Tag Archives: Drugs & Vice

Deputizing America

Posted on by

“By its indictment of FedEx, the feds are telling all other delivery firms that they are now forcibly deputized to do the DEA’s job in the War on Drugs. If they don’t play along, they need to show up in court.  Banking regulators have been playing a similar game. Under a campaign known as Operation Choke Point, they have been telling banks that if they don’t investigate their customers for ‘high-risk’ activity, they will be subject to subpoenas and everything that implies. As a result, banks have simply been cutting off links to customers on the simple basis of what business they are in.   If New York’s Department of Financial Services has its way, bitcoin businesses operating in the state will be deputized, too.”

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/deputizing-america

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Judge in Silk Road criminal case says Bitcoin is as good as money

Posted on by

“The New York district judge presiding over the criminal case against Ross Ulbricht, the alleged creator of underground online drug market Silk Road, has decreed that cryptocurrency Bitcoin is functionally the same thing as real money. Ulbricht had argued that he could not be charged for money laundering for his alleged part in creating Silk Road, as Bitcoin was not a real currency, but Judge Katherine Forrest rejected his defense. ‘The money laundering statute is broad enough to encompass use of Bitcoins in financial transactions,’ Forrest wrote in a ruling released on Wednesday. ‘Any other reading would in light of Bitcoin’s sole raison d’être be nonsensical.'”

http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/9/5885649/bitcoin-as-good-as-money-says-judge-silk-road-case

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Feds attack FedEx on behalf of Big Pharma

Posted on by

“Big Pharma obviously benefits if online competitors are choked out, but turning FedEx into an arm of law enforcement has advantages for the federal government as well. If federal agents searched private mail without warrants or probable cause, people would cry ‘Fourth Amendment!’  But private shippers are not bound by constitutional restraints. The ‘right’ to check packages can be written into the business agreement that customers sign. If a customer objects, then he is free to go elsewhere. By controlling FedEx policy, the DOJ would be able to search packages in absentia and make targeted arrests if illegal contents are found.”

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/crony-phony-drug-war

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

4 Things You Should Know About Mass Incarceration

Posted on by

“Today’s total American prison population exceeds the estimated amount of citizens detained within the Gulag system under the former Soviet Union. If we include those sentenced but not yet incarcerated, as well as those released upon probation and parole, there are more young black men embroiled in the American criminal justice system than were estimated to be enslaved in America circa 1850. These statistics are not to say that the United States is totalitarian, or based on chattel labor. Instead, these numbers emphasize that, insofar as despotism requires enforcement, our own government is more than capable of imposing serious and pervasive social control.”

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/4-things-you-should-know-about-mass-incarceration

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Dry California Fights Illegal Use of Water for Cannabis

Posted on by

“Amid the state’s crippling drought, many communities are fighting the growers’ use of water.  Environmentally minded marijuana growers say that illegal operators and water guzzlers are giving them a bad reputation.  Because there are countywide restrictions on the number of marijuana plants even legitimate growers may keep, Mr. Chaitanya said, they have an incentive to make those plants as robust as possible — and that means using more water. Mr. Chaitanya suggested that the problem was exacerbated by confusing regulations.  Sheriff Allman of Mendocino County was skeptical of this. ‘That sounds like logic they’ve made up after smoking a joint,’ he observed.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/07/us/dry-california-fights-illegal-use-of-water-for-cannabis.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Medical Marijuana Research Hits Wall of U.S. Law

Posted on by

“Though more than one million people are thought to use the drug to treat ailments ranging from cancer to seizures to hepatitis C and chronic pain, there are few rigorous studies showing whether the drug is a fruitful treatment for those or any other conditions.  In the case of marijuana, restrictions are even greater than for other controlled substances.  To obtain the drug legally, researchers like Dr. Sisley must apply to the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse — which, citing a 1961 treaty obligation, administers the only legal source of the drug for federally sanctioned research, at the University of Mississippi.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/us/politics/medical-marijuana-research-hits-the-wall-of-federal-law.html?_r=0

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Man who taped police putting Eric Garner in chokehold arrested

Posted on by

“The man who recorded police allegedly placing Eric Garner in a chokehold was arrested on a weapons charge in Staten Island over the weekend, police said.  Ramsey Orta, 22, was charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon after he allegedly walked out of a Central Avenue hotel with a 17-year-old girl, Alba Lekaj, and gave her a gun just before 10 p.m. on Saturday, police said.  Orta, who lives a few blocks away in the Tompkinsville area, was also charged with criminal possession of a weapon with a previous conviction, police said. Lekaj was charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and possession of marijuana, police said.”

http://www.amny.com/news/ramsey-orta-man-who-videotaped-police-putting-eric-garner-in-chokehold-arrested-on-weapons-charge-1.8953834

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

NYPD commissioner defends “broken window” policing

Posted on by

“The NYPD has made almost 400,000 arrests in the past year, which is up from 268,000 arrests in 1995, when there were three times as many murders in the city. Bratton defended the increased arrest rate, however, citing a dramatic decrease in state prison populations.  ‘Why? Because the serious crime that would get people sentenced to those facilities is down dramatically. Why? Because we’re stopping the behavior before it becomes more serious,’ Bratton said.  He said he would rather crack down on summonable offenses where people don’t go to jail.  Blacks and Latinos make up 85 percent of drug arrests in New York City when half of the drug users are actually white.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/nypd-commissioner-bill-bratton-on-eric-garner-chokehold-arrest-broken-windows-policing/

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Russell Simmons: Prisons profiting from putting kids in jail

Posted on by

“American business magnate, Russell Simmons, co-founder of Def Jam Recordings and founder of the pre-paid card company, RushCard, is attempting to do something about it through his ‘Keep the Peace’ initiative. ‘We’re going to fund [successful] anti-violence programs in communities, which I think is very important.’  ‘When we talk about the mass incarceration of young people,’ says Simmons, ‘and we think about the number of non-violent, first-time offenders who are in jail for drug offenses… that’s a different subject. We’re talking about the cost to the consumer or the taxpayer, but we’re not talking about the profit to the prison industrial complex.'”

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/youth-violence-costs-americans–6-6-billion-annually-150106804.html

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet

Rising Hops Prices Make Craft Brewers Jumpy

Posted on by

“The popularity of hopped-up beers has led to a serious hops shortage in the U.S. That shortage drove the average price for all hops to $3.59 a pound in 2013, up from $1.88 in 2004.  Craft beer’s market share cracked 5% in 2011, and by 2012 it hit 7.8%.  The greater demand for hops has come amid a decline in supply from Oregon, Washington and Idaho, the nation’s top hop-growing states. This was thanks to a global hops glut a few years ago that spurred growers to pull back at what turned out to be exactly the wrong time.  Other states could fill this vacuum.  New York, for instance, led the U.S. in hop cultivation until a 19th-century blight and Prohibition killed the industry.”

http://online.wsj.com/articles/tom-acitelli-rising-hops-prices-make-craft-brewers-jumpy-1403737009

Scan to Donate Bitcoin to Freedomwat.ch Staff
Did you like this?
Tip Freedomwat.ch Staff with Bitcoin
Donate via Installed Wallet