had been on a university speaking tour across Canada, and after speaking at the University of Saskatchewan campus, 40 of us went to smoke a few joints in the park beside the Bessborough Hotel where I was staying. We were all nestled in the Vimy Ridge memorial pavilion, honouring the soldiers who died in the infamous WW1 battle (fighting for "our freedom" as they say). After we finished, a police officer came by, said he smelled smoke, and asked a 23-year old university student, "Did Mr. Emery pass you the joint?" Yes, the student replied.

On August 19th, 2004, I was convicted of trafficking that one joint, and much to both our shock, was sentenced to three months, 92 days, in Saskatoon Correctional Center. My time there is well documented, and you should resurrect some of the choice jail blogs that I made throughout my time there, especially so they don't get lost into the cybersphere forever, as those were some of the best writings I had ever done up to that time. Remember, that is where we fell completely in love, if we weren't already, because each night I would furiously write my thoughts and politics from 10pm to 2am each night, and then after my job in the jail was done from 8am to 2:30pm – I was the janitor of the prison administration center where much of that staff worked, paid $5 a day, the top wage in the inmate job hierarchy – I called Chris Bennett of Pot-TV collect and he would record my voice narrating my writings of the night before. He would put this on a CD and hand it to you, and each night you would painstakingly listen to the disc, line by line, and type it up so it could be read on the internet.

Just as my newsletters I wrote at D. Ray James were read by the staff there, at Saskatoon Correctional, all the staff would read my jail blogs of my time there. When I was vacuuming the carpets around the staff, I would spy out of the corner of my eye them reading the latest entries. It was a passionate retelling of each day there, and all the political, emotional revelations that were going on. A lot seemed to happen in the 62 days there. I went in to court on August 19th, and I thought I would get a $500 fine, but instead was stunned when the judge, after a long speech condemning my bad influence on the community, gave me 3 months. The last words I said as I was handcuffed and lead away immediately after sentencing was, "Three months for one joint!!!????" It was a blazing hot summer day outside that August 19th.

I was released on October 19th into a beautiful snowy blizzard. Your taxi to pick me up was an hour late because of the bad roads. It was cold and the snow fell relentlessly, but there are few days in my life when I was happier. You were there to pick me up at the prison with Dana and Rebecca, and you accompanied me to the various TV and radio stations to give my comments on my highly publicized release. I savoured the food in four different restaurants that day, and then by mid-afternoon, I could wait no longer and we made love in the hotel. I remember that evening I was in the hotel computer room, doing my email, you sitting beside me, and I was speaking on my phone and said "I just got out of jail", then, noticing a person on the computer beside me, put my hand on his shoulder and said to him, "Don't worry, it was nothing unsavoury", and he turned around and said, "I know." It was Canadian musician Matthew Good, performing that night in Saskatoon, staying at the same hotel, also checking his email.

US transfer application rejection letterI bring this jail memory up because yesterday I received the dreadful, but not wholly unexpected, DENIAL of treaty transfer from the US Department of Justice.

I know you had sincere strong hopes that both governments would accept my transfer application. I certainly qualified in all of the criteria set out in the DOJ guidelines, and I had unprecedented political support in Canada – a Senator, 14 Members of Parliament, a Member of the BC Legislature, four city councillors, two mayors, and at least one State Representative. Those are just the elected officials we are aware of whose endorsement for transfer we have copies of. Yet I was refused because of the "seriousness of my offense" and "serious law enforcement concerns".

Additionally, it would appear my constant critiquing of the US penal system in my newsletters was inferred as a reason for the refusal, as the DOJ referred to my "actions within my control" that caused them to deny me.

DEA chief Karen Tandy always said my arrest was political, in fact, in her statement issued the day of my arrest, she doesn't actually mention my so-called crime of selling seeds to consenting adults, because that, juxtaposed with being one of the top 46 most wanted in the world, would sound outrageous and absurd. Instead she railed on repeatedly about my political 'crimes' in opposing the US federal government war of cannabis.

DEA Head Karen Tandy's statement on Marc

"Today's DEA arrest of Marc Scott Emery, publisher of Cannabis Culture Magazine, and the founder of a marijuana legalization group — is a significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the U.S. and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement.

"His marijuana trade and propagandist marijuana magazine have generated nearly $5 million a year in profits that bolstered his trafficking efforts, but those have gone up in smoke today.

"Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General's most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets — one of only 46 in the world and the only one from Canada.

"Hundreds of thousands of dollars of Emery's illicit profits are known to have been channeled to marijuana legalization groups active in the United States and Canada. Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on."

When I called you and told you the upsetting news about my transfer application being rejected, you were thunderstruck. I know it was a shock and disappointment, and of course, we both know it's further punishment because of my life's work in repealing marijuana prohibition, and for the millions of dollars – not hundreds of thousands as Tandy stated, but millions of dollars – I contributed to the US, Canadian and worldwide repeal movements, and my pride in doing so.

We have no choice but to channel our indignation into the movement. I expect every soldier in our great cause to do their duty. I hope our American friends and supporters will appeal to hold "OBAMA: FREE MARC EMERY" signs, banners, etc. at every opportunity at every rally, gathering, website, Facebook profile, meeting, town hall, sports event, and wherever people gather. I enjoin them to begin a campaign to write the President and urge him to pardon me.

I also urge my American friends to support the Presidential nomination campaigns of Congressman Ron Paul and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. These two men are great men, fully behind the repeal of cannabis prohibition, and do not retreat from saying so. They need our full support, in primary votes, in campaign contributions, in volunteer efforts, fundraising, and sign carrying. I cannot stress this too much. Ron Paul was the real man of Hope in 2008, but the false Hope was elected instead. Ron Paul is the greatest man of our time, a champion of the Constitution and has opposed every aspect of the drug war since first elected to Congress in 1974. He is co-sponsor of bills legalizing personal possession of cannabis , industrial hemp, medical marijuana, the Truth in Trials Act, ending the Drug Czar's budget – simply every aspect of the federal drug war, Ron Paul has opposed it. [Marc's massive study of all US Congress votes for Cannabis Culture Magazine #63 showed that Ron Paul was the #1 supporter of our culture. View that article here.]

It is my fervent hope that the Republican Presidential ticket for 2012 will be Ron Paul & Gary Johnson as President/Vice-Presidential nominee. Ron Paul is an incredibly decent, honest, ethical man, an intellectual giant and a down-to-earth person. There simply has never been a better candidate for the trust of the people in the last 50 years for the office of President. For our people, our cannabis culture, there simply is no one who comes close. Jodie, if our American people want to honour my life-long struggle to secure their freedom in the face of this prohibition tyranny, they MUST support Ron Paul in his bid for President. [Read more about Ron Paul's stance on cannabis and the drug war here, here, here, and here.]

My Canadian people must commit themselves to voting in the May 2nd Canadian federal election. It is vital to punish the Conservatives for both extraditing me, and persisting in bringing in legislation to impose mandatory minimum jail sentences and other cruel punishments upon the cannabis culture. Most young people do not vote; this has had, and will have, tragic consequences if that happens May 2nd. I recommend all young people, all Canadians reading this, vote at the earliest advanced poll they can find for their riding, before May 2nd. They must vote for the candidate with the greatest chance of defeating the Conservative. In English Canada, this means voting Liberal or NDP, in French Canada, this means voting for the Bloc or Liberal. This is no time to vote Green; that alas, only helps the Conservative. Certainly, it is not the time in our culture's history, in our nation's history, to fail to vote. Think "FREE MARC EMERY – IMPRISON STEPHEN HARPER" and get out and vote.

If they need a push, Jodie, beg them to read my most recent essay, amongst the best works of writing I have ever done, "A Visit by the Grand Inquisitor Himself on the Eve of an Election Call". If they don't realize who the Grand Inquisitor in the story is, Jodie, please tell them. Whatever people think of Michael Ignatieff or Jack Layton, they are not evil men. Stephen Harper is evil and death, to our culture particularly, and to Canada certainly. [See "10 Reasons to oppose the Harper candidate in your riding" from Rabble.ca for a great list of why Harper is such a threat to Canada.]

As for us, I hope our wonderful supporters who have been so caring, loving and generous to myself and you will continue to be so kind, you will need the financial help so you can visit every two weeks in Mississippi, and I will need the great uplifting letters I continue to receive. 38 months and three weeks IS a long time, but it is made endurable by the gifts of love and respect I receive from those who take the time to show their support, consideration and understanding.

Send mail or money to Marc

Most of all, my dear sweet Jodie, without you I would be lost, forlorn, and ever so lonely. You are my rock, my pride, you have exceeded all my expectations and have become one of the most respected activists for our glorious cause. Every day you impress me and hundreds of thousands of others by your dedication, passion and eloquence. I live on through you and am dearly proud that you bear my name, Mrs. Jodie Emery. I pray for your well being, and I am not a religious man, but those positive affirmations to the universe make me feel better, and I can only hope that many others will do what they can to help you, when and how they can do so.

I remain, Your honoured husband,
Grateful I have so much, under these circumstances, to still be thankful for,
Marc
xox

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Marc is now in Yazoo City, Mississippi — please send him letters! www.FreeMarc.ca — and we all missed him at the annual Vancouver 4/20 event on April 20th… but we had a massive FREE MARC banner on stage to remember him. Vancouver had a tremendously successful protest festival, bigger and better than ever before, and the media got out the FREE MARC EMERY and VOTE on MAY 2nd messages. Jodie also shares her voter registration card and explains how to get out and VOTE on May 2nd!

MARC EMERY #40252-086
FCI YAZOO CITY MEDIUM E-1
FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION
P.O. BOX 5888
YAZOO CITY, MS 39194

http://www.cannabisculture.com
http://www.freemarc.ca
http://www.whyprohibition.ca
http://www.catch22campaign.ca
http://www.swing33.ca

GET OUT THE VOTE:
http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/2011/04/05/Save-Canadas-Cannabis-Culture-Vote-Out-Conservatives-May-2

http://www.Facebook.com/PrinceOfPot
http://www.Facebook.com/JodieEmery
http://www.Facebook.com/MarcEmery
http://www.Twitter.com/JodieEmery
http://www.Twitter.com/MarcScottEmery

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My prison conditions are a good measuring stick of Canada’s descent into this new Conservatism. Political leaders always tell us we should judge them by their actions. This is because what a political leader does, what a government does, is a reflection of the leader’s principles, character and beliefs.

When Pierre Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada from from 1968 to 1983 (with a 9 month interruption when Joe Clark was Prime Minister), was asked about putting Canada into a state of martial law under the powers of the War Measures Act in 1970, he said, “there are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just don't like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is, go on and bleed. But it's more important to keep law and order in the society than to be worried about weak-kneed people who don't like the looks of a soldier.” At any cost? Trudeau was asked. “Just watch me,” he replied.

Watch what I do, decide what kind of person I am, then vote. This, perhaps, is the most basic and obvious political rule of all. When looking at a Prime Minister’s decisions, the question voters always ask themselves is this: Would I do the same thing? Does this action meet my definition of decency, fairness, justice and civilized behavior?

And while some issues are of a practical nature, such as taxes, others are of a moral nature and go directly to the character of the politicians involved. As an example, when Americans started to see Vietnam as an immoral war, President Johnson had to decline to run for a second term. Johnson was voted in on a wave of idealism over the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his promise of the Great Society. Johnson’s willful deception and sacrifice of American idealism and lives to maintain a corrupt and hopeless South Vietnamese government betrayed both his American supporters and the Vietnamese people.

Nixon, on the other hand, was always despised by the idealists and won election appealing to racists, the fearful and reactionary ‘silent majority’. When Nixon proved to be a venal, paranoid, disgustingly bigoted war-mongering ogre of immense proportions, that didn’t betray the sentiment of those who voted for him. That’s who they voted for!

When I studied the civil rights movement in Taylor Branch’s trilogy on the life & times of Martin Luther King, I was stunned to realize that Jim Crow laws in the South were virtually unshatterable because America had tens of millions of vicious racists whose attitudes and behavior were completely grotesque – yet this was the ‘normal’ of its time throughout virtually all of white society in the South, and much of the rest of America too. This is incomprehensible to a ‘decent’ Canadian of our contemporary time, today. Yet this nasty, wretched racism was the dominant ethos in all southern states only 50 years ago, in my lifetime. Nixon proudly introduced the modern drug war as his legacy of revenge on the generation of young people and the counter-culture who were mostly responsible for his vilification and downfall (with a little help from Woodward & Bernstein).

One such moral issue is how a society punishes citizens and what it punishes them for. This is the single most important issue in ANY society, that of a government taking away a citizen’s freedom and under what conditions.

The decision to deliver me to an American prison was made by the government of Stephen Harper. While it would have previously been government policy to charge me under Canadian law and in a Canadian courts, and serve any jail sentence, were there to be one, in a Canadian jail, the Harper government changed that policy. Now I am in a US Federal prison for foreigners, a contract for profit concentration camp in the desolate southeast corner of Georgia.

Hundreds of thousands of people consider me to be the leader of a culture within Canada and in the world. A peaceful culture that is known for its pacifism and truth-telling. A culture that produced the greatest music of the last century. The great art, film, literature, comedy of our time is also the inspiration of the cannabis culture. I am this culture, and this culture is me. How I am regarded is how every individual in this culture is to be regarded. I am Bob Marley, Paul McCartney, Carl Sagan, Richard Branson, Michael Phillips, Lady Gaga, Carmelo Anthony, Tommy Chong, Rob Van Dam, Jack Nicholson and every individual whose life enriched others through their use of cannabis. And of course, I am you. I am now, at the pleasure of Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his appointees in the Conservative government, and the US DEA, at D. Ray James Correctional Institution. D. Ray James CI is an accurate representation of the mind and moral character of ‘the Harper government’.

So, a voter, I hope, would ask him or herself, would I do to Marc Emery what Stephen Harper has done to Marc Emery?

From my perspective, Canada’s Harper government, the new Conservatism, endorses my situation;

1) I am crammed into a dorm with 63 other people, six are fluent in English. I have no privacy of any kind. No doors on toilets, showers. The water tastes bad is suspect. I am sentenced to be in this dorm another 40 months before my release date of July 7th, 2014, for raising money from consenting adults through the sale of seeds to empower a peaceful & honest political movement to legalize cannabis.

2) I am in a slave labor concentration camp segregated by our non-American-ness. I get 12 cents an hour. If I refuse to work the job assigned I get put into solitary confinement. The GEO Group Inc. is America’s largest prison corporation. Formally called Wackenhut, the name change was required when the endless criminal brutality of jail staff became public.

3) I am now part of the massive American prison slave labor system that has been subject of many contemporary books; I have 6 of them, Lockdown America being one of the best. Jail inmates must work to produce goods for the profit of American Corporations. Or it’s solitary. Maybe it’s making jeans, maybe it’s license plates, maybe it’s selling travel packages by phone. For me it’s paralegal and secretarial work at 12 cents an hour.

4) Dental care and medical care may or may not be available when I need it. One doctor and one dentist handle 2,250 inmates.

5) Water and food are nutritionally substandard. Heavy in fats, carbohydrates and sugars, the food lacks adequate Vitamins A, B, C, & D, essential fatty acids, calcium, potassium and most trace minerals. The water is yellowish and foul, and if tests were ever done, would likely show it unfit for human consumption.

6) Books are withheld from me, my letter mail is withheld by Security and read, my outbound mail is opened and read to see what I am saying about my captors.

7) From April to September it is unrelentingly hot and humid, insects of every kind proliferate here as we are beside a massive swamp.

8) There are no courses, career training and the reading library is deliberately kept useless and dysfunctional.

I never hurt anyone, I only did good. My cause is a just one, the majority of Canadians and Americans agree with the premise I have advocated, that cannabis prohibition should be repealed.

After I wrote the essay Injustice & Cruelty As A Laughing Matter, I had a dream that I was visited here at D. Ray James CI by the Grand Inquisitor from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s seminal work The Brothers Karamazov. Normally I never dream, I can never recall any dreams.

In that book, Christ had returned to Earth during the Spanish Inquisition. Heretics were being jailed, tortured and burned alive, all because they would not believe what authority wanted them to believe. In my dream, The Inquisitor is here, now. The Inquisitor has come back for an encore, for the Marijuana Inquisition. Heretics are being jailed, tortured, and terrorized, all because they will not believe what authority wants them to believe.

The Inquisitor has had me arrested, extradited, convicted and put me in D. Ray James CI. I was to go to a California Federal prison but this was not cruel enough for The Inquisitor. It did not satisfy the Inquisitor’s sadistic longings. The Inquisitor has taken over a modern government in this age of propaganda, and proudly releases a promotional photo of the GEO Group Inc., my hosts here at D. Ray James CI, boasting the use of growling German Shepherd dogs, automatic rifles, leading chained, handcuffed and leg-ironed prisoners into a GEO Group ‘Con-Air’ plane. This is the photo that is to soothe the citizenry about keeping a dangerous ‘propagandist’ like Emery, this heretic who would poison the minds of young and old alike, in captivity.

The Inquisitor ordered me to this human compression chamber. Scores of men live crammed together in single rooms. Of all The Inquisitor’s vast array of concentration camps, this is one of the greatest distance away from my wife, my true love.

As the Spanish Inquisition showed, and as history has documented ever since, these timeless Inquisitors feed on the pain of others. This is their trip. This is why they originally devised the most horrendous punishments imaginable, crushing bones, pouring molten lead into eyeballs, even exhuming dead heretics from the grave so their remains could be burned. There are museums of the Inquisition’s implements of torture in most every European country. Hundreds of instruments meticulously crafted for the use of the Inquisitor to painstakingly punish the heretics, the unbelievers.

This went on for centuries, six centuries to be precise, ending only in 1832. But the Inquisitors live on, though modern media has frustrated them. Modern television, newspapers and now the Internet have made The Inquisitor necessarily more shrewd in choosing the heretics targeted for destruction. The punishments must be more to the mind, behind closed doors, away from the revelatory images cast by the media. The Spanish Inquisition had over 17 million victims in 600 years; the last 50 years of the Inquisitors’ war on the drug culture, the cannabis culture and the others who put potions and chemicals in their bodies and into the world, numbers 26 million humans punished as heretics. The Inquisitors have not slowed down, but, in the age of propaganda, adapted brilliantly. Seeing is believing, so the Inquisitor makes the inquisition overwhelming, so that no image can capture the colossal onslaught against humanity.

70 years ago, images of thousands of heretics being brought to concentration camps by trains was extremely disturbing. The Inquisitor of that era did not wish such images to get out in the world. Today, in our supposedly more enlightened time, (Never Again?), the Inquisitors release publicity photos crowing about the hundreds of thousands shackled, being led onto buses and planes, being taken to concentration camps, by men with the same German Shepherds and automatic rifles. I was flown directly to Oklahoma City prison, the landing strip goes right up to the door of that windowless and dour processing hub. But hundreds of thousands of heretics being shipped across America in planes does not evoke the horror of 70 years ago. Something has happened to people since then. 26 million victims, persecuted for their potion, pill and plant consumption in the last 50 years, are still hounded unmercifully worldwide. America arrests over 1,000,000 heretics each year alone. There is no shock or shame.

Now, as the Inquisitor approaches the gates of D. Ray James, he reaches a frenzied state of excitement. He thinks of how he has separated two decent people who are deeply in love. He thinks of their longing for each other. He knows, from monitoring all of my letters, recording and listening to all my calls, that I break down and cry frequently from the void created by this rupture in existence. The Inquisitor knows Jodie suffers from the stress, strain and abuse this forced removal of her beloved husband has had on her. This excites him further.

He thinks of the constant sacrifice the delicate and exquisite Mrs. Jodie Emery must make to see her husband. For a woman who is beautiful inside and out is what the Inquisitor has always feared the most. After these delicious thoughts of vicarious misery, the Inquisitor licks his pale lips. He feels as if he has just had a good meal. The Inquisitor, and all the Inquisitors of humankind’s history, feeds on the denial of love.

The Inquisitor thinks warmly, as his government limousine approaches the sentry at the entrance to D. Ray James, of the thousands – no millions! – of women painstakingly tortured and obliterated as witches in the times past. Ah, the good old days. And he is bringing these days back. In truth, they never left. Torture jails are the new ‘act of Faith’.

I am called to a windowless, characterless room. My Inquisitor has pale blue eyes. Karla Homolka eyes. A disturbing, dead watery blue. Pale and pasty skinned, it occurs to me, in need of blood, vampire-like. He speaks. I say nothing for now. He tells me that Canadians do not believe me. He says he will be able to brainwash “the very people you have been trying to save for 30 years.”

To prove this, my Inquisitor tells me, “I have an army of Inquisitors, not with robes and crosses, but with the faceless anonymity of the bureaucracy and government” to keep me locked up here, until the very last day of my sentence, July 7, 2014, “and longer, if I can make you snap and forfeit your good time credit. And if your wife’s health should fail further, consider how that will make you behave. Worth pondering, yes? Jodie is everything to you, and you to her, yes? We know what we’re doing, or rather, I know what I’m doing. I will tell you why in short order. But consider years of anxiety as you watch the stress eat away at your young wife’s health and vitality. I see you have many more grey hairs now than you did a year ago. If you should, God willing, perish from such anxiety earlier than otherwise, then my work in the world has been done. Your wife would never recover from your demise here, and that would serve my purpose so utterly, don’t you agree?”

I want to gasp, but I only stare into the eyes.

The Inquisitor continues, “It’s remarkable, really, what humans will do for a paycheck. They do what I tell them, or they lose their jobs. I have an army I can pay to frustrate you. It really is hopeless for you Mr… Prince of Pot, isn’t it? As my car approached D. Ray James, here is the place, this Folkston, Georgia, this obscure place, it is a morbid sight, really. All the way here from the airport buildings are boarded up and deteriorating. This prison – you call it a concentration camp, I know, in your pathetic assertion of reality – is located in a barren landscape laid waste by unemployment and the cost of supporting the endless wars that I and my American counterparts never fail to convince the people they must have. We have destroyed the America they love, and they don’t even know it yet.

“And of course, Canada is next, you know I am working hard on that right now, all the more easily done because you are here, isn’t that right? There was a time in 2003 that I feared your cries in the wilderness were, shall I say, resonating with the Canadian people. The people, some judges, were going off script and finding favor with your vision of Canada. But it was only a momentary lapse into reason, and so we Inquisitors dealt with you promptly, and our lackeys in the courts, police and Parliament made the necessary adjustments, and the people, the sheeple, as we joke in our private chambers, were none the wiser. Can you imagine your beloved Canada laid waste like southeast Georgia? Anyone for one hundred miles around clamoring for a job as a concentration camp guard just so they can eat and survive? Can you imagine your Vancouver, your British Columbia, your Canada, in such a pathetic moral and economic prostitution? I know I can.

“I’m really enjoying my machinations in Mexico. You know what is going on in Mexico, don’t you, Prince? Sure you do, there are thousands of Mexicans here in this prison. We Inquisitors decided to annihilate Mexico years ago, as criminal government gangsters battle criminal non-government gangsters for control of the prohibition market. Thousands die month after unrelenting month. It never ends. It never will. Oh, I know you dream of ending it. That’s why we stopped you. There was a time… when you might have had a chance. But I’m repeating myself, and you are here, your body-less existence relegated to some Facebook page, I guess you’d have to admit.

“I really enjoy the evening news on my big TV, although torture and exquisite killing that goes on daily in Mexico is even now too blasé for American media, and the Mexican media are so fearful of reprisal that they have already cut out their own tongue. Ah, it’s like Europe at the height of the Inquisition, but even more satisfying, because with propaganda we have silenced the people’s most powerful resource and tool. Such recourse by the peasants in Europe centuries ago did not exist. We were their voice of the truth exclusively. There was no media. Now, we still are the voice of the truth because, as you and others now know, the price of stating reality is very, very high. And these people will sell their tiny souls as concentration camp guards for a few meals a day and shack roof over their head. Do you really want to save these people, Oh Prince?”

I stare at the Inquisitor. I hear music. It's ‘Sympathy For The Devil’.

His lecture continues. I listen, spellbound, silent.

“Dear Mr. Emery”, he says my name for the first time now, like he’s been holding back until now, “you people never learn. I told this to Christ long ago. Now I’ll inform you. Please pay attention. We tell people what to think. We tell people what to believe. We tell the people what to do. If they don’t follow us, we destroy them. Methods vary. Why is this so hard for you and Christ to understand? Just look at my track record. You made the same error he made. He also thought people would want the truth. He also thought people could rise above a paycheck. He also thought wrong. So do you. Here, look at this.”

I see the Inquisitor get a huge ledger book from out of a briefcase I hadn’t noticed before. It’s a book of pay stubs, job appointments.

“It’s all here, Mr. Emery. Over one thousand individuals who have been involved with putting you in this place. Tens of millions of dollars spent, we spared no expense, to put you in this gulag by the swamp. It took us two decades but it’s done. A DEA world government. The RCMP, a branch of the DEA. Vancouver police, a branch of the DEA. The American Justice Department a branch of the DEA. Judges, court clerks, court reporters, crown attorneys, assistant crown attorneys, District Attorneys, prosecutors, wire tappers, a local swat team in every community, police undercover operatives, confidential informants, anonymous tipsters, desperate drug addicts, paid internet trolls, Ignatieff, Layton, Canadian Senators, op-ed hacks, political operatives, prison guards, university professors, and most important of all, public relations firms. I pay them all. Metaphorically you could say – I know you, Mr. Emery, would say it thus – they have sold their soul for some paper with ink on it.

“Amazing, isn’t it, the true value of a person’s soul? In movies and books, the sale of a soul is made to be some Faustian big deal, but in truth, it’s a cheap, common, banal transaction less thought through than the swatting of a fly. That realization must drive you quite crazy, Mr. Emery. I’m sure it does. And you are here, where you can do nothing about it. Your helplessness delights me. But then, I’m stating the obvious, am I not?”

…Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners saints, wooo, wooo…

“I own these people, Mr. Emery. I pay them all. I bought them all. They are mine. They do what I say. If they want to eat, if they want a roof over their heads, if they want to get a new TV, if they want to take the kids to Disneyland, if they want to get the wife a new mini-van, if they want the husband to get a new copy of Guns & Ammo, if they want dental work, if they want a career, if they want a promotion, if they want to sit on The Supreme Court, if they want ego stuffing, then they do exactly what I say. It is as simple as that. I also educate them. This is how you can be put in a place like this. I educate them to believe they are fulfilling their destiny by working for me.

“This process was predicted long ago in the book ‘La Trahison des Clercs (The Treason of the Intellectuals)’ by Julien Benda. It was written in 1928, but no one believes there is much to learn from the past, certainly not the French, so these little prophecies are ignored in our disposable present tense. That is a mistake for the people, because that is where all the clues are, in books, in history, in all cultures.

“Let me read you what Benda said, In English translation, of course: ‘Our age is the age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds. It will be one of the chief claims to notice in the moral history of humanity. The condensation of political passions into a small number of very simple hatreds, springing from the deepest roots of the human heart, is a conquest of modern times. Now, at the end of the nineteenth century a fundamental change occurred: the clerks began to play the game of political passion. The men who had acted as a check on the realism of the people began to act as it’s stimulators.’”

The Inquisitor looked up at me from the book he had obviously brought for my edification.

“You see, Marc, this is… may I call you Marc?”

I smiled a faint smile, a wry affirmative.

…what’s confusing you is the nature of my game… wooo, wooo…

“You see, Marc, this is extremely simple. Do you know why I do this? I do it because I can. No other reason. There is no bigger thrill than to create life through propaganda, to look into the eyes of people and see emotions and beliefs you have created. We create things, Marc. And after we have created them, we look proudly at our creations and shout with joy, ‘It’s Alive! It’s Alive!’ Karloff was great in Frankenstein, wasn’t he? Such presence. And those eyes! It’s the maximum buzz, to use a word you might use. It’s like being God. Do you know what it feels like? Do you know what it’s like to hold people’s minds in your hands? Once you get a propaganda hit, you want more and more. You can never stop. Never, never, never. We are using you, Marc, as we have used others like you throughout history, to show there is no limit to this power of propaganda. We can make people believe anything. We can make people do anything. Propaganda put you here, Marc, put you in D. Ray James. I mean, really, what did you do? Seeds! In previous ages you would have been heralded and lauded like John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed. Or even George Washington, the most prolific planter of cannabis seeds the United States has ever known! In the space of exactly 250 years, for George’s first massive planting of thousands of acres of cannabis from seed occurred by Washington’s own diary notes, in 1760, to 2010, when you were extradited to America and put here in D. Ray James CI, we’ve proven the power of propaganda. The first President of the United States, the revered father of this nation, was you 250 years ago. Two and a half centuries later we’ve demonized the very same behavior into one of the world’s 50 Most Wanted! Imagine what a triumph of metaphysical alchemy – propaganda – that truly is, what with all the evil in existence today, we could convince the public that you represented a greater threat than any dictator, murderer, drug lord, criminal syndicate and virtually any other agent of destruction that walks the earth today. We were not laughed at when we said you were #46 on world’s most wanted – therefore most dangerous – persons of this modern epoch!

“Five years in a Georgia compression dungeon for selling seeds from Canada to willing adult buyers? In 2011? Even now it amazes me, and I am rarely so impressed by my own work, and I am always effective. You know that. You’ve watched me for 30 years and railed on about me to Canadians and Americans alike but they ignored you. When you really needed them, they could do nothing for you. Only your wife holds a torch, a flame of truth you might say, for you. And we are watching her. Her health is failing. You think she can keep it up for 40 months more, Marc? I don’t think so. I’m sure you think about that yourself, but…”

The Inquisitor held his right palm to face me, “but you needn’t answer that little rhetorical remark. It’s not really a question. I’ve too much experience breaking down the bonds of loving adults to not recognize the signs. Mrs. Emery’s hair falling out? Skin in poor shape? Chest pains? Chronic weakness? Travel Exhaustion? Maybe you shouldn’t make her see you so often, Marc. Your being selfish is going to make the poor woman sick. How would you feel then?”

I clenched my teeth, and bore a steely gaze on him. He stuttered whenever he mentioned Jodie. It began to occur that he feared her more than he feared me. But he hardly missed a beat and continued.

“And to think, the government told licensed users to get their seeds from you. The majority of Canadians continually poll for legalizing cannabis. In your home province and city, two-thirds of the people want to legalize cannabis. But they do nothing for you Marc, have you noticed that? All those people with their point of view and nothing changed, nothing! You know there were colleagues of mine in government who told me it would be impossible to get rid of you. That you were loved as a great Canadian, a folk hero, a great humanitarian even. Told me to forget about getting rid of you. Told me Canada was a democracy and that you’d soon have the majority on your side. They laughed at me when I told them you had to be put far, far away for a long, long time. They laughed at me! They said it couldn’t be done. But I did it with ease. I humiliated you and exiled you and all your supporters could do was… nothing! I showed them to be impotent, and me the omnipotent. That’s democracy, I told my colleagues of little faith. Now who’s laughing?

“Here, I’ll show you proof of my absolute power. It is in the following paragraphs in the book the “biography of an idea: memoirs of public relations counsel edward l. bernays”. It’s a modest looking book for such a significant one, the title is all in the lower case, in a modest font. As you well know, Marc, Eddie is the self-proclaimed ‘Father of Public Relations’. A nephew of Sigmund Freud – the father of psychology to manipulate people, all without their ever knowing it. He called this propaganda method his ‘invisible government’, which he created through the engineering of consent. He did this by manipulating buttons in the subconscious sector of the mind. Eddie created the age of propaganda we are living in. His clients included… well, everybody.

“There is this single paragraph in his book that makes it saleable on Amazon for $200 for a fair condition copy, while a mint copy had a recent sale price of $2,000. Yet it is not that old. From 1965. It’s a first edition, but that’s not a big deal in this case. If you want the text, you can buy a Xerox reproduction. It is not personally signed, that $2,000 first edition. There is no leather binding, no gilt edged paged, no vellum paper. For those collecting cover art or dust jackets, there is nothing special here. As a former bookseller, you know this book would be something you’d usually find in the bargain bin and sell for $3.00. But it contains a single truth that allows it to demand this price. It is because of this one paragraph this book has become legendary. It’s on page 652.”

“Karl von Weigand, foreign correspondent of the Hearst newspapers, and old hand at interpreting Europe and just returned from Germany, was telling us about Goebbels and his propaganda plans to consolidate Nazi power. Goebbels had shown Wiegand his propaganda library, the best Wiegand had ever seen. Goebbels, said Wiegand, was using my book CRYSTALLIZING PUBLIC OPINION as a basis for his destructive campaign against the Jews of Germany.”

“What this means, Marc, is that people like me made up lies that tricked one group of people into making lamp shades out of the skins of another group of people. It means we were able to get those same people to put six million other people in ovens. As you can see from this paragraph, we have proven you can get people to do absolutely anything by using propaganda. And if you can do it in Europe’s most cultured nation, the nation of Beethoven, Goethe, Bach, then you can do it once, you can do it forever in every place.

“Remember, the German people who committed these atrocities, the volk, these weren’t monsters; there were well brought up, educated people with families, love, and normal upbringings. But in a climate of fear and bewilderment, propaganda easily took root. Dachau concentration camp, opened within months after the Nazis were elected to power, in 1933, was just like D. Ray James. The Nazis issued publicity photos to the German press and even the foreign press to show how well its ‘undesirables’ were being treated in these camps, just like GEO Group proudly does.

“At first, the concentration camps were much like D. Ray James is now. They became worse and far more sinister when the German people came to accept the ‘necessity’ of concentrating the ‘others’ into ghettos and gulags, as a normal aspect of life. Once you can herd the ‘other’ into overcrowded, dehumanizing barb-wire fenced prisons, it’s only a matter of time before a cultural genocide is underway. It took, what, just under ten years to go from a gulag of concentration camps to extermination camps? But then the Nazis were in a hurry and the allies were closing in. Still, it’s amazing that tens of millions of Germans could be convinced of the necessity of concentration camps with just a few years of targeted propaganda.

“What do you have here, illegals and those who trade in the ceremonial chemistries of the mind? This GEO Group gets $1 million a week to ‘house’ you. For what purpose ultimately? What is the point? Punishment of the ‘other’, the ‘heretic’, and the debasement of the citizen, who begins to think it’s normal to herd these people around a concentration camp so they can pay the rent? Do you think a German guard at Dachau in 1933 was brought up any different than a guard at D. Ray James today? They are not different at all. They weren’t evil – they needed to eat and put a roof over their head. Propaganda is the great equalizer between cultures. You’ve seen it in the drug war, in Rwanda, in Germany, you see it everywhere. Of course, Eddie has an explanation in the next paragraph:

“This shocked me, but I knew that any human activity can be used for social purposes or misused for antisocial ones. Obviously the attack on the Jews of Germany was no emotional outburst of the Nazis, but a deliberate, planned campaign.”

“Bernays refused to seize on the outcome of his brilliant methods and conclusions outlined in his book. The massive Joseph Goebbels Ministry of Public Enlightenment & Propaganda – the actual name, isn’t it wonderful – which covered every aspect of German life, simply misused his theories for that which was already pre-determined, according to Bernays limp explanation. Bernays was embarrassed (at least so he said) to take responsibility for what became the greatest triumph of propaganda in humankind’s history! To convince essentially good, decent people they must round up all these other decent people and put them in internment camps and within a few years exterminate them all! To destroy several millions women as witches took the Inquisition 600 years! To kill millions of Jews, homosexuals, communists, dissenters, idealists, and others took Goebbels only a few years of brilliantly orchestrated propaganda! Bernays refused to take credit for this staggering achievement. Sigh. Whatever.

“Regardless of how you slice it, propaganda is indeed the truth and the light, the power and the glory, the yin and yang, the alpha and the omega, the works. For is it now a fact that belief determines truth? Lies can be truth if you can make people believe them. Yesterday they were lies, today they are truth. After a few weeks, who cares? We made it all up. We always do. Somebody has to.”

I could see my Inquisitor was warming up to his task. He was setting the mood for some reason, some purpose.

…made damn sure that Pilate washed his hands, and sealed His fate… woooo, woooo…

“You must be thinking, Marc, because you are not talking, who could ever believe the notorious Marc Emery silent, is it for some principle, Marc, that even I’m unable to see? You must have asked yourself, ‘Why me?’ Why you Marc? Why are you in this place? You must, in your despair, ask yourself this question. And don’t try to convince me you don’t despair, I read those newsletters, Marc, I know you cry often, perhaps not over your predicament here at D. Ray James, though that can hardly be a comfort, but over your lovely wife’s absence. How old are you, Marc? 53, 54? What is it for? How many good years do you think you have left in you before you’re a drooling shell of a man, incapacitated from a stroke the same way your father perished, and his father, and his father. It IS hereditary, those things, alas. Surely you think about ‘what if I die in this godforsaken place?’ Don’t you wonder ‘what if I am never to be with Jodie in the outside world again?’ I know you must wonder that, don’t you?

“You are here to help me make a point. I have introduced legislation that will allow me to put all of your people in jail. For such a massive task, propaganda demands that you be demonized beyond even the level of the worst violent criminals. And then we must do things to you that no civilized person would ever do to you. This allows us to form a contract with the public.

“When the public allows us to do this to someone like you, an idealist and Canadian of truly outstanding achievements, personally and politically – I’ll admit you have an impressive record of patriotism, as it used to be understood – the public will accept any one of its own going to jail for trivial offenses and in any number. When the citizenry can’t help you one bit, and again, they’ve gotten you not one iota closer to any kind of freedom, in fact, the more they love you, the more we must deny you, it reinforces their helplessness. They just give up and give in. They join us, rather than be against us, because survival and prosperity is with joining us.

“They could help you. They could vote, they could organize, they could assert themselves, they could face up to the truth of what has happened to their country and really fight for it. But mostly they just write polite letters to their elected MP’s, who are, let’s face it, my lackeys who rubber stamp whatever I tell them. When the citizen’s only protest is a polite letter to these sycophants under my thumb, the citizens become our assistants, our partners in the conspiracy of lies, washing their hands with us, so to speak. They soon realize no one in the Ottawa is listening; they get a form letter back, for goodness sakes! And give up opposing us. After we correct their perceptions through propaganda, they join us, or are silent. Either one serves our purpose.

“It was the same back in the good old days. We never burned them alive. What we did, and here I quote, was ‘abandon’ the heretic to the masses. The public did the torture and killing with their own hands. They were the ones who set the fires. They enjoyed the screams as much as we did. They had been properly propagandized. They surrendered their integrity and their belief in truth for our lies, even the grotesque, uncomfortable lies. Their need to belong and conform, combined with our propaganda, crude as it was in those days compared to today, was all that was required.

“Do you recall, Marc, ever reading about any citizen rebellions to the excesses of the Inquisition? You don’t, because it almost never happened. In 600 years. How many ‘good’ Germans rose up against the concentration camps, the mass killings, in that brief, brilliant 13 years? Less than a few hundred. In what was regarded as one of the most advanced and enlightened intellectual societies on earth! But you can’t go around calling the people evil and expect to be loved the way I’m loved. So we tell them now what we told them then. We tell them it’s all good, that we’re just getting rid of a threatening ‘culture’. Now everyone’s happy. They’re working for ‘the good’. They’re getting well paid. And they’re going to heaven instead of jail.

“When the Jews were demonized, most Germans lived beside and interacted with dozens of Jews daily, good people they bought bread from, or worked with, and did so for decades without any untoward incident at all. Yet it was child’s play to convince these Germans that, contrary to all the experience accumulated over their lifetime, that Jews were vermin to be put in camps and destroyed.

“It’s the same with your people, Marc. Everyone knows a pot smoker. Known them forever, decades. All of us have someone we even love who smokes pot. How could we not? There are 5 to 7 million in a nation of 30 million. Odds are, every one of us has a family member who smokes or grows the stuff! Yet I will convince them their own loved ones should be jailed and perhaps raped in prison over a few weeds. How brilliant is that?!

“Here is my favorite part. They all use cannabis. Politicians use it. Police use it. Crown attorneys use it. Judges use it. Jail guards use it. Do you not find a beautiful symmetry here, Marc, a confirmation of the Grand Inquisitor’s Philosophy?”

I can see he’s ready to wrap up, he’s waving his arms in the air, spinning in his chair. There’s joy in him.

…Been around for many a long, long year; stolen many a man’s soul and faith… wooo, wooo…

“Look around you. Look around outside at Folkston. The name is humble enough, the folks’ town. Sounds sweet, doesn’t it? Rhymes with Volk’s town. What do you see in Folkston? You see people. They’re just like people everywhere. They’re not bad people. And some of the best are here in Georgia. Little Richard is just over there in Macon. But the only way most folks around here can survive is the same way much of America survives. This is by locking up their non-violent fellow human beings. Modern American survival depends on jails and prohibition. It’s pretty well all that’s left in a lot of places.

“We expect to effectively transfer this prison prohibition policy intact to Canada by Christmas. Rob Nicholson will make the announcement of the grandest prison-building scheme ever imagined in Canada wearing a Santa Claus suit. Nobody sells like Santa. Jobs for everyone, a prison in ever community. Nobody will ask, ‘who are we putting in these jails?’ We will have already told them all they need to know: a ‘culture’ we can do without.

“I can tell you all this now, Marc, because it’s unstoppable. It doesn’t have to be secret anymore. We can’t be beat. That election you’ve heard about, don’t think you can count on that. What did they throw the Liberals out for, 10 or 20 million to friends in Quebec for some advertising scam? We’ve put Canada in debt for hundreds of billions more, committed a half a trillion dollars to weapons and militarization, made Parliament irrelevant, and embraced a mania of secrecy the old East German Stasi would admire – and our poll numbers don’t drop! Check the stats. Canada has so many political parties that a prison prohibition punishment cult can get in with 30%, perhaps in perpetuity, no matter how we have transformed Canada into the dark bête noire most Canadians in their gut know is not what they want their children to live in.

“Incremental stages, incremental stages. You’ve read the book ‘Harper’s Team’. That Tom Flanagan. He almost gave away the game when he said Julian Assange ought to be killed for telling the truth about how our governments work. But Flanagan knows brainwashing, I’ll give you that. Add some true believers like Ezra Levant, and Kory Teneycke, and the propaganda brain trust is unstoppable. Now, I’m sorry that Kory put out on Twitter that joke, implying he hoped you’d be raped in D. Ray James here. That’s unbecoming of a man who was a bit too upfront and truthful about how much we relish what we’ve done to you. I did reprimand him for being so candid while media was paying attention, though I’ve got to like his instincts. Kory will make a fine Inquisitor himself one day. So will Ezra and Tom. There are always so many potential Inquisitors waiting to join in our holy crusade.

“But it’s all there in Flanagans’ book, ‘Harper’s Team’. We do it inch by inch. That’s the magic technique. Then, all of a sudden, the country wakes up and realizes it’s one big jail in a police state. We have achieved our goal. Done deal. Believe me, Marc, when you can have a democratic country in 2011 seriously debating putting a person in jail for six months for six weeds, this shows we know what we’re doing. Oh sure, there might be some fine tuning. Ignatieff and Layton will posture, but they’ll buy in. Maybe it’ll be two plants, maybe 20 plants. Maybe it’ll be five months, maybe even seven months. Maybe it will cost $5 billion in 3 years, or ten billion in 5 years. Maybe, as in your case, it’ll be 5 years for seeds. There are hundreds of shops selling those seeds now, aren’t there? But so what? Who cares? That’s not the point.

“The point is that it’s always jail. That’s the one constant. That never changes. Never. We’re talking about it all in a jail context. Totally. Entirely. More punishment. End early parole. End contact visits. End the prison farm program. Jails and the cruelty of punishment is what it’s all about. Making marijuana and jail synonyms in the public mind.

“You’re so well read, so I enjoy discussing this with you. There aren’t a lot of people who can understand what I’ve done. But that’s the price I pay for brainwashing. Sure, they’re great robots, and they’ll do anything I say, but it’s like taking to a fridge. Very cold and uninspiring. They lack the independence of mind to say anything original, and their reading consists solely of a TV Guide and a criminal code. But let’s face it, everyone likes a little appreciation, even a Grand Inquisitor like me. So what do you think? Are you impressed with my work?”

I say nothing. I just stare, waiting for the finale.

…or I’ll lay your soul to waste… wooo, woooo…

“Hmmmm, still not talking. This disappoints me, Marc. Your reputation promised otherwise. Marc, you could have had it all. You are a gifted person. You could be the one in a position of political power. And then you could be sending people to D. Ray James. Anybody you want. Just make a law. It’s easy. Here, watch. Bill S-11 will require cannabis people sent to jail to be whipped twice, once on entry and once on exit. You’ve read the book on us, called Slumming It At The Rodeo. You know this is a law that would meet with the approval of your current government. Indeed it was once a serious Conservative proposal. We’ve done internal polls and our 30% base didn’t flinch, didn’t question it.

“Sadly, you don’t seem to have a taste for torturing and abusing people. We checked and checked, looking for any woman, child, or anyone who could claim you’d shown some degree of hate or sadism or even a mean-streak. We came up empty-handed and, believe me, we looked. Couldn’t believe it, really; you’ve been that virtuous, Marc, that not one person came forward with a first hand tale of sordidness that showed you had the potential to be one of us. Not a single person said they had been harmed by you. We were pretty disappointed we received only seven letters in five years even agreeing with our decision to extradite you. Of course the 3,000 letters we received in the mail opposing your extradition were ignored. We know there isn’t much else they can do after they send those polite letters begging us to spare you from extradition to the gulag, to D. Ray James concentration camp.

“Such a shame, you didn’t become one of us. Here, I’ll tell you what you what I’ll do. You can be out this afternoon. Just do one thing. Confess! That’s all you have to do. Confess! Beg our forgiveness! We’ll let you out. Back to your wife…”

I saw him tremble. Does he always tremble when thinking of women? I wondered. He fears their inherent goodness and unconditional love. He dreads such love, for such love can destroy his power. Therefore, he must try to smash it ever chance he gets. He sees my curious gaze…

…Rode a tank, held a general’s rank, when the Blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank… wooo, wooo…

“Wife… yes, your wife,” he recovered, “Good food, nice clothes, even a few joints if you don’t tell anyone, clean air, non-poisonous water, food that can actually support human life. It’s all yours. Just make the following statement: ‘I, Marc Emery, have sinned. I beg forgiveness. I was led astray by the Devil’s harvest. If you use cannabis, you will develop schizophrenia, kill your family and commit suicide with an axe. I am truly sorry for the trouble I have caused. I will ask all my supporters to join me in helping elect Canada’s first Prime Ministerial Prison Warden. I believe our children are safer in jail until we eliminate the cannabis culture. As a bonus, mandatory minimums will keep the kids off the streets and busy in jail getting raped.

“After you say this, we’ll get you a job as a mainstream politician. The people will love you, Marc. You’ll be on TV whenever you want. You’ll get the best make-up. Free booze. Saunas. Super pension. Lots of money. And don’t give it all away this time. Are you nuts? Nobody gives money away, at least not their own money! But you must confess first. This has been our rule since the Spanish Inquisition, and it remains our rule today. Think of it as honoring a great tradition of changing a culture. That’s all you have to do. Just say it. Just say it once, publicly, stick by it, and you’re free. People trust you. They believe in you Marc, we know that. If you say it like you mean it, they’ll believe it too. If you say it, we’ll stop torturing you. Come on, Marc. What’s it matter? Really. Who cares? This is just the way the world is.

“Just say it. All my lackeys say it. Ignatieff says it. Layton says it. You can’t get a judicial appointment these days without saying it. You can’t get a nomination with any major political party without saying it. It’s not going to hurt you to say it. And trust me, it’s going to hurt a lot more if you don’t say it. A lot more.

“Still silent, eh? I gave you an offer. You’ve said nothing, so I’ll be leaving. I just wanted you to know why this all being done to you. You know that phrase, ‘no good deed shall go unpunished’? You have a lifetime of good deeds, Marc, and as you Grand Inquisitor I have a lifetime, and the power, to make you pay for them. And you will.”

…tell me, baby, what’s my name? Tell me, sweetie, what’s my game? All along the watchtower, who’s to blame?… wooo, wooo…

www.FreeMarc.ca

Marc Emery was transferred out of D. Ray James Correctional Institution on April 4th, and is currently in Oklahoma City waiting for transfer to Yazoo City Correctional Institution in Mississippi. Keep up to date on Marc's situation and efforts to come home at www.Facebook.com/PrinceOfPot, www.Facebook.com/MarcEmery, www.YouTube.com/PotTVNetwork and www.FreeMarc.ca

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420 is happening on Wednesday next week! Are you celebrating our culture and taking a stand for our freedom? BIG NEWS in Canada with a major court decision! And Jodie has prison photos from her last visit with Marc in Georgia, as he's in Oklahoma waiting to be moved to Mississippi. Go to http://www.WhyProhibition.ca and sign up to find out who you should vote for in the upcoming federal election on MAY 2nd, MONDAY so we can stop the Conservatives from sending us all to prison and destroying Canada!

http://www.cannabisculture.com
http://www.freemarc.ca
http://www.whyprohibition.ca
http://www.catch22campaign.ca
http://www.swing33.ca

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This is a preview from Marc Emery’s autobiography, which he has been working on while in prison. The introductory chapter, called “The Prophecy”, is a strange but true story, seemingly foretelling Marc’s destiny when he was just 19 years old – even before he knew about marijuana.

Marc first mentioned this in an interview in CC #16, from January 1999. Click here to read "Marc Emery: The Prince of Pot speaks out".

One Saturday in September 1977 at my City Lights Bookshop in London, Ontario, I arrived early and excitedly to work on a huge collection of books from the 1800's and early 1900's. It took two trips in my Chrysler van, completely loaded with at least 750 books in each trip, to bring in this purchase from the estate of a deceased person the night before. I have to say, the best collections were always from people who had just died. Usually the children or heirs had no interest in the books and many other ephemera of an entire life of a collector, and in the era before the internet or eBay, those things were either put in an estate auction or, for most people who were impatiently wanting to settle estate matters more immediately, taken away by a bookseller like me. I would pay a nominal sum, and then haul away everything they wanted disposed of.

In this case it was a lifetime collection of religious books from 1800 to about 1930, with a fair bit of British poetry volumes from 1840 to 1900, and perhaps a few hundred illustrated books from the 1870 to 1945 period, probably the best books in the collection. For the 1,500 books in total, I paid about $1,000. The retail price when I was finished marking each one of them up was going to be $10,000 to $12,000. It was a great business, and I loved the old books, as each one was a treasure that was very profitable over time. On days like this, the next morning after a pick-up, it was the most fun my job could be.

I bought a collection of old, musty, rich smelling leather bound books two or three times weekly in those days, so my store was soaked in the smell of old paper and history and stacked with the 1,500 new arrivals in every available space, on counters, on the floor, rising above the counters three feet high above my head. For me to see anyone that morning I'd have to crane my neck around skyscrapers of old books. Only right by the cash register could I see someone in the aisle way.

Upon arriving at 9:30 in the morning, I put in my classic music tape; I was partial to George Frederick Handel Water Music, or Georg Philipp Telemann Flute Sonatas, gentle soothing period music that was clearly suggestive of old books. I unlocked the front door at 10am and started taking the religious books to their section in the back of the store, as I priced a stack of about 20 or so at a time. My store was 100 feet long, so once I was at the back, all I could hear was the classical music piped into every room, and every section was tight with bookshelves stacked with books and little room to move or maneuver. I would often peer around a corner to see if anyone came through the front door or needed assistance, and tried to stay in an isolated section no more than a few minutes before returning to the front area to do another stack of books and take them to their appropriate section. I was pretty fast, but this collection would take the better of three days to price and distribute throughout the bookshop.

I was so thrilled by this new collection of books that I wasn't particularly concerned that very few customers came in, at least for the first 90 minutes. Around a quarter to noon, my good friend and regular David Hogg came in and said "Hello," with a bit more animation than usual. "You didn't come out to see the woman who collapsed in front of your door?" he immediately wanted to know.

"What?" I said. "A woman collapsed? Where?" I was lost in my world and knew nothing about this.

"Right there," he pointed outside the very door he had walked through, "on the sidewalk."

"No; what happened?" I was surprised.

David looked at me askance. "You mean you didn't see an old woman, her head cracked open, blood all over the sidewalk, right there? That's hard to believe, Marc. She hit her head quite badly, apparently collapsed as she walked by, just like that."

"Wow…" I didn't know what to say. "No one told me."

"Well, I don't know how you'd miss it. Jim was following behind her and saw her fall, and called 911 from his store." Jim Weaver was my neighbor and the owner of Belle Air Music, a guitar and instrument shop two doors over. "That was lucky for her; the ambulance was here within minutes. I showed up just as they were loading her on a gurney to take her to the hospital. Jim got a bucket of hot water and washed the blood off the sidewalk just a few minutes ago. And you didn't see or notice any of this? Where were you?"

"Geez, I'm sorry, I guess I was in the back, with the music playing… you know how this place is."

"But you didn't hear the ambulance when it got here or left? It pulled up just outside your window." David was almost accusing me of negligence or something, and I felt a bit guilty. We went out and looked at bloodstain on the sidewalk, already old-looking and dried, but clearly it was quite an injury. I did marvel that I was somehow oblivious to what had happened. "Really odd that you missed that, Marc," David said. "I hope the old lady is going to be okay, but I don't know, it looked pretty bad."

I changed the subject and showed David some the old treasures I had hauled in the night before. Twenty minutes later, Jim Weaver came in and walked up to my counter, looking subtly like he had done a good deed, and also to query me. "Did you see the old woman who fell on the sidewalk just outside your door?"

"David told me about it, but I didn't even notice. Honestly, I had no idea. I must have been in the back, maybe even downstairs in that time."

"Well, it did all happen pretty fast. I was walking right along behind her just ten feet, on the way to get lunch from Between The Bread," (that was our neighbourhood sandwich shop three doors over) "and I saw her just drop face forward like a ton of bricks, not a stumble, just straight as a board fell forward. Oh, and the sound of her head splitting, the 'thunk' sound, just enough to make you sick. Went up to her for a second and then I ran into my store and called 911. Then I came out and knelt beside her and waited. The ambulance was pretty quick but I didn't move her and the blood was pouring out. It was terrible! It’s amazing you didn't hear the ambulance or see any of it, it was right there in front of your doorway. I guess no one came in to tell you."

"Not until she was gone in the ambulance, then David came in and told me, and by then you'd even washed away the blood," I said.

"Ian came out with towels," – Ian was his manager – "and a bucket of soapy water and our first aid kit. I didn't want to move her though, in case her head was really badly damaged. I hope she's going to be okay, but she was unconscious, or worse. She didn't move or anything."

Twenty-three days later, on a Monday morning, I was opening my store. I remember the counter was totally clear of books that day. The phone rang.

"Hello, City Lights Bookshop," I said.

"Mr. Emery?" said an old woman’s voice.

"Yes, speaking."

"Mr. Marc Emery?"

"Yes."

"Mr. Emery, you don't know me. We've never met. But I know all about you."

"Er… yes?"

"Mr. Emery, I was walking along Richmond Street three weeks ago Saturday, and I passed in front of your store when a terrible, terrible thing happened to me. As I passed in front of your store, Mr. Emery, right in front of your doorway – and I know you were inside there – in the space of an instant, just a fraction of a second, I felt this most tremendous surge of an energy… of a force… this invasion of my whole brain by YOU, Mr. Emery, a terribly painful invasion by your aura, your essence, everything that radiates from you was forced into my brain, and I collapsed and fell on the sidewalk and split my head open. I understand from the hospital, when they explained what happened, that one of your neighbours called the ambulance.

"Mr. Emery, I was released from hospital yesterday. I was unconscious, in and out of a coma for two weeks. In that time, doctors operated on me, and remarkably, I only fractured my skull, had a very bad concussion and required stitches. They don't know why I was in a coma for two weeks, but I was on life support. After I was conscious again, I was kept in there for another week for observation, but yesterday they released me, as they think I'll be all right. But I know why I was in a coma, Mr. Emery. I didn't tell the doctors the reason I was there, but I'll tell you. I only know that the entire experience I went through is all about you, Mr. Emery.

"I know all about you now, Mr. Emery, in very strange ways. It’s all I can recall from the moment my brain was attacked with this painful energy that comes from you. I know this doesn't make any sense, Mr. Emery – how old are you, Sir?"

"I'm 19." I was disconcerted by how she frequently called me Mr. Emery with both fear and awe, and she sounded like she was blaming me for her horrible accident.

"All the time I was unconscious, all those weeks in the hospital, the second I fell, Mr. Emery, has all been about you. That’s all I've been able to think about. I can't control it. I'm very scared Mr. Emery; I've never met you. I knew nothing about you, I've never heard of you before. I've never been in your store, and now I feel I know too much about you. My husband made me call you to tell you of this, Mr. Emery, he thinks maybe it will stop once I tell you this… what happened to me. Maybe it will mean something one day. But I know you've got to leave my brain, I can't take it anymore. So I'm going to tell you, Mr. Emery, what I saw, and why I believe I fell into unconsciousness in front of you, and your building. I want my life back. My husband and I are so scared and confused, and he thinks if I tell you, it will stop. I don't know why this happened to me. I've never had any psychic experience. I don't even believe in that sort of thing. I want to tell you this and then I want it desperately to go away.

"Throughout the entire unconscious experience I know I was experiencing your life flashing before me. It was just all about Marc Emery, your name, thousands of times repeated to me, with images, and incredible energy and upheaval, like torrents of electricity and power and violent exchanges of energy, but not violence in any way. It was just your life being forced into my mind, so now I have to tell you these things that are coming, Mr. Emery, coming to you. And you need to be prepared."

This was so strange. Customers came in as I listened to this woman, and I even whispered to a woman across the counter, "This is the weirdest phone call ever!" but did not stop listening attentively. How could I not?

"Symbols, Mr. Emery, important and great symbols tell me about your future, your life, you significance to people, to the world, a great mass of people. Noisy masses of people. These symbols are the key to your future, Mr. Emery, and there’s more but these symbols are so important.

"I know I'm to tell you that you have a great destiny before you, Mr. Emery. When or how, I don't know. But you will lead a great multitude of people to sanctuary, to a liberation of some kind. There is great joy and rejoicing, with flags and symbols. And it will be trying Mr. Emery, it will be painful, you will have adversity, and you will have one very great obstacle, Mr . Emery, that you must conquer. You must not give into despair on this journey, you must practice patience and not lash out in anger at the adversity that comes, because it WILL come, and that is not the answer. That will undo everything, if you give in to bitterness. There is great power and influence where you are going, Mr. Emery, but if you give in to despair, you will risk ruining all the good you are working for. This was the largest warning I saw repeatedly. You cannot give into bitterness, anger, despair; those are your enemies, Mr. Emery. I am to warn you about this, because those internal personal adversities will be a great challenge to you, more than any other person or group in your way. You will feel deserving of this anger, Mr. Emery, but you must avoid giving in to it.

"I saw three symbols repeatedly, endlessly in my time unconscious, and they are certainly about your life. I don't know what they mean. I only know they are very important to what you must do and will do in the time ahead.

"The first symbol is the symbol of the dollar, Mr. Emery. The dollar sign. The dollar sign is very special in your life. You will rule the dollar. The dollar is a power you can control – it doesn't control you. With this power, you will have no conflict. You will use the dollar to great ends. And it means something very special in your power, different from its use by other men. You have a great gift and ability. It is like magic in your hands, I can't describe it.

"The second symbol that flashed endlessly was your brain, Mr. Emery, your brain in a steel trap. I think it means your mind holds information like a steel trap. It never escapes your mind. But this symbol changed back and forth. It would sometimes be your mind as the steel cage, and then it was like your mind in a cage. It would flash back and forth, so constantly, mind in a cage, the cage in your mind. I kept thinking it all goes in your brain, both experiences or meanings. This is also where I felt terrible premonitions of despair and sadness inside your brain, and I know I'm to tell you to protect your brain, your great and powerful brain, and to use this mind of yours to accomplish the goal of the next symbol.

"The most dominating symbol of all, the one that was always dominant in my mind the entire time, that never left, is the most mysterious to me because I don't understand it. It is a symbol of a leaf, Mr. Emery. It’s like a maple leaf, but it’s not a maple leaf – it’s different from a maple leaf, but I also thought the Canadian maple leaf was there too, and I'm confused about this. Because the leaf I saw had several fronds, each part of the leaf was similar in varying sizes, and the leaf has uniform ridged fingers around its stem. I can't tell you what colour it is, only that this is the most powerful symbol, it is what all the other symbols and messages I received were devoted to. This leaf is in all your banners, all the parades, all the conflicts, the great liberation, the people, whoever they are, are all bound together by this leaf, and you are leading them, to what I don't know, I just know it’s your destiny and it will happen and you will do it. Does any of this mean anything to you, Mr. Emery?"

I had listened to her desperate and anxious story quietly, hardly interrupting, out of politeness to an old woman who, after all, had nearly died because something about me had laid her out on the concrete sidewalk and put her near death. I felt guilty about that, but I felt she was disturbed, possibly nuts, too.

"I'm sorry, it doesn't mean anything to me," I said. "I'm sorry I'm involved in this… terrible thing that’s happened to you." I thought she was delusional, what else could I think?

She gulped. "Well Mr. Emery, I'm going now. I hope I never think of you again. I hope this all goes away. It’s been the most draining, painful, exasperating thing I've experienced in my whole life, and I'm 65. I am so frightened by what happened. I can't make sense out of it. Why me? All I know is that I saw these things and I know I was meant to tell you, to warn you, to prepare you. But now I want these thoughts gone and my life back. So goodbye, Mr. Emery, and remember, you have a great destiny important to millions of people somewhere, but don't give in to despair – that word was imprinted in these visions, don't give into it, Mr. Emery, that is so important. It will be hard but you have to get through the difficulties and then it will all be fine. Goodbye, Mr. Emery."

I said goodbye, and after she hung up I sighed. I didn't get her name and I never heard from her again. And then I didn't think about it for years.

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