Marc Emery's sentence is up!

[Prime C]

http://www.pot.tv/video/2014/07/09/Under-Influence-Marijuana-Man-End-Sentence-Period

Free the Prince of Pot!!

 

[EVOKE]

@Medusa

 

[Medusa]

Thanks bud.

 

[Prime C]

Marc Emery: His Final Blog from U.S. Federal Prison
By Marc Emery - Monday, June 30 2014
FOLLOW:

• CANADA
  
• GEO GROUP
  
• LASALLE
  
• MARC EMERY
  
• PRINCE OF POT
  
• PRISON
• PRISON BLOG
  
• USA

This is my last blog from the terminals of the US Bureau of Prisons. My sentence was for five years (1,825 days), and I earned all 235 days of my eligible good conduct credit, so my sentence officially ends at 1,590 days, which is Wednesday, July 9th.

On Thursday, July 10th, US Immigration picks me up and takes me to the private, for-profit GEO Group LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana, where I will be processed for deportation back to Canada.

My understanding is that I'll be dropped off ultimately at the border in Windsor, Ontario; I'm thinking sometime between August 10 and August 25, but we have no way of knowing for sure. You'd think that would be a straightforward process, taking a few days at most, but LaSalle is a for-profit GEO Groupdetention center, and thus, they are making money for every day I am there.

And because the Canadian federal government is involved, these bureaucrats have a tendency to be slower than they ought to be. So I may need your help in providing motivation for them to repatriate me back to Canada on a more reasonable and timely schedule.

When former Canadian Conrad Black got out of Coleman federal Prison in Florida last year, he was driven straight to Miami, and able to go immediately to Toronto on a flight with his wife Barbra Amiel. That was extraordinarily, not the least of which is because Conrad Black is not even a Canadian citizen anymore, and it has never happened to any other Canadian in a US prison. No doubt his friendship with former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and others got him an instant express immigration approval back to Canada, but it shows a clear unfairness that a man who renounced his Canadian citizenship so he could be a Lord in the British House of Commons gets treatment far beyond what any actual Canadian citizen (like myself) currently receives from the Canadian government.

I get the no-connections-in-high-places, long, drawn-out, delayed route to an unceremonious drop-off – in Windsor, Ontario, at that, not even to my home in Vancouver. No cushy flight for me back to the airport of my choice alongside my wife, like Conrad! My point being, if they could get non-Canadian Conrad's paperwork ready in advance to get to Toronto immediately upon his US federal prison release, they could have mine ready too. Last I checked, I am still a Canadian citizen.

At any rate, once I arrive at LaSalle I will be given an "alien number", and Jodie will update this blog to indicate what my "A" number is. When you see my "A" number in this blog, I've been told that you can actually send me messages over the phone by calling this number: 318-992-7800. The receptionist, Marc Wright, will deliver written messages to me three times a day. I have unlimited phone usage there, but no email like I've had with the federal Bureau of Prisons' Corrlinks program. I buy phone cards and can call out without limits on phone time. It's not quite a prison, and I will be done my official US prison sentence, but I can't leave until they take me, so it's purgatory of a sorts.

When I get my "A" number, I am also assigned my deportation officer. I will fill out my temporary passport information, have my photo taken. I'll fill out my forms, and my deportation officer fills in his part, and forwards it to the Canadian Consul in Dallas, Texas, a fellow by the name of David Martinez. Once I am at LaSalle, Jodie will post that phone number here.

All of the communication between LaSalle and the Canadian Consul in Dallas (who liaisons to his boss in Ottawa) is done electronically, so ought to be done quickly – that is, within days. But I am certain that perfidious actors in Ottawa could choose to be deliberately slow, lazy or obstructive, simply because it's me, and the Harper government is hardly eager to have me back in Canada. That is where my many supporters can influence events, should this procedure get unduly tardy; I may need all of you to call one of those three locations, or all three locations, for several hours a day, urging an end to any questionable delays if they should happen. But we will see. Just be ready to help if you are so inclined!

Once the government paperwork is completed, and my temporary passport is done, the INS people at LaSalle merely need to book my flight, then take me to Alexandria, Louisiana and fly to me to Detroit, Michigan and escort me over the border point into Windsor, Ontario. However, many US-imprisoned Canadians have waited weeks for their flights to be booked, because the prisons make more money the longer we are there. But then again, let us be optimistic and hope that a big campaign to urge my speedy return will prove to be unnecessary.

At this facility, we don't get outside much, but I can buy items from the commissary daily. I can't take anything with me from Yazoo to LaSalle, but I will get a brief subscription to the NY Times while I am there, which I hope is four to six weeks at the most. My mailing address for letters will be posted in this space once I am there after July 10th. I'll need money immediately, and that can only be done with US credit cards (based on my previous experience in a private prison).

If you want to send me anything to help me get comfortable upon arrival and during my hopefully-short stay, you can use your credit card to send me $20 or $30 to help pay for my phone calls – I'll call you to thank you! – and buy food and clothes. Refer to my name and "A" number (when it gets posted once Jodie knows), and call 1-866-345-1884. I believe only US credit cards will work, but I hope Canadian credit cards will be okay too, because that's all Jodie has!

When I am finally to be placed on a plane in Alexandria, Louisiana, and flown to Detroit, I will be met by two US Marshalls, and then driven through the tunnel to the Windsor, Ontario Canadian Customs & Immigration office. I hope I will have enough advance notice to call Jodie and have her fly stand-by to Toronto from Vancouver, then get to Windsor to be there waiting for me. And if you live in the Windsor area, I hope to see you there also! (Follow Jodie onTwitter.com/JodieEmery for regular updates; that's where she posts most often online.)

We will have an impromptu gathering somewhere Windsor after my arrival, and within twelve hours I will take the train or some transport to Toronto, where we will have another party at Vapor Central, and then I will give a talk the following evening there, too. Other venues for meeting people will surely be planned and announced, but everything will be done short-notice, so stay tuned for news alerts!

I will be seeing my siblings in London, Ontario and Newmarket, Ontario, buying some clothes and a pair of glasses, and doing interviews with media. After spending five days out there, I will return with Jodie to Vancouver, have a few public events and private parties, get settled in at work in our Cannabis Culture store, and marvel at all the changes in Vancouver – including hundreds of new buildings, 35 dispensaries, years of developments at Marc & Jodie Emery's Cannabis Culture store, and more.

I also haven't had a cell phone since a judge barred me from having one as part of my bizarre bail conditions in August 2005, so for the past nine years I have not owned a phone, and never had a smartphone. I have never texted in my life! It's all going to require some adjustment; I don't even have a currently valid email address anymore, and this Corrlinks account I use now will expire when my sentence ends on July 9th. Exciting changes ahead!

I want to close this final prison blog with a sincere Thank You to our supporters, who helped in so many ways during these long years of my incarceration. Jodie and I appreciate everything you've done for both us and the movement at large in my absence. I can't wait to get home to thank you all in person in the weeks and months ahead, and resume the unfinished battle to finish off marijuana prohibition with renewed vigor. I hope you'll be there with me!

 

[henry]

How does he feel, I wonder, about his release coinciding with weed being legalized in WA? If it were me, I would feel quite angry, that I've just served up a hefty prison sentence for a crime that is no crime just to be released to find out that in essence what I was imprisoned for is no longer a crime at all.

It is good he is finally being released, but no one can give him his time back sadly.

 

[Oregon Grown]

^^^ ?

 

[Capulator]

his wife is hot.

 

[m8ty]

Amazing ... history in the making...

 

[OB1Ganjobi]

:joyful: Thank you much for letting us know! Happy to hear he's got out of his BS early.
Can't wait to see some new pics of Marc smoking some freedom fatties!:cigar:.. or some bong rips in front of the courthouse like old times!!!;)

 

[sanvanalona]

Yes Marc!!!! I am so happy this wrongfully imprisoned man is finally getting his freedom back! Cheers to Marc for pushing our movement so far, many strains that we are still rocking today come from the back of his cannabis culture magazine. I can't wait to see where he ends up once he is back on his feet, a day to celebrate indeed!

 

[kolah]

Fucking A!!!! and Yeah!!

They dragged Marc through the muthatfuckin coals..rotten pricks in the system..all of em.

sounds like he is not officially free yet (correct me if I wrong)

 

[burn4me]

These corrupt American fucks gotta drag every dollar they feel owed. Just let this man be free!
Awesome read thanks for posting it

 

[Prime C]

 

[FiveAM]

his wife is hot.

This made me literally laugh out loud..

 

[henry]

^^^ ?

What i meant is that weed should not be illegal and therefore possession or sale of it should not be a crime. Make sense?

 

[Prime C]

Jodie Emery Creates a Problem For the Conservatives
Colby Cosh on the dangers of ignoring the libertarian vote
By Colby Cosh, MacLean's - Wednesday, July 16 2014
FOLLOW:

• CANADA
  
• JODIE EMERY
  
• LIBERAL PARTY
  
• MARC EMERY
  
• NDP
• NEW DEMOCRATIC PARTY

Jodie Emery, the wife of marijuana activist and seed dealer Marc Emery, has declared her intention to run for a Liberal nomination in the NDP stronghold of Vancouver East. Emery’s husband, you will recall, was arrested in Nova Scotia in 2005 at the behest of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. The DEA’s boss immediately called the arrest a “significant blow, not only to the marijuana trafficking trade but also to the marijuana legalization movement.” Not one of history’s happier forecasts, you’d have to say.

Mr. Emery, convicted of mailing contraband seeds to American buyers, served five years in American prisons before being released last week. Canada’s Conservative government had not only shanghaied Emery and extradited him for a crime practically deemed beneath notice by Canadian police, they intervened against a plea bargain he made with American prosecutors that would have allowed him to serve part of his sentence here. Now that he is free, he plans a tour of Canada in support of the Liberal party. It is a less rude version of what I would do in his place.

Jodie Emery stood by her husband during his American sojourn and served as his spokesperson. It is not surprising to find the Conservatives snickering at her proposed Liberal candidacy; it is a little surprising to find politically independent academics and pundits getting derisive about it, emphasizing the problems she would supposedly create for the Liberals. Are we really so sure she creates none for the Conservatives?

The Canada Revenue Agency was happy to cash enormous tax cheques from the Emerys’ seed business until the DEA waggled a finger. It is thus hard to see how Marc Emery’s arrest was morally distinguishable from kidnapping. One might even say it was a kidnapping mail-ordered from our Conservative government, in much the same manner as Emery’s seeds.

The people who applauded the arrest are those who ordinarily talk the loudest of Canadian sovereignty. Are they even slightly embarrassed that the U.S. federal government changed its policy while Marc Emery was still bunged up, and now suffers pot to be sold openly, in industrial quantities, in two U.S. states? I would ask on what principle this man was condemned, but even some mere excuse beyond sadistic frivolity would be nice.

- Read the entire article at MacLean's.

 

[Prime C]

Jul-24-2014 00:33
Prince of Pot Freed from US Clutches
Bonnie King Salem-News.com
The cannabis warrior should be home in Canada by mid-August.

Marc Emery, Canada's Prince of Pot has been imprisoned for five years in the USA.
(COTTAGE GROVE, Ore.) - In 2009, a dear friend to this reporter personally, Mr. Marc Emery, aka The Canadian "Prince of Pot" was extradited to the U.S. from his homeland Canada, where he pleaded guilty to one count of "Conspiracy to manufacture marihuana".

The then 56-year old martyr publicly acknowledged that he had sold cannabis seeds to American customers via mail order since 1994, and quite frankly, gaining immense popularity as well as making a financial Killing as he did it. For that dung-smearing in ole Uncle Sam's face, he was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment in US federal corrections, which he's about finished having served in multiple facilities across the nation.

Jodie & Marc Emery

Marc was lucky. Originally, US prosecutors were seeking a life sentence and talking their grounds being his "Conspiracy to overthrow the US Government", an extremely serious allegation to threaten a person with. That's why ultimately he agreed to half a decade, though he had hoped to be allowed at least some of his sentence to be served in Canada as was insinuated during his plea negotiations with the United States, which didn't happen.

The Prince had used the bulk of the seed sale profits from his BC Seed company to support activist groups, lobbyists, court cases and ballot initiatives in both his country as well as in the US and abroad. Emery has always claimed politics, and not justice, were behind his prosecution, which if it's the case, it's safe to say the plan backfired.

At the time, the American drug enforcement officials boasted of his arrest, calling it a "significant blow to marijuana trafficking and to the legalization movement." Now as we see today, cannabis is flourishing in and beyond the North American continent and Marc Emery is forever accredited at least in part because of his efforts and sacrifice defending it. Still, busting him didn't stop anything at all.

"Marc can take a lot of credit for everything happening in the U.S. And of course it's a wonderful feeling to see that his mission has been accomplished," said Mrs. Emery, the pretty & petite "Princess of Pot", who's assumed all of their advocacy work in Marc's absence, and has been managing their now seed-free store and popular Cannabis Culture Magazine, which is similar to the ever-popular High Times Magazine of America. "He was successful, even though he had to pay the price for it."

Cannabis activists across the Globe were in literal shock over the arrest and later conviction of Marc Emery, and there has been non-stop rallying and support pouring in to the Emery's as they've gone through this unfortunate situation. Letters continuously poured into the "Model Inmate" while he spent most of his time helping teach other inmates how to read, and at one point even started a band to occupy his time. His Princess too has had non-stop red carpet treatment and support from the global cannabis community as she not only held their empire together, but took to the stages in protest of his incarceration every chance she was allowed to be heard on a cannabis subject.

"I wish he hadn't gone to prison," she said in a recent interview, "But it's almost fitting that he had to go down into the belly of the beast of America where the drug war begins, and where it has pressure in Canada, and spend his time in the U.S. to oversee all the success from his work."

Despite being freed on July 9, it could be weeks, or even months, before Emery is back on Canadian soil. His schedule of return as we know it to be now, is that he will be transported this Thursday to a private immigration deportation facility in Louisiana, where his paperwork must be completed and a temporary passport obtained. Then a flight will be booked to Detroit courtesy of US officials and tax payer dollars.

After that, he's expected to fly to Detroit/Windsor and make his way home to Vancouver. Emery is guessing he'll be back home in mid-August. On his blog, Emery wrote about the anticipated communication between the Louisiana detention centre, Canadian consul in Dallas, and Ottawa:

I am certain that perfidious actors in Ottawa could choose to be deliberately slow, lazy or obstructive, simply because it's me, and the Harper government is hardly eager to have me back in Canada. That is where my many supporters can influence events, should this procedure get unduly tardy; I may need all of you to call one of those three locations, or all three locations, for several hours a day, urging an end to any questionable delays if they should happen. But we will see. Just be ready to help if you are so inclined!

Jodie Emery said she'll encourage a crowd to greet him in Windsor and then Toronto, before the pair visits his siblings in London and Newmarket, Ontario. She also says that at some point, she's hoping they may even spend a weekend alone before their life as activists once again ignites into the team they were before her hubby was hauled away, which wasn't all too long after their honeymoon.

In the meantime, Marc is asking supporters to provide "motivation" for the Canadian government to repatriate him on a "more reasonable and timely schedule." In exchange for that support, the Emery's will aggressively lobby to unseat the "prohibitionist Conservative government".

Starting in September 2015, Marc Emery plans to hold rallies in 30 separate Canadian cities continuing until the October federal election. Meanwhile, Jodie Emery announced she plans to seek the federal Liberal nomination in Vancouver-East, a goal she has long had in her sights, since before even meeting, much-less marrying, the Canadian Green Party's prince of pot.

In his final blog post from prison, Marc wrote that he expects to "marvel at all the changes in Vancouver," and all who know the Emery's, whether fan or foe will assure you, they will be part of and have a big hand in it as it blossoms.

"Jodie and I appreciate everything you've done for both us and the movement at large in my absence," he wrote on June 30. "I can't wait to get home to thank you all in person in the weeks and months ahead, and resume the unfinished battle to finish off marijuana prohibition with renewed vigor."



________________________________________

Joy Maxine Graves, published author, cannabis reporter and photographer is best known for her involvement as a Cannabis Freedom Fighting Activist. Joy has shown herself to be quite the trooper when it comes to fighting for Truth, Justice & Peace; for protecting the "weaker guy", and for standing her ground when faced with nothing but hate and diversity.


She was the #2, most beloved personal "Jack's Girl" to the Emperor of Hemp himself, Jack Herer (RIP) for more than 13 years, and since his heart attack in 2009 and eventual passing in 2010, Joy has become a valuable part of the Salem-News team.

______________________________

 

[fishwhistle]

So is he actually back in canada free now or still in the holding facility?

 

[Prime C]

So is he actually back in canada free now or still in the holding facility?

Still being held I guess. Sounds like mid August.

 

[kolah]

the political pig system is still fucking with him.