CIA Invests in ImageTree’s Forest-Tracking Technology

ImageTree, a company that tracks individual trees in forests, has signed a technology development agreement and received an undisclosed investment from In-Q-Tel, an investment firm founded by the Central Intelligence Agency. ImageTree’s ForestSense technology can calculate height, basal area, volume, species–every visible detail about a tree–of every tree crown in a forest. According to ImageTree chief executive Mark Redlus, ForestSense can also track topographical tree images down to a tenth of a meter.

The CIA remains mum on its interest in foresting technology, which is primarily used by logging companies. But ForestSense could potentially be used to comply with carbon-credit markets, or to track the growth of illegal crops like marijuana. The technology could also be used to monitor illegal logging practices.

In-Q-Tel’s investment portfolio spans a variety of industries, including nanotechnology, digital identity and security, power systems, and medical technology. And ImageTree isn’t the firm’s first foray into mapping: Last month, the firm invested in Geosemble, a geospatial technology developer working on products that automatically extract maps, aerial imagery, and more.

Don’t you think if federal or state law enforcement could use this to spy for pot plants in the back yards of American citizens, they would? Of course they would. Laws, like the Supreme Court ruling which prohibits the use of infrared electronic devices to spy into people’s homes, hasn’t stopped law enforcement from breaking the law and doing it anyway. If this technology were available to law enforcement, they would use it.

When debating how much of our privacy we have given up to the government, I can’t fathom how much more they are going to take from us.

Perhaps someday we will be told it is a privilege, not a right, to walk on a sidewalk or plant a garden in our yard.

Oh… wait… It’s already against the law to plant a garden. Well, we can grow beets, but we can’t grow a plant from which we can make paper for writing on, fiber for sewing, making rope, fuel for my car, material to build onto my home and make furniture, seeds with a high source of complex proteins and fiber, and life saving medicine.

If we can find the law on a computer in Congress, I can edit it using Microsoft Word and we can use the copy & replace function to change the words from “Marijuana and Marihuana” to Beet. I hate beets.

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As my British friends say, “spot on!”  Radley Balko at The Agitator has nailed it with a sledgehammer:

Dear America,

I take it back. I don’t apologize.

Because you know what? It’s none of your goddamned business. I work my ass off 10 months per year. It’s that hard work that gave you all those gooey feelings of patriotism last summer. If during my brief window of down time I want to relax, enjoy myself, and partake of a substance that’s a hell of a lot less bad for me than alcohol, tobacco, or, frankly, most of the prescription drugs most of you are taking, well, you can spare me the lecture.

Go read the whole thing, it’s brilliant, especially the “let’s see you rationalize in your next lame ONDCP commercial how the greatest motherfucking swimmer the world has ever seen . . . is also a proud pot smoker” part.  The comments are pretty good, too, especially this one from Eric Ogunbase:

You know who I feel bad for? Everyone who competed against him in the pool.

“You mean I’ve been training my whole life for these events and I STILL got my ass kicked by a dude who smokes the chronic?!”

Also, my diary at DailyKos could use some comments and recommendations.  Let’s bump this one up!

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TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Olympic great Michael Phelps has acknowledged ”regrettable” behavior and ”bad judgment” after a photo in a British newspaper showed him smoking marijuana.

In a statement released to The Associated Press, the swimmer who won a record eight gold medals at the Beijing Games conceded the authenticity of the exclusive picture published Sunday by the tabloid News of the World.

Phelps said: ”I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I’m 23 years old and despite the successes I’ve had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again.”

via Phelps Apologizes for Marijuana Use – NYTimes.com.

Youthful and inappropriate.  Childish things, as our president might say.  ”It will not happen again.”  Not to get all Clintonian on you, Mike, but does “it” refer to “smoking marijuana” or does “it” refer to “photos surfacing in newspapers showing you smoking marijuana”?

I’ll never understand the mindset that accepts as rational the idea that these world class athletes – Michael Phelps, Ricky Williams, Ross Rebagliati, those Russian sumo, etc. - can dedicate their entire lives to eating right, working out, honing their bodies and minds to the pinnacle of their sport, but should they wish to relax and unwind, they’re forced to ingest a hard liquid drug that has noticably deleterious effects on health and athletic ability (Max McGee notwithstanding) rather than a mild herb that doesn’t seem to  have affected their abilities whatsoever.

Even more perplexing is the notion that, in the name of “sports medicine”, these athletes are accustomed to taking all manner of narcotic pain killers and other pharmaceutical cocktails that aid performance or mitigate injury, but are addicting (Brett Favre, *cough*,) and wreak havoc on the liver and kidneys, yet if we catch them smoking weed we have to mete out severe punishment (Santonio Holmes, notwithstanding).

As I look at the coverage on Huffington Post (admittedly, a liberal website) almost all comments are “it’s well past time to legalize it” and “so what” and “didn’t hurt Phelps’ performance any”.  Oh, an Obama brother pot bust and an eight-time gold medalist bong photo following ten days of growing drumbeat over President Obama’s non-response to the Tahoe Raid… somebody really did get me a swell birthday present!

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News of the World in the UK is reporting that Olympic swimming sensation Michael Phelps is one of us!

THIS is the astonishing picture which could destroy the career of the greatest competitor in Olympic history.

In our exclusive photo Michael Phelps, who won a record EIGHT gold medals for swimming at the Beijing games last summer, draws from a bong.

And after sporting chiefs announced laws which mean four-year bans for drug-taking, Phelps’ dreams of adding to his overall 14 gold medal tally at the 2012 games in London could already be OVER.

Those dreams seemed the last thing on his mind when he puffed from the bong during two days of partying with students last November, a quiet time in the swimming calendar when athletes would not expect to get tested for drugs.

As he basked in his hero status, Phelps knocked back beers and shots of spirits. And when a student offered him the glass bong engraved with red writing, he did not hesitate, says our source.

Our source said: “You could tell Michael had smoked before. He grabbed the bong and a lighter and knew exactly what to do.

“He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool. He was the gold medal winner of bong hits. Michael ended up getting a little paranoid, though, because before too long he looked like he was nervous and ran out of the place.”

The US Olympics Committee, who have pledged to clamp down on drug use, refused to comment, as did USA Swimming and Phelps’ coach Bob Bowman.

More surprising still was the World Anti-Doping Agency’s refusal to comment, given that they introduced the four-year ban on sport’s drug users.

Spokesman Clifford Bloxham offered us an extraordinary deal not to publish our story, saying Phelps would become our columnist for three years, host events and get his sponsors to advertise with us.

In return, he asked that we kill Phelps’ bong picture. Bloxham said: “It’s seeing if something potentially very negative for Michael could turn into something very positive for the News of the World.”

So, you wanna explain to me how marijuana smoking will make one a lethargic, unmotivated loser who will never get anywhere in life?  This should be fun, watching sponsors and Olympic and USA Swimming officials trip all over themselves.  I expect to see a special exemption or a sudden new rule that lets firt time offenders skate with some sort of class and community service.  Does anybody really think they are going to end Michael Phelps’ career, the greatest Olympian ever, and a huge marketing and endorsement cash cow, for a picture of him doing something that isn’t even criminal in thirteen states?

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“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
April 16, 1963

Today our nation honors what would’ve been this week the eightieth birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of these United States.  I was sixty-four days old when an assassin’s bullet cut down Dr. King in the prime of his life.  Today I am six-hundred forty days older than Dr. King when he was killed.  Tomorrow I will see something few people my age and older thought we’d ever see, yet something Dr. King had dreamed from the start.

There remains a grave injustice to be battled, the most unjust of laws to be disobeyed, a law that by its definition is not rooted in eternal law and natural law: the man made code that declares nature itself to be illegal, the prohibition on cannabis.  Yet when I mention marijuana law reform in the context of the great civil rights struggles in America, so many are quick to dismiss me with snickers of derision.  ”You just want pot legal so you can get high!” is a common refrain.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

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States ponder early release for prisoners – Economy in Turmoil- msnbc.com
NEW YORK – Their budgets in crisis, governors, legislators and prison officials across the nation are making or considering policy changes that will likely remove tens of thousands of offenders from prisons and parole supervision.

In California, faced with a projected $42 billion deficit and prison overcrowding that has triggered a federal lawsuit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to eliminate parole for all offenders not convicted of violent or sex-related crimes, reducing the parole population by about 70,000. He also wants to divert more petty criminals to county jails and grant early release to more inmates — steps that could trim the prison population by 15,000 over the next 18 months.

In Kentucky, where the inmate population had been soaring, even some murderers and other violent offenders are benefiting from a temporary cost-saving program that has granted early release to nearly 2,000 inmates.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is proposing early release of about 1,000 inmates. New York Gov. David Paterson wants early release for 1,600 inmates as well as an overhaul of the so-called Rockefeller Drug Laws that impose lengthy mandatory sentences on many nonviolent drug offenders.

Here’s an idea: how about you stop arresting so many of those non-violent drug offenders in the first place?  Based on the numbers from the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2007:

• California arrested 289,449 people for drugs
• Kentucky arrested 11,883 people for drugs
• Virginia arrested 32,941 people for drugs
• New York arrested 61,163 people for drugs

Now if it is too scary to think about not arresting the users of all illegal drugs, let’s narrow it down to cannabis.  The FBI didn’t give me state-level breakdowns of cannabis arrests, but nationwide cannabis accounts for 47% of all drug arrests.  For the four states mentioned, that’s 185,854 cannabis arrests, and since 89% of those are possession-only arrests, that’s 165,410 otherwise law-abiding pot smokers arrested – not growers, traffickers, or dealers, just tokers.

To be fair, most of these 165,410 don’t spend much more than their booking time in a jail.  But it still takes time, money, and space to prosecute them and that begins to add up.  If these four states mentioned just taxed and regulated cannabis like Jagermeister, combined they’d raise $1.9 billion every year.  That wouldn’t completely solve these states’ budget crises, but it sure would keep a few more actual criminals behind bars.

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WASHINGTON — With the help of CIA spotters, the Peruvian air force shot down 15 small civilian aircraft suspected of carrying drugs, in many cases without warning and within two to three minutes of being sighted, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday.

It is the first public disclosure of the number of planes shot down between 1995 and 2001 as part of the Airbridge Denial Program, a CIA counternarcotics effort that killed an innocent American missionary, Veronica Bowers, and her infant daughter in 2001. A State Department investigation into the incident at the time said the Peruvian fighter jets forced another 23 planes to land.

Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra told The Associated Press most of the 15 planes shot down with the help of the CIA crashed in the jungle. The wreckage has not or could not be examined to ascertain whether narcotics were onboard the aircraft.

Shoot first, ask questions later – it’s a drug war tactic as old as Prohibition.  Let’s suppose that the fourteen other planes that weren’t carrying a missionary and her baby were really carrying large amounts of drugs.  Does that justify the execution of the pilot and passengers with no proof or trial?  We don’t even have the death penalty for drug dealers and traffickers until they’re tried and convicted for amounts in the 60 metric tons and $20 million range, and even then it is only for the kingpin of a continuing criminal enterprise.

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On my nationally-syndicated radio show this morning I had a caller from Las Vegas.  I had been discussing the fallout from Senator Obama’s pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and how his comments, while controversial, aren’t necessarily surprising.  I was referencing Wright’s sermon where he speaks of three strikes laws, drugs in the inner cities, and more young black men in prison than in college and asks, “God bless America?  No, God damn America…”

My caller took great offense to that and ranted about how Obama belonged to this “racist church” for twenty years, and I let him ramble a bit before I asked him about the truth of the disproportionate impact of the drug war on racial minorities.  He then called Wright’s claim about the CIA inventing crack to take down the inner city “bogus” and told me I was believing lies… and that’s where I let him have it.  I try not to be one of those talk radio hosts who shouts over his callers, but whenever I think of poor Gary Webb’s “suicide” after he exposed the connection between the CIA turning a blind eye to and at times assisting the trafficking of cocaine to the inner cities in order to fund black budget illegal wars in Central America, I get a bit upset. Especially when I’ve seen the interviews with the former CIA officers who acknowledged they did just that (well, they didn’t “invent” crack; that’s just CIA-funneled-supply meeting street-level-demand in the form of a few entrepreneurs with some rudimentary chemistry skills).

If you’d like to hear the show, it will be posted Sunday night to my website, RadicalRuss.net; just click on the speaker in the yellow box.  The caller in question hits at about the 42:00 mark.

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