Category Archives: Special Reports

Prohibiting maintenance of tanker Off Yemeni coast, Saudis risk explosion and environmental disaster

‘We are talking about a huge floating tanker that entered service in Yemen 30 years ago, which contains more than one million tons of oil. If an explosion takes place, many countries, including Saudi Arabia, will be hit with an environmental disaster.’

HODEIDA, Yemen—Officials in Yemen’s western port city of Hodeida have expressed concern to MintPress that the deserted Safer FSO vessel, filled with an estimated 1.1 million barrels of crude oil, is vulnerable to an explosion or a leak due to increasing temperature, high humidity, and maintenance failures. They say that ship’s boilers and coolers have been stopped owing to a lack of diesel fuel and the body of the tanker is beginning to suffer from corrosion following multiple failed efforts to unload its cargo of crude oil. Continue reading

The research is in: Stop fracking ASAP

Over 1,500 reports show there’s simply no safe way to do it—and it’s harming us all every day it goes on.

Science. Evidence. Facts. Do these even matter anymore in U.S. policy? They should—especially when it comes to issues that affect our health and environment, like fracking. Continue reading

‘A dystopian surveillance state being built in plain sight’: Pentagon tests radar-equipped balloons to spy on vehicles across Midwest

‘These programs are not about stopping violence, they're about social control.’

Millions of Americans across the Midwest this summer are being subjected to surveillance from above as the Pentagon experiments with the use of surveillance radars attached to high-altitude balloons. Continue reading

How slick consulting firms get us on drugs

Ninety-one people a day die from opioids and 1,000 visit ERs in the US, according to the CDC. How did opioid makers get such a deathly grip on the US population? Recently, the New York Times reported that the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company had a big hand in these morbid figures. Continue reading

New BLM appointee brings conflicts of interest and plans to sell off public lands to agency charged with protecting them

‘It's hard to imagine anyone in this position more dangerous than William Perry Pendley.’

Control over nearly 250 million acres of public lands was placed Monday in the hands of a former Reagan administration official who has argued that all federal lands should be sold to fossil fuel and other corporate interests in accordance with the goals of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Continue reading

The ongoing dread in Gaza: So many names, so many lives

Jehad Abusalim, a Palestinian now living in the United States, grew up in Gaza. In Chicago last week, addressing activists committed to breaking the siege of Gaza, he held up a stack of 31 papers. On each page were names of 1,254 Palestinians living in Gaza who had been killed in just one month of Israel’s “Operation Protective Edge” attacks five years ago. Continue reading

‘Unconscionable’: Trump USDA proposes new rule to strip food stamps from over 3 million Americans

The proposal, said Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, would ‘take food away from families, prevent children from getting school meals, and make it harder for states to administer food assistance.’

In a move critics denounced as the Trump administration’s latest effort to bypass Congress to attack low-income families, the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday proposed a new rule that would strip food stamps from more than three million Americans. Continue reading

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: Trump’s agenda driven by ‘ethnicity and racism’

At town hall event, New York Democrat says Trump "relished" racist chant directed at fellow lawmaker

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sustained her criticism of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and rhetoric on Saturday, and said that what’s driving his agenda is “ethnicity and racism.” Continue reading

Rural America and the 5G digital divide

While there is considerable telecom hubris regarding the 5G rollout and increasing speculation that the next generation of wireless is not yet ready for prime time, the industry continues to make promises to rural America that it has no intention of fulfilling. Decades-long promises to deliver digital Utopia to rural America by T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T have never materialized. Continue reading

‘A hotter future that’s hard to imagine’: Super-charged by climate crisis, new study warns of ‘killer heat’ set to overtake US

If we wish to spare people in the United States and around the world the mortal dangers of extreme and relentless heat, there is little time to do so and little room for half measures.’

Without urgent international action to address runaway global heating, there will be almost no communities or regions in the contiguous United States unaffected as the number of lethally hot days each year—including those characterized as “off-the-charts” hot—doubles by mid-century and quadruples by the year 2100. Continue reading

‘We cannot overstate the harm this decision will have’: Oklahoma judge upholds ban on common abortion procedure

‘We will keep fighting this unconstitutional ban to make sure Oklahomans have access to the best medical treatment.’

The Center for Reproductive Rights on Friday announced its intention to keep fighting after an Oklahoma court upheld a ban on a common abortion procedure. Continue reading

Trump’s POS labor secretary, Acosta, out; POS number 2, linked to Abramoff, to fill role

Deputy Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella will now serve as acting secretary

After Labor Secretary Alex Acosta announcing his resignation on Friday in the wake of outrage over the deal he brokered for alleged child rapist Jeffrey Epstein, President Donald Trump said the department’s number two, Deputy Labor Secretary Patrick Pizzella, would now serve as the acting secretary. Continue reading

5G threatens weather forecasting

It comes as no surprise that the American public remains oblivious to a not-so-slight glitch in the 5G Race with China as the US strives to be the first, the best and most technologically advanced country in the world with its guarantee of a Brave New World. But then, many Americans are unaware of the true nature of 5G in the first place. In its haste to win, the telecom industry, its friends in Congress and the Federal bureaucracy are intent on foisting 5G on a largely unsuspecting American public before all the technological kinks have been worked out. Continue reading

Accusing Adam Schiff of ‘criminalizing routine reporting,’ groups call for stripping CIA-backed provision from intelligence legislation

‘Schiff is clearly the resistance to the resistance, and he should drop this provision from his bill.’

A CIA-backed provision for a bill that could have dire effects on the freedom of the press is quietly making its way through Congress, despite the protestations of civil rights groups to Rep. Adam Schiff, the powerful California Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, to strip the rule. Continue reading

Epstein busted by feds at New Jersey airport

Billionaire Wall Street hedge fund financier Jeffrey Epstein was arrested by federal authorities on July 6 at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. Epstein was returning on his private jet from a trip to Paris. After his arrest, Epstein was taken to the Metropolitan Corrections Center in Manhattan while awaiting arraignment in federal court at Foley Square on July 8. Epstein’s old friend, Donald Trump, was spending the weekend at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey gold club, 44 miles from the Teterboro airport where Epstein was arrested. Continue reading

5G complexities and national security

In case you missed the kickoff, there is an unprecedented ‘must win’ wireless race for the US to cross the 5G finish line before China as alluded to during the recent Senate Commerce Committee oversight hearing on the Federal Commerce Commission. Continue reading

On the anniversary of U.S. independence, a Nazi shadow is cast across the land

During an ego-fellating interview with Donald Trump in Japan, Fox News opinion show host and unofficial Trump national security adviser Tucker Carlson and Trump discussed America’s homeless population and agreed that it should be called “filth.” Trump and Carlson singled out San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York as examples where homeless people represent such urban “filth. Trump, moreover, lied about the U.S. homeless problem existing for merely the past two years. Trump also concocted a story about homeless people causing police officers walking the beat to become sick because of the “filth.” Trump also iterated to Carlson that the administration “may intercede” to clean the “filth” from cities like Washington, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Continue reading

Everyone’s got a ‘surveillance score’ and it can cost you big money

In these Orwellian times, when it is revealed that yet another government agency is spying on us in yet another way, most of us aren’t one bit surprised. Being surveilled nearly everywhere we go (and even in our own homes) has become the norm, unfortunately. Continue reading

5G as a globalist tool

The recent Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing regarding oversight of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) failed to shed any real light on details of the proposed 5G network as it received less scrutiny than expected given its highly anticipated, ubiquitous role in American life. Continue reading

Libra: Facebook’s audacious bid for global monetary control

Payments can happen cheaply and easily without banks or credit card companies. This has now been demonstrated—not in the United States but in China. Unlike in the US, where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments, in China most money flows through mobile phones nearly for free. In 2018, these cashless payments totaled a whopping $41.5 trillion; and 90% were through Alipay and WeChat Pay, a pair of digital ecosystems that blend social media, commerce and banking. Continue reading

Fake food, fake meat: Big Food’s desperate attempt to further the industrialisation of food

Food is not a commodity, it is not “stuff” put together mechanically and artificially in labs and factories. Food is life. Food holds the contributions of all beings that make the food web, and it holds the potential of maintaining and regenerating the web of life. Food also holds the potential for health and disease, depending on how it was grown and processed. Food is therefore the living currency of the web of life. Continue reading

Unlabeled ingredients in meat raise questions

Most people know that antibiotics are part of the diet of conventionally raised livestock in the US and elsewhere to make them grow faster (feed is metabolized more efficiently) and prevent disease outbreaks in cramped conditions. But they’d be surprised at how many animals destined for the dinner table have drug residues that exceed legal limits. In the US, each week the Agriculture Department Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) finds dangerous antibiotic levels in animals raised for human food which include penicillin, neomycin, “sulfa” drugs and fluoroquinolones like Cipro. Many of the meat producers are repeat violators. Continue reading

‘We need to ban fracking’: New analysis of 1,500 scientific studies details threat to health and climate

‘The data show that fracking impairs the health of people who live nearby, especially pregnant women, and swings a wrecking ball at the climate.’

A comprehensive analysis of nearly 1,500 scientific studies, government reports, and media stories on the consequences of fracking released Wednesday found that the evidence overwhelmingly shows the drilling method poses a profound threat to public health and the climate. Continue reading

Chorus of outrage as Trump administration throws climate, public health under bus by killing Obama-era Clean Power Plan

Climate advocacy groups on Wednesday decried the Trump administration’s killing of the Clean Power Plan. Continue reading

Venezuelan coup plotter Guaido’s Popular Will Party members involved in grand theft

According to the Spanish-language PanAm Post, sympathetic to the Trump regime’s anti-President Maduro coup plot, figures close to designated White House puppet/usurper in waiting Guaido “seize[d] funds for humanitarian aid [meant for Venezuelans] in Colombia.” Continue reading

U.S. Sanctions: Economic sabotage that is deadly, illegal and ineffective

While the mystery of who is responsible for sabotaging the two tankers in the Gulf of Oman remains unsolved, it is clear that the Trump administration has been sabotaging Iranian oil shipments since May 2, when it announced its intention to “bring Iran’s oil exports to zero, denying the regime its principal source of revenue.” The move was aimed at China, India, Japan, South Korea and Turkey, all nations that purchase Iranian oil and now face U.S. threats if they continue to do so. The U.S. military might not have physically blown up tankers carrying Iranian crude, but its actions have the same effect and should be considered acts of economic terrorism. Continue reading

How neocon billionaire Paul Singer is driving the outsourcing of US tech jobs to Israel

Several U.S. tech giants including Google, Microsoft and Intel Corporation have filled top positions with former members of Israeli military intelligence and are heavily investing in their Israeli branches while laying off thousands of American employees, all while receiving millions of dollars in U.S. government subsidies funded by American taxpayers.

WASHINGTON—With nearly 6 million Americans unemployed and regular bouts of layoffs in the U.S. tech industry, major American tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Intel Corporation are nonetheless moving key operations, billions in investments, and thousands of jobs to Israel—a trend that has largely escaped media attention or concern from even “America first” politicians. The fact that this massive transfer of investment and jobs has been so overlooked is particularly striking given that it is largely the work of a single leading neoconservative Republican donor who has given millions of dollars to President Donald Trump. Continue reading

The Trust Project: Big Media and Silicon Valley’s weaponized algorithms silence dissent

Given the Trust Project’s rich-get-richer impact on the online news landscape, it is not surprising to find that it is funded by a confluence of tech oligarchs and powerful forces with a clear stake in controlling the flow of news.

After the failure of Newsguard—the news rating system backed by a cadre of prominent neoconservative personalities—to gain traction among American tech and social media companies, another organization has quietly stepped in to direct the news algorithms of tech giants such as Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. Continue reading

Election 2016 manipulation involved same players as 9/11

A growing collection of evidence indicates that three nations directly involved in coordinating the planning and carrying out of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States—Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates—were also jointly involved in “hacking” the 2016 U.S. presidential election to bring about Donald Trump’s victory. The January 11, 2017 meeting in Seychelles—involving Blackwater founder Erik Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and top officials of UAE, Saudi, and Israeli intelligence—represented a de facto after-action overview of the 2016 election interference that covered successes of the operation. Continue reading

Julian Assange’s gravely deteriorating health

Involuntary confinement in Ecuador’s London embassy for nearly seven years, compounded by his unlawful arrest and isolation under appalling conditions in Britain’s Gitmo, gravely harmed Assange’s physical and emotional health. Continue reading

Fighting for colonial footprints: a very British thing

Great Britain is determined to never see the sun set on the remnants of the old British empire. However, the United Nations General Assembly recently delivered a stinging rebuke to Britain over its continued occupation of the Chagos Islands, which it cleaved from its colony of Mauritius in 1965 in order for the United States to build a major military base on the island of Diego Garcia. The General Assembly voted 116 to 6, with 56 abstentions, against Britain’s continued control of the Chagos Islands. Continue reading

Freedom Rider: No chemical attacks in Syria

The corporate media is concealing a leaked UN agency report that shows Syrian government innocence in an alleged chemical attack. Continue reading