Category Archives: Special Reports

The Senate’s narrow approval of fossil fuel-defender Bernard McNamee for a seat on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday provoked anger and dismay from climate action groups, which have demanded the Trump administration listen to scientists and the American people and end its efforts to prop up “dirty, dying, and dangerous” energy industries. Continue reading →

America honors its worst. Throughout his career as a House member, UN envoy, GOP National Committee chairman, ambassador to China, CIA director, vice president and president, GHW Bush was an unapologetic imperial spear carrier. Continue reading →

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.—Nearly a decade of vexatious civil litigation in Palm Beach County court between convicted underage sex molester Jeffrey Epstein and Fort Lauderdale trial attorney, Bradley Edwards, who represented pro bono many of Epstein’s victims, concluded rapidly on December 4 after Edwards’s attorney, Jack Scarola, announced an out-of-court settlement between Epstein and Edwards. Under the terms of the agreement, termed a “surrender” by Epstein, a confidential financial settlement was reached in favor of Edwards and an apology by Epstein to Edwards for wrongly suing him in an effort to “damage his reputation” and divert attention from Epstein’s victims. The Epstein suit was designed to force Edwards to abandon Epstein’s victims, including Courtney Wild, formerly known only as “Jane Doe 1,” who was recently identified in a three-part series on the Epstein case in The Miami Herald. Continue reading →

The rumored nomination of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta as attorney general in the wake of Jeff Sessions’s firing is apparently what spurred the Miami Herald to publish a detailed 3-part series look at the sweetheart plea agreement worked out by Acosta with convicted child molester and Donald Trump’s close friend Jeffrey Epstein. The Miami Herald story resulted in a public rebuke for the story’s reporter, Julie Brown, from former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, who appears to have taken over as Trump’s “muscle” to attack journalists who investigate Trump and those tied to him. Continue reading →

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear (pdf) a challenge to President Doanld Trump’s proposed expansion to the U.S.-Mexico border wall brought by conservation and animal protection groups who said the administration improperly skirted environmental laws in its pursuit of the project. Continue reading →

World headlines announced the passing of GHW Bush at age 94, eulogizing him, ignoring the disturbing Bush family legacy. Continue reading →

Donald Trump is attempting to do something that no previous recent president of the United States has attempted. Trump is trying to abrogate longstanding legal international treaties signed by some of his predecessors with sovereign Native American tribes. The Trump administration is using a requirement that Medicaid recipients work in return for health benefits to deny Native American tribes the right to govern themselves as sovereign entities. The Trump administration is denying an exemption for the work requirement for tribal nations by reclassifying Native Americans as a racial group subject to federal law, not as separate sovereign nations bound by distinct tribal laws. Continue reading →

Former Donald Trump chief strategist and 2016 campaign manager Steve Bannon has become a neo-Nazi frequent flyer. Bannon established his organization, known simply as “The Movement,” with the help of some far-right Belgian politicians. In a worrying trend, The Movement is forging close ties with far-right parties and politicians around the world, including Brazil’s incoming president, Jair Bolsonaro, an admitted admirer of Adolf Hitler. Continue reading →

Those who have been saying that the West has turned Russia into a scapegoat to be blamed for each and everything that goes wrong have been proved right. We have witnessed concocted stories invented to denigrate Moscow that have gone viral as directed by the secret services. The UK, the country that is spearheading the anti-Russian information campaign, offers a good example that illustrates how this is being done. Continue reading →

It isn’t often the UN Security Council votes unanimously to remove sanctions against a country, but this past Wednesday, November 14, they did just that by saying goodbye to nine years of UNjust punishment against the small, socialist, east African country of Eritrea. Continue reading →

In April, I made new estimates of the death toll in America’s post-2001 wars in a three-part Intrepid Report series I estimated that these wars have now killed several million people. I explained that widely reported but much lower estimates of the numbers of combatants and civilians killed were likely to be only one fifth to one twentieth of the true numbers of people killed in U.S. war zones. Now one of the NGOs responsible for understating war deaths in Yemen has acknowledged that it was underestimating them by at least five to one, as I suggested in my report. Continue reading →

When Israeli troops stormed the house of Palestinian parliamentarian and lawyer, Khalida Jarrar on April 2, 2015, she was engrossed in her research. For months, Jarrar had been leading a Palestinian effort to take Israel to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Continue reading →

A few days after Brazil’s new neo-Nazi president, Jair Bolsonaro, declared victory in that nation’s presidential election, Donald Trump’s “wargasmic” neocon national security adviser, John Bolton, was in Miami unveiling the administration’s version of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil.” After Trump congratulated the Adolf Hitler-praising Bolsonaro on his victory, Bolton, speaking before a crowd of right-wing Cuban-Americans, warned Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua—nations Bolton called the “Troika of Tyranny”—that the United States and its new far-right allies, including Brazil and Colombia, would work together to overthrow the socialist governments of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Bolton also referred to the three nations as the “Triangle of Terror.” Continue reading →

The former chief strategist and campaign manager for Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, likes to use the term “globalist” in his zeal to create a worldwide, read that as “global,” movement of fascist, neo-Nazi, and racialist political parties. Bannon, the anti-globalist far-right obese version of Adolf Hitler, initially, had few takers for his plan for a Nazi Internationale. Unfortunately, for the entire planet, that has changed. Continue reading →

While deep anxiety about mass shootings, falling standards of living, inadequate pay, and lack of healthcare long predate the Trump era, a survey by the American Psychological Association (APA) published on Tuesday found that President Donald Trump—with his bumbling incompetence, immense cruelty, and plutocratic economic agenda—has intensified the stress Americans feel about their financial situation, the U.S. political system, the climate crisis, and a variety of other issues facing the nation and the world. Continue reading →

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.—President Trump’s announcement that he intends, through issuance of an Executive Order, to terminate birthright citizenship, which confers citizenship to children of noncitizens who are born in the U.S., is in direct conflict with the plain terms of the United States Constitution, namely the Fourteenth Amendment, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United Statesand of the State wherein they reside.” Continue reading →

A new federal lawsuit charges that President Donald Trump, his company, and his three eldest children—Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric—deliberately defrauded working-class Americans by convincing them to invest hundreds or thousands of dollars in sham business opportunities and training programs. Continue reading →

Ignoring once more the existential necessity of keeping fossil fuels in the ground and transitioning to a global energy system powered by renewable sources, the Trump administration on Wednesday delivered another major victory for Big Oil by quietly approving a Texas company’s plan to drill in federal Arctic waters six miles off the coast of Alaska. Continue reading →

Gazans show no signs of ending their liberating struggle against Israel’s illegal blockade and overall occupation harshness. Continue reading →

US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley has made her post a “more glamorous” position than her predecessors—as President Donald Trump described Haley’s two-year term at the UN, following her resignation announcement. Continue reading →

As Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, wields ever greater power over U.S. foreign and defense policy, with Defense Secretary James Mattis due to be the next victim of Bolton’s “house cleaning,” the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is preparing Libya for a neocon-led “nation-building” operation. Although Trump has slashed funding for USAID, the agency has found the necessary budget to begin to prepare Libya’s local municipal councils for elections. Continue reading →

On a recent night in Richmond, Virginia, speaker after speaker came forward to talk about the multidimensional reality of poverty. The setting was a hearing held by the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Continue reading →

Former president George W. Bush has been misinterpreted by many political observers as a “neo-moderate.” However, Bush’s phone calls to four wavering senators, in which he urged them to vote for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, belies the actual reason behind his support for Kavanaugh. Serving as White House Staff Secretary for Bush from 2003 to 2006, Kavanaugh was part and parcel of theft of Ohio’s 20 electoral votes to Bush in 2004, which ensured Bush’s re-election and denied the presidency to Democratic candidate John Kerry. Bush’s phone calls to Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) were supplemented with an invitation for her to visit the Bush family at their Kennebunkport, Maine estate. Bush also phoned Senators Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Out of the three, only Murkowski voted against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Continue reading →

In what amounts to a clear violation of the United States-United Nations Treaty of 1947, the Trump administration is denying visas to same-sex domestic partners of UN diplomats and staff. The U.S. is also requiring UN personnel in same-sex partnerships to get married or face the cancellation of current U.S. visas for domestic partners. For foreign diplomats being assigned to the UN and hoping to obtain visas for their same-sex partners, the U.S. is requiring them to get married before issuing visas. However, some of those affected by the U.S. visa ban live in countries where same-sex or even opposite sex domestic partnerships are illegal. Continue reading →

While Americans were transfixed by Senate hearings over Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assaults, House Republicans quietly passed another enormous tax handout for the wealthiest Americans. Continue reading →

The United Kingdom is resettling Al Qaeda’s Syrian medical unit, called the “White Helmets,” as “refugees” in the UK. The White Helmets organization is funded by UK’s MI6 and America’s CIA, and is headed by Raed Saleh, who was prohibited from visiting the US because he’s a terrorist. These jihadists won’t just have UK honors (and they already have: a Hollywood Oscar-winning ‘documentary’ full of lies about how ‘heroic’ the White Helmets are), but, presumably, they’ll also obtain UK citizenship. Continue reading →

There are roughly 9 million pigs in North Carolina—the same number as people. There are also 819 million chickens and 33.5m turkeys on a multitude of poultry farms and even fish farms. Continue reading →

There are a variety of factors why 15-year old Christina Blasey did not report the alleged sexual assault by a 17-year old Brett Kavanaugh at a party in 1982. The freewheeling 1980s were not kind to those who were sexually harassed or assaulted. The decade was marked in the Washington, DC area by booze, drugs, and inappropriate behavior in the workplace. This was the environment, particularly insidious among the affluent teens of Georgetown Prep and University crowd, that Blasey found herself. Continue reading →