Canadian Feds Harass Mark Emery

http://www.orato.com/node/3170?PHPSESSID=54d614040a1e3af1e8fd5e05063f0bac

Shady Deal Between The DEA And Revenue Canada
By Citizen Correspondent Marc Emery
08/03/07

When I was busted by the DEA on July 29, 2005, a financial calamity
occurred. From 1999 to 2005, I had paid $584,000 in personal income
taxes as a marijuana seed vendor. Nonetheless, I was still about 12
months behind in payments, even though I was giving Revenue Canada
$10,000 or $12,000 a monthy. So on July 29,2005, I was in arrears
$140,000 to Revenue Canada. Additionally, I had $90,000 in bank debt
too, as my seed business was a going concern generating $100,000 -
$175,000 in sales a month, so I had five credit cards and a $40,000
line of credit. Here's the deal.

My deal with Revenue Canada is that they'd get whatever they were
entitled to; I never used any personal deductions or any legal or
illegal income avoiding tactics while I was in business. In fact,
Revenue Canada did much better than me, because my company was in
trouble from raids so many times that I had to lend it money - money
I had to pay income tax on first.

Over the last two years I struggled to pay off all my personal debt,
reduced the bank debt from $90,000 to $50,000, but I simply could not
pay more than $250 a month to income tax. My pay in the last two
years has been a steady progression from $300 a week in the first six
months to $850 a week up to June of this year when Revenue Canada
decided to garnishee half my loan repayment (I get $600 a week, money
I already paid tax on, from the company) and half my wages from the
store upstairs (I get $300 less tax less 50% to the Revenue Canada).

I just received my statement for the current month. $140,000 in July
2005 has, with penalties and interest, becomes $299,418.57 as of June
20, 2007

From June 25 to July 10 there were five weekly garnishees of $441.27
each, thats $2,206.35.

And on my statement it says:

July 20, 2007: Amount owed: $299,420.44

I owed $1.87 more, even with Revenue Canada getting half of all my
money for five weeks. And so it will continue indefinitely. Leaving
me with $441.00 each week to live on, pay off five banks, and someone
how to afford a lawyer in my extradition fight.

And of course, that is why I am unable to field a comprehensive
challenge to my extradition. A real challenge would involve
investigating the Vancouver Police Deptartment's complicity with the
DEA, the political nature of this extradition, DEA head Karen Tandy's
expressed admission of its political nature, the disproprtionality of
sentencing in Canada, the acceptance of torture and overcrowding in
U.S. prisons, and many more issues of sovereignty and the U.S. drug
war.

But that would involve three lawyers for 15 to 20 days and that would
cost about $20,000 per week over four weeks for lawyers plus expenses
to bring witnesses, testimony, et cetera.

We've given our lawyers $75,000 so far but its all used up in the
adjournments so right now our lawyers are in the price range of
cutting deals that still sends me to jail for a long time instead of
a more expensive strategy of assessing the issues, laws, treaties,
dispatrities, Charter of Rights, et cetera and having the courts
refuse the extradition.

The CBC ordered us to take down any remaining video or pictorial
evidence our Vapor Lounge had ever advertised a "Hockey Night in
Vansterdam" promotion to have people come in the B.C. Marijuana Party
Vapor Lounge and consume their marijuana and watch the Vancouver
Canucks in the play-offs.

Seems straightforward - we got a big plasma screen, set it up in the
BCMP, made a tongue-in-cheek Hockey Night in Vansterdam poster and a
promotional Youtube video that CBC ordered off the Internet because
they own the term "Hockey Night in," including, CBC claims, "Hockey
Night in Vansterdam." So I got threats of lawsuits in the mail this
July over that.

And in February of this year, the Canada Elections Commission found
me guilty and convicted me of "illegally participating in a Canadian
federal election." How did I do that, you ask? In the 2004 election I
printed up $4,000 worth of election cards endorsing Jack Layton's
marijuana position. The 50,000 3" x 5" cards promoting Jack Layton's
interview comments from POT.TV were distributed across Canada. Even
though we are an officially registered provincial AND municipal
party, me or the party still has to register as an official
third-party participant if any action over $500 is taken in any
federal election.

When the "Special Prosecutor" from Elections Canada came to visit me,
he first sat down and read me my rights: "Anything you say can and
will be used against you..." Some serious stuff! I was convicted and
fined $250 to be given to a Canadian charity, so I chose to give the
money of my punishment to the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.

I am the only Canadian convicted under this obscure election law
passed in 2003 (meant to catch more important transgressors I am
sure), but this new conviction is one of a pantheon of convictions I
have for civil disobediance that includes promoting bongs, selling
bongs, selling seeds, giving a gram of hash away free, challenging
the obscenity laws by selling the 1990 rap CD Two Live crew, As Nasty
As They Want To Be, going to jail after disobeying the Sunday
Shopping laws in 1986.

Over the winter, RCMP from 'National Security' visited me at the
request of the FBI because two Canadians on our cannabisculture.com
[1] forums (currently under DDoS attack, as you'll recall) said they
wanted to "kill George Bush" or would love to see him killed or
something obvious and reasonable like that.

They both lived in the Canadian boondocks and had no ability or
intent to carry out a threat, but since the FBI, NSA, are frequent
visitors to my websites, they must notice anything anywhere where the
term "Kill Bush" shows up.

After the police visited I had to contact the two posters of the
remarks and tell them FBI & RCMP want to talk to them. Wow! Nothing
came of it after everyone talked, but I wrote an editorial called "
Can't You say You'd Like to Strangle the President of the United
States with Your Bare Hands?" It would seem you can't say it without
an FBI and RCMP visit.

This week I've had my website for Cannabis Culture Magazine and the
No-Extradition website under DDoS attack from punk computer hackers
for six days, and this impairs our ability to operate and raise
money. It's from an online extortion group of teenagers that demand
cash ransoms or they bombard your website host with what are called
Distributed Denial of Service attacks.

This kind of online extortion goes on a lot against Internet gambling
sites, marijuana or seed sites, and other vulnerable sites. We refuse
to give them any cash so they are flexing their cyber-criminal
muscle, so all our websites have been offline for six days now.

We even have given out the name of the 17-year-old responsible, in
Chicago, with a variety of other information, and its very telling
that the U.S. tolerates cyber-terrorist punks in America while
wanting to extradite me to face life imprisonment without parole for
sending seeds over an invisible line (The U.S. border) to consenting
U.S. adult citizens.

It's amazing who will kick you when you're down. A retail store in
Toronto has been trying to establish their ownership of the brand
"Cannabis Culture Magazine", which have used since 1999, because they
have been called "The Friendly Stranger Cannabis Culture Shop." They
have a relative who is a lawyer who launched this challenge to our
ownership of the name of my magazine, so this challenge since 2003
has cost them nothing, but incredibly, we have had to pay $80,000
from 2003 to 2007 to defend our right to the name Cannabis Culture
Magazine.

This is money that should have gone to so many other things. Why does
Robin Ellins, the owner of this Toronto shop, want to own Cannabis
Culture Magazine's name - we already own the trademarks in Europe and
the USA- I wish I could say.

So my websites under attack as I write, my wages are being garnished
as I write, the hearing is three months away and my lawyers have no
arguments prepared because the money's not there, my wife is crying a
lot lately thinking of my being in a U.S. jail for...eternity.
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California NORML, 2215-R Market St. #278, San Francisco CA 94114 -
http://www.canorml.org