Posts in category North America
Written by Occupy Bilderberg 2012
The annual Bilderberg conference is taking place from May 31 to June 3 in Chantilly Virginia. Help send Dan and Steve of Press For Truth to provide coverage of this important meeting of some of the worlds most powerful and influential people.
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.
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.
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.
Omar Khadr transfer up to Ottawa
OTTAWA – Convicted terrorist Omar Khadr is one bureaucratic step closer to being repatriated to Canada.
On Wednesday, Public Safety Minister Vic Toews confirmed he’d received a formal transfer application in the Khadr case.
If approved by Toews, Khadr would be transferred to Canada from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where he’s been in custody for about ten years.
“A decision will be made on this file in accordance with Canadian law,” Toews’ spokeswoman Julie Carmichael said Wednesday.
Report: British Member of Parliament puts $16 million bounty on Obama, George W. Bush
British Lord Nazir Ahmed put a £10 million ($16 million) bounty on both President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush Friday, according to The Express Tribune, an English language Pakistani newspaper.
Nazir, who is of Pakistani heritage and a member of the British House of Lords, reportedly made the comments while at a reception in Haripur, a Pakistani city 4o miles north of Islamabad. Nazir told the audience that he was putting the bounty out for the capture of the American leaders in response to the bounty placed on Hafiz Muhammad Saeed by the United States.
“If the U.S. can announce a reward of $10 million for the captor of Hafiz Saeed, I can announce a bounty of 10 million pounds on President Obama and his predecessor George Bush,” Nazir reportedly said.
