I got called by a reporter from the Ottawa Citizen who was definatley asking me leading questions trying to depict me as an anti-semite. His point was based around a comment I wrote that stated "there are certain elements of Minister Cotler's religion (laws against paganism, witches, etc.) which would require him to be prejudiced against my wife's case". The reporter was centering on this one statement but taking it out of context of the larger statement as outlined below in the complete paragraph and letter, and it seemed he was trying to make it a statement singularily about Jewish people, but not in the context of the Bible and thus Christianity as well.

The reality is the use of plants for spiritual purposes, including the spitritual use of cannabsi predates any religion, and this covenant is encoded in DNA into creation itself. All humans have an indeginous right to the plants of the earth, and this covenant goes beyond the religion of any book scribed by the hand of man, whether it be the Torah, Bible, Koran, Vedas or whatever. to not see this is pure bigotry.

Here is the statement in the context of the letter it appeared in

Hello Libby

I'm not a moderator of that forum, but I will pass your concerns on to others. But to tell you the truth I think Cotler's rejection of my wife's refugee claim on the grounds that he did shows little evidence of any sort of human rights ideas, and he is both prejudiced and biased in his decision.

I fail to see the difference between the persecution of the cannabis community and the suffering of Mr. Cotler's ancestors? It is shocking to me that someone who has paid such close attention to the atrocities of previous generations would be so keen to perpetuate a similarly vindictive campaign here in Canada, (particularly after the Senate Report and House of Commons report). I myself prefer the comparison of 'Witch Burner', as the laws against cannabis our based on that same mentality. I sugest you read 'Drug Warriors and Their Prey by Richard Lawrence Miller.

Our beliefs were discounted by Minister Cotler, and moreover there are certain elements of Minister Cotler's religion (laws against paganism, witches, etc.) which would require him to be prejudiced against my wife's case, and I believe this can and does influence him. Have you ever read the Torah? It would be banned as hate literature if it were written today, (murder of homosexuals, cheating wives, disobedient children, practicing other religions as well as condoning and mandating the slaughter and robbery of other cultures). (These same prejudicems are at the root of the Bush Administrations war on cannabis and comes from their Christian bias). My book that deals with this topic matter Sex, Drugs, Violence and the Bible was favorably reviewed in the London England Sunday Times, http://www.cannabis.net/articles/jesus-cannabis.html, so I do in fact know what I am talking about here.

Moreover, Renee and I are both sacramental users of cannabis and it is a part of our Gnostic faith, and Cotler, although aware of this. failed to recognize a basic Charter right in his decison against my wife. For details on the religous use of cannabis see Leah Spicer's HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL USES OF CANNABIS AND THE CANADIAN "MARIJUANA CLASH", Prepared For The Senate Special Committee On Illegal Drugs, http://www.parl.gc.ca/37/1/parlbus/commbus/senate/com-e/ille-e/library-e/Spicer-e.htm

If you paid attention to the war on marijuana and the suffering and scapegoating it has caused, you would see how the comparison does in fact hold. People have suffered in jail, families have been ruined and children taken from their parents. We are the victims here and Irwin Cotler is the perpetuator of cultural persecution.

I'm sorry this has caused you consternation. Since 1955, authorities worldwide, have charged or arrested or incarcerated (and in several thousand cases, murdered) 24,000,000 people over cannabis. These numbers are tantamount to cultural warfare of a huge and prolonged proportion, and we feel Mr. Cotler should be sensitive to pogroms of this scope and tragedy, of which my wife is a victim among many.

However, for purposes of political harmoney, I certainly want to not offend allies, so I shall keep my disagreements tasteful and encourage others to do so also

Respectfully

Chris Bennett

It's terrible when the media calls to talk to Marc... and it's not about cannabis, extradition, the USA in Canada, how he feels, what he's been doing - no, it's about "the comments on his site". It's about this "Moderator for CC" who is anti-Semitic. It's about Marc "tolerating" or "endorsing" it. It's about "calling Cotler a Nazi". Etc. etc. etc. Questions about how many posts a day. Where this Anti-Israeli stuff is. The cartoons Abby posts. Specific posts by Abby. Comments and posts by Abby that just create problems and do not gather supporters or allies for us.

Abby has been banned because he is creating grief for Marc for his Israel bashing, and Marc is not down with Abby's worldview regarding Israel, nor is this the space to bring those kind of inflamatory politics into the discussion.

Its cannabis liberation. Its our people out of jails. Marc gave $2,000 to the Israel Green Leaf Party for their national elections for the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) in the year 2003. Green Leaf is the Israeli equivalent of the Marijuana Party. Marc is a supporter of the cannabis liberation movement and thats all the worlds' peoples, including those in Israel. Marc put his money where his beliefs are.

Abby is no longer welcome here because its a headache dealing with his poor judgement.

Good eye marc.
Some people are bound to post things in an attempt to muddy the waters, and on the internet you can never be to sure of who is posting stuff. Abby might be DEA???
What better way then to make you look bad, could be a reporter looking for a story.

Yeah...But Cotler's more of a Likud simpleton than an enlightened Green Leafer or a backer of one of the many other civil libertarian parties in Israel.

lol, Abby may be many things, but DEA is not one of them. If the banning is necessary to further Marc's cause, or help him stay in Canada, then I support it, even though I don't believe in censorship. I and anyone else who follows Marc knows he is definitely NOT an anti-semite. I have made the drug war/holocaust comparisson many times myself, but I am not anti-semetic at all. In fact, like Marc, I had the priveledge to meet a concentration camp survivor and listening to his story, was one of the saddest things I have ever endured. He was the father of one of my dad's co-workers and I met him when I was about 10 years old. He showed me the identification tatooes the Nazi's had used to brand him. He was actually Polish, and like many of his countrymen persecuted right along with the jews in horrible death camps. NOBODY should ever have to endure the kind of treatment that he was subjected to. He was a very old man by the time I met him, in about 1983, and tears rolled down his face as he recounted the tale. The experience of hearing his story has made me very sensitive to the suffering of minorities, and very aware of the scapegoating that leads to the persecution. Let's hope that Marc is successful, and the US administration doesn't get the chance to escalate their drug war to the level of nazi era concentration camps, which is exactly what some of them would like to do.

Hopefully a reporter will make note of this post some day. As a Jewish person, I have no problem with Marc Emery and I certainly would never believe him to be an Anti-Semite. The first time I had heard him compare the persecution of marijuana users to those who suffered the holocaust, I was a bit taken aback and decided to mull it over because as with many things Marc says, it was simply a controversial statement and most likely was not mindless.

Considering what happens to drug users around the globe, it is indeed a valid comparison. Perhaps it is not concentrated in one area but it is all happening in our backyard...our global home.

As a proud individual of Jewish decent who does not use marijuana, I would make very clear that though I may not agree word for word with Marc's opinions and ideas, I am very supportive of Marc himself and would never consider him to be Anti-Semitic. In fact, I find it offensive that the suggestion...no the assertion would be made that Marc is Anti-Semitic.

Far too often, Israel (especially) and many Jewish groups around the globe play the anti-Semite card when it is simply not a valid play. This type of bitching about a problem that does not exist discredits the entire Jewish community and is something that can not be tolerated.

Anyone who says such unfounded things should be made to apologize to Mr. Emery and indeed to the Jewish community for bringing about this falsehood and misnomer.

Cheers

It's a point of nuance...you can have beefs with Middle East policy but the cartoons, insults directed at Jewish people in government, etc. don't help.

Need I remind you that the other side has plenty of true anti-Semites on their own? Don't follow their example.

http://www.cannabis.net/politics/richard-nixon.html


Just What Was He Smoking?
By Gene Weingarten
Washington Post Staff Writer

Now that the latest tapes from the Nixon White House have been released, the press is all over them with characteristic glee, eager as always to remind us that not long ago the leader of the free world was buggier than a flophouse blanket. Don't you get tired of this?

Me neither. So when researcher Doug McVay from Common Sense for Drug Policy sent me tapes he culled from Nixon's Oval Office rants about drugs, I pounced on them. I figured it would be a welcome respite from Nixon's recent rants about Jews.

From the Weed Screed, May 26, 1971:

"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists."

In my professional capacity, I diagnose a delusional state of mind. It's simple logic: In a previously released rant, Nixon and Billy Graham gnash and froth over how Jews control the media. How can most Jews be psychiatrists and still control the media? Nixon does not explain.

But he does explain many other things in these drug tapes, including the insidious nexus between drugs, homosexuality, communism and, of course, Jews.

The excerpts begin with the Nixon doctrine on why marijuana is much worse than alcohol: It is because people drink "to have fun" but they smoke marijuana "to get high." This distinction was evidently enormously significant to Nixon, because he repeats it twice.

In an excruciating sequence from Sept. 9, 1971, Nixon is meeting with former Pennsylvania governor Raymond P. Shafer. Shafer heads a presidential commission on drug policy that Nixon has heard might be flirting with the notion of recommending the decriminalization of marijuana.

"You're enough of a pro," Nixon tells Shafer, "to know that for you to come out with something that would run counter to what the Congress feels and what the country feels, and what we're planning to do, would make your commission just look bad as hell."

Shafer begins to stammer. Nixon appears to be telling his commission, in advance, what to conclude.

If there is any doubt about this, Nixon erases it instantly. He instructs Shafer not to seek input from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which he seems to think is soft on drugs, apparently because it is filled with, you know, psychiatrists:

"As an old prosecutor, I don't mind somebody putting it in J. Edgar Hoover's hands, but I come down very hard on the side of putting it in, uh, hardheaded doctors, rather than a bunch of muddle-headed psychiatrists."

Shafer can barely get a word in edgewise.

"They're all muddle-headed," Nixon says. "You know what I mean?"

The governor's discomfort is palpable. You can almost hear him hooking a finger in his collar.

Nixon continues, making things perfectly clear: "But anyway, the thing to do now is to alert the country to the problem and say now, this far, no farther, and I think that's what you want to do, take a strong line."

Suddenly, people start getting up. The meeting is over. Before Shafer knows what hits him, the president is pushing him out the door, with a gift of golf balls and cuff links.

Eventually, Shafer's commission would recommend decriminalization. The Nixon White House was appalled, understandably: Nixon saw drugs as a threat to the vitals of the republic -- right up there, hand in hand, with the scourge of homosexuality.

Nixon expounds on this in a lengthy monologue on May 13, 1971. On this day, he makes it clear that he does not like gay people. Northern California, he says, has gotten so "faggy" that "I won't shake hands with anybody from San Francisco."

Nixon loves this subject. He is nearly unstoppable on it. His top aides H.R. "Bob" Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are in the room, but they barely speak beyond monosyllabic sycophancies. It takes the president a while to get to the point, which begins with his review of a popular TV sitcom he has just watched, apparently for the first time:

"Archie is sitting here with his hippie son-in-law, married to the screwball daughter. . . . The son-in-law apparently goes both ways."

Nixon seems to have concluded, against all evidence, that Meathead is bisexual. Possibly it is the length of his hair. Another character in the show, Nixon reports, is "obviously queer. He wears an ascot, and so forth."

The president is outraged that this filth should appear on TV: "The point that I make is that, goddamn it, I do not think that you glorify on public television homosexuality. You don't glorify it, John, anymore than you glorify, uh, whores."

The president asserts that America is in jeopardy from this Archie Bunker gay thing:

"I don't want to see this country to go that way. You know what happened to the Greeks. Homosexuality destroyed them. Sure, Aristotle was a homo, we all know that, so was Socrates." Ehrlichman interrupts to reassure his boss. Socrates, he says, "never had the influence that television had." Precisely, precisely. Nixon is on a roll, lecturing like a history professor:

"Do you know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags. . . . You know what happened to the popes? It's all right that popes were laying the nuns."

Someone laughs nervously. Nixon bulls on, not a hint of humor in his voice.

"That's been going on for years, centuries, but when the popes, when the Catholic Church went to hell in, I don't know, three or four centuries ago, it was homosexual. . . . Now, that's what happened to Britain, it happened earlier to France. And let's look at the strong societies. The Russians. Goddamn it, they root them out, they don't let 'em hang around at all. You know what I mean? I don't know what they do with them."

"Dope? Do you think the Russians allow dope? Hell no. Not if they can catch it, they send them up. You see, homosexuality, dope, uh, immorality in general: These are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the Communists and the left-wingers are pushing it. They're trying to destroy us."

Well, that was 31 years ago, and I am happy to report that the Jew-homo-doper-Commie-shrink-lefty-pope cabal has not, to date, destroyed us. Nixon seems to have been wrong on this one.

Of course, it's not the first time he was wrong. Yes, he was a crook. No, it wasn't a third-rate burglary. And yes -- we do still have Dick Nixon to kick around. Apparently, thanks to his tapes, forever and ever and ever.

I'll talk about my situation with the Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler.

I had great hope for him. Terrific resume, unusual for a politician to have a substantial human rights portfolio of activities. Of course, Anne McLellan was a civil rights lawyer, and now she is the leading proponent in the Liberal government for drastically changing Canada to reflect a completly American agenda, with all its pernicious incursions into privacy, decency and dignity.

So to think that this great man was becoming Justice Minister seemed so wonderful. Moreover, I felt that coming from a Jewish background, he would be even more sympathetic to our culture. Certainly I always expect that when one is sensitized to one's own culture's persecution and suffering, it is imperitive to be sensitive about the suffering of others around you when your own suffering has been relieved.

So Mr. Cotler was in government! He was in a position to reverse the marijuana prohibition! To stop jailing us! To stop the tens of thousands of arrests in Canada every year. To stop the thousands of jailings in Canada for marijuana every year! To recognize us as bona-fide culture, a peaceful & honest culture, cruelly discriminated! To be liberated! To stop the prohibition which manufactures so much 'crime'. To allow the provinces to regulate, tax & distribute marijuana.

Let me say now, that there is nothing I have ever written that is anti-Jewish, or even anti-Israel. Nor ever said. I have always loved and enjoyed Jewish culture. There is no whiff of anti-Semitism about me. So many of my great heroes are Jewish people, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman, Alan Young.

Further, I wrote a biography of a dear woman I knew as Fanny Goose in London, Ontario. She has a holocaust survivor from eastern Poland, and I spent many days with her in 1983 taping her life story and then writing it up. I studied the holocaust in depth, and got the stories of other holocaust survivors (Meyer Epstein, one of my business neighbours in London whose story was fascinating, was one of the only 8 survivors of the Warsaw ghetto). But with Mrs. Goose (her married name), I was immersed and learned so much from her.

Mr. Cotler inherited the flawed marijuana sentencing reform act that has been in limbo in the Parliament. It wasn't a decriminalization bill at all, it really increased penalties for the hundreds of thousands of Canadian growers, everything was still illegal, so no change was apparent. There was no plan to provide a taxed & regulated environment where the criminal justice system no longer was involved. Organized crime would still handle this government-sanctioned black market, and all the problems associated with marijuana/war on marijuana would continue.

In fact, very importantly, I was buoyed when Mr. Cotler was on the Global National Evening News in 2003 and said that his children (plural) were devoted fans of POT TV and watched our internet station more than they read the Globe & Mail. And he reminded audiences that he respected the views of his children and that he listened to them, they were his best critics he added.

Wow! This was wonderful stuff. The Justice Minister's children watch POT TV and the Justice Minister seems proud of it.

Well, six months later I am on a nationwide speaking tour promoting the NDP in the federal election. Mr. Cotler in fact has very much disappointed our culture by siding with the police establishment and speaking out to longer penalties for growing, a continued prohibition. The NDP are articulating a much more rational non-jailing tax & regulate approach.

One evening, in Saskatoon, I am with 40 people or so who attended my lecture that I had delivered in about 17 cities so far in March. Joints are passed. The police arrive. I have a joint on me, but I am charged with trafficking because a 22 year old who gets caught with a pipe, says to the police officer I passed a joint. I spend 4 days in jail and am released under onerous bail conditions.

On August 19 that summer, much to my surprise, for passing a joint that no police officer even saw, I was sentenced to 92 days in jail.

Now thats a sobering experience. I am ripped away from my fiance. My dear friends. My father, who is very infirm, is anxious. My mother, who has Alzheimers, is kept away from the television and newspapers for the next two months. My business suffers. All because I shared a marijuana joint.

Inside the jail I am given the job of Administration Block Cleaner. I do this for about 40 days of my 62 day incarceration period. I clean toilets, floors, walls, furniture, everything, in the area where the director of the jail and other administrators work. In reality, I am a slave for 62 days. Everyday I keep a diary and call it into POT TV each day. Its very good therapy. I work as the janitor from 8.30 to about 3.00 p.m., then I go back to my cel and read or interact with inmates but often I am writing furiously. When we are required to be in our cel after 10.30 p.m. I read voraciously and write the thoughts I am having that day. Then I narrate them over the phone next day.

Of course, each day is completely confessional. When I was sad, you knew it. When I felt abandoned, you knew it. When I felt militant, you knew it, and when I was accepting, you knew it. Thousands and thousands of people have read that journal. It shows the daily drama in a prison but also my observations about the beliefs of the people I am studying. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, the persecution of the Jews, African-Americans, The native North Americans, the female healers of Europe (called witches), the Chinese persecution in Western Canada.

In one diary entry, I refer to Irwin Cotler as a Nazi Jew or Jewish Nazi. This has had some people very distracted. I want to explain these remarks and the circumstances under which these diaries are written.

When you are in jail for behaving peacefully and honestly, as I always have, it's very legitimate and rather predictable to resent the authority that has put you there. Jail is no place for peaceful, honest citizens who behaviour has harmed or threatened no one. Who is the Attorney-General of Canada? Irwin Cotler. He is the chief political officer of the prohibition, of the courts, and he is directly responsible for any Canadian who is incarcerated under his watch as Justice Minister.

So Irwin Cotler has done this to me, make no mistake.

So at one point in my jailhouse ruminations, I use the term Nazi Jew and Jewish Nazi. Let me explain what I meant.

A Nazi is a person who inflicts pain, punishment, incarceration or death on any human who is behaving peacefully & honestly. However, a thug on the street who beats you and robs you, is not a Nazi because another precondition is that a person who inflicts pain, punishment, incarceration or death must believe in an ideology that gives moral permission to behave that way.

The Nazis not only inflicted pain, punishment, incarceration or death, they believed in an ideology that specified the use of pain, punishment, incarceration or death to achieve their desired social control goals.

Anyone who inflicts pain, punishment, incarceration or death for peaceful & honest behaviour, and believes idelogically it is permissable to do so, this is Nazism, no matter what label this person puts on their own behaviour.

Mr. Cotler is Jewish. As I said earlier, I have higher expectations from people who shared a background of persecution. Mr. Cotler knows extremely well the perniciousness of governments in meting out punishments for peaceful & honest behaviour. He understands history.

Yet his ideological belief in inflicting pain, punishment, incarceration or death for the good of the state is identical intellectually to the Nazi philosophy, and a betrayal of his persecuted roots. Now he is the chief political officer in charge of a massive pogrom against the cannabis people, and that is why I was enslaved in a jail for 62 days. There can be no doubt, that when I was in jail, Mr. Cotler's authority of me, and his sanction of my imprisonment, and his ideological belief as expressed by his actions, that inflicting pain, punishment, incarceration or death, Mr. Cotler is living & breathing his duties with a profound philosophy of Nazism permeating everything.

Yet there are editorial writers like Norman Spector and others, who are trying to paint me as anti-Semite, and completely discount my experience with Mr. Cotler so far by zeroing on sensational terms like "Jewish Nazi".

Mr. Cotler has admitted that some of his children are enthusiastic pot smokers by admitting on television news that his adult children watch POT TV. When interviewed last week, Mr. Cotler stated of his four children, "one is an anti-drug activist, the others are on a 'don't ask, don't tell' basis".

What is this? He certainly does know they smoke marijuana. But what kind of parenting is that, this "don't ask/don't tell" stuff? Thats bad parenting! Your children should feel comfortable bringing any subject up.

So he's a hypocrite too. Human rights superstar becomes Nazi philosophy head jailer. Proud father of pot smoking adult children becomes anxious evading parent in denial. Who could imagine? Maybe I was being so naive all along.

So these critics go for these hot button words in jail blogs but miss the real story. The Justice Minister is the Attorney-General also. He must have known about this DEA raid and the collabotation of the Vancouver Police Dept. He no doubt signed off on it.

This Attorney-General wants to send me to jail for the rest of my life. And I have every confidence that if I am put in a US jail, no one in Canada will ever see me alive again. The DEA/USA is not going to make it possible that I'll ever get out to rouse the world's conscience. I am a permanent enemy of these Nazified forces that are surging through North America these very anxious days for all of us in the cannabis culture.

So if you see remarks about these diary blogs in any newspaper story, please set them straight as to what our struggle is about. And our struggle is one of worldwide peace, love & understanding in an anxious age of state barbarism. The menacing forces of government are waging this vicious war against our beloved people. Make no mistake, its a war. Thats how the DEA sees it all. A War.

When they capture the leader of the enemy, what do you think they do to him?

I've just noted, in comparing marijuana persecution to Jewish persecution, you are most similar to Schindler - who spent inordinate amounts of his money to help those persecuted.