Monthly Archives: May 2012

Obama Administration uses post-9/11 “Bank Secrecy Act” to target Small Farm family

open quoteOver the past few years, agencies under the Obama administration have been commencing full scale raids on individual farmers, as well as on family farms, under the auspices of non-legislative regulation created by the ATF, EPA, and FDA. These raids focussed on several agricultural areas that included the sale of raw milk, grazing on federal lands, water collection and usage, and the raising of certain categories of swine.

On April 23rd however, the stakes got much higher for the individual farmer as the FDA is now using the terrorist based “Bank Secrecy Act” as justification to invade, investigate, and even confiscate the bank accounts of Americans in the agricultural business.

Now, Obama has the Dept. of Justice going after small farmers under the post-911 “Bank Secrecy Act” which makes it a crime to deposit less than $10,000 when you earned more than that.

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Israel to revive razing of homes as form of punishment

open quoteEhud Barak, Israel’s increasingly hawkish defence minister, approved an intelligence recommendation to demolish the houses of Hakim and Ajmad Awad, two cousins from the Palestinian village of Awarta.

The decision, the first of its kind in nearly seven years, will render the wives and children of both men homeless.

The two Palestinians are serving life sentences for the murders of Ehud and Ruth Fogel, as well as three of their six children, in the West Bank settlement of Itamar in March, 2011.

The dead included a three-month-old infant and a four-year-old boy stabbed to death in a frenzied attack that horrified Israel.

The Israeli authorities abandoned the once common practice of punitive demolitions in 2005 after facing heavy international criticism.close quote (Read more)

Man, 95, says $300 taken during humiliating airport search

open quoteA 95-year-old Michigan man says he was subjected to humiliating searches by security guards at San Diego International Airport and that his $300 went missing during the process.

Omer Petti, 95, said he believes an airport employee stole the cash that he was told to remove from his pocket and place in a bin on his way through security on March 29. He and his girlfriend, Madge Woodward, 85, were headed home after a family vacation in Palm Springs.

“I got set up, and they took my money,” said Petti, who has written letters to the Transportation Security Administration, elected officials and President Barack Obama demanding investigations.close quote (Read more)

TSA agents forced crying 4-year-old to undergo TSA pat-down at Kan. airport after hug

open quoteFrom The Washington Post:

WICHITA, Kan. — The grandmother of a 4-year-old girl who became hysterical during a security screening at a Kansas airport said Wednesday that the child was forced to undergo a pat-down after hugging her, with security agents yelling and calling the crying girl an uncooperative suspect.

The incident has been garnering increasing media and online attention since the child’s mother, Michelle Brademeyer of Montana, detailed the ordeal in a public Facebook post last week. The Transportation Security Administration is defending its agents, despite new procedures aimed at reducing pat-downs of children.

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TSA Reveals Passenger Complaints … Four Years Later

open quoteFrom intrusive pat-downs to body scans to perceived profiling, the Transportation Security Administration always seems to be the target of complaints.

Here’s another one: It took the TSA almost four years to tell me what people complained about — in 2008.

In my first week at ProPublica in June 2008, I filed a public records request for the agency’s complaint files. Such records can provide good fodder for investigations.

For example, amid the brouhaha over the agency’s introduction of intensive full-body pat-downs in 2004, I requested complaints and discovered an untold story of the pain and humiliation suffered by rape victims and breast cancer survivors. In one incident that I found from that request — while I was a reporter at the Dallas Morning News — a woman complained that a screener asked her to remove her prosthetic breast to be swabbed for explosives.

When I made a similar FOIA request in 2008, I assumed the TSA would respond in a few months. Government agencies have about a month to respond to public record requests, though they often take longer.close quote (Read more)

Beating of Alabama Man Not Being Investigated As Hate Crime

open quoteA racially charged beating of a white Alabama man by a throng of African-Americans is not being investigated as a hate crime, despite one witness’ claim that she heard an assailant exclaim: “Now that’s justice for Trayvon.”

Matthew Owens, of Mobile, Ala., was assaulted with baseball bats, paint cans and other weapons at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday after telling a group of children to stop playing basketball in the middle of Delmar Drive, according to Ashley Rains, public information officer for the Mobile Police Department.close quote (Read more)

Most Israeli citizens don’t want a war with Iran

open quoteAt a public meeting on Friday Diskin, former head of Shin Bet (Israel’s MI5), described Netanyahu and Barak as “not fit to hold the steering wheel of power”. He went on: “I have observed them from up close … They are not people who I, on a personal level, trust to lead Israel to an event on that scale and carry it off … They tell the public that if Israel acts, Iran won’t have a nuclear bomb. This is misleading. Actually, many experts say that an Israeli attack would accelerate the Iranian nuclear race.”

Diskin joins a long list of eminent members of the Israeli security establishment who have publicly voiced criticism of, and opposition to, their government’s ultra-hawkish line on Iran. In fact, his astonishing attack on his former bosses came just 48 hours after the head of Israel’s military, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, declared that the Iranian leadership had not yet made a decision to build nuclear weapons, that it was unlikely to go this “extra mile”, and was composed of “very rational people”. “Decisions must be made carefully out of historic responsibility but without hysteria,” added Gantz in a not-too-subtle dig at his political masters.close quote (Read more)