An Interview with Blair T. Longley (Part One)
Interviewer: Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Numbering: Issue 18.A, Idea: Outliers & Outsiders (Part Fourteen)
Place of Publication: Langley, British Columbia, Canada
Title: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal
Web Domain: http://www.in-sightjournal.com
Individual Publication Date: November 15, 2018
Issue Publication Date: January 1, 2019
Name of Publisher: In-Sight Publishing
Frequency: Three Times Per Year
Words: 1,749
ISSN 2369-6885
Abstract
Blair T. Longley is the Party Leader for the Marijuana Party of Canada. He discusses: background; influence on development; and early involvements in activism and politics prior to the Marijuana Party of Canada.
Keywords: Blair T. Longley, Canadian Society, Cannabis, Marijuana Party of Canada.
An Interview with Blair T. Longley: Party Leader, Marijuana Party of Canada (Part One)[1],[2]
*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citation style listing after the interview.*
2. Jacobsen: How did this influence development?
Longley: When one pursues the prodigious progress made in mathematical physics, one learns about the history of scientific revolutions, whereby there were series of intellectual revolutions, and profound paradigms shifts. Those trends that follow from attempting to more seriously consider what mathematical physics is telling us about the “real” world. One finds that those more and more re-converge with ancient mysticism. I have spent several decades pursuing those convergences between mathematical physics and mysticism, with particular emphasis upon attempting to reconcile physical science with political science.
3. Jacobsen: What were your early involvements in activism and politics prior to the Marijuana Party of Canada?
Longley: My first participation in registered political activities was going to the founding convention of the Green Party of Canada in Ottawa, in 1983. In 1984, I became a Green Party candidate in the General Federal Elections, in order to help the Green Party become a registered party under the Canada Elections Act. At that time, my main concern was the nuclear arms race between the USA and the USSR, which became quite insane during the 1980s, and reached its most insane point in 1986.
(Of course, now, that situation after getting somewhat better for a while, has now become worse than it has ever been before.) Back at that time, the Green Party was tending to become more mainstream, and therefore, my kinds of radical politics were not approved of by the more mainstream members of the Green Party. That ended up with my also being endorsed as a Rhinoceros Party candidate on the last day of the nomination period, which made national news, due to my becoming a Green Rhino.
During the 1984 General Federal Elections, one of the most important turning points in my life took place when I attended an election expenses seminar given by Elections Canada official, where the political contribution tax credit was explained. I realized the awesome potential of that tax credit, and spent the next few decades attempting to realize that potential. I became a registered agent of the Rhinoceros Party, which enabled me to work on using the tax credit, as political experiments that enabled me to build the factual basis for a court case against the government of Canada regarding the uses of political contribution funds.
From 1982 to 1987, I was publicly cultivating cannabis plants in university family housing gardens, first on SFU’s campus, and then on UBC’s campus. During 1986 I engaged in substantial correspondence with Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and some of his other ministers, regarding the criminalization of cannabis. In 1987 I was growing several dozen marijuana plants in the center of the family housing garden, in order to gain standing to challenge the constitutional validity of the marijuana laws.
However, when I went to court, the RCMP witness, crown prosecutor, and judge, conspired to make deliberate errors in laws, so that they could summarily acquit me, and therefore, not have to bother to look at the evidence nor listen to the legal arguments that I had prepared for that case. In other words, that court case ended in a completely goofy way. Since then, it has been repeated, over and over again, that Canadian courts were too corrupt to engage in a proper Charter of Rights examination of the original purpose and subsequent effects of the laws that criminalized cannabis.
After my own efforts had resulted in clearly demonstrating that was going to be the case, I stopped doing any more activism on that topic, but rather, devoted all my time and energy, from 1988 to 2000, in working on my court case against the Canadian governments regarding the political contribution tax credit. After I finally won that case, by proving that the government had been arrogantly dishonest about the legal used of that tax credit, in 2000, I attempted to interest all the other registered political parties in adopting my ideas.
NONE of the other registered parties were willing to adopt my ideas regarding the possible uses of that tax credit, EXCEPT the newly registered Marijuana Party. Therefore, the reason that I became associated with the Marijuana Party is that it was the ONLY registered party that was willing to attempt to realize the full potential of the political contribution tax credit.
In 2004, the Canada Elections Laws were changed in ways which deliberately decimated the Marijuana Party. After the Marijuana Party had been effectively destroyed by those changes in the Elections Laws, I became Party Leader, because there was nobody else who was willing and able to do so at that time. I primarily did so in order to continue to work on the political contribution tax credit potential, by finding ways to work around the changes in the Elections Laws which summarily criminalized most of what the Marijuana Party had been successfully doing from 2000 to 2003.
(That is what I continue to do now through authorizing autonomous Marijuana Party Electoral District Associations.) Becoming Party Leader enabled me to have another court case against the Canadian government regarding Elections Laws that made votes for big parties be worth about $2 per vote, per year, for the big political parties, while votes were worth nothing to smaller political parties. We originally won at trial, however, we lost under appeal in 2008, which effectively made sure that the Marijuana Party could not compete with the bigger political parties.
The big parties actually made money from participating in General Federal Elections, while the smaller parties went broke by attempting to do so. The Elections Laws are set up in every possible way to favour the big parties, while screwing the smaller parties. However, since the big parties also appoint the judges, the typical patterns are for the courts to uphold as constitutionally valid the laws regarding the funding of the political processes which accumulate to result in Canada NOT being a “free and democratic society,” but rather, being a runaway fascist plutocracy juggernaut. Overall, Canada is deteriorating from colonialism towards neofeudalism, while the vicious spirals of the funding of all facets of the political processes are the main factors driving that to happen…
4. Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Mr. Longley.
Appendix I: Footnotes
[1] Party Leader, Marijuana Party of Canada.
[2] Individual Publication Date: November 15, 2018: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/longley-one; Full Issue Publication Date: January 1, 2019: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.
Appendix II: Citation Style Listing
American Medical Association (AMA): Jacobsen S. An Interview with Blair T. Longley (Part One) [Online].November 2018; 18(A). Available from: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/longley-one.
American Psychological Association (APA, 6th Edition, 2010): Jacobsen, S.D. (2018, November 15). An Interview with Blair T. Longley (Part One). Retrieved from http://www.in-sightjournal.com/longley-one.
Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S. An Interview with Blair T. Longley (Part One). In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 18.A, November. 2018. <http://www.in-sightjournal.com/longley-one>.
Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2018. “An Interview with Blair T. Longley (Part One).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 18.A. http://www.in-sightjournal.com/longley-one.
Chicago/Turabian, Humanities (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott “An Interview with Blair T. Longley (Part One).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 18.A (November 2018). http://www.in-sightjournal.com/longley-one.
Harvard: Jacobsen, S. 2018, ‘An Interview with Blair T. Longley (Part One)‘, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 18.A. Available from: <http://www.in-sightjournal.com/longley-one>.
Harvard, Australian: Jacobsen, S. 2018, ‘An Interview with Blair T. Longley (Part One)‘, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 18.A., http://www.in-sightjournal.com/longley-one.
Modern Language Association (MLA, 7th Edition, 2009): Scott D. Jacobsen. “An Interview with Blair T. Longley (Part One).” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 18.A (2018):November. 2018. Web. <http://www.in-sightjournal.com/longley-one>.
Vancouver/ICMJE: Jacobsen S. An Interview with Blair T. Longley (Part One) [Internet]. (2018, November; 18(A). Available from: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/longley-one.
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