Pubdate: Tue, 06 Sep 2005 Source: London Free Press (CN ON) Copyright: 2005 The London Free Press a division of Sun Media Corporation. Contact: http://www.lfpress.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/243 Author: Herman Goodden Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?196 (Emery, Marc) OVER THE TOP IS ALL HE KNOWS Marijuana activist Marc Emery has been stirring the pot, so to speak, since the days he managed a London bookstore. Marc Emery, intemperate? Gosh, do you think so? Facing extradition to the United States and a possible life sentence for selling marijuana seeds to Americans through his Vancouver-based mail order business, longtime London bookseller and political agitator Marc Emery now needs all the friends he can get. So last month was not the time -- as if there ever is a time -- to be quoted making loutish, anti-Semitic remarks. With interest in Emery's case billowing on both sides of the 49th parallel, some trawlers on Emery's pro-cannabis website dug up a little gem from last summer, when Emery served a three-month jail sentence in Saskatoon for passing a joint at a public rally. In his "jail blog," Emery characterized federal Justice Minister Irwin Cotler as a "Nazi-Jew." Seeking to explain himself in a letter last Monday to the National Post, Emery ratcheted up the rhetoric further. Having already likened his plight to that of Martin Luther King, Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, Emery now depicted marijuana users as one of the great persecuted peoples of the Earth. "Twenty-four million people worldwide have been arrested for their belief in cannabis since 1955 and many millions of them have spent substantial time in jail. Much of the world does not want to believe there is a cultural genocide going on against the 164,000,000 who, according to the UN last year, cherish marijuana in their lives. Yet everywhere on Earth today in 2005, we are hunted down, humiliated, arrested, jailed or even executed. The perpetrators are 'Nazis,' even though they may call themselves something else." A few days later, Emery thought better of throwing around terms such as "Nazi" and "genocide," and posted a thoughtful and sincere apology to Cotler on his website. Unfortunately, that's unlikely to erase the obnoxious impression he'd already made on so many people It's fascinating for Londoners, long accustomed to Emery's over-the-topness, to watch the impact his unmeasured words can have on a larger stage. Many of us recall Emery's so-called "presentation" in August 1991 to a standing committee of the Ontario legislature that came to London to listen to briefs prepared by members of the business community concerning the then-hotly-debated issue of Sunday shopping. Emery was all for it, of course, and vociferously spearheaded the London contingent for changing the law. The proceedings of that session are faithfully recorded in issue J-45 1991 of the official Hansard report. I was not then and am not now a subscriber to that particular organ, but Emery was so tickled with his performance that he ordered up extra copies, which he sold for 50 cents a pop at his City Lights book shop. Early in the session, Emery told London MPP Dianne Cunningham that she wasn't attractive enough to warrant looking at and is repeatedly quoted telling other members of the committee to "shut up." He concluded his oratorical moment in the sun thus: "I think you people are the problem and the only real benefit to any of us would be if you were all exterminated. I cannot see any possible benefit in the existence of you people. Every problem you look at in today's society was created by the very people I see before me. So in conclusion, I do not care how they do it, but I hope they take a gun, knife, bomb or bottle to you people and do you in, because until that happens nothing is really going to change in this province. Thanks a lot." Needless to say, I disagree with Emery almost every time he opens his mouth and find his motor-mouthing conversational style bullyish and exhausting. I used to work for him at City Lights and repeatedly watched him trounce debating opponents, not in points but in sheer verbal tonnage. But he's a sharp biscuit and at the end of the day I can't help liking the man and admiring the energy he brings to so many reprehensible causes. In that spirit of friendship, and the hope he rallies enough support to stay out of an American jail, I suggest that, for the next little while at least, he should impose a strict 24-hour delay before he speaks or writes about anything. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin