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Piggycide? Farmers Considered Felons in Michigan, Forced to Mass Slaughter their Healthy Pigs
In the heart of Western Michigan are picturesque rural towns that are now a backdrop to a raging battle between farmers and the government. The Department of Natural Resources in Michigan has deemed a certain type of pigs an invasive species. Farmers have been ordered to slaughter every last one of their pigs and piglets and farmers that don’t comply are now faced with jail time and a felony. But some farmers are putting up a fight. RT Correspondent Liz Wahl and Photojournalist Jon Conway traveled to Michigan to investigate what’s really behind the swine carnage.
U.S. secretly released prisoners in Afghanistan: Report
The United States has been secretly releasing detainees from a military prison in Afghanistan as part of negotiations with insurgent groups, the Washington Post reported in its Monday editions.
The “strategic release” program has allowed American officials over the past several years to use prisoners as bargaining chips to reduce violence in restive provinces, it said, citing U.S. officials who it said spoke on condition of anonymity.
The freed detainees are often fighters who would not be released under the legal system for military prisoners in Afghanistan. They must promise to give up violence, the report said.
Officials would not say whether those who have been released have later returned to attack U.S. and Afghan troops, the Post said.
Court: Former Bush official cannot be sued over ‘enemy combatant’ memos
Washington (CNN) — A convicted American terrorist plotter and his mother lost another legal round Wednesday in their efforts to hold accountable a former Bush administration official who issued legal memos supporting harsh interrogation techniques for suspected enemy combatants.
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit from Jose Padilla and his mother, Estela Lebron, who claimed the man’s constitutional rights were violated when he was held for years in solitary confinement at a military prison in South Carolina.
The issue was whether John Yoo, who worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, deserved “qualified immunity” as a government official from such suits. A federal judge earlier had said the litigation could proceed.
U.S. quarantines two dairies after mad cow case
WASHINGTON – Two California dairy farms are under quarantine and a calf ranch is under investigation following discovery of the latest U.S. case of mad cow disease, but the government on Wednesday said the actions were standard procedure and there was no threat to the food supply.
Also, a calf born to the infected cow was found and tested negative for the disease.
Cattle records at the two dairies are being matched to determine if any at-risk cattle are on the farms, said the Agriculture Department.
USDA said the infected cow was a rare “atypical” case of the disease, meaning it arose spontaneously rather than through the feed supply. However, it is USDA’s standard procedure to search for other cattle, offspring or herd mates, that might be exposed to the fatal disease, even though mad cow disease is not contagious.
Student abandoned in DEA holding cell drank own urine to survive
Daniel Chong, a 24-year old student at UC San Diego, was taken into custody during a drug raid and abandoned in a holding cell for five days without food or water, according to NBC San Diego.
“They never came back, ignored all my cries and I still don’t know what happened,” he said. “I’m not sure how they could forget me.”
On April 21, Drug Enforcement Agents raided an apartment where Chong and his friends were smoking marijuana. Nine people were arrested and the agents reportedly seized ecstasy pills, marijuana, prescription medication, psychedelic mushrooms and weapons, according to CBS 8 News. Seven of those arrested were taken to jail and one was released.
Disabled parents fight to keep newborn at home
A disabled couple in Mississauga are fighting to keep their newborn son after social workers threatened to take the boy away unless he receives round-the-clock care from an “able-bodied attendant.”
Maricyl Palisoc and her partner, Charles Wilton, are the parents of a healthy month-old baby boy named William. Both parents have cerebral palsy, a disorder that limits their motor skills and slurs their speech, but has no effect on their cognitive abilities.
However, the Peel Children’s Aid Society is concerned about the couple’s ability to take care of their son and has expressed an intention to remove William from their home unless his parents secure 24-hour care from an able-bodied person.
The boy’s mother told CBC that she and her partner do not want to lose their son.
2,000 Palestinian Prisoners on Hunger Strike and Zero News Coverage
There are currently 2000 Palestinians on hunger strike in Israeli prisons, though judging by the lack of coverage of the story in the mainstream media you’d never know it. Two of the prisoners involved are now in a critical condition, having been on hunger strike for 60 days and counting. They are protesting prison conditions, including the widespread use of solitary confinement, lack of medical treatment, and most importantly the use by the Israelis of the prisoner category described as administrative detention.
Under this particular category prisoners can be held indefinitely at the behest of the military without any charges being brought, no trial, or even so much as a hearing to be made aware of the evidence against them. Currently, over 300 Palestinians are being held in Israeli prisons and detentions centers under administrative detention, including six women and six children.
According to the website of the Palestinian prisoner support organization Addameer,
19 of the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike are being kept in solitary confinement. One of those, Ahmad Sa’adat, has been held in isolation for three years and is yet to be charged with a crime.
It is also claimed that the Israeli prison authorities are waging a campaign of punishment against the hunger strikers, which includes daily raids on their cells, the confiscation of personal belongings, cutting their electricity supply, and various other measures deemed illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
RFK assassination witness tells CNN: There was a second shooter
As a federal court prepares to rule on a challenge to Sirhan Sirhan’s conviction in the Robert F. Kennedy assassination, a long overlooked witness to the murder is telling her story: She heard two guns firing during the 1968 shooting and authorities altered her account of the crime.
Nina Rhodes-Hughes wants the world to know that, despite what history says, Sirhan was not the only gunman firing shots when Senator Kennedy was murdered a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel.
Obama and Bill Clinton campaign together
Former President Bill Clinton gave a rousing endorsement of fellow Democrat Barack Obama in his first 2012 campaign appearance with the president on Sunday night, and helped him raise more than $2 million.
A white-haired and svelte Clinton, 65, pounded the podium and pointed at the crowd while addressing about 500 Obama supporters outside the Virginia home of his friend and Democratic adviser Terry McAuliffe.
“I think he’s done a good job,” he told the crowd in his signature raspy voice, warmly introducing the man who beat his wife, Hillary Clinton, to win the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination and then made her secretary of state. “We are going the right direction under President Obama’s leadership.”
In Vast Jungle, U.S. Troops Aid in Search for Kony
OBO, Central African Republic — It has got to be one of the oddest matchups in United States military history.
One hundred of America’s elite Special Operations troops, aided by night vision scopes and satellite imagery, are helping African forces find a wig-wearing, gibberish-speaking fugitive rebel commander named Joseph Kony who has been hiding out in the jungle for years with a band of child soldiers and a harem of dozens of child brides.
No one knows exactly where Mr. Kony is, but here in Obo, at a remote forward operating post in the Central African Republic, Green Berets pore over maps and interview villagers, hopeful for a clue.
Their biggest challenge, they say, is Mr. Kony’s turf, a vast expanse the size of California in the middle of Africa that is so rugged it renders much of the American gadgetry useless. Picture towering trees that blot out the sun, endless miles of elephant grass, and swirling brown rivers that coil like intestines and are infested with crocodiles; one of them recently ate a Ugandan member of the force.
Man Shoots Unmanned Police ‘Speed Enforcement’ Vehicle In Sante Fe
Via Talking Points Memo: “One Santa Fe man is fighting back against the city’s program to crack down on people who speed by taking the matter into his own hands — literally. A video released Friday shows an elderly gentleman clad in a white nightgown pull up next to an unmanned speed-enforcement vehicle at about 1:20 a.m and casually unload five gunshots into the windshield before proceeding to drive off…”.* Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur break it down on The Young Turks.
Watergate figure, Christian leader Chuck Colson dies
(CNN) – Chuck Colson, a Watergate-era “hatchet man” for President Richard Nixon who became an influential evangelical leader after serving time in prison, died Saturday afternoon, according to his website.
He was 80.
Colson suffered a brain hemorrhage in late March.
Colson was the first Nixon aide to be convicted of Watergate-related charges in the 1972 scandal.
