Hands Up If You Live In A Constitution-Free Zone!

[rstrong]

Remember, hemp is grown legally in Canada and many other countries around the world. And yet - despite being perfectly legal - it doesn't have a very large market because it simply isn't the wonder material that the conspiracy theorists claim.

You don't have externalized costs for the other products in Canada?

Well sure. The point still stands.

The Dupont/Nylon claim is pure BS because nylon rope didn't replace hemp. It replaced Manila, which was never banned.

Did I say rope? Hemp and nylon are both fabrics, not just rope. I do prefer nylon rope for most uses.

Fabrics....? Nylon never much competed with hemp. It replaced mostly cotton and wool.

If wood paper production ceased tomorrow the profit from raw wood for those other uses would drop immediately. That's basic supply and demand.

If all the wood cellulose supply is still there and suddenly a hemp cellulose supply also appears, the price of cellulose is going to drop. Mega-scale cellulose consumers like Hearst's newspapers would make more profit. That's basic supply and demand.

It doesn't make sense for Hearst to kill off hemp production. If hemp were a viable alternative to wood, he would have welcomed it.

That's what I said, as it turns the fear of competition was largely unfounded out but it existed, partly due to the United States Department of Agriculture report that was later debunked that is mentioned just before you started quoting.

Again, the inaccuracy of the report makes it less likely to be banned, not more.

Because of externalized costs. Cotton sucks for the environment.

High-yield hemp crops still require fertilizer. The pest problems that appear when you grow a single crop on a massive scale would likely appear for hemp also.

And of course if you're growing hemp for cloth - by far the largest market - you'll be growing cotton anyway. (You need to mix hemp with 50-50 with cotton to get a wearable fabric.) (And I'm sure the Christians here will point out that this is strictly forbidden by Leviticus. )

We have the wrong climate for cotton here in Canada. Hemp on the other hand grows nicely here. There's still no significant market.

Here, they've contributed to the war on drugs. I don't know about elsewhere. Plus, as I said, the far bigger opponent now is the prison-industrial complex.

The hemp part of the war on drugs is ending, to be replaced by new crimes. Cell phone unlocking. Piracy. Transferring a legally purchased movie from one device to another. You can even go to jail for violating the 23-page-tiny-print click-through agreement on a web site. SOPA suffered a setback, but it's already being reintroduced under other bills.

I haven't said that it's a "wonder material", haven't defended any pro-hemp extremists, nor said that it would completely replace alternatives, just that it would do better if those alternatives couldn't externalize their costs.

This seems to be the main argument, and I'm not sure how much I trust it. To me it appears to come from the same sources as unrealistic claims of higher cellulose content and no fertilizer needed.

The externalized costs - water, pesticides, fertilizer - are very real non-externalized costs for farmers. If hemp could do without, that makes it far more competitive. And still, where it's legal to grow, it's not cheap enough to be a viable alternative to cotton and wool.

[Wneglia]

Help Put A Stop To Warrantless Drones Spying On Americans (petition)

Local law enforcement agencies are planning to use cheap drones technology to conduct criminal investigations without a warrant or any judicial authorizations, posing a serious threat to every American’s privacy.

A bill recently passed in Virginia places a moratorium on the use of drones by law enforcement for two years. It's currently sitting on the governor’s desk, waiting to be signed. With a big push from around the country, we can help the first domino to fall in a national rethink on the use of domestic drones. Sign the petition to Governor Bob McDonnell asking him to sign the bill into law.

Dear Governor McDonnell,

“Protect our privacy by signing the bill putting a moratorium on law enforcement's use of domestic drones in Virginia."

Is this a mosquito?
No. It's an insect spy drone for urban areas, already in production, funded by the US Government. It can be remotely controlled and is equipped with a camera and a microphone. It can land on you, and it may have the potential to take a DNA sample or leave RFID tracking nanotechnology on your skin. It can fly through an open window, or it can attach to your clothing until you take it in your home.

[O Really]

It would be fun to know where Doc read that...Google the first three sentences and they turn up verbatim in some, ummmm, "interesting" publications and sites.

[Sometime Lefty]

Can anyone explain the difference between a drone taking video of an area and a video camera taking video of an area? Please contain answer to todays technology and not possible future developments.

[O Really]

Can anyone explain the difference between a drone taking video of an area and a video camera taking video of an area? Please contain answer to todays technology and not possible future developments.

Or satellite?

[O Really]

Satellites only get the view from above, are limited by their orbital paths and numbers, and each pic is very expensive. Drones, currently can be deployed in far greater numbers for far cheaper and, potentially, could get pics from all angles, anywhere.

Yeah, yeah, but I took Lefty's question to be related to privacy, not necessarily the technicality of the tool. Maybe I was wrong. I took it to mean, "if it's OK to use a video-cam at a toll booth, what's the difference in using a drone over the road?" If that were the question, I'd think it would be a matter of a changing definition of what constitutes a "public" area. There basically is no privacy, or reasonable expectation of privacy in a public area any more. Whether in stores, on roads, city streets, airports, yada - you're gonna be on Candid Camera. But instead of fixed cameras in static locations, you have drones capable of looking under shelters and through windows, you start to blur the line between public space and private space. For example, cops don't need a warrant for something they find "in clear sight" right? Does that have to be with the naked eye? Theoretically, the ARGUS-IS http://www.darpa.mil/Our_Work/I2O/Progr ... S-IS).aspx can see what kind of phone you're using from 17,500 ft. And even if that is an exaggeration, it can certainly see things that under the "old" definition would not be considered a "public" area.

[Wneglia]

Using http://www.tineye.com/ reverse image search I found the pic first appearing on Russian and Hungarian sites. I first found the pic/wording combo at newsrescue.com, without any skepticism offered as to the authenticity. It credits the pic/wording combo to DDees.com, a political satire site.



Good question. Where did you find it, Wneglia, and why didn't you link us? Would you like me to move these posts to the "A Nutjob A Day" thread?

Found it on Facebook. Thought it liven up the discussion, as it did.

[Sometime Lefty]

Yep I was talking of privacy. So does it matter if they use HD video cameras or HD drone video, if both are used to look at public space or private property with the owners consent?

And as far as looking into windows, a few years ago there was a case of police driving around and looking for grow houses with their IFR, they found one and arrested the grower. Later it was thrown out of court because it was considered an illegal search. As far as looking in windows without a warrant we should be protected by the constitution (of course the way it is being ignored maybe in the future they won't need a warrant so the technology they use wouldn't matter).

[rstrong]

Wired: DHS Watchdog OKs ‘Suspicionless’ Seizure of Electronic Devices Along Border

Back in 2008 the Bush II administration announced that Homeland Security was granting itself the right to seize and search laptops, cell phones and other electronics, anywhere within 100 miles of the nation's borders - for any reason whatsoever. No grounds for suspicion was needed. The coastlines are considered borders.

According to legal precedent, the Fourth Amendment - the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures - does not apply along the border. (Again, including the coasts.) This puts the majority of the American population outside the protection of the Fourth Amendment.

The Obama administration followed up with virtually the same rules a year later. Between 2008 and 2010, 6,500 persons had their devices searched.

In 2009 the DHS announced that it would conduct a “Civil Liberties Impact Assessment” of its policy "within 120 days." More than three years later, the results are in: Suspicionless search-and-seizure is just peachy-keen.

At some point not long after this story, someone in the US government declared that the "Constitution-Free Zone" was purely hypothetical, not real, because you wouldn't really lose your rights there. Move on, citizen.

Techdirt: Border Patrol Agents Tase Woman For Refusing To Cooperate With Their Bogus Search

Cooke was driving from Norfolk to her boyfriend's house in Ogdensburg, the northern border of which is the St. Lawrence River. If you cross the river, you are in Canada, but Cooke was not crossing the river. She nevertheless became subject to the arbitrary orders of CBP agents by driving through one of the country's many internal immigration checkpoints, which can be located anywhere within 100 miles of the border (a zone that includes two-thirds of the U.S. population).