Swiss cops sniff out dope plantation on Google Earth Swiss police reported yesterday they "stumbled across" a sizeable dope plantation which had helpfully been captured on Google Earth, AP reports. The happy find came last year during an investigation into an alleged drug ring. Officers were using Google Earth to find the addresses of a couple of farmers suspected of involvement …
In these times of economic uncertainty and depression, the Swiss police have succeeded in closing down an immensely profitable business that employed a significant number of people.
Yes, the business was - strictly speaking - in contravention of some 'law' or other but come on! Shurely desperate times require desperate measures so it's time for the Swiss plods to get a little creative in their application of these 'laws' and to allow the spirit on entrepeneurism to drag us back from the edge of the economic abyss.
were quite liberal when it came to pot.
One way out of the economic black hole of despair we find ourselves in, is to legalise pot, create a new economy, bring it out of the black economy, have some nice coffee houses, and people thinking the big thoughts for economic recovery.
My bet though is Labour will do the opposite, and oh yes they have, they have moved it back up the list of dangerous drugs.
I do wonder if the swiss police tested some to see how "good" or "bad" it was...
Why when I read this story did I get images of the "toffs" from Lock, Stock n Two smoking barrels and maybe a bit of Layer Cake as well...
Yes so where is the obigitry google earth / map link just so we can erm "check" it out...
They already are a little creative in applying the law, although in a different sense. As we all know, the WEF is going on in Davos. And as it happened there, some shop owner put some Tibetan stuff on display in his/her shop window. He was 'asked' by the police to remove this things based on the overstretching of a anti demonstration act.
It looks like they're getting closer to conditions such as in the UK...
@AC have a look at
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=thurgau&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=12.918331,38.452148&ie=UTF8&ll=47.595977,9.152985&spn=0.46026,1.20163&t=h&z=10&iwloc=addr
It can't be that difficult. After all, Switzerland is a rather tiny place and it's only part of it.
EA
That was the reason we never penetrated too deeply into the fields when picking corn as a youngster in NZ - you never knew which ones might have a pot patch in the middle. The cops would hire light planes during the summer.
And wandering through the pine forests of the Bay of Plenty could be downright dangerous.
I understand your sentiment, or at least I think I do, but I have to ask - where does a civil society under tough economic pressure draw the line at being 'creative' about previously illegal money-making ventures? Let's say the drug in question was heroin rather than weed - still OK to help out the national economy with that? How about a gigantic fraud ring located in Switzerland - still OK? How about manufacturing nuclear dirty bombs and suicide vests to sell to terrorists? Hey, I know, how about human trafficking? Ooh here's a good one - international murder for hire - killing people on contract in any country but Switzerland. Is it still OK for the national economy to benefit from that endeavour?
The reason that most peoples stay away from slippery slopes such as the one you've proposed is that simply using the ability to generate money as your only criterion for making moral and ethical judgments usually ends badly. When considered through your eyes, the issue at hand may represent an acceptable risk, but once unleashed, the impetus of pure unadulterated greed will eventually turn around to violate some other social covenant that's more near and dear for you.
Christ, you can always guarantee that there's some f*cking wowser who turns up and ruins the party - and today that is YOU.
What is it with people who have a massive chip on their shoulder about anything vaguely cannabis related that they have a complete absence of humour. Oh yeah, now growing pot = manufacturing dirty bombs, why stop there - I'm sure in your mind that you could somehow rationalise that lighting a blunt is the main contributing factor in global warming. Nice attempt at looking intellectual, but your comments are only vaguely coherent. Why dont to just go and suck on a big bong for a while and chill out.
(either that or you already have and you're just Trolling)
now, where were we
I know that the Swiss are leaders in pharmeceuticals but I'm quite impressed that you can grow good quality oudoor weed in Switzerland. Now I know that HASH actually stands for High Altitude Skunk Horticulture.
@ Simon Blakeley, you should have tried growing up in Tokoroa mate, those massive pine forrests weren't just full of trees. It was considered a perk of working in the bush that you were free to help yourself when felling.
those flames are from my zippo
sorry mate, but "Let's say the drug in question was heroin/nukes/murder rather than weed" does rather change the argument.
John was suggesting that the enforcement of law could be less aggressively pursued, based on the benefits and harms to the host society.
Freedom, if you believe in it, has to allow people to do stuff that has a potential to cause them harm.
A few years ago, a small-operation farmer in my home town of Columbia, Illinois (USA) decided he would do a little cash cropping of his own ... about 15 acres of it.
So that it wouldn't be seen, he planted a 10-foot wide swath of Sunflowers (they grow very tall and dense, you know) around the square-proportioned 15 acre pot-field.
He was right ... you sure couldn't see it ... unless of course, you were flying a State Police Traffic Helicopter over the interstate running right next to it.
He got 12 years.
Paris: She's smokin' hot (not pot)
where is the morality in banning a plant? i fail to see the extension from smoking a spliff to selling a bomb vest? that's a pointless and silly argument. Alcohol kills people, it causes them to do very stupid things. There will be violence, car crashes and teenage pregnancies happening tonight because of alcohol. me? i'll be home with a couple of cups of coffee, a few fat joints and season 4 of red dwarf. nobody will be injured, and tomorrow i'll get up and go to work with a clear head.
Pot wouldn't need dealers if it were legalized. It's a weed. It grows almost everywhere. Anyone who wanted it could simply toss their seeds in the back garden, pick out the males, and be set year round. The only downside to this would bee the regular friendly visits from neighbors wanting a dimebag.
If you've seen the resolution available from Google Maps/Earth over rural Switzerland, you may find this story rather bullshitty.
If you could differentiate rows of corn from an apple orchard, you'd be doing well, much less discern cannabis from corn. Moreover, most imagery used for Google Maps/Earth is a couple of years old in most cases, not terribly conducive to spotting cannabis grows, given they are annual plants. Few Google images are updated frequently enough to make them of any use in spotting crops of annuals.
Sounds like LEO is going on a bit of a terrorising expedition here.
meh...
Well, these busts are all for show. Just like the rat catchers, wrestlers and roach hunters, some are always left for future employment.
Without drugs, arms smuggling and the trade in human flesh the profit rate would fall catastrophically, cos these areas of investment have such a high profit rate that (equalized out) it keeps the general rate of profit higher than it would be otherwise.
That's why the opium poppy is bigger than ever in Afghanistan. Coca in Colombia, etc. The white slave trade as it used to be known is globalizing with the speed of a bushfire, and weapons are accumulating everywhere. Wait till China and India get arming the citizens...
Booze and coffin nails are also good earners and bringers of death, but too deeply rooted in our "culture" to be banned - too dangerous, ie too big a threat to the state monopoly of violence and terror, as Prohibition showed back during the (oh dear) Great Depression...
Unemployment is good for profits too - keeps wages low. The next-best thing to war for profits, though, is the "peaceful" destruction of capital going on at the moment.
But that's probably another story.
(Paris, cos for the likes of us, she's another story altogether...)
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