“No pictures!” growls a burley Lebanese Army captain, looking me deliberately in the eyes from not three feet away across his major’s desk, while pointing directly at my Nikon. “No pictures!” he repeats, now staring at my translator. Since we are both seated in his office deep within the heavily armed perimeter of the Army’s southern command, scores of heavily armed soldiers all around us, and these being the only words of English so far spoken by him, there was no doubting his sincerity on this point. Continue reading →
Mystery untreated sewage appears in Mexico just across the border from an Arizona wastewater-treatment plant, city official says.
DOUGLAS, Ariz.—Public Works director Lynn Kartchner guides his city pickup truck down the overgrown, littered alleys of the Bay Acres mobile-home community in search of raw sewage. Continue reading →
President Trump and Congress ignore the nation’s poorest residents along the U.S.-Mexican border, where an environmental health crisis threatens millions of lives.
IMPERIAL BEACH, Calif.—U.S. Border Patrol Agent Christopher Harris steers his truck along the hilly road next to the border fence separating this beach community in the extreme southwest corner of the U.S. from Tijuana, Baja California’s largest city. Continue reading →
There are increasing worries that Donald Trump’s special adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, specifically requested Top Secret intelligence files to pass gleaned information to Israeli intelligence. WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources that Kushner’s compromise of National Security Agency and allied FIVE EYES partners’ intercepts of foreign leaders led to his losing his temporary access to Top Secret/Special Compartmented Information (SCI). Continue reading →
The political propeller backwash caused by the Trump administration has swept into Washington the flotsam and jetsam of Republican Party grifters and mercenaries eager to cash in on foreign opportunities as the U.S. Department of State stands to be gutted even further under Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s choice to replace the recently-fired Rex Tillerson as secretary of state. Continue reading →
The discovery of an illegal $2.5 million money transfer from the United Arab Emirates via a murky Canadian company and Elliott Broidy, a Jewish Republican fundraiser convicted in 2009 for pension fraud, points to high-level Israeli intelligence penetration of the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign. The UAE financial transfer to Trump campaign coffers also involved the mysterious George Nader, a Lebanese-American lobbyist for the government of the UAE and its crown prince and de facto leader, Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahayan. The revelation of a joint UAE-Israeli intelligence operation to funnel illegal contributions to the Trump campaign also highlights the close relationship between Israeli intelligence and the intelligence service of the UAE, as well as that of the UAE’s close ally, Saudi Arabia. Continue reading →
Top North Korean official says Monday his country wants to be "free from aggression and war."
A senior North Korea official on Monday urged the United States to behave as if it seriously wants peace. Continue reading →
Recent Greyhound bus raids have revealed an obscure law that gives Border Patrol authority 100 miles inside borders, across the entire perimeter of the country.
In Hartford, Vermont, last year, U.S. Border Patrol agents boarded a Greyhound bus as it arrived from Boston, asking passengers about their citizenship and checking the IDs of people of color or those with accents. In January, they stopped a man in Indio, California, as he was boarding a Los Angeles-bound bus. In questioning him about his immigration status, they told him his “shoes looked suspicious,” like those of someone who had recently crossed the border. Continue reading →
Donald Trump represents Version 2.0 of the same neoconservative crowd that dominated the George W. Bush administration. The cabal of pro-corporation, xenophobic, and nationalistic right-wingers, which includes such outliers as the alt-right—a less-threatening title than white nationalist, neo-Nazi, or Ku Klux Klan—are now in the driver’s seat in Washington. Trump is nothing more than a corporate trademark or logo for what can be called the “neo-neocon” movement, which is led by individuals who have long been embedded in the U.S. intelligence community, law enforcement, media, and military. Continue reading →
PHILADELPHIA—The Maryland rapper Sean Born’s 2012 album Behind the Scale includes what one reviewer described as the “candidly soulful single” “Lights On,” which has the driving and catchy up-tempo beat that tends to characterize much of contemporary hip-hop. Its lyrics, however, have none of the swagger that the genre is known for and is, in fact, so achingly honest that it seems an apologia of sorts to explain the emcee’s drug-dealing past. Continue reading →
When the French ruled Indochina, they had a shortage of white collar workers in Cambodia and Laos, so solved it by bringing in many thousands of Vietnamese, which, understandably, didn’t please the Cambodians and Laotians too much. Most of these Vietnamese would be kicked out in waves, sometimes violently, as happened in Cambodia during the ‘70s. Continue reading →
John Bolton, the only unconfirmed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to have ever represented his country in the international organization, has recently been seen more frequently around the White House. There are strong rumors that Donald Trump’s next purge will claim the national security adviser, Lt. General H. R. McMaster, and that Bolton has the inside track to replace him. Bolton taking over the National Security Council will, after a nine-year hiatus, put the neoconservatives back in the foreign policy and national security driver’s seat in Washington. Continue reading →
The actions of Donald Trump’s “enforcers,” particularly his personal and corporate attorneys, are more in keeping with those of a mafia chieftain than an American president. Those familiar with the Watergate scandal, which all-too-many media pundits are presently comparing to the investigation of Trump, concur that Richard Nixon, who was battling seen and unseen forces to his political right, never went to the lengths of Trump in attacking his accusers. Continue reading →
The former congressman and current CIA director's climate denialism and praise of the United States' use of torture has raised alarm among green groups and human rights defenders
While applauding the end of former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson’s tenure as secretary of state, green groups and government watchdogs on Tuesday denounced President Donald Trump’s pick to replace him—current CIA Director Mike Pompeo. Continue reading →
On the 29th anniversary of the founding of the World Wide Web, British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee—the inventor of the Internet as we know it and a long-time advocate of digital rights—penned an open letter to call for stricter regulations of the major tech corporations that aim to control the web. Continue reading →
Saudi Arabia’s 32-year old crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is on a whirlwind tour of Egypt, Britain, and the United States. What he is selling is a Middle East that should worry everyone on the planet, but most of all, the Palestinian people. Continue reading →
With a decision that could have far-reaching implications, a federal judge in California has ordered the first ever U.S. court hearing on climate science for a “public nuisance” lawsuit, meaning that major oil and gas companies for the first time may have to go on the record regarding what they knew about the planetary impacts of their products—and when. Continue reading →
According to The Washington Post, U.S. intelligence has yielded information that Donald Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, a presidential adviser with numerous portfolios, including Middle Eastern adviser, was manipulated by several foreign governments, including, primarily, Israel, to seek favors with the Trump administration. Other nations named by U.S. intelligence sources as influencing Kushner are the United Arab Emirates—a present Israeli ally, China, and Mexico. Continue reading →
Traveling, I prefer to be on the ground, for that’s how you get an overview of the countryside. The bus from Saigon to Phnom Penh took more than seven hours, but that included 30 minutes for lunch, plus 45 more at the border. My seatmate was a young fellow, Morris, from Halle, Germany, and we had a fruitful, wide ranging conversation. For a moment, I had mistaken him for a woman, for he had a pony tail and such a smooth, unblemished face. Continue reading →
Multiple reports from inside the Trump White House and the FBI that point to a major on-going counter-intelligence investigation of the financial dealings and foreign intelligence contacts of Trump’s “Secretary for Everything,” son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Trump’s daughter and Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, are also raising their close connections to Chabad organizations. Continue reading →
According to the newly leaked transcript of a New York Times staff meeting last year, editorial page editor James Bennet wants his employees and the public to believe that the paper of record is dedicated to open debate, not committed to any particular ideology, and opposed to “simply assert[ing] that we know what the right answers are.” Oh, except when it comes to one small matter: capitalism. Continue reading →
The criminal syndicate with links to the Trump Organization is very similar to Ian Fleming’s fictional SPECTRE, the organization of crime bosses and former spies recruited from the ranks of Joseph Stalin’s SMERSH (SMERt’ SHpionam, or “Death to Spies,” security service), Nazi Germany’s Gestapo, Yugoslav Marshal Josip Tito’s secret police, the Italian Mafia, the Unione Corse (the Corsican Mafia), and a massive heroin-smuggling syndicate based in Turkey. The Japanese yakuza and Chinese Triads also lent their services to SPECTRE. Led by Polish-Greek super-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld, SPECTRE was stymied at every turn by British agent 007 James Bond. Continue reading →
Like as shown in the movie 1984, in its two-minute section “Two Minutes of Hate,” the US-installed Ukrainian regime on Russia’s doorstep, will soon be debating a bill to make hate of Russia obligatory to be inculcated into all Ukrainian children. Continue reading →
While House Democrats were urged to ignore Medicare for All as a viable solution to the nation's healthcare woes, a separate memo to lawmakers after Las Vegas shooting appeared to be "straight out of the NRA's talking points"
Progressives found new reason for dismay on Tuesday after internal documents revealed efforts by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to squash support for Medicare for All and a separate attempt to curtail demands for stricter gun control following the mass shooting in Las Vegas last year. Continue reading →
A concerted push is underway in South America that could see one of the world’s largest reserves of fresh water soon fall into the hands of transnational corporations such as Coca-Cola and Nestle. According to reports, talks to privatize the Guarani Aquifer—a vast subterranean water reserve lying beneath Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay—have already reached an advanced stage. The deal would grant a consortium of U.S. and Europe-based conglomerates exclusive rights to the aquifer that would last over 100 years. Continue reading →
On Wednesday, February 21, the UK’s Minister of Defence, Conservative Gavin Williamson, announced that the United Kingdom is changing its fundamental defence strategy from one that’s targeted against non-state terrorists (Al Qaeda, etc.), to one that’s targeted instead against three countries: Russia, China, and North Korea. He acknowledged that a massive increase in military spending will be needed for this, and that “savings” will have to be found in other areas of Government-spending, such as the health services, and in military spending against terrorism. Continue reading →
Arguing that only a positive and truly transformative economic agenda will be sufficient to overcome the Republican congressional majority and President Donald Trump, scores of progressive leaders this week endorsed a bold 11-point platform that calls for Medicare for All, tough Wall Street regulation, and a ban on corporate money in elections. Continue reading →
Bernie Madoff, who is serving a 150-year sentence after being convicted of running a $64.8 billion fraud scheme in New York in 2009, has been permitted by Trump administration officials to quietly resume running investment schemes from the medium-security Federal Correctional Institute in Butner, North Carolina. According to a high-level enforcement official of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who contacted WMR, Madoff, who is 79, has been permitted to maintain contact with the outside world to direct investments from assets he continues to control from the prison, which has been nicknamed “B’nai Butner” due to its heavy concentration of Jewish white collar criminals and the only kosher-certified chef and kitchen in the federal Bureau of Prisons system. Continue reading →
Bottled water companies have relied on predatory marketing practices and exorbitant lobbying efforts to sell Americans on the inaccurate belief that pre-packaged water is cleaner and safer than tap water—a notion that is costing U.S. households about $16 billion per year. Continue reading →
As nearly 250,000 Puerto Ricans remain without power five months after Hurricane Maria struck the island territory—the longest blackout in U.S. history—the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) said Sunday it will reduce its operating reserve to save money, as the island’s government moves toward privatizing the authority. Continue reading →
With the last shot of the 2006 war fired and the IDF moving back into Israel, Lebanon began to heal its wounds. At the same time, Hizbullah, that had so successfully turned back the tides of war, began to rebuild—this time in new ways. Continue reading →
The president's proposal ‘could be a significant blow to the slew of protesters who spent years agitating against the Keystone XL pipeline and more recently the Dakota Access one.’
As green groups continue to denounce the Trump administration’s recently unveiled infrastructure plan as a “scam” that’s designed to keep the nation trapped in its “dirty and destructive past,” analysts are also warning the proposal will “make it harder for the next big anti-pipeline movement” to launch successful legal challenges to new fossil fuel projects. Continue reading →
