Search Results: homeland security (31)

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
I don’t feel like a terrorist just because I smoke weed. Do you?

​You knew it would come to this, right? Lest you think those hard-working goons at the Department of Homeland Security are slacking in their jobs — you know, spying on your everyday activities — it has been revealed that the domestic surveillance agency has been scouring your online postings for, among other things, the word “marijuana.”

Homeland Security personnel regularly monitor updates on social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, to uncover “Items Of Interest” (IOI), according to an internal DHS memo released by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), reports Animal New York.
That baseline list of terms for which the DHS searches — or at least a DHS subcontractor hired to monitor social networks — reveals which specific words generate realtime IOI reports.

Photo: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
I don’t feel like a terrorist. Do you?

​The U.S. Department of Homeland Security apparently doesn’t have enough real terrorists to chase. Now they’re going after medical marijuana growers.

A Colorado Springs police detective has enlisted the help of Homeland Security in a local medical marijuana investigation. Homeland Security sent a plane with thermal imaging equipment and two federal Border Patrol agents to Colorado to fly over a warehouse which was a suspected pot growing site, and the spy equipment revealed the warehouse was generating a lot of heat, reports Joel Millman of the Colorado Springs Gazette.

Miguel Tovar/AP
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano: The Drug War is “a continuing effort to keep our peoples from becoming addicted to dangerous drugs”

​Never mind what your ears, your eyes and your brain tell you. The Mexican Drug War, despite the fact that it has produced a river of blood and no results, is “not a failure,” claimed U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.

The bloodshed began in earnest in December 2006, and has, to date, claimed more than 40,000 lives in Mexico, according to Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), which published an online Google map of the killings, reports Daniel Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times.

Secretary Napolitano on Monday called the drug policies of both the U.S. and Mexico “a continuing effort to keep our peoples from becoming addicted to dangerous drugs” at a press conference in Mexico City, reports Rafael Romo at CNN. She made the remarks after meeting with Mexican Interior Minister Alejandro Poire.

Photo: ICE
These artfully arranged bales of marijuana, totaling four tons, were found inside hidden compartments of a tractor trailer parked inside a warehouse in Texas

​Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security agents have seized more than 8,000 pounds of marijuana from a warehouse in south Texas.

Agents executed a search warrant Friday at the warehouse on Highway 281 in Edinburg, Texas, north of McAllen, reports WOAI. They found a tractor trailer parked inside the warehouse. The tractor trailer had false compartments filled with bundles of cannabis totaling more than four tons, which agents claimed had a street value of $6.6 million.
“This significant seizure sends a strong message to drug smugglers that we will not tolerate brazen disregard for U.S. laws,” said Jerry Robinette, special agent in charge of ICE HSI in San Antonio, who, bless karma’s humorous heart, of course has to deal on a daily basis with people who have a brazen disregard for U.S. laws.

Photo: Gerald Nino
U.S. Customs and Border Protection unmanned drone: Big Brother is watching you.

​The U.S. Homeland Security Department is expanding its use of unmanned drone aircraft, widely used in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other war zones, beyond the Mexican and Canadian borders to the Caribbean and possibly elsewhere.

The department already owns five of the aircraft, reports Randal C. Archibold in The New York Times. The drones, known as Predator B craft, already operate along the Mexican border from a installation in Arizona and along the Canadian border from a base in North Dakota.
Homeland Security assures us that these drones, unlike those used by the military, do not carry weapons and are purely for surveillance.
The nominee doesn’t seem to care much about the environment either.
Here’s your daily dose of pot news from the newsletter WeedWeek.

President Elect Donald Trump selected Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt (R) to run the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt has repeatedly sued the agency to block anti-pollution laws. While this might be seen as support for states’ rights — and by extension the marijuana industry — Mark Joseph Stern at Slate calls Pruitt “ one of the phoniest federalists in the GOP.

In particular, Pruitt joined Nebraska in suing Colorado over the state’s REC industry. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Homeland Security, retired Marine General John F. Kelly, opposes legalization saying that it increases health care costs and crime, and that the state experiments with it open the U.S. to accusations of hypocrisy from Latin American nations. Kelly is open to the plant having medical benefits.

Meanwhile veterans’ group American Legion, pushed the administration  to loosen cannabis laws. ” I think they were a little caught off guard and didn’t expect such a progressive statement from such a traditional and conservative organization,” a senior Legion official told Marijuana.com.

It also emerged that Jim O’Neill, a Silicon Valley investor who Marijuana.com describes as a “ Marijuana legalization activist,” could be tapped to lead the Food and Drug Administration. O’Neill is neither a doctor or scientist, typical credentials for the position. For more see here.

Marijuana entrepreneurs want Trump to see them as “ job creators,” Forbes reports.

The New York Observer, which is owned by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, called for rescheduling.

In an effort to protect marijuana laws under the Trump administration, Colorado is cracking down on home growers. The state is poised to surpass 3,000 licensed businesses next year.

What attorney general nominee Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) means for state-legal pot business remains the big green question. In an in-depth piece, Politico says Sessions could easily “ ignore the will of millions of pro-pot voters” and crack down. Time lists seven reasons Trump is unlikely to go after the industry.

The Sessions hearing has been scheduled for Jan. 10 and 11.

Pro-cannabis group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) is petitioning the Justice Department to correct what ASA says is incorrect or misleading information about cannabis on the DEA web site. ASA is represented pro-bono by the major San Francisco law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe.

Though he’s promised to legalize next year, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he still wants police to prosecute dispensaries. His pro-pot supporters feel “cheated.”

Canadian producer Cronos Group will work with First Nations groups in Canada to help them join the cannabis economy.

An upcoming March ballot measure for regulating the industry in Los Angeles raises many questions.

A Democratic state Senator in Texas introduced a “longshot” MED bill. Virginia Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (R), asked for a study of how the state’s cannabis laws might be changed.Tennessee could also be in play.

Oregon took emergency steps to lower the testing burden on growers, but the industry is skeptical.

REC opponents in Maine were accused of not providing enough volunteers for a recount of the recent vote. A judge ruled that following the recent vote, MED dispensaries in Montana can reopen immediately.

Maryland named 102 pre-approved dispensary license winners. In New York, licensees are worried about competition in the relatively small market.

Guam is implementing a MED program. Dusseldorf, Germany is on the path to legalization.

The soldiers of the drug war have crossed the threshold from brainwashed law enforcement tactics into a despicable realm of cold-blooded murder that not even the deranged attitudes of the Old West would dare support. The latest evidence surrounding a case involving a fruitless drug raid speculates that when the Laurens County Sherriff’s Department showed up to the residence of 59-year-old David Hooks earlier this year, their primary objective was to assassinate the man, not to serve a search warrant.

http://www.thc-ministry.org/
Roger Christie, Hawaii’s “Preacher of Pot”


64-year-old Hawaii resident Roger Christie has long been a well-known advocate for medical and recreational marijuana use on the Big Island. As a minister at his own church on Hilo – a quaint little joint by the name of THC Ministries – Christie enjoyed a rapidly growing congregation of over 60,000 followers, to many of whom he provided “sacrament” in the form of cannabis.
On July 8th 2010 though, it all came crashing down as a result of an extensive undercover investigation, leading to the arrest and indictment of 14 people associated with THC Ministries, along with Christie and his wife Share.

Your average U.S. truck driver in the makes something like $.30 or $.40 cents per mile. It’s enough to make a living but not much else.
Swap the 18-wheeler full of widgets for one full of Mexican marijuana, and the job becomes way, way more lucrative. Reliable data are tough to come by — this particular sub-occupation isn’t tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and it’s not a topic that comes up in online trucking forums — but anecdotally, a driver transporting weed can make $50,000 for a 430-mile trip, or roughly 300 times his law-abiding counterpart. That’s at least the amount that was offered last week to an undercover law enforcement officer in Laredo for the eight-hour drive to Dallas.

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