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Marc Emery agrees to 5year jail


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Alison you have a very good point there about the seed being quasi legal in both countries (although Canadian seed sellers won't ship to the US anymore, before this happened there was never a problem).

 

The thing that has always bothered me about this whole mess is the arrogance of the DEA in calling Marc a "Drug Kingpin"!

The DEA thinks nothing of barging into other countries and killing food crops because they believe "drugs" are being grown. And until the people of these countries start shooting down the planes, and the agents, they will continue to bully the world with this warped, sick agenda.

It's bad enough that innocent americans are killed because these jerkoffs have the wrong address, or faulty info, and that they seem to feel that they have the right to be judge, jury and executioner here. I do not understand why the rest of the world tolerates (even encourages) these invading jarheads to violate the rights of people over whom they have no juristiction.

 

In the words of the late great Bill Hicks: It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom."

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Marc Emery's Extradition Proceedings Postponed

2008-01-21 >> news category >> general

Source: www.canada.com

 

VANCOUVER - Extradition proceedings against Marc Emery, Vancouver's self-styled Prince of Pot, set for Monday were postponed.

 

The B.C. Supreme Court put over until tomorrow the hearing at which time the proceedings are expected to be adjourned until Feb. 6 while negotiations and details of a plea bargain are worked out.

 

US federal prosecutors have charged Emery and two associates - Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams - with drug offences and money laundering for operating a global marijuana seed business.

 

All face a minimum 10-year sentence and the possibility of life if convicted in the U.S.

 

But under the proposed deal, Emery would plead guilty and apparently serve a minimum of five years behind bars, mostly in Canada.

 

In return, he is demanding the charges against his friends be dropped.

 

Assistant US Attorney Todd Greenberg in Seattle, where Emery was indicted in 2005, has so far declined to comment.

 

He was unavailable Monday because of the public holiday in the U.S.

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And I found this too linked from www.outgrowbigbro.org'PRINCE OF POT' GIVEN PRISON TIME

by Paul Shukovsky, P-I Reporter, (Source:Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

Regional News

CN BC: Column: Pot Prince Takes the Rap

 

CN BC: Constitutional Pot Challenge In Sechelt Provincial Court

 

CN BC: Emery's Out Of Options

 

CN BC: Marijuana Activist Agrees To Prison Deal

 

CN BC: Editorial: Pot Decision A Good Step

 

CN BC: Door Opened For Large-Scale Pot Growing

 

CN BC: Organized Crime 'Alive And Well In Kelowna'

 

CN BC: Editorial: Judge's Pot Ruling A Step In The Right

 

CN BC: Plenty O' Pot News

 

CN BC: 'Prince of Pot' Given Prison Time

 

 

16 Jan 2008

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British Columbia

-------

B.C. Man Says U.S. Sentence Is a Political Muzzle

 

A Vancouver marijuana activist, whose arrest and pending extradition for selling marijuana seeds over the Internet outraged many Canadians, says he's cut a deal with federal prosecutors in Seattle and is going to prison.

 

U.S. authorities portray Marc Emery, dubbed the "Prince of Pot," as a major drug trafficker who pocketed millions of dollars and fueled organized crime.

 

But Emery, 50, says the prosecution was politically driven and designed to muzzle his vocal opposition to laws criminalizing pot.

 

Although the plea deal has not yet been formally adopted, Emery said Tuesday that he's agreed to the prosecution's terms: that he serve a minimum of five years behind bars. Most of that time would be done in a Canadian prison, he said.

 

Emery had been facing a mandatory minimum term of 10 years and up to life if convicted in U.S. District Court for a crime that's rarely prosecuted in Canada.

 

The plea agreement calls for him to plead guilty to a three-count indictment issued in 2005 by a Seattle grand jury. He was charged with manufacturing more than a ton of marijuana and conspiring to distribute seeds and launder the profits.

 

As part of the deal, he must also agree to return any proceeds from the seed sales.

 

"But I've never kept any of the money," said Emery, who claims it all went to support marijuana legalization activists, except for "450 bucks a week as editor of Cannabis Culture Magazine."

 

Emery said the plea deal is contingent on sparing two longtime associates, also charged in the indictment, any jail time.

 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg on Tuesday declined to comment on the plea bargain outlined by Emery. He said an extradition hearing scheduled to begin Monday in Vancouver so far hasn't been canceled.

 

For years, Emery has been thumbing his nose at law enforcement on both sides of the border through major cash donations to marijuana legalization efforts and public pot smoking.

 

In 2002, Emery -- who once ran for mayor of Vancouver on the B.C. Marijuana Party ticket -- bought a table for a presentation by White House drug czar John Walters and proceeded to heckle him throughout his presentation at the Vancouver Board of Trade.

 

"Three days later, I was under investigation," Emery said.

 

As support for his allegation that his prosecution was politically motivated, Emery prominently displays on his Web site a statement from Karen Tandy, the administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration at the time.

 

To the dismay of the federal criminal justice establishment in Seattle, Tandy issued a statement after Emery's arrest in July 2005, saying: "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 the marijuana legalization movement.

 

"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."

 

Greenberg last week rejected Emery's assertion that the prosecution was political.

 

"His politics and the marijuana legalization movement in general have nothing to do with the charges in this case or with why the charges were brought," Greenberg said.

 

A spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said Walters would not comment on an ongoing criminal case. Tandy, who left the DEA in the fall for an executive position with Motorola, did not return calls for comment.

 

The depth of concern on the part of many Canadians over the arrest was revealed by the massive response to a CBC documentary about Emery.

 

"I am incensed at the obvious infringement of our national sovereignty," wrote one viewer of the documentary to the CBC Web site. "If the U.S. tried this crap in China, it would be WWIII!"

 

Another viewer wrote: "We need to keep the influence of the American government at bay in Canada. This is OUR country, and OUR values are a lot different than America. It's wrong to send someone to jail for so long for something that is not considered to be a crime by most Canadians."

 

Canadian Sen. Larry Campbell, the former mayor of Vancouver and a former narcotics cop, told the Seattle P-I that it is "a rare, rare occurrence that anybody would be charged with seeds in Canada."

 

"If they extradite him to the States, there will be total outrage. The offense he is charged with carries virtually no penalty here in Canada. This is so characteristic of the drug war in your country and the hyperbole and over-the-top statements. It would make a great comedy show."

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Like him or not, he has done more for Cannabis law reform than anyone else I can remember.

 

I know I am coming in late on this thread, but as someone who is from Vancouver and knows Marc personally as a friend, it is very important to me that it is known that all the things that were done for cannabis law reform by the British Columbia Marijuana Party were not done solely by Marc himself. I am not saying this in any way to be negative towards him or lessen what he has done, it's just very very important to me that it is known that there was a team of people working on changing the laws and a core group of people who did the majority of the work.

 

The main person being Michelle Rainey who was Marc's right hand person and ran everything, scheduled every appointment, booked all the media, followed up on everything, she managed and ran the whole operation and is an amazing person who did all that work while suffering from a very painful disease that she needed medical marijuana for. It is easily said that if not for her, the success that the BCMP had would not have happened. And there was of course Greg and Chris Bennett who did a very large amount of work as well.

 

Marc is a good guy who did a lot of important stuff for cannabis reform, but he was more of a figurehead and representative of the party, which is a very important and needed position, but its kind of like how you have the prime minister and then you have everyone behind him who makes sure all the trains run on time.

 

I know there is a good chance Marc will read this as stuff on forums gets passed around, so I am not writing any of this to talk behind his back, in fact if he is reading it "Hi Marc", so I do want to make it clear that I am not saying this to diss or lessen any of the wonderful, passionate and hard work that Marc has done, but at the same time I feel it is very important to note that there were some other very important and passionate people working with him that also made a lot of this possible that deserve credit.

 

Also to whoever said that cannabis is legal is Canada, it's not... not sure where you heard that. It is just that due to the work of the above people at the BCMP, they made it so that in Vancouver, the police were educated to realize that it was a waste of their time, money and man power to bust people for smoking pot.

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Also to whoever said that cannabis is legal is Canada, it's not... not sure where you heard that.

 

Meerkat it's been legal since Health Canada missed the 12 month deadline in 2001 - check out www.thepotlawhasfallen.ca The courts are only now coming to realise this, one province at a time. In the coming weeks and months it will make it to higher courts in other provinces, but it is against the Charter for an unconstitutional, invalid, null and void law to be applied unevenly in Canada so it is already legal to possess nationwide.

 

Have a chat to Kirk Tousaw, Michelle Rainey, Alyson Myrden, Alan Young etc. - Kirk's got motions in BC right now, a confirming decision is expected by mid Feb.

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It doesn't matter if they are able to say that it's legal based on a technicality, it's still illegal. I used to work for the BCMP, I used to live in Vancouver, I am friends with Marc and Michelle, so it's not like I am some guy coming out of left field.

 

 

If it was legal then I know a lot of people that would be openly growing and selling and buying weed in Vancouver. If it was legal there would be people on every corner selling it, there would be booths set up in the park selling it, there would be people openly giving it away and so on. The truth is that if you will still get arrested, it's just that as long as your not obvious about it, like in the cops face about it, the cops don't bother to go out of their way to arrest people.

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I'm not sure, but the "like him or not ref. may have been regarding my still paranoid memory of a guy who threatened all his customers with "I wouldn't speak badly about a guy who has all your addresses", when complaints about his strains were made public in his threads.

I personally am horrified anyone ever is arrested as a criminal for bloody pot, so I don't rejoice in his arrest, and I wish him totally the best.

 

I was just amazed at the hero type revs he was given and that large clanger was totally forgetten, kinda like when a bloke dies, and only the best is ever raised, and damn the man who says otherwise.

 

But that aside, (and I do wish him well), what was it in around 1987 or there-abouts (maybe '88?), we saw on out TV headlines a vancouver judges gaval being hit to the desk, and some rather happy smokers lighting up joints on the steps of the court house?

 

thanks

rob

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I too remember the events of Marc threatening to hand over the addresses of folks that bought seeds from his seed bank at the same time proclaiming he was a legal business. That was the beginning of his demise from the worlds leading seed supplier as his customers left his web site in droves and looked elsewhere to purchase seeds. As for the extradition, America has been extraditing folks involved in drugs to the US since the sixties so Marc aint gonna be a virgin to the yanks.

Actually he could have been quite fortunate,ie,"Pentagon officials were concerned that US forces were possibly violating a presidential directive that prohibited American involvement in assassinations of foreign citizens. " To kill Columbia drug lord Pablo Escobar, US government spent millions in a covert operation in which a secret group assassinated about 300 people. No one was ever prosecuted. US ambassador, DEA, special force of pentagon were involved.

 

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

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