Kit O'Connell

A gonzo journalist from Austin, Texas and Staff Writer for MintPress News, Kit O'Connell's writing has also appeared at Truthout, the Texas Observer, and The Establishment.

Recount 2016: Controversy & Media Attacks Follow Jill Stein’s Demand For Electoral Integrity

‘What the recounts will do is make clear at long last that we must radically reform our abysmal voting system so that this kind of thing never happens again,’ an election integrity activist tells MintPress News.

Kit O'Connell
By Kit O'Connell
Jill Stein holds a press conference to discuss recount efforts outside Trump Towers in New York City, Dec. 5, 2016. (Photo by: Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx via AP)

AUSTIN, Texas --- Dr. Jill Stein has been attacked in the mainstream media, threatened with legal action, and even created a divide within her own political party due to her attempts to audit the results of the presidential election. “I think Jill Stein’s doing the right thing,” said Mark Crispin Miller, a self-described “election integrity

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Massive Corporations From Chiquita To Coca-Cola Used Personal Armies To Uproot, Terrorize Colombians

‘Chiquita admitted to paying paramilitaries and giving them 3,000 Kalashnikov rifles between 1997 and 2004,’ Dan Kovalik, a human rights lawyer, notes in an interview with MintPress News.

Kit O'Connell
By Kit O'Connell
Coca-Cola has been linked to paramilitary groups and human rights abuses in Colombia. The company has faced multiple lawsuits over attacks on union organizers. (AP Photo/Scott Sady)

On Thursday, Colombia’s Congress ratified a new peace accord that could end decades of civil war and weaken the ability of foreign corporations to turn a profit on unrest in the South American country. Since the 1960s, communist rebel forces have fought right-wing paramilitary groups and their government allies in Colombia’s ongoing civil war.

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Dakota Access Pipeline Builders Threaten To Continue Construction After Gov’t Refuses Key Permit

Energy Transfer Partners, the builder behind the Dakota Access pipeline, vows to continue construction under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump. ‘Nothing [the Obama administration] has done today changes that in any way,’ according to a Sunday statement.

Derrick Broze
Kit O'Connell
By Derrick Broze
And Kit O'Connell
A crowd gathers in celebration at the Oceti Sakowin camp after it was announced that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers won't grant easement for the Dakota Access oil pipeline in Cannon Ball, N.D., Sunday, Dec. 4, 2016. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

STANDING ROCK RESERVATION, North Dakota --- Native American opponents of the Dakota Access pipeline and their allies celebrated after the Army Corps of Engineers denied a key permit to the pipeline builder on Sunday. https://twitter.com/tommiesunshine/status/805522355804114944 Citing concerns raised by the leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux

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Washington Post’s ‘Fake News’: MSM Supports ‘Shameful,’ Anonymous Attack On Independent Media

‘The article is rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations, and fundamentally shaped by shoddy, slothful journalistic tactics,’ Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton wrote in an analysis of the Washington Post report attacking alternative media as Russian propagandists.

Kit O'Connell
By Kit O'Connell
The Washington Post published a‘McCarthyite Blacklist’ of Independent News Sites that they deem 'fake news.' (AP Photo)

AUSTIN, Texas --- On Thanksgiving, The Washington Post published a widely shared -- and widely criticized -- report accusing a host of media organizations of spreading Russian propaganda, despite little evidence to support the claims. In the Nov. 24 article, Craig Timberg, the Post’s national technology reporter, cited the work of “experts” who

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New Study Suggests Cannabis Could Help Ease The Opioid Epidemic

‘I like to say that instead of cannabis being a gateway drug into harder drugs, I think that we might see cannabis being used as a gateway drug out of our current opioid epidemic,’ a cannabis industry consultant with a background in law enforcement tells MintPress News.

Kit O'Connell
By Kit O'Connell
A marijuana bud is seen at a medical marijuana facility in Unity, Maine. A new study suggests that cannabis could help ease the deadly opioid epidemic in the United States. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty, File)

AUSTIN, Texas --- A new study suggests that cannabis could help ease the deadly opioid epidemic in the United States. Participants reported “a notable decrease in their use of conventional pharmaceutical agents,” including a 42-percent drop in the use of opiates, according to the pilot study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology on Oct.

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BDS Activists Plan Black Friday Protests Against HP’s Support For Israeli Apartheid

‘People of conscience today should boycott HP companies for providing imaging and technology for Israeli apartheid,’ declared an activist who helped target South Africa’s apartheid policies in the 1970s.

Kit O'Connell
By Kit O'Connell
An Israeli border police officer stands as Palestinian women wait to cross the Qalandia checkpoint between the West Bank city of Ramallah and Jerusalem, June 17, 2015. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)

AUSTIN, Texas --- Though best known for their computers and computer peripherals like printers, companies under the Hewlett-Packard umbrella are engaged in another profitable, and far more nefarious business: enabling apartheid Israel to track the movement of occupied Palestinians. Activists from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)

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PayPal Serves Illegal Israeli Settlers But Won’t Let Palestinians Open Accounts

‘Without access to PayPal, Palestinian entrepreneurs, nonprofits, and others face routine difficulties in receiving payments for business and charitable purposes,’ an open letter from a coalition of American activists reads.

Kit O'Connell
By Kit O'Connell
A Palestinian farmer looks at Israeli army soldiers after he planted an olive trees near the West Bank town of Tubas in the Jordan valley, during a protest against the closure of land to Palestinians by the army and Jewish settlers, Tuesday, April 8, 2014. (AP/Mohammed Ballas)

AUSTIN, Texas --- PayPal is one of the world’s most popular ways to send or receive money online, but Palestinians are cut out of the action. Time magazine reported in January that PayPal has 179 million active accounts in dozens of countries, and PayPal payments are widely accepted in online marketplaces from eBay to Etsy. To sign up, every

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