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
Dear Jodie: On July 2nd, the band I am bassist in, called STUCK – because we are stuck in prison – performs live and amplified for the other inmates. We’re going to play Sunshine of Your Love (Cream), Johnny B. Goode (Chuck Berry), Red House (Hendrix), Little Wing (Hendrix), Tightrope (S.R. Vaughan), Voodoo Child (Hendrix), Star Spangled Banner (Hendrix, a solo song by lead guitarist Terry), and All Along the Watchtower (Hendrix).
CANNABIS CULTURE – The United States Department of Justice has refused imprisoned political activist Marc Emery's transfer back to Canada, meaning he will likely spend the majority of his five-year sentence in a US federal prison.
Perhaps the best news I’ve received so far in jail was a YouGov poll in the February 12th edition of The Economist showing a MAJORITY of Americans in every age group and both Democratic and Republican voters want LEGALIZATION, taxation, and regulation of marijuana. So it is now a matter of WHEN, not IF – sooner rather than later. We have reached the point of obvious inevitability. So 2012 must be the year every US state with an initiative and referendum process gets a legalization/repeal of cannabis prohibition question on their state’s ballot.
I submitted 16 typewritten pages of answers to 16 questions High Times editor Malcolm put to me. The most HT can print in their magazine is 4 or 5 pages, so I am hoping they put the entire interview online at HighTimes.com, which will be seen by many in addition to High Times’ substantial print circulation. I’d like to be on the cover of High Times; knowing that a great bud is always required on a cover that sells the magazine, a photo of Jodie and I in a massive cannabis hemp field, taken in the Prince Albert area of Saskatchewan in 2009 on the Farewell Tour, would be ideal, I think. Tell High Times you think so too.
February 8-14: On January 6, Warden Booker told me I was to be reinstated to my job in the law/reading library. After three weeks of waiting and going to the library daily in any case, I saw on the call-out sheets (daily assignment sheet) in late January that I was assigned to pick up garbage on the compound in the afternoon and evening. Considering any inmate can do this job but only 4 or 5 English speakers in the entire population can do the paralegal/secretarial work I was doing on behalf of the 1,500+ Hispanic inmates here, this new assignment was clearly an attempt by someone here to thwart the warden and humiliate me.