Prince of Pot's US prosecutor: "Our pot policy is dangerous and wrong"

Friday, Sept 10 Update : Sentenced. Five years.

In a guest column in the Seattle Times last Friday, the former US attorney who indicted Marc Emery in 2005 for selling pot seeds over the internet wrote :

"The U.S. war against marijuana has failed and actually threatens public safety and rests on false medical assumptions. Our marijuana policy is dangerous and wrong .... the law has failed, the public is endangered, no one in law enforcement is talking about it and precious few policymakers will honestly face the soft-on-crime sound bite in their next elections."

This includes our own homegrown cowards, principally Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada Rob Nicholson, who had Marc Emery, a Canadian citizen, deported to the US in May to serve a five-year sentence that will begin next week.

As Lib MP Ujjal Dosanjh put it back in March when he joined forces with Con MP Scott Reid and NDP MP Libby Davies to present petitions from 12,000 Canadians in the HoC asking Justice Minister Rob Nicholson not to sign extradition papers :

"It appears to me that we have assisted a foreign government arrest a man for doing something that we wouldn't arrest him for doing in Canada."

The rhetoric from the DEA at the 2005 bust was absurd :

"Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General's most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets.

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."

In a letter to his wife Jodie yesterday, Emery remarks on the importance of getting supporters to write to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews and the US DoJ for the Saturday Sept 18th Marc Emery Support Day. I don't care if you don't smoke pot - I don't smoke pot - but write a letter or support a rally on Sept.18th. I'll stick up a reminder then.

History, ironically aided by his former prosecutor, is already moving to vindicate Emery. Too bad he still has to serve the time so that Canada can continue to suck up to the phony US War on Drugs.

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Libby Davies - in perspective

"Why should the Arabs make peace? If I was an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country. Sure God promised it to us, but what does that matter to them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?"

~David Ben Gurion, Prime Minister of Israel, to Nahum Goldmann, President of the World Jewish Congress, in 1956
The Jewish Paradox, p. 99. Grosset & Dunlap (1978).

"Uh ... '48. I mean, it's the longest occupation in the world but I'm not going to argue numbers - it's too long, right? This is the longest occupation in the world and people are suffering."

~ NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies to blogger/interviewer David Katz, answering the question : "When do you believe the occupation in Israel started - '48 or '67?" at a rally protesting Israel's assault on the aid flotilla to Gaza

"The central remark causing the uproar was that Israel had been occupying Palestinian territory since 1948. This is factually correct. In the 1948 Israeli War of Independence (known to the Palestinians as the ‘Nakba’) more than 750,000 Palestinians were forced to leave what later became the State of Israel. They have never been allowed to return. Much of the land that these people left had been designated by the United Nations Partition Plan of 1947 as Palestinian territory," IJV-C spokesperson Haiven explained.

But pointing out this fact is not tantamount to denying Israel’s right to exist. Says Haiven, "Historians (including Israeli scholars like Benny Morris), governments and individuals all over the world acknowledge that Israel seized Palestinian territory in 1948 (and again in 1967) and expelled the Palestinian residents. Nevertheless, the prevailing consensus is that Israel has the right to exist within the territory it was occupying at the end of its War of Independence (the so-called ‘Green Line’.) Even the PLO has conceded this point."

~Independent Jewish Voices Canada condemns what it calls a “feeding frenzy” around NDP Member of Parliament Libby Davies, June 16, 2010.

By comparison, the noosemedia coverage of Steve and Bob Rae and Thomas Mulcair - all three parties! - condemning Libby Davies has shifted its focus from lawfare to strawfare.
The greater point here is : do we want our parliamentarians speaking their minds, or do we want them carefully tailoring their remarks to conform to Steve's bizarre and bullying framing of contentious issues like Palestine? Because if we let Steve away with that, we have already lost.
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Libby Davies gets smeared

G&M : Harper wants NDP to fire deputy Libby Davies for criticism of Israel

CBC : Calls for NDP MP to resign after Israel comments

Star : Libby Davies in hot water for anti-Israel comments

What a complete load of bollocks.

We expect this kind of shoving to the front of the line to defend Israel from imaginary threats from Harper but what's your excuse, Bob Rae? Rae :

To deny the state of Israel's right to exist

Except she didn't.

and to propose an international campaign of boycotts, divestments and sanctions against a legitimate member of the world community for over 60 years

And she didn't do that either.

Bob, don't you at least have staff who can do a modicum of research for you into what Libby Davies actually said before you try to outsteve Steve on Israel? Your behavior actually proves her point made in the vid below that people are afraid to even discuss this for fear of being branded anti-Semitic.

That she should be required to apologise for this at all, much less be threatened with being fired, is, to turn Rae's own words against Libby back on him :

to reveal a level of hostility and ignorance that is truly breathtaking

Watch it for yourself ...



Layton defended Libby on Power Play tonight and she stood beside him in the House today. Good because the NDP have not shown much courage on the issue of Palestine.
Libby Davies has nothing to apologise for.

More from Cliff at Rusty Idols.

MPs move to block extradition of Prince of Pot

Yesterday in the House of Commons, an MP from each of the Cons, the NDP, and the Libs stood up in succession to present petitions signed by 12,000 Canadians asking Justice Minister Rob Nicholson not to sign extradition papers that would deport Marc Emery to the US to serve a five-year sentence for selling marijuana seeds online. Emery was busted in 2005 by Canadian police acting on behalf of the U.S. DEA.

Scott Reid, CPC :

"Marc Emery's activities, the ones for which he is being extradited, involve selling viable marijuana seeds over the Internet. It is worth noting that these activities were approved by Health Canada's referral of medical marijuana patients to his seed bank. Canadian courts in ruling on this subject have ruled that a $200 fine is an appropriate punishment for this kind of activity as opposed to extradition to a country where he can face potentially life imprisonment."

Libby Davies, NDP :

"Mr. Emery or any Canadian should not face harsh punishment in the U.S. for selling cannabis seeds on the Internet when it is not worthy of prosecution in Canada. I think people see it as a question of Canadian sovereignty."

Ujjal Dosanjh, Lib : "

It appears to me that we have assisted a foreign government arrest a man for doing something that we wouldn't arrest him for doing in Canada. As a former premier and a former attorney-general, I sense a certain degree of unfairness in the process."

Kudos to all three of you.

Flashback :DEA Administrator Karen Tandy, 2005 :

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

Emery and his organization had been designated as one of the Attorney General's most wanted international drug trafficking organizational targets."

Fast forward to Michael Ignatieff, yesterday :

"If I had to tell you as a parent or as someone who has spent his whole life working with young people, the last darn thing I want you to be doing is smoking marijuana," the federal Liberal leader said. "I want you to be out there digging a well, digging a ditch, getting a job, raising a family ... doing stuff, instead of parking your life on the end of a marijuana cigarette."

Holy Reeeeeeefer Madness! Gosh, thanks, Dad.

"Given the things we need to do together, that's what I think," he said, adding that legalizing marijuana would create problems in dealings with the U.S. because the drug would remain illegal there."

Bingo!

Except it isn't. It's been decriminalized in one quarter of US states since Emery was busted. Are we really going to throw Emery to the US just to suck up to the surviving worshippers of Nancy Reagan?

Bonus : Tonight's deadline for Steve's clueless foray into the interactive intertubes approaches. The most frequent suggestion out of nearly 3800 entries was "Legalize marijuana". Expect Steve to pass on this one nonetheless. I'll be back for it later.

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