After 11-MONTH Investigation, La. Cops Working With DEA Bust Teens For A Few Grams Of Marijuana, MDMA

The Terrebonne Parish Sheriff's Office Narcotics Task Force, Houma Police Department, State Police Narcotics Division and the DEA working in cahoots for eleven months succeeded in busting a couple of teenagers for a few grams of marijuana, or as they call it, "high-grade marijuana," and a couple pills of ecstasy. 

Houma Today reports:

Five teens were arrested today and one man is wanted after an 11-month investigation ended in police seizing marijuana and other drugs from the suspects' homes and vehicles.

[...]Spencer Savoy, 20, 216 Malibou Drive, Houma, is wanted on two counts of marijuana distribution and one of principal to marijuana distribution, Sheriff Jerry Larpenter said. Agents found 8.9 grams of synthetic MDMA, a digital scale and a box of sandwich bags in his bedroom and 9.5 grams of high-grade marijuana in his vehicle.

Larpenter said the following were arrested on warrants for the following charges:

-- Austin Ferrill, 19, 104 Angelle Circle, Houma, two counts of marijuana distribution, two counts of principal to marijuana distribution, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. He was charged with obstruction of justice and a turn signal violation. 

Agents found .80 grams of marijuana, 10 capsules of synthetic MDMA and 11 hydrocodone pills in Ferrill's bedroom. His bond is $205,000.

-- Cameron Clement, 19, 221 Lake Mechant Court, Houma, one count of marijuana distribution. His bond is $35,000.

-- Jude Boudreaux, 19, 109 McAllen Drive, Houma, one count of marijuana distribution. Agents found 20 grams of high-grade marijuana in his vehicle. His bond is $50,000.

-- Gage Fontana, 19, 207 Malibou Drive, Houma, distribution and possession with intent to distribute marijuana. His bond is $60,000.

-- Dylan Brewer, 17, 200 South Ellendale, Houma, principal to marijuana. He was apprehended at 3902 Southdown Mandalay Road, and his bond is $35,000.

Here's a picture of the hardened criminals they busted:

 

Clearly, the faces of killers.

Notice they say they seized "high-grade" marijuana -- most marijuana these days is "high-grade," that means nothing. 

Fact of the matter is "high-grade" marijuana is said to be safer for people than "low-grade" marijuana as you smoke less of it to get the same high and therefor inhale less smoke into your lungs. Nonetheless, the DEA loves to use such inflated terms to make their actions seem less petty. 

These cops working together with the feds spent almost an entire year spying on these kids and this is all they could come up with, a few grams of pot, a few pills of MDMA and "a turn signal violation."

How much taxpayer money were these cops paid over this past year? In terms of value to taxpayers, this has produced nothing. In fact, it's a net drag on the economy as taxpayers will have to pay for their prosecution and potential imprisonment, the "investigation" which led to their arrests, and lose any tax money and value the kids would have created through work if they got real jobs -- all this because they dared to partake in the same drug admittedly used by the current President of the United States.

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This Device Brings ‘Brave New World’ to Life

If you could have a device implanted in your brain that could bring instant nirvana at the press of a button, would you want it? Daily Beast says it’s coming and has neuroethicists in a bind:

Last week, a team of researchers developed a new implant that has the ability to wirelessly deliver drugs directly into the brain with the press of a button, like changing the channel on a TV.

No wider than a strand of human hair, the device combines brain implants with a remote control drug delivery system. With the ability to genetically modify individual neurons, the implant inevitably calls up dystopian fictions from the likes of Vonnegut’s Harry Bergeron or Huxley’s Brave New World.

To demonstrate the amount of control this device is capable of, investigators made mice walk in circles by injecting a morphine-like drug directly into their ventral tegmental area (VTA), a brain region responsible for motivation and reward.

With rapid technological advancements that tinker with the most complex organic structure in the known universe, serious moral and ethical questions are bound to arise. That’s where neuroethicists come in.

The Daily Beast reached out to several leading thinkers in the field of neuroethics to get their opinions on this astonishing (yet creepy-sounding) device.

One neuroethicist, Dr. Peter Reiner, told The Daily Beast that this newest advancement is “is no different than previous work that used electrodes or injections of substances into the brain (of animals), but does so with considerably greater finesse.” He called this latest development a “technical tour de force.”

However, Dr. Frederic Gilbert, a researcher in bioethics at the Australian Research Council, errs on the side of caution. In an email, he wrote, “As in many fields, the ethical questions are often raised too late in the development of novel technologies; optogenetics is no stranger to this.”…

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Universities are using data analytics to assess a students mental health and much more

Currently there are 150 universities in the U.S. using "

Skyfactor

" which monitors and assesses a students tests scores. Schools are also assessing how "COOPERATIVE" your parents are!

"Skyfactor advertises itself as a risk management service, promising to help academics “quickly see which students need attention and resources now — before it’s too late”. Course tutors are given access to a dashboard that documents each student’s class attendances, assessment grades, participation in sports practices, and visits to the campus financial aid officer. "

A door icon placed next to each students name, is either closed or open. If the icon is "closed" it means the student isn't likely to leave the institution early, but if the icon is "open" then the school could lose thousands of dollars if he or she leaves the institution!

Skyfactor also monitors EVERY students grades, if their high grades drop, or their passion for university sports begins to wane,Skyfactor will flag these individuals in red.

David McNally, chief technology officer at Macmillan Science and Education, which owns Skyfactor, says the early warning mechanism is beneficial for all involved. “In the US more than the UK . . . losing a student is a very expensive loss to an institution because they pay high annual fees,” he says. “If you can get to a student before they drop out, you can keep them in the institution.”

McNally insists the information is “being used for the greater good, which is better education for everybody”. He insists it is not only students being tracked: the same programs that measure their performance are being used to compare how effective their tutors are and how well one school is teaching its pupils compared with another. In the future, it will be possible to compare entire local education authorities.Andrew Campbell

 a computer science professor at 

Dartmouth University

 believes students could reap bigger long-term benefits if they allow their data to be shared with their student dean, professor or clinician, who could make external interventions.

Of course Professor Campbell wants to spy on students, he helped develop a smartphone app that spies on students mental health 24/7 called the 

StudentLife app

. Click 

here

 to read his study.

“The StudentLife app is able to continuously make mental health assessment 24/7, opening the way for a new form of assessment,”

 says Professor Campbell, the study’s senior author. “

This is a very important and exciting breakthrough.”"Campbell admits that the study involved a “very invasive form of monitoring..."

Don't be surprised when universities force EVERY student to have "The StudentLife" app installed on their cellphones.

Schools are also assessing how "COOPERATIVE" your parents are!

The Tewksbury Public Schools system in MA., inadvertently released confidential student data earlier this year along with this stunner:

"Though it did not feature student names, it included several identifying factors for special-education students with out-of-district placements, including students' grade levels, schools and Individualized Education Program information. It also included a ranking of parents based on how "cooperative" they were.The list, which replaces student names with numbers, remains in alphabetical order. Information included the student’s current grade, the out-of-district school, the last school attended, the year the student began attending the new school, information on whether or not the decision was made by the IEP team, a legal settlement (typically kept strictly confidential), or if the student moved in from another town, and miscellaneous detail such as the involvement of the Department of Children and Families, passage of MCAS assessments, and more.The office of Student Services also published its rating of parents according to their ‘cooperativeness with the district.’ Parents rated a ‘1’ are cooperative, ‘2’ somewhat cooperative, and those rated ‘3’ are ‘not cooperative.’

Try not to laugh as the Mass. Dept of Education spokesperson claims they don't give anyone assessments.

As to the ranking of parents for their cooperativeness with the district, Jacqueline Reis, spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education said, “I have not heard of ranking parents. That’s not something that we’ve advised districts to do.”

Universities worldwide are spying on students ebook reading habits:

"

CourseSmart

" gives university customers a window into exactly how often e-textbooks are being read.  CourseSmart can show educators which individuals have read which pages on any given day.

CourseSmart's materials operate via a cloud service, so every time users access a new page, it's tracked in the same way as web page views." "CourseSmart was founded in 2007 by Macmillan, Cengage Learning, John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill Education and Pearson with a simple goal of providing instructors a better textbook evaluation service. CourseSmart has millions of users around the world and offers access to over 90 percent of core higher education titles as e-textbooks along with the largest catalog of e-resources and digital course materials." 

"

Vital Source

" is the largest, most accessible digital content channel in the world. 

The VitalSource Bookshelf platform is the most used e-textbook delivery platform in higher education with more than 4 million users across 6,000 campuses around the world. It uses the latest technology to enhance the learning experience through e-textbooks and digital education. Content from more than 500 of the world's top academic publishers is available to VitalSource Bookshelf platform users, including those living with disabilities, on a variety of operating systems and devices.

Click 

here

 & 

here

 to read how individual American addresses and travel in the U.S. are being assigned risk assessments!

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G4S, the controversial British outsourcing firm's for-profit juvenile detention facility 'a disgrace to Florida', says grand jury

G4S, the controversial British outsourcing firm behind the disastrous security provision at the London Olympics, has been accused of running a “disgraceful” juvenile detention centre in Florida.

The Highlands Youth Academy (HYA) in Avon Park, a facility for young men aged 16 to 19 that was the site of a riot involving more than 130 children two years ago, was described as “a disgrace to the state of Florida” by a grand jury report that called for it to be closed down.

The excoriating 21-page report, unsealed last week, details a string of criticisms, including dilapidated buildings, unclean sanitary facilities, undertrained and poorly equipped staff and failure to report incidents of children escaping.

“What we have discovered at the Highlands Youth Academy simply cannot be what our Legislature and state leaders have intended for our juvenile justice system,” the jurors wrote. “While the citizens are essentially being ripped off – the juveniles are being even more poorly served. The Highlands Youth Academy should cease to exist.”

 The grand jury called the Highlands Youth Academy’s conditions a ‘disgrace’. Photograph: State attorney's office of the 10th judicial circuit in Florida

G4S

, which is set to make a $4m profit from the facility over five years and runs 28 other juvenile detention centres in the state, said the grand jury’s report contained “multiple factual errors and misstatements”.

Photos released to the Guardian by the state attorney’s office reveal living quarters described by the grand jury as “disgraceful”: bedrooms with exposed plywood walls where children slept on steel bunk beds, and bathrooms with unpainted plaster and more plywood with peeling and dilapidated fixtures and fittings.

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