Intrepid Report

Intrepid report is an independent, progressive, reader-supported alternative to the corporate media. Founded on September 5, 1998, as Online Journal, it was renamed Intrepid Report on January 28, 2011.

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Week of January 26, 2015

Monday

Barack Obama’s popularity and his annual stage of disunion By Ben Tanosborn

America’s states, fifty stars orderly represented over a background of blue in our flag, may be said to be united . . . but the folks who populate them certainly are not. We may claim to be the United States of America, but rest assured that we are definitely not the United People of America; never have been, and likely never will be, no matter what the pledge of allegiance might deceitfully say, or the colorful fantasy-pens we utilize in writing our history . . . or the misinformation in which we, fat-dumb-and-happy, live.

Law in the US has been murdered By Paul Craig Roberts

Barrett Brown, Kathy Kelly, and Bonny Mahoney are the kind of people who are imprisoned in America. It is not the perjurers and liars, the torturers, war criminals and mass murderers. It is the good people who peacefully protest the crimes of those who control the US government and its policies.

My future in federal prison A vengeful and diseased criminal justice system By Kathy Kelly

The Bureau of Prisons contacted me today (January 22), assigning me a prison number and a new address: for the next 90 days, beginning tomorrow, I’ll live at FMC Lexington, in the satellite prison camp for women, adjacent to Lexington’s federal medical center for men. Very early tomorrow morning, Buddy Bell, Cassandra Dixon, and Paco and Silver, two house guests whom we first met in protests on South Korea’s Jeju Island, will travel with me to Kentucky and deliver me to the satellite women’s prison outside the Federal Medical Center for men.

Freedom Rider: Jeffrey Sterling: A black man and the CIA By Margaret Kimberley

The Espionage Act was a nearly 100-year-old historic relic until Barack Obama came to office. The legislation was used by his predecessors in only three whistle-blower prosecutions after it was enacted in 1917. Obama has used it in seven prosecutions in six years in office and never for actual instances of espionage.

Dumb and dumber By William Blum

Remember Arseniy Yatsenuk? The Ukrainian whom US State Department officials adopted as one of their own in early 2014 and guided into the position of prime minister so he could lead the Ukrainian Forces of Good against Russia in the new Cold War?

Tuesday

Escape from America In the totalitarian state there are no rights only privileges By Linh Dinh

Lin Yutang wrote, “What is patriotism but the love of the food one ate as a child?” Born in Fujian, Lin also lived in the U.S., France, Germany, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan, where he’s buried. Whatever attachment Lin had to his childhood stews, fish balls, snails, clams and tofu, it didn’t prevent this remarkable author and inventor of the first Chinese typewriter from globetrotting to improve his mind then, finally, to save his own ass, as his favored Kuomintang and got routed by bad-assed Mao

Charlie Hebdo and the ‘Wild West’ By Dr T P Wilkinson

Innumerable Hollywood films begin with or contain scenes that can be roughly described as follows: family of settlers (whether pastorally or agriculturally engaged) are found dead, including women and children of course. Indications of “native” activity, i.e., arrows are found either in the corpses or in various places on the set. Often flames or smouldering ruins appear. Then someone with authority enters the scene to summarise the events making it clear that “Indians” have attacked and murdered an innocent settler family. This inevitably leads either to police, military and or vigilante retribution.

The dire state of our nation What you won’t hear from the politicians By John W. Whitehead

No matter what the politicians say about how great America is and how we, as a people, will always triumph, the fact is that the nation seems to be imploding.

Some thoughts about this thing called ideology By William Blum

Norman Finkelstein, the fiery American critic of Israel, was interviewed recently by Paul Jay on The Real News Network. Finkelstein related how he had been a Maoist in his youth and had been devastated by the exposure and downfall of the Gang of Four in 1976 in China. “It came out there was just an awful lot of corruption. The people who we thought were absolutely selfless were very self-absorbed. And it was clear. The overthrow of the Gang of Four had huge popular support.”

Wednesday

The elephant in the room The origin of modern terror and crumbling Western values By John Chuckman

Do you ever solve problems by ignoring them? Most of us would say that is not possible, yet that is precisely what Western governments do in their efforts to counteract what is called “Islamic terror.” Yes, there are vast and costly efforts to suppress the symptoms of what Western governments regard as a modern plague, including killing many people presumed to be infected with it, fomenting rebellion and destruction in places presumed to be prone to it, secretly returning to barbaric practices such as torture, things we thought had been left behind centuries ago, to fight it, and violating rights of their own citizens we thought were as firmly established as the need for food and shelter. Governments ignore, in all these destructive efforts, what in private they know very well is the origin of the problem

Stairway to tyranny By Rand Clifford

For most any government, maintaining power is the ultimate bottom line. Without a power foundation solid as a 47-story steel-frame skyscraper, a government cannot climb the stairway to tyranny—hold the aphrodisiac.

Can Netanyahu avert US-Iran detente? By Linda S. Heard

The Israeli prime minister’s plan to persuade Congress to slap the Islamic Republic of Iran with further sanctions is aimed at subverting US-led negotiations with Iran over its uranium enrichment programme. Benjamin Netanyahu has been invited by House Speaker John Boehner to address Congress on the issue in early March, which has set President Barack Obama fuming, according to White House insiders. One unnamed official apparently warned that Netanyahu “will pay a price” for this departure in protocol.

Freedom, where are you? Not in America or Europe By Paul Craig Roberts

When the former Goldman Sachs executive who runs the European Central Bank (ECB) announced that he was going to print 720 billion euros annually with which to purchase bad debts from the politically connected big banks, the euro sank and the stock market and Swiss franc shot up. As in the US, quantitative easing (QE) serves to enrich the already rich. It has no other purpose.

Let Cuba live! The Devil’s List of what the United States has done to Cuba By William Blum

On May 31, 1999, a lawsuit for $181 billion in wrongful death, personal injury, and economic damages was filed in a Havana court against the government of the United States. It was subsequently filed with the United Nations. Since that time its fate is somewhat of a mystery.

Thursday

Canada leaps into the empire of chaos By Jim Miles

Canada has always been a part of U.S. imperial ambitions, in spite of our pretensions otherwise. Locked in as we are to the U.S. economy and our dollar only relevant in comparison to the US $, up until the Harper regime Canada was able to maintain that pretense. Our NATO political alignment, the NAFTA trade agreement, the North American Aerospace Defence Command—formerly NORAD—are a few big ticket acronyms that have kept us united and generally subordinated.

New Saudi king was major supporter of Al Qaeda By Wayne Madsen

The new king of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud, the half-brother of King Abdullah, who died in his early 90s from complications from pneumonia, is expected to rule with a more Wahhabist-oriented religious bent and concentrate on limiting cautious political reforms started by Abdullah. Salman is also expected to devote his energies to increasing Saudi national security.

It is time for Iran to tell the West ‘goodbye’ By Paul Craig Roberts

From all appearances, the Obama regime’s negotiations with Iran, overseen by Russia, were on the verge of ending the contrived nuclear issue. An end to the confrontation is unacceptable to the Zionist Israeli government and to their neocon agents in America. The Republicans, a political party owned lock, stock, and barrel by the Israel Lobby, hastily invited Netanyahu, the crazed ruler of both Israel and America, to quickly come to tell the Republican Congress, which the insouciant American voters put in place, how to prohibit any accommodation with Iran.

Not so fast, Net neutrality . . . By Michael Winship

Over the last few months, things have been looking good for keeping the Internet open to everyone. A little too good, as far as Congress is concerned, which is why members and the corporate lobbyists who write them hefty checks have launched a last-ditch legislative effort to scuttle Net neutrality.

Netanyahu upsets allies By Linda S. Heard

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a tough cookie. For him, making enemies is as routine as eating a sandwich. He makes no secret of the fact that his main priority in life is Israel’s security, which he’ll do just about anything to maintain.

Friday

SYRIZA: Uniting Greece and demanding justice By Joshua Tartakovsky

What is one to make of the fact that SYRIZA, a progressive party with socialist values, formed a government with Independent Greeks (AN.EL), a populist right-wing party that opposed immigration and was accused of racism? Has it gone mad? Betrayed its initial promises?

Russia in the crosshairs By Paul Craig Roberts

Washington’s attack on Russia has moved beyond the boundary of the absurd into the realm of insanity.

Russia in the crosshairs By Paul Craig Roberts

Washington’s attack on Russia has moved beyond the boundary of the absurd into the realm of insanity.

Freedom Rider: Chris Kyle and media propaganda By Margaret Kimberley

Mass killer Chris Kyle should have been forgotten when he was killed by another Iraq war veteran in 2013. Kyle became rich and famous after he spoke and wrote publicly about the record 160 kills he committed in America’s war of terror in Iraq. He was the subject of the book, American Sniper: the Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History, and enjoyed celebrity status until his death.

Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism By Dave Alpert

If someone were to ask me to define anti-Semitism, I would offer the following: Anti-Semitism is the targeting, brutalizing and exploiting of people physically, socially, economically, and politically, and endorsed by those in power, for no other reason than they are Jewish (Hebrew), Assyrian, Phoenician, and Arab.

Dear Syria: From one refugee to another By Ramzy Baroud

Whenever the word ‘refugee’ is uttered, I think of my mother. When Zionist militias began their systematic onslaught and ‘cleansing’ of the Palestinian Arab population of historic Palestine in 1948, she, along with her family, ran away from the once peaceful village of Beit Daras.

[intrepidreport]

Week of January 19, 2015

Monday

Psychological Operations Inc.’s ‘War on Terror’ creates more terrorism, delivers less ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ By Mark Taliano

“Democracy” and “freedom” are two over-used words that belong to the domain of Psychological Operations (Psy Ops) Inc. Likewise for the phrase “War On Terror.” The psychological impacts of these abstractions are very powerful even as their literal meanings have been totally corrupted.

Kiev was hotbed of neo-Nazism even during Soviet times By Wayne Madsen

The CIA archives contain an obscure newspaper article from the New York Herald Tribune, dated September 14, 1964, that points out that neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism ran rampant in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev even during the time of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. This fact makes the current love affair between neoconservative Zionists like Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, and incoming Central Intelligence Agency Director David Cohen and the neo-Nazi imbued government of Ukraine all the more perplexing.

Charlie Hebdo update By Paul Craig Roberts

Readers, with the exception of neoconservative William Kristol, appreciated the questions I raised about the Charlie Hebdo affair. Europeans sent me videos and news reports from Europe.

Early morning thoughts By Steve Church

Even had I not had the flu, I would not have attended or participated in the mass psychosis billed as “Je Suis Charlie” following the murder of journalists, cops, and deli patrons last week in Paris. But I did watch a lot of the live tv coverage of these strange events, and a few images keep coming back to mind.

On praying By Missy Comley Beattie

I read several articles that Stanford researchers have found a cure or “potential treatment” for Alzheimer’s. And, yes, there’s the possibility of reversing the mind-robbing disease.

Tuesday

Regarding terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo By Ismael Hossein-zadeh

Despite all the reporting and commentary on the terrorist attacks on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, political pundits and mainstream media have failed to shed any light on some of the submerged factors that might have provoked those heinous attacks. Indeed, the simplistic and politically expedient explanations such as “incompatibility” of Islam with the modern world or “good vs. evil” have shed more heat than light on the issue.

From neighborhood cops to robocops: The changing face of American police By John W. Whitehead

If 2014 was the year of militarized police, armored tanks, and stop-and-frisk searches, 2015 may well be the year of technologized police, surveillance blimps and scan-and-frisk searches.

Charlie Hebdo: Report from Europe By Paul Craig Roberts

Here is a video of the execution of Amedy Coulibaly. It is a German website with the actual live French video of the police assault on the deli. There are three videos. The first one repeatedly shows Coulibaly with tied hands containing no weapons shot down and killed when he could easily have been captured. It is as if the order was to make sure that there is no live suspect whose story might have to be explained away. The first video also repeatedly shows the execution in slow motion. Commentary in French accompanies the video.

Hypocrites Without Borders By Frank Scott

If the stand-up-for-freedom by paying to see a lousy film about Korea wasn’t enough to send you to the vomitorium, the murders in Paris should have done the job. The global 1% is moving us towards more bloody warfare as salvation for capital while growing sectors of the 99% wonder if we can afford to tolerate this madness much longer and hope to survive as a race.

Propaganda Central (aka TSA Blog) trumpets award By Lisa Simeone

Oscar season may be upon us, when movies, actors, actresses, directors, etc. get recognized for their achievements, but never let it be said that our hardworking civil servants, who do so much to Keep Us Safe, go unnoticed.

Wednesday

How propaganda conquers democracy By Nicolas J S Davies

Do we live in a country where citizens are critically informed on the issues of the day by media that operate independently of the government? Or do our political leaders deliberately plant a false view of events and issues in the mind of the public that complicit media then broadcast and amplify to generate public consent for government policy?

There are limits to inciteful speech By Wayne Madsen

As unlikely a pair as Pope Francis and Charlie Hebdo founder have weighed in on the flagrant incitement of believers of a major religion with the intent of causing violence. On his way to the Philippines, the Pope said, “You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.” He also said that if someone insulted his mother, he “could expect a punch” in return.

By any other name, terrorism sucks By Philip A Farruggio

When a suicide bomber blows away the lives of students and other civilians in an Israeli café, my eyes fill with tears. When Israeli Apache helicopters blast away the lives of innocent Palestinians, more tears flow. Terrorism has no parameters. It sucks no matter who does the killing and who does the dying.

CFR-Trilateral pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s corporate philanthropy tied to transhumanist neo-eugenics By John Klyczek

Jeffrey Epstein is currently infamous for his conviction for soliciting a fourteen-year-old girl for prostitution and for allegedly orchestrating underage “sex slave” orgies at his private Virgin Island mansion, where he purportedly pimped out underage girls to elite political figures such as Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz, and probably Bill Clinton as well (he also traveled to Thailand in 2001 with Prince Andrew, probably to indulge in the country’s rampant child sex trade).

Bush versus Clinton again? By Linda S. Heard

In the US, a Western democracy with a population of 316 million, it’s astonishing that whenever there’s a presidential election in the offing, the same old familiar names are trotted out time and time again. And when one of them has a dynastic ring about it, the American public hardly blinks. Can it be mere happenstance of fate that candidates have been plucked from a handful of mega-wealthy establishment families more often than not?

Thursday

Murdering journalists . . . them and us By William Blum

After Paris, condemnation of religious fanaticism is at its height. I’d guess that even many progressives fantasize about wringing the necks of jihadists, bashing into their heads some thoughts about the intellect, about satire, humor, freedom of speech. We’re talking here, after all, about young men raised in France, not Saudi Arabia.

The aliens amongst you By Michael Freed

We all know they’re here. Everyone tries to deny it: to pretend they don’t exist. But they’re out in plain sight all the time and every once in a while remind us of they’re existence. We try to ignore them. Sometimes we even try to pretend they’re not alien at all. We incorporate parts of their culture into our own. But only parts of it. We may listen and sing along with their music. Heck, heard but not seen is nearly acceptable when it comes to this unwanted presence. But we wouldn’t invite them say to a sit-down dinner inside our homes.

Ohio’s anti-green suicide By Harvey Wasserman

Swing state Ohio is plunging ever deeper into the fossil/nuke abyss.

An American hero, the American sniper By Dave Alpert

Who is Chris Kyle? Well, if you’re a movie fan, Chris Kyle is the man whose life and experiences are used for the film, “American Sniper.” He is the man that Clint Eastwood chose to be the hero of his film.

A personal note on Jewish statistics By Gilad Atzmon

The British political establishment is in a state of panic. A poll revealed last week that “a quarter of Jews in Britain have considered leaving the country in the last two years and well over half (58%) feel they have no long term future in Europe.” This could be a potential disaster for British political parties. Eighty per cent of the Tories are members of the pro Israeli lobby, The Conservative Friends Of Israel (CFI), and a similar percentage of Labour and Libdem MPs have vowed their allegiance to Israel through their respective Jewish Lobby groups. The Jews are clearly a vital source of funding for British politicians. In fact, it has become hard to imagine what British politics would look like without Jewish Lobby’s money. Though the vast majority of British MPs are friends of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, it has not been established how many of our MPs are friendly with Manchester and Hartlepool.

Friday

Austerity or how the European Union and the Greek governing class destroyed Greece’s economy By Luciana Bohne

An anecdote: in our travels through Greece in the 1980s, our daughter suffered from car-motion sickness. She wrote in her diary: “We left Delphi, and I felt sick. Mom stuffed me with bread, and I threw up. Dad told me a Greek tragedy, and I felt better.” She was twelve but understood catharsis.

Trojan hearse: Greek elections and the Euro leper colony By Greg Palast

Europe is stunned, and bankers aghast, that polls show the new party of the Left, Syriza, will win Greece’s parliamentary elections to be held this coming Sunday, January 25.

Lessons that Hollande failed to learn from George W. Bush’s blunders By Ramzy Baroud

François Hollande is not a popular president. No matter how hard the ‘socialist’ leader tries to impress, there never seems to be a no solid constituency that backs him. He attempted to mask his initial lack of experience in foreign affairs with a war in Mali, after his country enthusiastically took on Libya. While he succeeded at launching wars, he failed at managing their consequences as the latest attacks in Paris have demonstrated.

In SOTU, president punts on income inequality By Michael Winship

Much of the buildup to President Obama’s State of the Union address made it sound as if he were going to read chapter and verse from French economist Thomas Piketty’s book, Capital in the 21st Century—you know, last year’s 700-plus page best seller, the one that was unexpectedly all the rage as it argued that vast economic inequality is as much about wealth (what’s owned) as it is about income (what’s earned). That one.

Barack, ya coulda been a contender, instead of a tool of the elite By Philip A Farruggio

Okay, Barack, from one Brooklyn guy to one Chicago guy, let’s talk straight and pull no punches. I don’t care how nice of a guy you want to be, or how intelligent and articulate . . . ya blew it, kiddo! Just like with your predecessors, especially Clinton and Junior Bush, you simply are a stooge of the wizards who control this empire.

[intrepidreport]

Week of January 12, 2015

Monday

MKO’s and Mossad’s mortifying ignominy in Iran

By Dr. Ismail Salami

In their abortive effort to assassinate another Iranian nuclear scientist, Israeli officials only sustained desperation and disgrace in their dastardly elimination campaign against Iran, which was apparently in sync with ISIL’s inhumane brutalities inside Iraq and Syria.

Hebdo attack rife with ‘false flag’ clues By Wayne Madsen

The reliance of governments and non-state actors on carrying out “false flag” terrorist attacks, which, in the modern-era, began in Europe with the 1980 time-bombing of the Bologna train station that killed 85 and injured over 200, is beginning to yield predictable clues. This is certainly the case with the three-man professional military assault carried out in a precision manner by three alleged Islamist terrorists on the Paris editorial offices of the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo.

Charlie Hebdo and Tsarnaev’s trial: Cui bono? By Paul Craig Roberts

There are two ways to look at the alleged terrorist attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Is it a religious war in Europe or just another false flag operation? By Gilad Atzmon

The massacre in France was a devastating crime against freedom and the right to laugh.

Id as ideology By Missy Comley Beattie

Whew. I’ve been on a Netflix rip-roar binge, watching episodes of a Spanish drama series, Grand Hotel. Packed with deliciously devious characters, the story begins in 1905 when Julio travels to see his sister, a maid at the hotel. On arriving, he learns of her disappearance, that she may be dead, and decides to work at the hotel to investigate. He sees Alicia, the daughter of the hotel’s proprietor. It’s love. And taboo.

Tuesday

Hebdo vs Al Jazeera: A tale of two journalisms By Eric Walberg

Press freedom has been under attack with the deaths in Paris of nine Charlie Hebdo employees, including editor Stephane Charbonnier, and the continued incarceration in Cairo of three Al Jazeera journalists. The circumstances of the victimization of the journalists are starkly different.

The December 2014 payroll jobs report By Paul Craig Roberts

On January 9, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that a quarter of a million new jobs were created in December.

A textbook case of willful distortion By Walter Brasch

HarperCollins says it’s sorry. It says it regrets not including Israel on a map of the Middle East in an atlas it published and distributed in the Middle East. It says all remaining copies of the atlas will be pulped.

Are we really talking about freedom of speech and expression? By Dave Alpert

When I was growing up in the Bronx, at a very early age, I learned that what makes this country special is that we honor one’s right to free speech. But I also learned that one could not say what you want to, when you want to, and where you want to.

TSA logic: Carry on water, get groped; run guns, get a pass By Lisa Simeone

We’ve only been saying it for years.

Wednesday

Lies, lies and damned lies: The new Republican House of Representatives is insane and character disordered By Richard John Stapleton

I just read the following in the Statesboro (Georgia) Herald in its issue of January 7, 2014, in an article containing 36 column inches, about half a page, extolling the wonderful pageantry of the Republican takeover in Washington, with the largest majority in 60 years.

The CIA radicalized French Muslims By Wayne Madsen

The decision of the Central Intelligence Agency to fund, train, and arm Afghan mujaheddin fundamentalists against the Soviet Union and the socialist government of Afghanistan in the 1980s led directly to the radicalization of French Muslims. It was the CIA’s support for the mujaheddin assistance network known as “Al Qaeda,” or the “database” as revealed by the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, that facilitated the expansion of Saudi Wahhabist influence over Muslim communities not only in France but around the world.

Spitting on other people’s prophets is not a Western value By Gilad Atzmon

In a BBC interview following the Charlie Hebdo Massacre, Jewish Chronicle writer David Aaronovitch advised those who do not approve of ‘freedom of speech’ to ‘move to Pakistan.’ It is not surprising to find a Zionist Jew advocating voluntary cleansing; after all, expulsion is a Jewish nationalist favourite adventure. Judging by Aaronovitch’s endorsement of elementary liberty, I am happy to announce that the appeal for freedom of expression is the immediate and very positive outcome of the disastrous events in Paris.

The police threat is too high By Paul Craig Roberts

The hypocrisy of American police is beginning to bother even law and order conservatives. The New York Police Department is rivaling the black community in Ferguson in keeping alive the murders of their community members.

The fix is in By Philip A Farruggio

Sports have always been a keen reflection of the greater culture of our times. The Roman Empire was a devouring beast that ate up countries like its lions ate up the Christians in the Roman Coliseum. Rome’s violent aspect was mirrored by the so called ‘sport’of gladiator fights to the death (much like the new game in town, Ultimate Fighting, also done in a ‘cage’), or the chariot races which resembled rush hour down 7th Ave in NYC. Thus, when sports take on a more violent nature or focus, it must reflect the mindset of its greater culture. Interesting how pro football replaced baseball as our national pastime right about at the height of the Vietnam War.

Thursday

Je ne suis pas Charlie The extremely dark and unexamined underside of the Charlie Hebdo affair By John Chuckman

We hear much about bloody events in Paris being an attack upon Western traditions and freedom of the press, and I am sorry but such claims are close to laughable, even though there is nothing remotely funny about mass murder. It certainly is not part of the best Western tradition to insult the revered figures of major religions. You are, of course, technically free to do so in many Western countries—always remembering that in many of them, a wrong target for your satire will get you a prison term for “hate crimes”—but it does represent little more than poor judgment and extremely bad taste to exercise that particular freedom.

Charlie Hebdo By Paul Craig Roberts

The Charlie Hebdo affair has many of the characteristics of a false flag operation. The attack on the cartoonists’ office was a disciplined professional attack of the kind associated with highly trained special forces; yet the suspects who were later corralled and killed seemed bumbling and unprofessional. It is like two different sets of people.

Fox News’s ‘experts’ are blatant propagandists and liars By Wayne Madsen

Only the most ignorant consider Fox News to be a legitimate news network. And when it comes to issues dealing with terrorism and Islam, Fox News is not only a font of disinformation and blatant propaganda but also flat out lies.

Charlie Hebdo fallout in America By Stephen Lendman

Civil liberties in America and Europe are gravely threatened. Already seriously eroded.

You have the right to remain obnoxious By Michael Winship

Here in New York City, the past few weeks have been fraught. First, in early December, protesters took to the streets to protest a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict a policeman involved in the choking death of African-American Eric Garner. The police were attempting to place Garner under arrest for selling loose cigarettes.

Friday

Je suis CIA By Larry Chin

Since 9/11, the imperial playbook has consisted of a favorite and time-tested tactic: the false flag operation

Freedom Rider: Charlie Hebdo: ‘Je suis white people’ By Margaret Kimberley

Don’t kill white people. After all is said and done, the Charlie Hebdo outrage, the hashtags, and the million person marches amount to that simple but very powerful dictum. In the eyes of the governments that do most of the killing on the planet and the corporate media who act as their scribes, there is nothing worse than targeting even a handful of white people for death.

War begets war: It’s not about Islam; it never was By Ramzy Baroud

It is still not about Islam, even if the media and militants attacking Western targets say so. Actually, it never was. But it was important for many to conflate politics with religion; partly because it is convenient and self-validating.

Kiev’s big lie on ending Donbas conflict in two weeks By Stephen Lendman

Washington runs things in Ukraine. It newest colony. Kiev’s illegitimate puppet government serves its interests. Ruthlessly exploiting its people in the process.

Lonesome Yanks By Linh Dinh

I was sitting in the Friendly Lounge, one block from my Philly apartment. Next to me was a 59-year-old man, Robert. Seeing my wedding band, he confided, “You’re lucky to have somebody to go home to. I always had a lover, a boyfriend, but I haven’t had anybody in ten years. And it’s not the,” and he suddenly dipped his head down near my crotch, “but the support, you know. I can’t just go home and say to somebody, ‘Bitch, I love you!’”

[intrepidreport]

Week of January 5, 2015

Monday

Is Poroshenko preparing for peace or war? By Joshua Tartakovsky

What is one to make of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s recent statement that violence and force have failed in suppressing the Donbass and that negotiations must be carried out? Poroshenko said that there is no military solution to the war in Donetsk and Lugansk while qualifying his statement by saying that if Russia will launch an intervention, Ukraine will introduce martial law. Poroshenko’s statement that “we haven’t got the resources for an offensive today” can be interpreted to mean that either he is planning to get the resources in the future or attempting to appear pragmatic so as to deflect accusations from ultra-nationalists that he betrayed their cause.

Talking to a Palestinian about Israel, American dissent, brainwashing and hijacked protests By Linh Dinh

In 1948, Israel had its strange birth, and the newborn was greeted immediately by soldiers from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia as they tried to snuff out the monster in its crib. They failed spectacularly, and an ink-drawn Star of David flag was raised on the shore of the Red Sea. Screw you, Arabs!

‘Dos’ and ‘don’ts’: Things I learned writing about the Middle East By Ramzy Baroud

Writing about and reporting the Middle East is not an easy task, especially during these years of turmoil and upheaval. While physical maps remain largely intact, the geopolitical map of the region is in constant flux. Following and reporting about these constant changes without a deep and compassionate understanding of the region will achieve little but predictable and lackluster content that offers nothing original, but recycled old ideas and stereotypes.

Terrorism ‘insurance’ has expired By Buddy Bell

In 2002, at a time when insurance providers were unwilling to provide coverage for losses resulting from acts of terrorism, and when construction and utility companies were stalling in their development projects, Congress passed the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act (TRIA). They decided to socialize some of the financial risk, giving a federal government guarantee on insurance payouts exceeding 100 million dollars.

Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz named in US lawsuit over underage sex allegations By Gilad Atzmon

British press reports said Friday that a woman claims that Jewish banker Jeffrey Epstein loaned her to rich and powerful friends as an underage “sex slave.” The woman has alleged in a US court document that she was repeatedly forced to have sexual relations with Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz.

Tuesday

The ‘Espionage Den’: American ghosts in Tehran By Eric Walberg

The highlight to any trip to Tehran—if you can manage it—is a visit to the scene of the most spectacular hostage-taking in recent history, the US embassy, which Iranian students stormed in November 1979, holding 52 Americans hostage for 444 days, and dumping US diplomatic correspondence on the street in a spectacular premodern WikiLeak.

2014’s watershed events By Wayne Madsen

History will mark 2014 as the year of shifting global alliances and the beginning of the end of America’s self-styled unipolar dominance under the rubric of the “New American Century.” The corporate media is largely using the same “bucket list” of 2014’s most memorable events but the relative overall importance of these news stories are in the eyes of the beholder.

Ignorance is no excuse for wrongdoing, unless you’re a cop By John W. Whitehead

With Orwellian irony, the U.S. Supreme Court chose December 15, National Bill of Rights Day, to deliver its crushing blow to the Fourth Amendment. Although the courts have historically held that ignorance of the law is not an excuse for breaking the law, in its 8-1 ruling in Heien v. State of North Carolina, the Supreme Court gave police in America one more ready excuse to routinely violate the laws of the land, this time under the guise of ignorance.

Setting America’s priorities for 2015 By Walter Brasch

Marci Rosenberg, a senior speech language pathologist at the University of Michigan, earns about $73,000 a year.

Letting it all hang out By Dave Alpert

During a charity golf outing hosted by a retired LAPD officer, former investigator Gary Fishell took the microphone and began to sing a parody of the song, “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown,” substituting his own words and directing it at Michael Brown, the unarmed African-American youngster who was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, by police officer Darren Wilson.

Wednesday

This is what war does By John Chuckman

A Canadian photographer named Bryan Adams (yes, the rock singer) has done something extraordinary in publishing a book of photographs of what war does to soldiers. The wounds of his subjects are not covered with gore as they would be on the battlefield. His pictures are clean studio shots. The subjects sometimes even are smiling. Their wounds are healed, at least as much as such wounds can ever be called healed, but the surrealistic sense of the pictures says something profound about our society. We’ve done these savage things to our own young, and then left them to spend the rest of their lives struggling with the results.

The CIA’s themed revolution against Putin By Wayne Madsen

The CIA is using the same coalition of Zionists, neo-Nazi street thugs, militant homosexuals, and exiled oligarchs it used in Ukraine to overthrow the democratically-elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych to carry out the overthrow of democratically-elected Russian President Vladimir Putin.

UN lets down the Palestinians, will the ICC? By Linda S. Heard

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas must surely feel he’s fighting windmills. This is a leader who has wholeheartedly rejected violence, choosing instead the path of peaceful negotiation. Nevertheless, his legitimate efforts to bring about a Palestinian state always result in disappointment, despite the fact that the majority of UN General Assembly member states are in his camp. Unfortunately, there are those who pay lip service to a two-state solution, but when push comes to shove they throw the Palestinian people’s aspirations under a bus.

The struggle for Palestine’s soul By Stephen Lendman

International law is clear and unequivocal. Occupying powers have no sovereignty over territories they control.

Reason Number 13,336 why capitalism will be the death of us By William Blum

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria—the “superbugs”—if left unchecked, could result in 10 million deaths a year by 2050. New drugs to fight the superbugs are desperately needed. But a panel advising President Obama warned in September that “there isn’t a sufficiently robust pipeline of new drugs to replace the ones rendered ineffective by antibiotic resistance.”

Thursday

EU showdown: Greece Takes on the vampire squid By Ellen Brown

Greece and the troika (the International Monetary Fund, the EU, and the European Central Bank) are in a dangerous game of chicken. The Greeks have been threatened with a “Cyprus-Style prolonged bank holiday” if they “vote wrong.” But they have been bullied for too long and are saying “no more.”

‘Incomprehensible’ secrecy: Sanders demands release of trade agreement text By Deirdre Fulton

With Congress on the verge of taking up the controversial, corporate-friendly Trans Pacific Partnership, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is demanding that the chief trade representative for the United States turn over the full text of the proposed trade agreement.

Freedom Rider: Police corruption exposed By Margaret Kimberley

The false narrative about the need for hyper policing has come crashing down and police themselves destroyed the well-cultivated propaganda. The awful truth which black people were well aware of is now out in the open for all to see. Police departments in the United States exist for the purpose of maintaining white people’s prerogatives as the group in control of everyone else. Enhancing public safety is a secondary consideration.

Benefiting from the US’s weakness By Linda S. Heard

Oh what a tangled web the Arab country, considered to be the Cradle of Civilization, has become! When George W. Bush’s squads launched “Shock and Awe” on the false premise that Iraq had stocks of weapons of mass destruction, Pandora’s Box was opened and out popped a gift with the message “With love to Iran,” a message obliterated by the concept of democracy and freedom.

What would a direct democracy in the US be like? By Arthur D. Robbins

What would it be like if we really lived in a democracy? These days just about everybody seems to be enjoying the benefits democratic government, that is if you believe government propaganda and you are one of the credulous many who are eager for a sense of well being at any price. But what is usually called democracy is in fact an oligarchy of elected representatives responsible to the business interests who bankrolled their campaign. If people were actually given the opportunity to choose democracy, they might do so, provided they understood what the word actually means. Our one uncontested example is ancient Athens.

Friday

Canada’s quiet coup: How a CIA off-shoot helped install Stephen Harper as Canada’s prime minister By Mark Taliano

The biggest threat to Canada’s national security is internal. It is the offshoot of an extraordinarily successful—because it remains largely undetected—coup that imposed itself on the country with the federal election of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) in 2006, and solidified its impacts with the election of a Conservative majority in 2011.

Pumping up fear over selective terror while ignoring state terror Selective terror achieves political & psychological goals that state terror does not

By Douglas Valentine

Dianne Johnstone asks the rhetorical question at CounterPunch, “What do you say when you have nothing to say?” in regard to the I Am Charlie “terror” attack in Paris. Hers is an emotional response, exasperation; there is plenty to say that is quite rational.

Welcome to the Matrix: Enslaved by technology and the Internet of Things By John W. Whitehead

If ever Americans sell their birthright, it will be for the promise of expediency and comfort delivered by way of blazingly fast Internet, cell phone signals that never drop a call, thermostats that keep us at the perfect temperature without our having to raise a finger, and entertainment that can be simultaneously streamed to our TVs, tablets and cell phones.

It’s time to pay our taxes By Dave Alpert

Fellow Americans, we have come to that time of the year when we must anti-up and pay the piper.

Time to move out: The problem with Mahmoud Abbas and his authority By Ramzy Baroud

It was the moment many had been waiting for. On January 2, Palestine’s United Nations envoy, Riyad Mansour formally requested membership at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

[intrepidreport]

Week of December 29, 2014

Monday

Magic growth numbers from the government By Paul Craig Roberts

Everyone wants good news, so the government makes it up. The latest fiction is that US real GDP grew 4.6% in the second quarter and 5% in the third.

Russian Roulette: Taxpayers could be on the hook for trillions in oil derivatives By Ellen Brown

The sudden dramatic collapse in the price of oil appears to be an act of geopolitical warfare against Russia. The result could be trillions of dollars in oil derivative losses; and the FDIC could be liable, following repeal of key portions of the Dodd-Frank Act earlier this month.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture is nothing compared to the Panetta Review WARNING: THIS REPORT CONTAINS GRAPHIC MATERIAL By Wayne Madsen

The word out of Langley, Virginia, is that although the Central Intelligence Agency fought hard against the Senate Intelligence Committee’s release of its report on the agency’s torture or “enhanced interrogation” operations against “high-value detainees,” that report is said to be mild compared to the internal review of such practices ordered by CIA Director Leon Panetta after he assumed control of the agency in 2009.

The fracking boom is a fracking bubble By Walter Brasch

Gas prices have plunged to the low $2 range—except in Pennsylvania.

Good cop, bad cop By Missy Comley Beattie

After the Sony hack, Barack Obama said, “We cannot have a society where some dictator someplace can start imposing censorship here in the United States. That’s not who we are. That’s not what America is about.”

Tuesday

Fighting ‘Islamic State’ is not Israel’s priority By Nicola Nasser

Defying a consensus that it is a priority by the world community, comprising international rivals like the United States, Europe, Russia and China and regional rivals like Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, Israel, like Turkey, does not eye the U.S.-led war on the IS as its regional priority. Nor fighting Israel is an IS priority.

Year end interviews: Part I—Conservative canards By Jim Miles

It is the time of year for the mainstream media to make its lists, check them twice with the pundits, and find out who is naughty and who is nice. While not officially a year end review, I have recently commented on Evan Solomon’s interview with General Breedlove in which mostly softball questions without curves or spins were gently lobbed at the General—who did a reasonably intelligent job of responding considering the knuckleball attempts on some of the questions.(1) The next year end interview I viewed was between Peter Mansbridge, CBC’s senior correspondent, and Stephen Harper, Canada’s neo-Conservative head of state. As with the former interview, the Mansbridge interview was rather innocuous, with responses essentially reflecting Conservative canards about the economy, climate change, and foreign affairs.

Regime change in Cuba By Paul Craig Roberts

Normalization of relations with Cuba is not the result of a diplomatic breakthrough or a change of heart on the part of Washington. Normalization is a result of US corporations seeking profit opportunities in Cuba, such as developing broadband Internet markets in Cuba.

American exceptionalism and American torture By William Blum

In 1964, the Brazilian military, in a US-designed coup, overthrew a liberal (not more to the left than that) government and proceeded to rule with an iron fist for the next 21 years. In 1979, the military regime passed an amnesty law blocking the prosecution of its members for torture and other crimes. The amnesty still holds.

It’s a wonderful life, comrade The Hollywood Christmas classic was once accused of hiding a subversive Communist message. By Michael Winship

A number of years ago, I was telling a longtime city dweller friend of mine yet another story about the small, upstate New York town in which I grew up.

Wednesday

The false flagging of North Korea: CIA weaponizes Hollywood By Larry Chin

The campaign of aggression against North Korea, from the hacking of Sony and the crescendo of noise over the film, The Interview, bears all the markings of a CIA false flag operation.

Why is the West intent on making Vladimir Putin its villain? By Ben Tanosborn

American corporate press has firmly established its second identity in the Internet: its twin, or its alias, one might say. It does apply, although perhaps not as vividly, in much of Western Europe, this time to the beating of war drums . . . where the only common sound in the cacophony is the current displeasure for that daring devil: Vladimir Putin.

Year end interviews: Part II—Foreign Minister John Baird’s lies about Russia By Jim Miles

Wow! After listening to the Stephen Harper’s interview with Peter Mansbridge and now having listened to Canada’s Foreign Minister John Baird’s interview with Evan Solomon (CBC), it is apparent that they both have their talking points down pat. They could have exchanged places and the comments would have come out pretty much the same.

Activists permanently shut down Vermont Yankee nuke plant By Harvey Wasserman

The Vermont Yankee atomic reactor was permanently taken off-line Monday, Dec. 29, 2014. Citizen activists have made it happen. The number of licensed U.S. commercial reactors is now under 100 where once it was to be 1,000.

‘You’re either a cop or little people’: The American police state in 2014 By John W. Whitehead

For those of us who have managed to survive 2014 with our lives intact and our freedoms hanging by a thread, it has been a year of crackdowns, clampdowns, shutdowns, showdowns, shootdowns, standdowns, knockdowns, putdowns, breakdowns, lockdowns, takedowns, slowdowns, meltdowns, and never-ending letdowns.

Thursday

The outlook for the New Year By Paul Craig Roberts

Washington has shaped 2015 to be a year of conflict. The conflict could be intense.

A New Year’s resolution: Get out of the box! By Philip A Farruggio

We’ve all always been ‘boxed in.’ Our rents and mortgages, higher than they should be, our too high cable and power bills, car payments . . . really a myriad of debts that box us into this empire. You see, it has all been orchestrated by not even the so called ‘one percent.’

Turkey’s wild card president By Linda S. Heard

It wasn’t so long ago that the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was considered to be the poster child for political Islam. At one time, there were a slew of articles in the mainstream press praising the Turkish system of governance as an example to be emulated by other regional predominantly Muslim states. Turkey was considered an economic miracle that was well on the path to democracy en route to joining the European Union.

Freedom Rider: Cuba in the American imagination By Margaret Kimberley

On December 17, 2014, the Obama administration announced changes in relations with Cuba which broke with over fifty years of foreign policy decisions. The United States will open an embassy in Havana for the first time since 1961. All of the Cuban Five political prisoners are now free. While Congress must approve a complete end of the trade embargo, some trade restrictions have already been loosened.

The challenge of the Islamic State and U.S. policy By Karl Meyer and Kathy Kelly

What to do about the political mess in the Middle East and the rise of the Islamic State and related political movements?

Friday

Elie Wiesel: Conscience of mankind and saintly humanitarian or liar, hypocrite, and terrorist? By John Taylor

Elie Wiesel presents himself as a humanitarian whose personal narrative gives him special license to sermonize about tolerance and non-violence. Wiesel: “Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must—at that moment—become the center of the universe.” More Wiesel: “Never again becomes more than a slogan: It’s a prayer, a promise, a vow. Never again jail and torture. Never again the suffering of innocent people, or the shooting of starving, frightened, terrified children.”

2015: A pivotal year for economic and financial crises and wars? By Rodrigue Tremblay

These days, militaristic neoconservatives, or neocons, have near complete control of the American government under the façade of whoever is president at the time. They direct U.S. policies at the State Department, at the Pentagon, at the U.S. Treasury and at the Fed central bank. They are thus in position to influence and frame American foreign policy, military policy, economic and financial policies and monetary policy.

The renewed push for deeper North American integration By Dana Gabriel

The globalist plan to incrementally merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a North American Union has been ongoing for years. While at times, the agenda appears to have seemingly stalled, current efforts to expand the trilateral partnership show that it is alive and once again gaining steam. With NAFTA as the foundation, the renewed push for deeper North American integration continues on many different fronts.

Hysterical materialism: Anything new? Maybe By Frank Scott

The annual shopping frenzy representing profit for corporate America and loss for consumer nation is over. The joyful smiles of children at Santa’s visit were followed by the frowning faces of parents on his departure when the bills arrived. But that happens every year.

Postcard from the end of America: Passyunk Square, Philadelphia By Linh Dinh

Writing this piece, I didn’t have to get on any bus or train, but only walk five minutes to see Beth, someone I first met 28 years ago. Most lives are improbable, I know, but when I listen to Beth talk, I often find myself thinking, That can’t possibly be true, but her facts have always checked out, and her stories consistent, even on a retelling many years later.

[intrepidreport]

Week of December 15, 2014

Monday

Bail-in and the Financial Stability Board: The global bankers’ coup By Ellen Brown

On December 11, 2014, the US House of Representatives passed a bill repealing the Dodd-Frank requirement that risky derivatives be pushed into big-bank subsidiaries, leaving our deposits and pensions exposed to massive derivatives losses.

Torture is exactly who we are By Missy Comley Beattie

I could not read the names without weeping—a list of the tortured detainees. I stared at each name, lingering, imagining, feeling. I thought of the euphemism, enhanced interrogation, like collateral damage, a manipulation of words to mitigate the depravity by making the unacceptable sound less repugnant.

Drones and discrimination: Kick the habit By Kathy Kelly

On December 10, International Human Rights Day, federal Magistrate Matt Whitworth sentenced me to three months in prison for having crossed the line at a military base that wages drone warfare. The punishment for our attempt to speak on behalf of trapped and desperate people, abroad, will be an opportunity to speak with people trapped by prisons and impoverishment here in the U.S.

Is the United States attempting to overthrow Mugabe? By John Klyczek

Last week, 90-year-old Zimbabwean despot Robert Mugabe “reportedly alleged that [his vice president] had been conspiring with the west and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to bring Zanu-PF down,” according to Mail and Guardian Africa.

CIA has history of blanket denials By Wayne Madsen

The Central Intelligence Agency, which lives and breathes according to the mantra of “plausible deniability,” has a long history of denying wrongdoing.

Tuesday

Iran nuclear talks extended: A perilous, slippery slope By Ismael Hossein-zadeh

Soon after the Iran nuclear talks were recently extended for another seven months (beyond the November 22, 2014, deadline), President Rouhani spoke with the Iranian people in a televised address in which he sought to portray the inconclusive negotiations as a diplomatic victory for Iran, as an indication that his team of negotiators “stood their ground” in the face of excessive demands by the US and its allies.

‘That’s not who we are’ By Dave Alpert

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the torture and rendition programs sponsored by the Bush administration has caused an uproar not only in the U.S., but internationally as well.

American values only exist in Hollywood By Linda S. Heard

It is irksome to hear US presidents admonishing other countries on human rights and alleged crimes against humanity, while trumpeting their own country’s set-in-stone values. A nation either operates on a certain set of values, ethics and principles or it does not. Values cannot be cherry-picked as a matter of convenience. US administrations go out of their way to present a squeaky clean facade and when they are caught on the hop, they invariably attempt to get themselves off the hook by stating the crimes in question were committed by a few bad apples who end up getting nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

A plan for posterity: the presidential election of 2016 By Roger Copple

Here is a plan for posterity: Bernie Sanders for president, and Dennis Kucinich for vice president.

Practicing subsidized un-medicine By Walter Brasch

Clutching newspaper clippings in one hand and a medical bag loaded with seeds in the other, my ersatz friend Dr. Franklin Peterson Comstock III, knocking down pregnant ladies, students, the elderly, and two burly construction workers who were waiting for a bus, rushed past me, leaving me in a close and personal encounter with the concrete.

Wednesday

At what point will Putin bend under Obama’s Ukraine extortion? By Peter Chamberlin

Have we reached the point where American economic warfare against Russia has become so painful that Putin has to stop standing between Bashar Assad and Obama? With the “one-two punch” of punitive banking and oil industry sanctions, followed by plunging oil prices, the American aggression is starting to bear evil fruit.

The U.S. congressional declaration of war against Russia By Wayne Madsen

The sixteen-page anti-Russian House Resolution 758, which was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in an overwhelming vote, is a recipe for active U.S. military and intelligence operations against Russia.

U.S. Supreme Court rules 8-1 that citizens have no protection against Fourth Amendment violations by police officers ignorant of the law By Nisha Whitehead

WASHINGTON, D.C.—In a blow to the constitutional rights of citizens, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in Heien v. State of North Carolina that police officers are permitted to violate American citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights if the violation results from a “reasonable” mistake about the law on the part of police. Acting contrary to the venerable principle that “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” the Court ruled that evidence obtained by police during a traffic stop that was not legally justified can be used to prosecute the person if police were reasonably mistaken that the person had violated the law.

Deeds, not claims, say who we are By Ben Tanosborn

During the past three weeks we have been living in the United States, a wakeup call to reality that heralds Americans might not be quite the people we claim to be; not in the way we treat people within and beyond our borders. Torture and racial discrimination, different issues with similar amoral results, are intermittently resurfacing; creating great distress for the pharisaic promoters of Pax Americana . . . the self-proclaimed patriots convinced that America, given its predestined godly nature, can do no wrong.

Anti-nuke activists fight to close Diablo Canyon By Harvey Wasserman

California’s Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors are surrounded by earthquake faults they were never designed to withstand. They are riddled with design flaws and can’t meet basic fire safety standards. They dump huge quantities of hot water into the ocean in defiance of state water quality standards, killing billions of sea creatures.

Thursday

NATO’s General Breedlove’s equivocal replies to softball questions about the long war By Jim Miles

Evan Solomon, of CBC’s The House, recently had an interview with NATO’s current leading figure, four star General Philip Mark Breedlove, the seventeenth Supreme Allied Commander Europe. It was a fairly benign interview with no hard questions posed to the most powerful person in Europe. The answers were much more rational than someone from the Republican right domestically may have provided, but they demonstrate the understandable bias of the ‘Western’ views vis a vis NATO, ISIS, and Russia/Ukraine.

Washington’s master plan: World conquest By Stephen Lendman

Hitler’s master plan included removing all internal opposition. Genocide. Ethnic cleansing.

The tragic ends of the CIA’s madams By Wayne Madsen

Many readers may be familiar with the late “DC Madam” Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who reportedly committed “suicide” in 2008 prior to her revealing more details about her top flight clientele, which ranged from Vice President Dick Cheney to top officials of the Central Intelligence Agency. Most have likely never heard of Heide Rikan.

Thinking out loud By Dave Alpert

A new movie is opening on Christmas Day titled “The Interview.” Being a comedy, one would assume that it’s an appropriate film for the celebration of the holiday season.

This cruel and stupid charity needs transparency By Martha Rosenberg

Heifer International is a Little Rock-based Christian charity that “ends hunger and poverty” through sending live animals to poor people overseas. Despite its Unicef style photos of cute kids hugging cute animals which will soon be dinner, its projects have ended in sickness and death for the animals.

Friday

We are taking a holiday break By Bev Conover

Intrepid Report will resume publishing on December 29.

Israeli role in Syrian conflict brought into the open By Nicola Nasser

Overtly, the Israeli superpower of the Middle East has been keen to posture as having no role whatsoever in the four-year old devastating conflict in Syria, where all major regional and international powers are politically and militarily deeply involved and settling scores by Syrian blood.

The unspeakable in Afghanistan By Patrick Kennelly

2014 marks the deadliest year in Afghanistan for civilians, fighters, and foreigners. The situation has reached a new low as the myth of the Afghan state continues.

The CIA-engineered oil glut to bring down Putin and Maduro By Wayne Madsen

John Brennan’s long familiarity with Saudi Arabia, owing to the time he spent there as the CIA station chief in Riyadh in the 1990s and his knowledge of Saudi oil operations, has paid off. WMR has learned that Brennan’s agents inside Saudi Aramco convinced the firm’s management and the Saudi Oil Ministry to begin fracking operations to stimulate production in Saudi Arabia’s oldest oil fields.

Financial market manipulation is the new trend: can it continue? Financial imperialists attack Russia

By Paul Craig Roberts

A dangerous new trend is the successful manipulation of the financial markets by the Federal Reserve, other central banks, private banks, and the US Treasury. The Federal Reserve reduced real interest rates on US government debt obligations first to zero and then pushed real interest rates into negative territory. Today the government charges you for the privilege of purchasing its bonds.

Whitewashing CIA torture: ‘We are [not so] awesome’ after all By Ramzy Baroud

“This is not who we are. This is not how we operate,” were the words of President Barack Obama, commenting on the grisly findings of a long-awaited congressional report on the use of torture by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Which Democracy? By Arthur D. Robbins

Which Democracy? There are so many to choose from: Rhetorical Democracy (R.D.), Civic Democracy (C.D.), Economic Democracy (E.D.), Political Democracy (P.D.), Social Democracy (S.D.). Let’s start with rhetorical democracy.

And to all, a good night A contemporary Christmas tale By John Chuckman

It was only a matter of time before Santa Claus himself came under the Neanderthal-eyed scrutiny of American intelligence. After all, Santa’s citizenship is unknown, and he crosses borders with no passport or other form of identification. No one knows whether he even has a valid pilot’s license.

[intrepidreport]

Week of December 8, 2014

Monday

Is it time for a revolution? By Dave Alpert

There is hope that the people of this country are finally rebelling against the corruption in our economic and political systems. The murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, ignited a community to action. They demanded nothing more than justice and predictably did not get it.

Freedom Rider: Ferguson’s reckoning for Obama By Margaret Kimberley

For nearly six years black Americans have supported President Barack Obama overwhelmingly, only to be treated with disdain. He has gotten away with this disrespect because of misplaced allegiance to racial solidarity and racist attacks against him. But the day of reckoning may have finally arrived via Ferguson, Missouri.

The Brown/Garner killings are about a larger state of official terror By Harvey Wasserman

First, they’ve come for the people of color.

Goon cops murder at will By Paul Craig Roberts

Another goon thug gratuitous murderer has been let off by a grand jury and a prosecutor. Read the condolences offered by NY mayor Bill de Blasio, officer Pantaleo and the Obama Puppet: They are so sorry about the collateral damage of protecting the public from criminals and terrorists. But our society would collapse if people are allowed to sell on the street untaxed individual cigarettes out of a pack. Without the death of innocents, none of us would be safe. Our safety depended on the NYPD murder of Eric Garner, a father of six who was a threat to no one.

The Mockingjay of Palestine: ‘If we burn, you burn with us’ By Ramzy Baroud

Raed Mu’anis was my best friend. The small scar on top of his left eyebrow was my doing at the age of five. I urged him to quit hanging on a rope where my mother was drying our laundry. He wouldn’t listen, so I threw a rock at him.

Tuesday

Racists circle their wagons By Dave Alpert

As the furor escalates around the shooting and killing of unarmed black males around the country, white people have decided to circle their wagons and focus us on the “real” problem. What do you mean, the “real” problem?

Israel’s Gaza war continues By Stephen Lendman

State terror is official Israeli policy. Gaza war never ended. Israel breached ceasefire terms straightaway. Repeated violations occur.

Most ‘transparent’ administration in history will be more opaque for next two years By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—President Obama billed his administration as the “most transparent” in the history of the United States. After six years, the Obama White House has become a micro-managing executive and, according to Washington insiders, is about to become even more secretive.

The annual avariciousness assault and a non-existent war upon Christmas By Walter Brasch

It’s now been about a week after Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday.

Thinking is an expensive occupation By Paul Craig Roberts

Raising unsettling questions and providing disturbing explanations seldom meet with accolades. For example, Guy McPherson is a University of Arizona scientist who has been studying human disruption of the environment and climate for 30 years. Many human caused disruptions have developed into local or regional disasters, but now the question is whether the planet itself is endangered. Is human activity bringing about human extinction?

Wednesday

Barack Obama: Progressive Americans’ pyrite-politician By Ben Tanosborn

Much of conservative America, led by the business community and Wall Street as its parakletos, has from day one after Obama’s election to the presidency granted him a series of political pejoratives that only America’s puritan-capitalism can assign with a straight face, and total ignorance: calling him a socialist, or a communist, or many of the other anti-capitalist denominations in between.

Another fabricated jobs report By Paul Craig Roberts

Friday’s payroll jobs report is another government fairy tale or, to avoid polite euphemisms, another packet of lies just like the House of Representatives Resolution against Russia and every other statement that comes out of Washington.

Obama’s CT scan has Washington buzzing By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—President Obama’s two medical examinations, both on December 6, has Washington buzzing. Any time the president of the United States has so much as a cold, speculation begins flying about the state of the president’s health. Obama has been suffering from a persistent sore throat and he was examined at the White House in the morning by an ear, nose, and throat specialist from the Fort Belvoir Medical Center. The Fort Belvoir doctor used a fiber optic endoscope to examine Obama’s throat.

Israel’s worst enemy is Netanyahu By Linda S. Heard

A gale of international disapproval, far from softening Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hardline stance towards Palestinians is having the opposite effect. It reminds me of one of Aesop’s fables. The wind and the sun were in dispute as to which was stronger. They noticed a traveller wearing a cloak. Whichever of us can force the man to remove his cloak is the winner, they decided. The wind blew hard but the man wrapped his garment more tightly around him. When the sun shone brightly, he took it off.

America’s children: The trials of growing up in a police state By John W. Whitehead

After a year dominated with news of police shootings of unarmed citizens (including children), SWAT team raids gone awry, photo ops of militarized police shouldering assault rifles while perched on top of armored vehicles, and reports on how the police are using asset forfeiture laws to pad their pockets with luxury cars, cash and other expensive toys, I find myself wrestling with the question: how do you prepare a child for life in the American police state, especially when it comes to interactions with police?

Thursday

Obama: America “exceptional” so we don’t prosecute torturers By Jon Queally

In his first official remarks following Tuesday’s release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the torture program conducted by the CIA during the presidency of George W. Bush, President Barack Obama on Tuesday night indicated that the abuses detailed in the report conducted in the name of the American people—described as “horrific,” “ruthless” and “much more brutal than previously thought”—should not be followed by further inquiries or prosecutions as many have long urged.

The CIA-French Gladio plot to kill Eisenhower and Khrushchev By Wayne Madsen

WMR has discovered buried deep within the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives a file on a proposed operation to be carried out by the CIA under Allen Dulles and right-wing members of France’s Gladio “stay behind” network. The operation was to assassinate President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and bring about an all-out war between the two nations.

We don’t need nice, we need justice: racism and the moral blindness of white America By Tim Wise

This past week, Chris Rock noted in an interview that in his estimation, America is producing the nicest white people in its history.

Why sharing is a common cause that unites us all By Adam Parsons and Rajesh Makwana

Across the world, millions of campaigners and activists refuse to sit idly by and watch the world’s crises escalate, while our governments fail to provide hope for a more just and sustainable future. The writing is on the wall: climate chaos, escalating conflict over scarce resources, growing impoverishment and marginalisation in the rich world as well as the poor, the looming prospect of another global financial collapse.

Live and let live By Linda S. Heard

It has taken me decades to gain some understanding as to why so many members of the human race fear and detest their fellows merely due to the hue of their skin or their belief system, because I was brought up to believe the world is my oyster and we are all brothers and sisters under the skin.

Friday

Senate Torture Report exposes bizarre sexual voyeurism of Cheney, others By Wayne Madsen

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, otherwise known as the “Torture Report,” contains a number of references to male sexual abuse also seen in past reports about torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo.

Missouri judge convicts and sentences two peace activists for protesting drone warfare Kathy Kelly gets 3-month prison sentence and Georgia Walker 1 year probation By Buddy Bell

JEFFERSON CITY, MO—On December 10, a federal magistrate found Georgia Walker, of Kansas City, MO, and Chicagoan Kathy Kelly guilty of criminal trespass to a military installation as a result of their June 1 effort to deliver a loaf of bread and a citizens’ indictment of drone warfare to authorities at Whiteman AFB.

The war for America’s soul and treasure By Philip A Farruggio

Investigative reporter James Risen has written a new book, “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War,” that gets to the heart of our current American Empire.

‘I can’t breath’: Racism and war in America and beyond By Ramzy Baroud

America’s ruling elites are blatant in their intentions of maintaining “white privilege” at home and economic dominance by military means abroad.

The game is rigged: Why Americans keep losing to the police state By John W. Whitehead

My 7-year-old granddaughter has suddenly developed a keen interest in card games: Go Fish, Crazy Eights, Old Maid, Blackjack, and War. We’ve fallen into a set pattern now: every time we play, she deals the cards, and I pretend not to see her stacking the deck in her favor. And of course, I always lose.

[intrepidreport]

Week of December 1, 2014

Monday

We need to raise $1,500 by Dec. 31: Update By Bev Conover

A big thank you to those who have put us within $800 of closing our $1,500 budget gap. We still need those of you who can to please make a donation to help us close the gap.

Canada’s bizarre foreign/domestic policies entanglement By Jim Miles

Canada’s parliament is currently embroiled in a rather weird partisan sex scandal that makes all parties look like moral disasters (listen to Harper quote “Canadian values” now). While that has attracted all the attention of the media, a small news item emerged from RT News that managed to attract some small attention from the Canadian Press.

Confusion inside Foggy Bottom and Pentagon By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—The abrupt firing of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel after he clashed with national security adviser Susan Rice over an incoherent policy on Syria has spread confusion over U.S. Middle East policy from the Pentagon into the State Department.

Ferguson: The safety of citizens is lost with the unaccountability of police By Paul Craig Roberts

Events in Ferguson unfolded as most aware Americans thought they would. A white prosecutor guided a grand jury to the decision that the white policeman who shot and killed a young black male had just cause and committed no crime.

Perceptions of reality—and a failure to indict By Walter Brasch

She quietly walked into the classroom and stood there, just inside the door, against a wall.

Exposing weakness By Missy Comley Beattie

Listened to Joni Mitchell melancholy on Tuesday and then later held Mr. Poop-adore in my arms, inhaling his baby-ness with joy, hope, and a seasoning of fear. I looked at my son, Mr. Poop’s father, over six feet tall, but my baby still, always my baby boy. And I thought of Michael Brown, still his mother’s baby boy when Darren Wilson executed him. I move fluidly from happiness to despair, my small, personal world colliding with the largeness of gigantic injustices.

Tuesday

Jeb Bush and the crimes of Brickell Avenue By Wayne Madsen

Editor’s Note: While this article was originally published on March 20, 2013, with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush considering running for the GOP’s presidential nomination in 2016, it is worthy of being republished to jog people’s memories as to the disaster Bush, who destroyed Florida’s economy and portrays himself as a “successful” business man, would be in the White House. Since this article was published, Bush has apparently moved his business empire to the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida, and Josh Israel recently wrote two eye-opening articles that are must reading: Jeb Bush’s Four Mysterious Companies Share The Same Address And Have Never Done Any Known Business and Jeb Bush’s Reverse Midas Touch.

(WMR)—Prospective 2016 GOP presidential contender Jeb Bush has always felt more at home in the glass towers along the shores of Biscayne Bay in downtown Miami than he has in the Governor’s Mansion in Tallahassee or the White House during his father’s and brother’s administrations. That is because Jeb, in his youthful days as a “businessman,” cut his political teeth in behind-the scenes CIA drug smuggling, savings and loan rip-offs, and covert Central American wars.

Voting as an indicator of democracy? By Dave Alpert

For decades the working stiff has looked to the Democratic Party for salvation and protection from the Republican Party. And, let’s face it, we do need protection from a party that has claimed the rich and famous as its constituents.

Fish show drug effects and we’re drinking the water By Martha Rosenberg

You don’t have to see a doctor to imbibe a witch’s brew of prescriptions pain pills, antibiotics and psychiatric, cholesterol, asthma, epilepsy and heart drugs in your drinking water. They are found in many public drinking water systems says the Associated Press. Also found in drinking water is the toxic plastic, Bisphenol A. Some of the Bisphenol A comes from plastic bottled water which people, ironically, drink to avoid tap water risks!

Ukraine: Waging war during economic crisis conditions By Stephen Lendman

Ukraine is an economic basket case and then some. Illegitimate US installed putschists wage naked aggression while effectively bankrupt. More on this below.

American police and the shoot first mentality By Paul Craig Roberts

Few, if any, of the correct questions were asked in the grand jury hearing to decide whether policeman Darren Wilson would be indicted for killing Michael Brown.

Wednesday

New G20 rules: Cyprus-style bail-ins to hit depositors and pensioners By Ellen Brown

On the weekend of November 16, the G20 leaders whisked into Brisbane, posed for their photo ops, approved some proposals, made a show of roundly disapproving of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and whisked out again. It was all so fast, they may not have known what they were endorsing when they rubber-stamped the Financial Stability Board’s “Adequacy of Loss-Absorbing Capacity of Global Systemically Important Banks in Resolution,” which completely changes the rules of banking.

High drama is a way of life for Egyptians By Linda S. Heard

Life in the most populated Arab country is an emotional rollercoaster. Two revolutions in almost four years and a slew of both elected and caretaker leaderships have triggered instability. But serial surges of adrenaline have taken their toll. Most are aware that the promise of western-style democracy is unlikely to manifest within the foreseeable future, but they are fatigued by the highs and lows and have gained an understanding that security and stability must take priority over idealistic ambitions.

Obama: A placebo for civil liberties By Wayne Madsen

Barack Obama has served as nothing more than a placebo for steadily-eroding civil liberties in the United States

The fog of empire By Philip A Farruggio

Have you noticed lately how often you hear the expression that someone is ‘in a fog ‘? So many of us are walking around in some lethargic state as we go about our business. There is no sense of direction as many just ‘go through the motions’ of existence. Truly, they are lost in the fog of empire.

Postcard from the end of America: Taylor, Pennsylvania By Linh Dinh

The sixteen-year-old’s consciousness was percussive with recorded music, as usual, when the train slammed into him, and it’s not clear, even now, if it was suicide or merely absentmindedness that killed this boy. (To have your inner life constantly stunted or suffocated is already a form of death, but had he lived, this incipient man may have eventually outgrown his three-chord addiction.)

Thursday

Wayne Madsen Report editor on the TSA’s SSSS list By Wayne Madsen

The first clue that something was amiss before my early morning flight to DC National Airport from Tampa was the fact that I could not collect my boarding pass from the airport check-in kiosk. I was also curious that I didn’t receive the typical pre-boarding email from JetBlue.

What about all those white riots? By Dennis Rahkonen

Imagine if America’s racial experience had occurred in reverse. What if our homeland had been “discovered” and “settled” by strangers who used genocide to achieve their colonial objective? What if our children were then taken from us to have their culture, language and very defining essence erased in distant boarding schools?

Climate change challenges: Support the environment or the U.S. military? By Kathy Kelly

Having lived through the 1991 Desert Storm bombing and the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing in Iraq, I tread carefully when speaking about any danger greater than war that children in our world might face. I won’t forget children in Baghdadi hospitals whose bodies I have seen, wounded and maimed, after bombing campaigns ordered by U.S. leaders. I think also of children in Lebanon and Gaza and Afghanistan, children I’ve sat with in cities under heavy bombardments while their frightened parents tried to distract and calm them.

Only in America By Dave Alpert

What happens in the United States of America when a white police officer shoots and kills an unarmed black male teenager? (It is not limited to teenagers).

The man in the bathtub, December 1, 1940 By Philip A Farruggio

He was born and raised in a little town just outside of Licata, Sicily. By the time he was 18, the young man was accepted into university in Tunisia, a far more scholastically advanced place than the Sicily of the early 1900s. Upon graduating, he decided to do what many young Italians chose to do, and he emigrated to the United States.

Friday

American war machine ramping up for revenge U.S. media role is to pacify the nation By John Stanton

According to Stars & Stripes, United States Air Force Captain William Dubois—30 years old—was killed when the F-16 he was piloting on a mission against the Islamic State crashed. Marine Lance Cpl. Sean Neal, 19, of Riverside, California died in Iraq from a noncombat related injury. Marine Cpl. Jordan Spears, 21, of Memphis, Ind., was lost at sea while conducting flight operations in the North Arabian Gulf.

Boots on the ground and bats in the belfry By Frank Scott

The current global monster, Putin, so designated by corporate USA, is a heroic figure to much of the world.

Qatar is the oasis where neocons and Jihadists find comfort By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—America’s Middle East version of NATO, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which will become the GCC Plus if Jordan, Egypt, and Morocco join, is quietly celebrating the return of the Saudi, UAE, and Bahraini ambassadors to Qatar after a diplomatic row triggered by Qatar’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood. Apparently, the 34-year old Emir of Qatar, Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, who succeeded to the throne after the 2013 abdication of his father, Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, agreed to limit the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in Qatar.

US resorts to illegality to protect failed policies By Paul Craig Roberts and Dave Kranzler

In a blatant and massive market intervention, the price of gold was smashed last Friday. Right after the Comex opened on Friday morning 7,008 paper gold contracts representing 20 tonnes of gold were dumped in the New York Comex futures market at 8:50 a.m. EST. At 12:35 a.m. EST 10,324 contracts representing 30 tonnes of gold were dropped on the Comex futures market.

The Palestinians have managed to topple another Israeli Government By Gilad Atzmon

Occasionally Israeli political and military leadership fail to survive Israeli wars. PM Golda Meir and her Chief Of Staff (David “Dado” Elazar) were sent home after the 1973 blunder (Yom Kippur war). PM Menachem Begin lost his sanity after the first Lebanon war (1982). Defense Minister Amir Peretz and his Chief Of Staff, Dan Halutz, were treated harshly by the Israeli media following the 2006 defeat in Lebanon. PM Benjamin Netanyahu is now paying a price for the recent Israeli disaster in Gaza and the Palestinian uprising that followed.

[intrepidreport]

Week of November 24, 2014

Monday

Obama extends war in Afghanistan By Kathy Kelly

News agencies reported Saturday morning that weeks ago President Obama signed an order, kept secret until now, to authorize continuation of the Afghan war for at least another year. The order authorizes U.S. airstrikes “to support Afghan military operations in the country” and U.S. ground troops to continue normal operations, which is to say, to “occasionally accompany Afghan troops” on operations against the Taliban.

UN resolution on Iran is a mockery of justice By Dr. Ismail Salami

The not-very-independent UN body has made a mockery of justice by soldering a resolution on the so-called human rights violations in Iran.

Was the Atta team in Florida a group of poseurs? By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—HOLLYWOOD, Fla—WMR has sought out and spoken to the few Hollywood residents who distinctly recall how their town became a focal point for the post-9/11 investigation by the FBI of the activities of “lead hijacker” Mohammed Atta and at least three of his compatriots. One very politically-connected resident voices his belief that given the modus operandi of Atta and his team of going out of their way to bring attention to themselves that the purported future hijackers may have been plants.

Dividing the spoils By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

We’ve been watching Congress since the midterm elections and reading Zephyr Teachout’s terrific history book, Corruption in America: From Benjamin Franklin’s Snuff Box to Citizens United. That snuff box was a gift from King Louis XVI of France. His Majesty was a good friend of the American Revolution but when he gave Benjamin Franklin the gold box, featuring the monarch’s portrait surrounded with diamonds, some of our Founding Fathers objected. They worried that the gift would corrupt his judgment and unduly bias Franklin in France’s favor.

TSA holiday pleas? Oh, please By Lisa Simeone

At TSA News, a civil liberties watchdog site I run, we often call your attention not only to news reports but to other blogs and websites that discuss the TSA. Consumer Traveler is one of them.

Tuesday

Gaza bombings rock Palestinian reconciliation By Nicola Nasser

It is ironic that the annual commemoration of the death of Yasser Arafat should turn into an occasion for rekindling the flames of internal strife. This was clearly the aim of last week’s bombings that targeted the homes of Fatah leaders in Gaza, as well as the podium for the commemorative ceremonies of Arafat, who strove to make Palestinian national unity one of the pillars of his political legacy.

Tony Abbott: America’s useful idiot Down Under By Wayne Madsen

After Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s unfulfilled threat to physically “shirt front” Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 conference in Brisbane, Abbott did manage to undiplomatically insult the Russian head of state by telling him not to recreate the “lost glories of tsarism and the old Soviet Union.”

Opening the gates to World War III By Paul Craig Roberts

According to news reports, Washington has decided to arm Ukraine for renewed military assault on Russian ethnics in Donetsk and Luhansk.

How Americans came to oppose fracking By Walter Brasch

For the first time since high volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as nonconventional fracking, was developed, more Americans oppose it than support it.

Broken mental health system makes patients prisoners, says Patrick Kennedy By Martha Rosenberg

This month, mental health and correctional professionals from all over the nation gathered in Chicago to address a problem that many are not aware of. People denied mental health services who end up homeless or incarcerated as criminals.

Wednesday

Systemic injustice in America By Stephen Lendman

Monday’s grand jury exoneration of Ferguson, MO, police officer Darren Wilson didn’t surprise. Injustice triumphed.

Self-governance: Only basis for dignified communal identity By Ben Tanosborn

This Monday, November 24, the spark ignited by a 12-person grand jury’s decision in a Missouri community where black people predominate (67 percent in 2010 census) will have most white Americans confounded why blacks behave as they do, shaking their heads in disbelief. Yet, many of us, our skin color and socio-economic condition aside, see this new notch of extreme discontent and protestation by African-Americans, at the white policeman not being indicted, as another loud cry for change; a desperate clinging to primal that dignity by those who feel oppressed.

Swiss gold referendum: What it really means By Paul Craig Roberts

In a few days, the Swiss people will go to the polls to decide whether the Swiss central bank is to be required to hold 20% of its reserves in the form of gold. Polls show that the gold requirement is favored by the less well off and opposed by wealthy Swiss invested in stocks. These poll results provide new insight into the real reason for Quantitative Easing by the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank.

Immigrants are our brothers and sisters By Dennis Rahkonen

As “undocumented aliens” enter this country, remember that the U.S. Southwest once belonged to Mexico. Those routinely slandered immigrants have a more valid historical claim for being here than we do. Their ancestors had a rich culture from present-day Texas to California while our forebears were huddling in crude huts across the Atlantic.

Can we ever recover from the murder of John Kennedy? By Harvey Wasserman

The images we ingest never cease to shape us.

Thursday

Most white people in America are completely oblivious By Tim Wise

I suppose there is no longer much point in debating the facts surrounding the shooting of Michael Brown. First, because Officer Darren Wilson has been cleared by a grand jury, and even the collective brilliance of a thousand bloggers pointing out the glaring inconsistencies in his version of events that August day won’t result in a different outcome. And second, because Wilson’s guilt or innocence was always somewhat secondary to the larger issue: namely, the issue of this gigantic national inkblot staring us in the face, and what we see when we look at it—and more to the point, why?

What Americans celebrate on Thanksgiving Day By Paul Craig Roberts

When Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, they don’t know what they are celebrating.

The low-down on Wasserman-Schultz By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—A number of residents of Representative Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s 23rd congressional district in Florida are surprised that she still has her job as chair of the Democratic National Committee, especially considering the drubbing the party took at the polls on Election Day. However, given her cult-like following among her fellow New York Jewish transplants who largely make up the electorate in the densely-populated strip from Miami Beach to Fort Lauderdale, her political currency, not to mention her survivability as DNC chairwoman, come as no surprise.

Are ‘we the people’ useful idiots in the digital age? By John W. Whitehead

“Who needs direct repression,” asked philosopher Slavoj Zizek, “when one can convince the chicken to walk freely into the slaughterhouse?”

Are you walking away from McDonald’s? Many are. By Martha Rosenberg

Since its founding in the 1940s, McDonald’s, the world’s largest restaurant, has navigated many threats to its bottom line. Other fast food companies have imitated and sought to improve on its concept. Labor activists have decried its treatment of workers. Food and environmental activists have assailed the way it has industrialized food production. The international community has deplored McDonald’s trade practices and protectionism. Animal welfare activists oppose its wholesale commodification and mistreatment of animals. And, of course, public health experts condemn its hawking of unhealthy, fattening food to children and adults.

Friday

Redefining ‘imminent’ How the U.S. Dept. of Justice makes murder respectable, kills the innocent & jails their defenders By Brian Terrell

Political language can be used, George Orwell said in 1946, “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

‘Clever, classless and free’: The problem with compulsive activism By Prakash Kona

I remember a fellow student who was in his twenties and who had had made it his business to oppose everything the teacher said on Marxist economic terms. He was a recent convert to the Marxist vocabulary who merely was hell-bent on annoying the teacher and tiring the rest of us because he had nothing else to do. The motive was sheer boredom and attention-seeking behavior. I have no idea where he is these days but I’ve a strange feeling that he is a control freak trying to run the lives of those around him and is a flag-bearing marcher to the right-wing government. This is one generation ago back in the late 1980s or very early 1990s.

PFLP soul-searching: the rise and fall of Palestine’s socialists By Ramzy Baroud

When news reports alleged that the two cousins behind the Jerusalem synagogue attack on 18 November were affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a level of confusion reigned. Why the PFLP? Why now?

In praise of Russell Brand’s sharing revolution By Adam Parsons

The political conversation on sharing is growing by the day, sometimes from the unlikeliest of quarters. And at the present time, there is perhaps no-one calling louder for a new society to be based on sharing than Russell Brand, the comedian-cum-activist and revolutionary. It is easy to dismiss much of Brand’s polysyllabic and self-referential meanderings, as do most of the establishment media in the USA and Britain, but this only serves to disregard his flashes of wisdom and the justified reasons for his popularity.

Freedom Rider: Bill Cosby and Michael Brown By Margaret Kimberley

No one is more deserving of public scorn and ignominy than Bill Cosby. The poisonous words he directed at black people make him unfit for sympathy or protection from the group which he has dedicated himself to slandering.

[intrepidreport]

Week of November 17, 2014

Monday

We need to raise $1,500 by Dec. 31 By Bev Conover

We are coming up short on this year’s budget—$1,500 short—and desperately need your help if Intrepid Report is to continue publishing in 2015.

9/11 cleared way for e-exchange and NYSE layoffs By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—WMR has learned from survivors of the 9/11 attack that the recent opening of the 104-story One World Trade Center in New York completes a project long sought by Wall Street tycoons to lay-off New York Stock Exchange traders and create an electronic stock exchange. It was not merely the asbestos problem that plagued the former World Trade Center buildings, brought down on September 11, 2001, but the need to replace the antiquated New York Stock Exchange trading floor with the Archipelago Exchange or NYSE Arca, which links the NYSE’s electronic exchange via a high-speed optical fiber link to Chicago.

A global house of cards By Paul Craig Roberts

As most Americans, if not the financial media, are aware, Quantitative Easing (a euphemism for printing money) has failed to bring back the US economy.

The white man as weapon of mass destruction—part 1 By Dave Alpert

To understand the impact the white man has had on world history, we must take a look at the deaths, destruction, and chaos that the white man has created.

Perpetuating a myth By Missy Comley Beattie

Because I call out voting as futile, I’m not allowed to complain. At least that’s what a few readers have expressed, some outraged, admonishing, pressuring, writing: “People have died for the right to vote.”

World survival requires European uprising By Ben Tanosborn

Don’t count on the United States to be politically prudent in dealing with other nations of the world at any level. Maintaining hegemony, the American ruling-elite feels, is accomplished best not through overly cautious or moderating discussion, but through a strong, unrelenting campaign of discrete belligerence: showing your teeth but holding your bite.

Tuesday

The inevitable rightward march of America Midterm election debacle promises right-wing future By Larry Chin

Every two years, the deck chairs rearrange on the Titanic known as American democracy, as it continues to head towards certain disaster. The 2014 midterm election was another harbinger of calamity.

What we truly learned from the Great War and the absurdity of Remembrance Day By John Chuckman

No matter what high-blown claims the politicians make each year on Remembrance Day, the Great War was essentially a fight between two branches of a single royal family over the balance of power on the continent of Europe, British foreign policy holding to a longstanding principle that no one nation should ever be permitted to dominate the continent.

The white man as weapon of mass destruction—part 2 By Dave Alpert

“The history of U.S. and European white power is a history of war and violence inflicted upon the peoples of the world. It is a history of land theft and slavery that gave rise to the dominant world capitalist economy.

Looming US ground wars in Iraq and Syria By Stephen Lendman

Current US direct and proxy wars aren’t enough. Obama has more death and destruction in mind.

Dog sleeping—everyone does it but no one admits it By Martha Rosenberg

A few years ago, a polling group made a startling discovery about America’s dog love. A surprising number of dog owners called their answering machines during the workday to talk to their dog. Many celebrated their dogs’ birthdays with gifts and parties. And most slept with their dog—unapologetically. It’s no dirtier than sleeping with a shoe, said one respondent.

Wednesday

Living with insanity Harper, Abbott, and Cameron at the Brisbane G-20 By John Chuckman

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is reported by a spokesman, to have had the following exchange with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Brisbane G-20 summit: “Well, I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I only have one thing to say to you: you need to get out of Ukraine.” Putin is said to have replied, “Impossible. Since we are not there.”

‘Dude needs a vacation,’ a Net neutrality update By Michael Winship

A week has passed since President Obama surprised everyone with a strong statement in support of Net neutrality, declaring that the Internet should be available to everyone—reclassified under Title II of the Telecommunications Act as a common carrier—a public utility like telephone service or electricity without special privileges to companies willing to pay a premium for faster, more exclusive access.

The white man as weapon of mass destruction—part 3 By Dave Alpert

And now, we come to the 21st century where the white man, under the leadership of the United States, continues his journey toward global destruction.

The next presidential election will move the world closer to war By Paul Craig Roberts

Glenn Greenwald has revealed that Hillary Clinton is the presidential candidate of the banksters and warmongers. Pam and Russ Martens note that Elizabeth Warren is the populist alternative. I doubt that a politician who represents the people can acquire the campaign funds needed to run a campaign. If Warren becomes a threat, the Establishment will frame her with bogus charges and move her aside.

The Devil’s bargain: The illusion of a trouble-free existence in the American police state By John W. Whitehead

It’s no coincidence that during the same week in which the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Yates v. United States, a case in which a Florida fisherman is being threatened with 20 years’ jail time for throwing fish that were too small back into the water, Florida police arrested a 90-year-old man twice for violating an ordinance that prohibits feeding the homeless in public.

Thursday

Ideological foundations of the mainstream neoclassical economics: Class interests as ‘economic theory’ By Ismael Hossein-zadeh

There is now a widespread consensus that mainstream/neoclassical economists failed miserably to either predict the coming of the 2008 financial implosion, or provide a reasonable explanation when it actually arrived. Not surprisingly, many critics have argued that neoclassical economics has created more confusion than clarification, more obfuscation than elucidation. Economic “science” has, indeed, become “an ideological construct which serves to camouflage and justify the New World Order.”

Legislating abortion behavior: Lessons from Romania and Prohibition By David A. Grimes, M.D.

An unprecedented epidemic of anti-abortion legislation swept across America after Republicans gained control of many state legislatures in 2010. Indeed, more new laws restricting access to or interfering with abortions were passed in 2011-2013 than in the prior decade.

The white man as weapon of mass destruction—part 4 By Dave Alpert

When does perception become reality?

21st century Amerika: The Fourth Reich By Philip A Farruggio

In Joachim Fest’s fine biography of Adolf Hitler, aptly titled ‘Hitler,’ we learn many things never before taught in our World History classes here. To delve into it now with the needed detail from this 700+ page masterpiece would be futile for me the columnist. There is just so much to digest and comprehend about this Austrian of little education and no professional calling who became the Fuhrer. Yet, throughout the book one cannot help but realize just how much the movers and shakers of our Amerikan empire copied tactics and outright propaganda from the Hitler gang.

Beware of evil beings in cyberspace By Linda S. Heard

Internet users are plagued by viruses, spam and government spying, which we know is happening thanks to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. But you may not be aware that there are gangs of cheats and blackmailers prepared to ruin your reputation, if not your life, for a whole lot more than a fistful of dollars.

Friday

Russia invades Ukraine. Again. And again. And yet again . . . using Saddam’s WMD By William Blum

“Russia reinforced what Western and Ukrainian officials described as a stealth invasion on Wednesday [August 27], sending armored troops across the border as it expanded the conflict to a new section of Ukrainian territory. The latest incursion, which Ukraine’s military said included five armored personnel carriers, was at least the third movement of troops and weapons from Russia across the southeast part of the border this week.”

WSJ reports: Bank of North Dakota outperforms Wall Street By Ellen Brown

While 49 state treasuries were submerged in red ink after the 2008 financial crash, one state’s bank outperformed all others and actually launched an economy-shifting new industry. So reports the Wall Street Journal this week, discussing the Bank of North Dakota (BND) and its striking success in the midst of a national financial collapse led by the major banks.

Talk of a Third Intifada: Where to from here, Palestine? By Ramzy Baroud

When a journalist tries to do a historian’s job, the outcome can be quite interesting. Using history as a side note in a brief news report or political analysis oftentimes does more harm than good. Now imagine if that journalist was not dependable to begin with, even more than it being “interesting,” the outcome runs the risk of becoming a mockery.

It’s not what Obama says, but what he does By Dave Alpert

Four rabbis, three of them American citizens, plus a police officer were killed by two Palestinian “terrorists” on Tuesday, November 18.

Freedom Rider: Jackson, Sharpton, Holder and Ferguson By Margaret Kimberley

If a picture is worth 1,000 words the photo above proves the old adage to be true. This image encapsulates so much that is wrong with the so-called leaders of the black political class. Each of the three men depicted make a mockery of any claim to be allies of black people.

[intrepidreport]

Week of November 10, 2014

Monday

An election—and a nation—lost in Afghanistan and Vietnam By Harvey Wasserman

The GOP/corporate coup d’état is nearly complete.

Harpers’ chickens come home to roost By Eric Walberg

Thanks to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s extremism—total subservience to the US and Israel Middle East agenda—Canada now has a thriving Muslim-based extremism. This is a truly frightening development, and the situation will only get worse. The apocalypse will surely come, all Jews will ‘make aliyah’ to Israel, and all evangelical Christians will go to heaven. Hallelujah.

US midterm electoral results By Stephen Lendman

Ignore scoundrel media who won, who lost horserace rubbish. US electoral politics is too debauched to fix. Big money corrupts it.

Sanctions: Diplomatic weapons of mass criminality By Ben Tanosborn

Mid-term elections are over, and the anticipated trouncing of Democrats in Congress took place without a hitch, even if the media selfishly played the uncertainty card.

The knives are out for Netanyahu By Linda S. Heard

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds himself in unfamiliar territory. He has tumbled from his once set-in-stone international pinnacle and how! Netanyahu is increasingly feeling the cold and this time it is emanating from Israel’s tried and true allies.

Tuesday

The vicious politico-religious Sunni-Shi’ite civil war that the U.S. has ignited in Iraq and in Syria By Rodrigue Tremblay

When the U.S. administration of George W. Bush (2001-2009) decided to illegally invade militarily the country of Iraq and overthrow the Sunni government of Saddam Hussein, against the advice of many thinking persons, it opened a “Pandora Box” of woes that is still spewing out its calamities today, and probably will for many years to come. This is the first and foremost cause of the current quagmire prevailing in Iraq and in Syria today.

Political prophecies: Sealing the fate of al-Aqsa By Ramzy Baroud

Israel’s decision to shut down al-Aqsa Mosque on Thursday, 30 October, is not just a gross violation of the religious rights of Palestinian Muslims.

The FBI: America’s Secret Police By John W. Whitehead

Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Intimidation tactics. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment schemes.

A nation of fear By Walter Brasch

Maintenance workers at the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton, Pa., airport shot and killed a bear and her three cubs

Wednesday

Building a new North American partnership for the future By Dana Gabriel

The globalist controlled Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) have called on the U.S. to work more closely with Canada and Mexico to build a new North American partnership for the future. The pivot to North America would focus on greater trilateral cooperation in areas such as energy, economic competitiveness, border management, law enforcement and continental perimeter security. Throughout the years, the incremental steps towards a North American Union have been used to further chip away at the sovereignty of all three NAFTA countries.

Political Bunraku By John Chuckman

For those who are not familiar, Bunraku is an old form of Japanese puppet theater, its distinctive characteristic being that the puppeteers are on the stage with their puppets, dressed in black so that the audience can pretend not to see them.

Did you or your children use this asthma drug? By Martha Rosenberg

Did you or your children use the blockbuster asthma drug Singulair? World sales of Merck’s drug were about $5 billion a year until 2012 when its patent expired and it was the U.S.’s seventh best-selling drug. But last month, data from an FDA committee were presented that acknowledge “safety concerns” about “neuropsychiatric adverse events, including suicide and suicide attempts” with the drug.

Making sense of the simultaneous inflation and deflation By Ismael Hossein-zadeh

While the financial sector of the core capitalist economies is enjoying escalating asset price inflation, the real sector of these economies, especially those of Europe and Japan, is suffering from deflation, that is, stagnation and high unemployment.

The coming neocon troublemaking for U.S. foreign policy By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—Perhaps already anticipating pressure from Senator John McCain and other pro-Israeli Republican neocons, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey, only days after the Republican electoral victory, told the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs that he thought that “Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties” in Gaza. Dempsey’s opinion was in marked contrast to previous statements in which he said the U.S. must not fight Assad in Syria while also battling the Islamic State.

Thursday

Modern day America: One step away from the Third Reich By John Stanton

A bit of irony, perhaps, that on November 4, 2014—as Americans went to the polls to cast their ballots for a slate of politicians at the local, state and federal levels—the august citizens of the United States also celebrated the birth of the National Security Agency (NSA).

How the GOP bought, rigged, stole and lynched the 2014 election First in a series

Posted on November 13, 2014 by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

Since the Bush-Cheney-Rove theft of the 2000 election in Florida, the right of millions of American citizens to vote and have that vote counted has been under constant assault.

President Obama tells FCC: Reclassifying the Internet is ‘essential’ By Michael Winship

On Monday, the White House released a statement from President Obama in support of Net neutrality, his strongest and most direct since the 2008 election campaign. “An open Internet is essential to the American economy, and increasingly to our very way of life,” he began. “By lowering the cost of launching a new idea, igniting new political movements, and bringing communities closer together, it has been one of the most significant democratizing influences the world has ever known.

More lies from ‘our’ government: The latest jobs report By Paul Craig Roberts

Just as the German media have destroyed their credibility with lies, the US government is consistently destroying Washington’s credibility both with its own citizens and the rest of the world.

Thanksgiving air travel expands or why we’ll never get rid of the TSA By Lisa Simeone

I know I sound like a broken record. That’s why, as the years have gone by, I’m writing less and less about the TSA. Because I increasingly see it as pointless. And judging by the activity of our other writers here at TSA News, I’m not alone.

Friday

In love with democracy By Arthur D. Robbins

Democracy, like love, is a word oft used and little understood. We have a vague sense of what love “means.” We tend to apply the word indiscriminately, based on a deep need to be loved by the people who are important to us. We like to see the word in print. We feel warm and safe when we hear it said aloud.

The age of TV jokers: Arab media on the brink By Ramzy Baroud

As I was finalizing my research for this article, I found myself browsing through a heap of hilarious videos by mostly Egyptian TV show hosts Tawfiq Okasha and Amr Adeeb.

The endgame of the US ‘Islamic State’ strategy By Nicola Nasser

Dismantling what the former US President George W. Bush once described as the Syria-Iran component of the “axis of evil,” or interrupting in Iraq the geographical contiguity of what King Abdullah II of Jordan once described as the “Shiite crescent,” was and remains the strategic goal of the US—Israeli allies in the Middle East unless they succeed first in “changing the regime” in either Damascus or Tehran.

US radiation levels exceed evacuation level: Part 2 By Bob Nichols

SAN FRANCISCO—The American EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, is the big agency of the federal government tasked with monitoring and issuing timely reports about harmful levels of radiation to the American people. Well, that is the theory, anyway.

GOP consulting with 1998/99 impeachment managers By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—Some members of the incoming GOP-controlled House of Representatives and Senate are seriously considering impeaching President Obama. And they don’t believe they will face any adverse political consequences since one of the original House impeachment managers in the 1999 Senate trial of President Bill Clinton, Asa Hutchinson, is about to be sworn in as governor of Arkansas, Clinton’s home state.

[intrepidreport]

Week of October 27, 2014

Monday

ISIL seen as non-Islamic cult by Mideast intelligence services By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—Middle Eastern intelligence services have reported to WMR that they believe that the so-called “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,” or ISIL, also known as “Islamic State” and “Islamic State of Iraq and Sham,” is actually a quite non-Islamic cult developed by Israel and the Central Intelligence Agency and funded by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to destabilize the entire Middle East and beyond.

US radiation levels exceed evacuation level By Bob Nichols

SAN FRANCISCO—High radiation levels exceeded the evacuation level requiring the wholesale evacuation of civilians at many locations in the States over the past four years, from 2011 to 2014. Those who remain are supposed to be wearing hazmat suits.

Cowardice plagues Pennsylvania House of Representatives By Walter Brasch

The Institute for Legislative Action of the National Rifle Association (NRA-ILA) gives politicians Defender of Freedom awards. The award, accompanied by a glowing press release, has little to do with freedom; it has everything to do with legislators advancing the NRA agenda.

Many hope new rules will stop pharma tax dodgers By Martha Rosenberg

Just a few months ago, many US health corporations were eyeing tax inversions—reincorporating overseas, often merging with a European entity—to evade US taxes. Following the drug companies Mylan, Actavis, Perrigo, Jazz Pharmaceuticals and Endo, the Illinois-based drug company AbbVie announced inversion plans last summer, to the joy of many investors.

Washington is defaming Putin By Paul Craig Roberts

Friday, at the Valdai International Discussion Club meeting in Sochi, Russia’s President Putin correctly and justifiably denounced Washington for destabilizing the world in order to serve its own narrow and selfish interest and the interests of the private interest groups that control Washington at the expense of the rest of the world.

Tuesday

Some hard facts about terror By John Chuckman

We are having an outbreak of reports in the Canadian press about “home grown” terrorists, “radicalized” young men of Muslim faith traveling out of the country to participate in extremist groups abroad, a relatively insignificant phenomenon which has received inordinate publicity. In any event, if you give the matter some thought, you realize that this “news” is a kind of empty publicity, noise about something as old and familiar as human life itself, although it has been bestowed with a new name intended to frighten us into supporting measures outside the framework of a society of laws.

Indiana sex slayings highlight society’s ‘throwaway women’ By Martha Rosenberg

CHICAGO—At least seven women’s bodies have been found in Indiana within a few days in what appear to be serial, sex-related murders of women in high-risk lifestyles. Hammond police are holding Darren Vann, a convicted sex offender, in connection with the murders and say charges are possible in at least six other murders still under investigation.

Don’t let them silence you: Vote, dammit By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

Our country’s oldest and longest struggle has been to enlarge democracy by making it possible for more and more people to be treated equally at the polls. The right to participate in choosing our representatives—to vote—is the very right that inflamed the American colonies and marched us toward revolution and independence.

Al Franken, the liberals’ darling By William Blum

I receive a continuous stream of emails from “progressive” organizations asking me to vote for Senator Franken or contribute to his re-election campaign this November, and I don’t even live in Minnesota. Even if I could vote for him, I wouldn’t. No one who was a supporter of the war in Iraq will get my vote unless they unequivocally renounce that support. And I don’t mean renounce it like Hillary Clinton’s nonsense about not having known enough.

Israel is sworn enemy of Latin America’s progressive women presidents By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—Through its actions in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, the so-called “ABC” countries all currently governed by progressive women presidents, Israel has identified itself as an enemy of not only progressive governments in Latin America but particularly those with female leaders.

Wednesday

Why do banks want our deposits? Hint: it’s not to make loans By Ellen Brown

Many authorities have said it: banks do not lend their deposits. They create the money they lend on their books.

Kobani Kurds expose the hypocrisy of the coalition to fight ISIS By Ismael Hossein-zadeh

The dark force of ISIS is apparently an invincible and unstoppable war juggernaut that is mercilessly killing and conquering in pursuit of establishing an Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In reality, however, it is not as out of control as it appears. It is, indeed, carefully controlled and managed by its creators and supporters, that is, by the United States and its allies in the region—those who now pretend to have established a coalition to fight it! The U.S., Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other allies in the region do not really need to fight ISIS to (allegedly) destroy it; all they need to do to extinguish its hellish flames is stop supplying fuel for its fire, that is, stop supplying it with funds, mercenaries, military training and armaments.

Farcical Ukrainian parliamentary elections By Stephen Lendman

So-called Ukrainian democracy is pure fantasy. Tyranny masquerading as rule by the people.

How the I.R.S. abuses criminal law to steal money from innocent Americans By Carey Wedler

(TheAntiMedia)—Over the weekend, the New York Times revealed that the Internal Revenue Service has been abusing a civil assets forfeiture law intended to target drug traffickers, racketeers, and terrorists. Instead of catching “evil-doers,” it more commonly uses these policies to confiscate money from innocent people without ever charging them with a crime.

A too brief history of the CIA By Jim Miles

This indeed is a brief history of the CIA, a topic that could command volumes of information encompassing much if not all of post World War II history.

Thursday

Western imperialists have been bombing Iraq for 100 Years By Nicolas J S Davies

President Obama’s campaign of aerial bombardment against ISIS in Iraq and Syria maintains a British colonial policy designed 100 years ago to avoid the consequences of putting large numbers of boots on the ground in what are now Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Continue reading →

Two CIA-funded ‘cults’ team up in Middle East By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—WMR’s sources in Turkey and Iran are confirming that links have been established between the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Iranian exiled terrorist group Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) through Central Intelligence Agency and Israeli Mossad interlocutors.

Ukrainian electoral postmortems By Stephen Lendman

Obama reacted as expected. He “congratulated the people of Ukraine on holding successful parliamentary elections . . .”

Fighting for survival in the Sinai: Egypt’s convenient war

By Ramzy Baroud

Sinai is both heaven and hell. This triangular desert boasts an arid landscape of hopeless horizons often interrupted by leftover military hardware from previous wars. The land is comprised of breathtaking beaches, incredible history, and a fusion of fascinating cultures that reach back into the past as far as ancient times can possibly go. This thrilling land of contradictions is amazing, yet lethal.

The Tyrant Party By William Orthwein

The United States appears to be controlled by an oligarchy in which the American Israel Public Affiars Committee (AIPAC) is a major player, accompanied by many of the major corporations in the United States and elsewhere. That there is such a party is pure conjecture, but it is conjecture that is motivated by an abundance of facts. Call it the Tyrant Party because it rules independently of the will of the people.

Friday

We will be off next week By Bev Conover

Intrepid Report will resume publishing on Monday, November 10.

Canada’s heart of darkness By Jim Miles

Once upon a time, Canada was able to create the illusion that it was the “peaceable kingdom,” an illusion accepted domestically and arguably by most of the rest of the world. This history has been well discredited with newer historical research outlining how Canada’s position as a “peacekeeper,” generally under UN auspices, remained effectively within the realm of U.S. foreign policy, just with a kinder gentler face.

Sleazy pharma front groups pretend concern for ‘mental illness’ while pushing pills By Martha Rosenberg

One out of four people has a “mental illness.” You hear the statistic all the time. People who were once “nervous” or “high strung” now have “general anxiety disorder.” People who have the “blues” from real life issues like job, relationship and family problems now have “major depressive disorder.” People who are “up and down,” again from real life issues, are now “bipolar.” Adults who can’t focus on the work at hand, either because they didn’t get enough sleep or because the work at hand is boring—hello?—have adult ADHD. All need to be on drugs indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of their life. And notably, all suffer from diseases that are medical “judgment calls” that can’t be verified by blood or other diagnostic tests. Ka-ching.

ISIL-Ukraine link exposed By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—WMR’s Russian, Turkish, and Arab sources are reporting increased traffic via Turkey of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters to Ukraine and vice versa. Many of the ISIL guerrillas are ethnic Chechens who have either citizenship of or permanent residency in the Republic of Georgia.

Zombies are us: The walking dead in the American police state By John W. Whitehead

Fear and paranoia have become hallmarks of the modern American experience, impacting how we as a nation view the world around us, how we as citizens view each other, and most of all how our government views us.

Freedom Rider: The world must judge America’s human rights abuses By Margaret Kimberley

Black people in this country are brutalized by police on a daily basis. That has always been true but thanks to modern technology there is a steady stream of proof caught on video. Accessing the Internet means inevitably being confronted with awful imagery such as Marlene Pinnock being beaten by a highway patrolman in California. We see Eric Garner murdered by the NYPD, pleading that he couldn’t breathe.

[intrepidreport]

Week of October 20, 2014

Monday

Why you can’t believe what you’re being told about ISIS By William Blum

You can’t believe a word the United States or its mainstream media say about the current conflict involving The Islamic State (ISIS).

Dark times: What to do By Arthur D. Robbins

Professor Noam Chomsky has written an essay entitled, “The End of History: The short, strange era of human civilization would appear to be drawing to a close.” Chomsky invokes the Roman goddess Minerva as she contemplates the end drawing nigh. His essay is thoughtful. It is eloquent. But something is missing.

The great unhinging By Frank Scott

Summers uses jargon familiar to those who make financial policy, teach at Harvard, and are in process of destroying more of the earth and its people for short-term private profits that guarantee long-term public loss.

CIA big guns still aiming for Rousseff prior to second-round election By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—After the corporate media and the CIA and George Soros manipulators tried to engineer Green Party-turned-Brazilian Socialist presidential candidate Marina Silva into the Brazilian presidency after the classic CIA textbook aerial assassination of Socialist Party presidential standard bearer Eduardo Campos, these same forces are at it again on behalf of Social Democratic Party candidate Aecio Neves. Neves finished second ahead of Silva, who came in third, in the first-round of the Brazilian presidential election that has seen the CIA, Soros, and the other agents of Wall Street try every trick in the book to ensure that President Dilma Rousseff fails to win a second term.

Postcard from the end of America: New Orleans By Linh Dinh

This time, I got to New Orleans on a bus named Mega, and it also dropped me off at Elysian Fields. In Nola, there’s a street called Arts, so of course there has to be one named Desire, and Tennessee Williams clearly saw the two as intertwined, thrusting and plunging their bodies against each other. Of course, death will interrupt this coupling not just finally but every step of the way.

Tuesday

Capitalism and the Ebola epidemic By Dave Alpert

Ebola was identified 40 years ago in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, then called Zaire. Two hundred and eighty people died in this first reported outbreak, out of 318 infected, for a fatality rate of 88 percent.

Reinvented scoundrel media history By Stephen Lendman

New York Times editors do it numerous ways. At times in their “Room for Debate” series. Featuring mostly one-sided views.

Why President Rouhani’s ‘economic package’ is empty By Ismael Hossein-zadeh

Tired of the oppressive financial hardship, wrought largely by the imperialist economic war against Iran, the Iranian people elected Hassan Rouhani president (June 2013) as he promised economic revival.

A changing Israel-Palestine global dynamic By Linda S. Heard

Pro-Palestinian sympathies are on the rise. Due to the prevalence of social media, mainstream news outlets can no longer control the message. Ordinary folk around the world were incensed by the horrors inflicted upon the residents of the Gaza Strip by the Israeli army, seen graphically in videos posted on YouTube and many rounded on the corporate media for seeking to frame the conflict as one waged between equals.

Two millstones drowning America into premature oblivion By Ben Tanosborn

It was over four decades ago that I first heard the expression “premature oblivion.” It came from a fellow graduate student at UCLA, Stefan, a magisterial peer to many of us, not so much because of his then-soon-to-be ABD status, but rather his Zorba the Greek likeability in his contrarian demeanor. Beyond obstinacy perhaps, most of us close to him would agree, but with an undeniable air of prophetic clairvoyance. And if we took his assertions as Stefan-lite dictums; as the years have gone by, some of us started to realize our misdiagnosed pig-headedness in him was no more than unbending firmness resulting from clear vision, historical knowledge and logical perspective.

Wednesday

The Berlin Wall, another Cold War myth By William Blum

November 9 will mark the 25th anniversary of the tearing down of the Berlin Wall. The extravagant hoopla began months ago in Berlin. In the United States, we can expect all the Cold War clichés about The Free World vs. Communist Tyranny to be trotted out and the simple tale of how the wall came to be will be repeated: In 1961, the East Berlin communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies don’t like people to be free, to learn the “truth.” What other reason could there have been?

Challenging corporate power in a not-for-profit world By Rajesh Makwana

Does changing the way we do business hold the key to creating a world where resources are shared more equitably and consumed within planetary limits? According to Professor Donnie Maclurcan of the Post Growth Institute, the answer is a definitive yes—but only if we can fully embrace a business model that doesn’t require profits to be distributed to shareholders, and works instead to reinvest revenues back into the company. Increasingly, socially and environmentally conscious entrepreneurs are adopting not-for-profit (NFP) business practices across the whole spectrum of traditionally for-profit sectors. Maclurcan, whose book ‘How on Earth’ co-authored with Jennifer Hinton is due out next year, firmly believes that the NFP model presents an alternative macroeconomic framework with the potential to revolutionise how we produce goods and services, and thereby pave the way for an ‘economics of enough.’

Pennsylvania’s politics of virtue By Walter Brasch

The Pennsylvania Senate, possibly for the first time in its history, stood up against the NRA leadership and extreme gun-rights groups, and voted to ban pigeon shoots. The senators correctly called the ban a matter not of gun rights but of eliminating animal cruelty.

America is lost with no moral compass By Philip A Farruggio

For all you out there reading this who already reject our current ‘Two Party, One Party’ political con job and understand that our nation is a Military Industrial Empire, the title above is not about YOU. However, this small (too small) group of us still has many friends and loved ones who are lost with no moral compass. We have associates, acquaintances , employers, coworkers and people we run into at the store or gas station who not only have no moral compass, but many are passionate defenders of this empire. The Why to this is most interesting and frightening.

Stop the killing By Kathy Kelly

On August 9, 1983, three people dressed as U.S. soldiers saluted their way onto a U.S. military base and climbed a pine tree. The base contained a school training elite Salvadoran and other foreign troops to serve dictatorships back home, with a record of nightmarish brutality following graduation. That night, once the base’s lights went out, the students of this school heard, coming down from on high, the voice of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Thursday

Uncanny parallels in character By John Chuckman

I’m not one of those who scribble blunt little mustaches on pictures of politicians I dislike, but here I make some uncomfortable and I believe accurate observations comparing personality and character traits of a contemporary politician with one of history’s darkest figures.

What is wrong with Gareth Porter—an interview By Gilad Atzmon

A few days ago, I came across a disturbing article on Buzzfeed. The headline read; “U.S. Journalist Regrets Attending Conspiracy Conference In Tehran.” According to Buzzfeed, Gareth Porter, a respected journalist and critic of the Jewish lobby and Israel, reported that he would have never have attended the “conference in Tehran if he had known the real views of his fellow attendees.”

CFR analyst says travel ban wouldn’t keep Ebola from spreading to the US By John Klyczek

According to a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, Laurie Garrett, “Travel bans would [not] keep Ebola from spreading in the United States.”

Kiev war crimes By Stephen Lendman

Mounting evidence shows Kiev committed horrendous war crimes in southeastern Ukraine.

My father was killed by a computer, says 7 year old Afghan child By Dr. Hakim

Imal, a 7-year-old Afghan student in the 2nd grade, came to visit us in Kabul.

Friday

8 facts about American inequality By Pierce Nahigyan

The American Dream has been defined many ways by writers of both poetic and prosaic bent, but its essentials tend to involve life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (or property, depending on your source).

Chevron greases local election with gusher of cash By Michael Winship

When the Citizens United decision came down in 2010, many feared the Supreme Court had unleashed vast and unfettered campaign contributions from corporations bent on tightening their hammerlock on government and politics.

Britain’s real promise to Israel: ‘Symbolic’ vote on Palestine By Ramzy Baroud

The text of the letter was short and precise, leaving no room for any misinterpretation in the “promise” made by Britain’s Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to a powerful representative of the Jewish community in Britain, Lord Rothschild, on that fateful day of 2 November 1917.

Hollow justice and courts of order in an age of government-sanctioned tyranny By John W. Whitehead

Justice in America makes less sense with each passing day.

Redefining imminent By Dave Alpert

The Merriam-Webster definition of imminent is: “ready to take place; especially: hanging threateningly over one’s head.”

[intrepidreport]

Week of October 16, 2014

Monday

Canada and Israel: Partners in racial and humanitarian crimes By Jim Miles

As most of the world has duly noted, Canada under the neo-Conservative Harper regime has been a front-runner in supporting Israel in its racial apartheid policies in Israel. Also, recently a discussion comparing South Africa’s apartheid system with that of Israel has occurred with South African testimony indicating that while they are not the same, they are very similar, and in some circumstances, Israel’s apartheid is worse. What is not seen is Canada’s role in modeling apartheid for South Africa under the Afrikaner-dominated National Party. Canada’s role in developing these systems of apartheid has been seldom noted academically, and is given very little attention either domestically or internationally.

Towards one quadrillion US dollars in derivatives By Ben Tanosborn

A quadrillion figure seems far-fetched, one to be used only when referring to distances in the confines of intergalactic travel, and not the world of international finance. After all, Mars is just a measly 34 million miles away (at perihelion—when at its closest point to the sun); and the edge of our solar system barely reaches 9 or 10 billion miles. So, when talking about a quadrillion dollars, we need to reset our financial minds from the microscopic minimum wage to the mach-speed technology of the Enterprise; and leave behind the Good Ship Lollypop, where most of us uninitiated, financially-duped, yokels travel these days.

For want of a Pink Parade, Crimea was lost Did President Obama’s gay rights obsession lead to a redrawing of international borders? By Mathew Maavak

KUALA LUMPUR—Is it just me or has anyone else noticed a distinct dip in the United States’ LGBT posturing after Crimea’s reunification with Russia?

Washington is destroying the world By Paul Craig Roberts

The aggressive and mindless stance that Washington’s warmongers have taken toward Russia and China have shattered the accomplishment of Reagan and Gorbachev

It’s the stupid, stupid By Bernard Weiner

Barack Obama is not stupid and he says he doesn’t want his administration to do “stupid things” in foreign policy. So why, then, has he done a reckless, stupid thing by starting a new, two-theater war in the Middle East? And why does that war in Syria have to commence right now as an existential necessity?

Tuesday

A Swift Boatload of lies By Walter Brasch

“Gov. Tom Corbett, who claims he opposes legalization of marijuana, was seen behind a barn smoking weed. Just a-puffin’ and a-grinnin.’”

Should we just follow orders? Rules of engagement for resisting the police state By John W. Whitehead

The perils of resisting the police state grow more costly with each passing day, especially if you hope to escape with your life and property intact. The thing you must remember is that we’ve entered an age of militarized police in which we’re no longer viewed as civilians but as enemy combatants.

Nothing about us without us: The token Palestinian and authentic narrative By Ramzy Baroud

I recall, with particular awkwardness, my first talk at a socialist student gathering at the University of Washington in Seattle nearly two decades ago. When I tried to offer an authentic view of the situation in Palestine from the viewpoint of a refugee, my hosts were hardly impressed.

Are you really a size zero? Size inflation gives Americans a false sense of thinness By Martha Rosenberg

It is a sad fact that many want to ignore. The more we work out, the more “diet foods” we eat, the fatter Americans are actually getting. A chilling documentary released this summer, Fed Up, narrated by Katie Couric, highlights Americans losing battle with the bulge and indicts government capitulation to the agricultural industries that make the most fattening food.

Wave after wave of massacres By Missy Comley Beattie

Five hours into the ferry ride from Athens to Santorini, the passenger about four feet from me groaned and then vomited into a shopping bag. Twice.

Wednesday

Building an ark: How to protect public revenues from the next meltdown By Ellen Brown

Concerns are growing that we are heading for another banking crisis, one that could be far worse than in 2008. But this time, there will be no government bailouts. Instead, per the Dodd-Frank Act, bankrupt banks will be confiscating (or “bailing in”) their customers’ deposits.

The lie machine Corporations, trade pacts and the media By Paul Craig Roberts

I have come to the conclusion that the West is a vast lie machine for the secret agendas of vested interests. Consider, for example, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Transpacific Trade and Investment Partnership.

ISIL: From decapitation to Islamophobia By Dr. Ismail Salami

With the ISIL terrorists mounting more gory adventurism in Syria and Iraq and capturing villages and towns, there seems to be no tangible impediment to stop this influx of terror.

Challenging drone warfare in a U.S. court By Kathy Kelly

On October 7, 2014, Kathy Kelly and Georgia Walker appeared before Judge Matt Whitworth in Jefferson City, MO, federal court on a charge of criminal trespass to a military facility. The charge was based on their participation, at Whiteman Air Force Base, in a June 1, 2014, rally protesting drone warfare

Postcard from the end of America: Osceola, Iowa By Linh Dinh

The American presidential election is a drawn out, byzantine process that involves precinct meetings, regional caucuses, state primaries and national conventions, all to give citizens the impression that their participation matters, for in the end, the lying buffoon who gets to stride into the White House has long been vetted and preselected by the banks, death merchants and brainwashing media that run our infernally corrupt and murderous country.

Thursday

IS and the IDF: Canada’s double standard By Eric Walberg

Why can Westerners join the IDF while Westerners joining IS are despised and killed? In what sense is the IDF scenario any less reprehensible than the IS one?

It’s time for a post-Piketty vision of shared wealth By Adam Parsons

There is no doubt that Thomas Piketty’s best-seller, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has done a great deal of good in highlighting the urgency of tackling spiralling levels of global inequality. But could his main policy prescription—an annual global tax on capital—lead to a genuine sharing of wealth within and across societies?

Yes to Palestine, say British MPs By Gilad Atzmon

In a symbolic vote that has zero practical impact on British policy, MPs have voted to recognise Palestine as a state.

When the cat’s away the mice will . . . By Richard John Stapleton

Sitting in my car in 1963 in front of my newspaper office at Wolfforth, Texas listening to Walter Cronkite tell us John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, I was shocked and dumbfounded.

Texas justice: A parody By Missy Comley Beattie

Officials in Texas are demanding that the cremains of Thomas Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola on U.S. soil, are criminally prosecuted. Texas Governor Rick Perry is seeking the death penalty, comparing Ebola to both homosexuality and ISIS.

Friday

‘Kill the Messenger’ By Dave Alpert

What happens to people, ordinary citizens in positions to know and journalists, who report and publicize criminal acts committed by agencies in our government?

The missing context: ‘Islamic State’ sectarianism is not coincidental By Ramzy Baroud

Consider this comical scene described by Peter Van Buren, a former US diplomat, who was deployed to Iraq on a 12-month assignment in 2009-10.

Freedom Rider: Privatized Ebola By Margaret Kimberley

Sierra Leone has waved the white flag in the face of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). Its meager infrastructure has buckled under the onslaught of a disease which could have been curtailed. The announcement that infected patients will be treated at home because there is no longer the capacity to treat them in hospitals is a surrender which did not have to happen. Not only did Europe and the United States turn a blind eye to sick and dying Africans but they did so with the help of an unlikely perpetrator.

Mass surveillance destroys freedom By Stephen Lendman

It’s longstanding. It’s institutionalized. It’s lawless. It has nothing to do with domestic or foreign threats. Or anything related to national security.

Shielded from justice: The high cost of living in a police state By John W. Whitehead

Who pays the price for the police shootings that leave unarmed citizens dead or injured, for the SWAT team raids that leave doors splintered, homes trashed, pets murdered, and family members traumatized and injured, if not dead?

[intrepidreport]

Week of October 6, 2014

Monday

Our boys in Hong Kong A not so angelic craziness By Luciana Bohne I woke up the other morning to read the news in the Guardian that the pope believes in angels. I took the headline on faith, and moved on. The Guardian introduced me to Joshua Wong, leader of the “the spontaneous nature of the civil disobedience,” in Hong Kong, as if to illustrate the pope’s charming belief.

Poverty report contradicts GDP claims By Paul Craig Roberts It is amazing how the government manages to continue selling Brooklyn Bridges to a gullible public. Americans buy wars they don’t need and economic recoveries that do not exist.

Preparing to asset-strip local government? By Ellen Brown In an inscrutable move that has alarmed state treasurers, the Federal Reserve, along with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, just changed the liquidity requirements for the nation’s largest banks. Municipal bonds, long considered safe liquid investments, have been eliminated from the list of high-quality liquid collateral. assets (HQLA). That means banks that are the largest holders of munis are liable to start dumping them in favor of the Treasuries and corporate bonds that do satisfy the requirement.

The American delusion: Distracted, diverted and insulated from the grim reality of the police state By John W. Whitehead Caught up in the uproar over this year’s latest hullabaloo—militarized police in Ferguson, tanks on Main Street and ISIS—Americans have not only largely forgotten last year’s hullabaloo over the NSA and government surveillance but are generally foggy about everything that has happened in between.

Nation of cowards By John Chuckman What else can you fairly call a people who attack a population of refugees confined to a small space surrounded on every side by fences and machine-gun towers, a population with nowhere to run? No, that is not put strongly enough. Not just attack, but use the latest and most ferocious weapons from the American arsenal to slaughter more than 2,100 people, including more than 500 children, destroying along the way a major portion of the housing, businesses, and institutions of a poor people.

Tuesday

US pogrom parody featuring Narendra Modi By Mathew Maavak KUALA LUMPUR, Sept. 26, 2014—The timing of this summons was impeccable, and I presume this was intended to issue a subtle carrot-and-stick ultimatum to a key BRICS partner. This is not the first time the US had tried to splatter Modi with mass murderer gobs. Perhaps Washington hopes that some residual stain may prove fertile in the United States, within that dung called the collective American consciousness. It is the type of consciousness that induced the genocide of 200,000 Syrians, many of them minorities, women and children after the US attempted to remove the only leadership capable of protecting them in the region. And simply because the Saudi Wahhabi masters of the United States demand these orgies of death!

More bad news from the jobs front By Paul Craig Roberts The Bureau of Labor Statistics headline Friday morning read: “Payroll employment increases by 248,000 in September; unemployment rate declines to 5.9%.”

The theater of politics By Dave Alpert According to our president, we are initiating the bombing in Iraq and Syria in order to neutralize ISIS, a group of religious fanatics the U.S. helped grow and gain strength in order to overthrow the Assad regime.

Decapitation American style By Frank Scott America’s anti-humanism can cause shock among hyenas, vultures and other creatures that feed on death in accordance with rather than opposition to nature. But as the empire sinks more deeply into the political economic sewage of its own creation, its weaponized psyche grows more malevolent and the behavior pattern more dangerous. The public has to be nearly lobotomized to allow its leadership to perform at such odds with reality. That is almost the case.

Freedom Rider: Theodore Roosevelt and American racism By Margaret Kimberley It is true today and was true in the past. The most celebrated political figures in this country, including those called blue blooded, elite or patrician, were mostly criminals. The descendants of the Mayflower ought to be ashamed of their heritage instead of bragging about their ancestors who began the genocide of indigenous people. The earliest American presidents Washington, Jefferson and Madison, earned their wealth through slave holding. Their successors in the office of the presidency either acquiesced to the slave holding interests or actively protected them until a bloody civil war put an end to their dirty work.

Wednesday

Three secret domestic CIA bases with ties to 9/11 By Wayne Madsen (WMR)—Anyone driving from Norfolk, Virginia to North Carolina’s Outer Banks would normally not notice that when driving south on Caritoke Highway through the one-horse town of Moyock, North Carolina, they would be passing a country road leading to one of the largest “private” paramilitary training centers in the world. If one were to take a right turn on Moyock’s Pudding Ridge Road, after a few miles, they would come up on the gate of the Academi “Elite Training and Trusted Protection” facility. Formerly known as Blackwater and Xe, Academi is nothing more than a privatized arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, which provided the company, throughout all of its incarnations, with sweetheart and lucrative contracts to engage in operations that the CIA wanted to keep free of its fingerprints.

9/11 after 13 years By Paul Craig Roberts The tragedy of September 11, 2001, goes far beyond the deaths of those who died in the towers and the deaths of firefighters and first responders who succumbed to illnesses caused by inhalation of toxic dust. For thirteen years, a new generation of Americans has been born into the 9/11 myth that has been used to create the American warfare/police state.

Convenient genocide: Another failed war to rearrange the Middle East By Ramzy Baroud A few months ago, not many Americans, in fact Europeans as well, knew that a Yazidi sect in fact existed in northwest Iraq. Even in the Middle East itself, the Yazidis and their way of life have been an enigma, shrouded by mystery and mostly grasped through stereotypes and fictitious evidence. Yet in no time, the fate of the Yazidis became a rally cry for another US-led Iraq military campaign.

Resistance is futile: The violent cost of challenging the American police state By John W. Whitehead If you don’t want to get probed, poked, pinched, Tasered, tackled, searched, seized, stripped, manhandled, arrested, shot, or killed, don’t say, do or even suggest anything that even hints of noncompliance. This is the new “thin blue line” over which you must not cross in interactions with police if you want to walk away with your life and freedoms intact.

Resistance is futile: The violent cost of challenging the American police state By John W. Whitehead If you don’t want to get probed, poked, pinched, Tasered, tackled, searched, seized, stripped, manhandled, arrested, shot, or killed, don’t say, do or even suggest anything that even hints of noncompliance. This is the new “thin blue line” over which you must not cross in interactions with police if you want to walk away with your life and freedoms intact.

Thursday

There is no reasoning with an empire waging a world war of deception By Larry Chin

On September 24, 2014, the United Nations passed a resolution paving the way to open-ended “anti-terror” warfare against the Islamic State (IS), the “network of death,” promising a war that will “last for years.”

Washington’s secret agendas By Paul Craig Roberts

One might think that by now even Americans would have caught on to the constant stream of false alarms that Washington sounds in order to deceive the people into supporting its hidden agendas.

An unbearable and choking hell: The loss of our freedoms in the wake of 9/11 By John W. Whitehead

What a strange and harrowing road we’ve walked since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties. We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade a freedom-loving people to march in lockstep with a police state.

Politicians show their gratitude where it count$ By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship

There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart, a poet wrote, and as this year’s summer winds toward its end and elections approach, gratitude is indeed what our politicians have flowing from that space where their hearts should be.

Freedom Rider: Good riddance to Eric Holder By Margaret Kimberley

Barack Obama is nearing the end of his second and last term in the White House. With just a little more than two years before he leaves office, his top cabinet members and aides have begun making the inevitable exit for more lucrative pastures. Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week that he will resign after a successor is nominated and confirmed.

Friday

From Washington’s ‘Fear Factor’ playbook: The Khorasan Group is coming to get us By Dave Alpert

While our attention had been focused on ISIS, the new and heretofore unheard of Khorasan Group has been organizing and planning to implement a terror attack here in the United States.

Turning Americans into snitches for the police state: ‘See Something, Say Something’ and community policing By John W. Whitehead

If you see something suspicious, says the Department of Homeland Security, say something about it to the police, call it in to a government hotline, or report it using a convenient app on your smart phone.

Getting to sleep in a post-Ambien society Are new or existing sleeping pills any safer? By Martha Rosenberg

It has been several years since the bloom fell off the rose of Ambien, the blockbuster sleeping pill. Recently, the FDA has warned about Ambien hangovers, sedation and the risk of dangerous driving and recommended lower doses. The FDA warnings came a year after Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and former wife of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, was arrested for what was believed to be Ambien-inebriated driving. The arrest came six years after her cousin, former Rhode Island Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, son of Sen. Edward Kennedy, was also involved in an apparent Ambien-related traffic mishap.

China is exporting torture By Mary Shaw

Research by Amnesty International (AI) and the Omega Research Foundation has uncovered a “flourishing trade” in the “export of tools of torture by Chinese companies” which is fueling human rights violations worldwide.

Postcard from the end of America: Jackson, Mississippi By Linh Dinh

Riding the train from Chicago to New Orleans, I impulsively got off in Jackson, Mississippi. I had never thought about visiting Jackson, never even saw a photo of it, so I had no idea what I’d encounter. In the train’s lounge car, however, a boisterous game of dominoes, with much laughter and trash talking, already told me I was in the Deep South, and the towns glimpsed along the way, Tchula, Eden, Bentonia, spoke of a quietly dignified world that’s also besieged and crumbling.

[intrepidreport]

Week of August 25, 2014

We are taking a break By Bev Conover Friday, August 29, 2014

If all goes according to plan, Intrepid Report will resume publishing on or about the first full week of October.

Monday

Turning America into a war zone, where ‘we the people’ are the enemy By John W. Whitehead

Life in the American police state is an endless series of don’ts delivered at the end of a loaded gun: don’t talk back to police officers, don’t even think about defending yourself against a SWAT team raid (of which there are 80,000 every year), don’t run when a cop is nearby lest you be mistaken for a fleeing criminal, don’t carry a cane lest it be mistaken for a gun, don’t expect privacy in public, don’t let your kids walk to the playground alone, don’t engage in nonviolent protest near where a government official might pass, don’t try to grow vegetables in your front yard, don’t play music for tips in a metro station, don’t feed whales, and on and on.

‘Shock and awe’ comes to America By Wayne Madsen

The United States has employed “shock and awe” techniques—described by Pentagon policy documents as the use of “spectacular displays of force” to intimidate an opponent—against the civilian population of the St. Louis, Missouri, suburb of Ferguson, just a stone’s throw from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport. The police use of “shock and awe” tactics followed street protests after the police shooting death of an 18-year-old black teen, Michael Brown.

Russian humanitarian aid reaches Lugansk By Stephen Lendman

Kiev putschists blocked vitally needed humanitarian aid for days. They did so for spurious reasons.

Elanco is the Monsanto of the animal drug industry By Martha Rosenberg

Big Biotech, the chilling combo of genetic engineering, Big Chem, seed giants and Big Ag, is forging ahead in its hopes of dominating global agriculture and even patenting food production. Successfully fighting GMO labeling at home, the well-funded makers of Frankenfoods are also desperate to open overseas markets for Biotech which most of the world does not want.

Railroad ‘bomb trains’: Speeding to disaster By Walter Brasch

It’s 3 p.m., and you’re cruising down a rural road, doing about 50 mph.

Tuesday

Global Post, the employer of freelancer James Foley, fails to pass smell test By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—National news media operations based in Boston are almost like musicals that run “off Broadway.”

It isn’t Ferguson; it’s the USA By Frank Scott

Now that almost all mainstream political and media mind managers have responded, in horror, sympathy or skepticism, to the most recent—as this is written—police killing of an unarmed black man, it is time to consider radical action for social change as opposed to the usual reactionary individual reform.

Rights groups react to the murder of journalist James Foley By Mary Shaw

James Foley was a much stronger journalist than I could ever hope to be. Foley went missing in Syria in 2012, and it appears that he remained stoic right through the last words he spoke on video just before his brutal beheading by an Islamic State terrorist thug.

Lost in the funhouse: A president’s words By Missy Comley Beattie

“They have rampaged across cities and villages killing innocent, unarmed civilians in cowardly acts of violence,” Barack Obama said in his statement on the beheading of American journalist James Foley. Leadership in many countries and citizens in those countries could say the same about the USA. Black Americans could say the same about law enforcement or wannabe police officers like George Zimmerman) in their communities.

A baby boomer’s lament: August ’64 By Philip A Farruggio

Living here in Florida during the dog days of summer invites memories of some 50 years ago . . . in Brooklyn NY. We, our little group of East 24th Street friends, waltzed through the hot summer days so easily. When you’re fourteen, fifteen and sixteen you are immune to stifling August heat attacks.

Wednesday

Post racist America? By Dave Alpert

I’m assuming that most of you know the name Michael Brown. He is the 18 year old African-American who was gunned down by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri.

Who leaked hostage rescue mission to ISIL? By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—During the night of July 3, U.S. Special Forces landed at the formerly Syrian government-held Akershi military base at Raqqa in eastern Syria to rescue American journalists James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and other U.S., as well as foreign, hostages reportedly held by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadist fighters. ISIL renamed the base the “Martyr Osama bin Laden Camp” and used the base prison to hold its foreign hostages.

Author of new book discusses shame and codependency By Martha Rosenberg

Codependents often have trouble being open, honest and assertive with intimate partners, says Darlene Lancer, an author and marriage and family therapist. In trying to manage, control and manipulate others, often by “people pleasing” or giving advice, codependents can “turn themselves into pretzels,” says Lancer. Now, in her latest book, “Conquering Shame and Codependency: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You,” Lancer addresses the role of shame and especially childhood shame experiences in codependency.

Judicial Watch sues TSA/DHS over sexual abuse complaints By Lisa Simeone

This is what it takes to get answers from the TSA and DHS: you have to sue them. And even then you’ll be stonewalled.

Sharing economy’s new success: Adopt a homeless person By Frank Scott

Among the most incredible manifestations of the new sharing economy has been the wide acceptance of a program begun by social media activists that has American families adopting homeless humans instead of pets. While it has created some fear in the multi-billion dollar pet market place, it has also provoked the creation of new product lines for the formerly homeless now living in comfortable accommodations. More important, it has offered citizens a new opportunity to perform humanitarian deeds while really sharing their good fortune with those in need.

Thursday

Colonization by bankruptcy: The high-stakes chess match for Argentina By Ellen Brown

Argentina is playing hardball with the vulture funds which have been trying to force it into an involuntary bankruptcy. The vultures are demanding what amounts to a 600% return on bonds bought for pennies on the dollar, defeating a 2005 settlement in which 92% of creditors agreed to accept a 70% haircut on their bonds. A US court has backed the vulture funds; but last week, Argentina sidestepped its jurisdiction by transferring the trustee for payment from Bank of New York Mellon to its own central bank. That play, if approved by the Argentine Congress, will allow the country to continue making payments under its 2005 settlement, avoiding default on the majority of its bonds

More questions than answers in Brazilian plane crash By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—The August 13 crash of the Cessna 560XLS Citation aircraft, tail number PR-AFA, in Santos, Brazil, which killed pro-business Brazilian Socialist Party presidential candidate Eduardo Campos, his aides, and the crew, has raised more questions among Brazilian investigators and the general public. Since its introduction in 1996, the plane has enjoyed a perfect safety record. The sudden death of Campos upended the Brazilian presidential election campaign in a manner that may benefit the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency’s long-range agenda for Latin America.

Victim of Chicago killer John Gacy becomes anti-bullying activist By Martha Rosenberg

CHICAGO—About 45 people gathered on a hot August night at a Chicago LBGT community center to hear a chapter in Chicago history that is often forgotten—how John Gacy prowled the streets of Chicago’s northside from 1972 through 1978, picking up young men and murdering at least 33 of them. Gacy, one of the most vicious mass murderers in U.S. history, was found guilty of the murders, sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet, Illinois on May 10, 1994.

The final nail in the coffin: The death of freedom in our schools By John W. Whitehead

No matter what your perspective on the showdown between locals and law enforcement in Ferguson, Missouri, there can be no disputing the fact that “local” police should not be looking or acting like branches of the military.

Fascism grips Israel By Stephen Lendman

Zeev Sternhell is an Israeli historian, political scientist and outspoken critic of emerging Israeli fascism.

Burger King’s last straw By Dennis Rahkonen

Not content with Ferris Wheel-sized tax evasion loopholes that have given top corporations profit extravagance while American workers—the actual creators of our societal wealth—are stuck with part-time jobs providing lousy pay and no benefits, Fat Cat profiteers scheme to grow fatter still.

Friday

Journalists, hypocrisy, and Obama’s de facto 21st century U.S. fascism By Larry Pinkney

The ill-gotten wealth of the filthy national and global rich—power elite—’one percent’ is a systemic cancer that is consuming the life-blood of humankind of all colors in this nation and throughout Mother Earth.

Keynes is dead; long live Marx By Ismael Hossein-zadeh

Many liberal economists envisioned a new dawn of Keynesianism in the 2008 financial meltdown. Nearly six years later, it is clear that the much-hoped-for Keynesian prescriptions are completely ignored. Why? Keynesian economists’ answer: “neoliberal ideology,” which they trace back to President Reagan.

Media spies put all journalists in danger By Wayne Madsen

The increasing tendency of the Central Intelligence Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies to disregard previous prohibitions against the use of journalists as agents puts every legitimate reporter around the world in jeopardy.

The suicide of Robin Williams: Why we need a grand jury inquest to investigate it By Gary G. Kohls, MD

On July 2, 1961, an American icon, Earnest Hemingway, committed suicide at his beloved vacation home in Ketchum, Idaho. He had just flown to Ketchum after being discharged from Mayo Clinic’s psychiatric ward where he had received a series of electroshock “treatments” for a depression that had started after he had experienced the horrors of World War I as an ambulance driver.

Freedom Rider: Van Jones and Charles Blow absolve white America By Margaret Kimberley

Few people outside of the St. Louis, Missouri, area had heard of the town of Ferguson before August 9, 2014. On that day 18-year old Michael Brown was shot dead by police officer Darren Wilson. Brown was shot six times, and after he was killed the police left his uncovered body to lie in the street for four hours.

Steven Salaita’s academic lynching By Stephen Lendman

Criticizing Israel is the third rail in American politics, the major media and academia.

Like it or not, the present is always rooted in the past By Ben Tanosborn

Monday, August 25, 2014, we found ourselves waking up in an America which is neither in peace with much of the world and, most definitely, far from being in peace with itself. A predicament that philosopher George Santayana warned us about a century ago in a much-quoted, but seldom-heeded warning: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And condemned we are in America . . . for being blind, deaf and mute in acknowledging our past!

DA won’t prosecute fake TSA agent who groped women By Lisa Simeone

Remember the guy who dressed up in a blue shirt, khaki pants, and blue gloves and impersonated a TSA agent in San Francisco last month? He succeeded in leading two victims into a curtained booth and groped at least one of them. Well, we don’t know exactly what he did, since he was hidden. We only know that he got away with it, and that if he had been an actual TSA clerk, whatever he did, including sexual molestation, would’ve been legal.

[intrepidreport]

Week of August 11, 2014

Monday

Washington threatens the world By Paul Craig Roberts

The consequence of Washington’s reckless and irresponsible political and military interventions in Iraq, Libya, and Syria has been to unleash evil. The various sects that lived in peace under the rule of Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad are butchering one another, and a new group, ISIS, is in the process of creating a new state out of parts of Iraq and Syria.

George Will confirms Nixon’s Vietnam treason By Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

The new release of extended versions of Nixon’s papers now confirms this long-standing belief, usually dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” by Republican conservatives. Now it has been substantiated by none other than right-wing columnist George Will.

Richard Nixon: Honk if you think he was guilty By Michael Winship

In August 1974, forty years ago last week, commentator Alistair Cooke faced a dilemma. The events of the Watergate scandal—“a Laurel and Hardy absurdity in the beginning,” Cooke recalled—had snowballed since 1972 from a farce of botched burglary into a severe constitutional crisis, and events were building to a big finish. A few days before, the House Judiciary Committee had voted for three articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon. It seemed clear that the full House would support the committee and impeach the president, and that the Senate would convict.

Why a Jewish-only state necessitates a program of genocide: Part 2 By Dave Alpert

Last Tuesday, I was having dinner with some friends and, of course, the conversation was dominated by the events in the Middle East. I was complaining about Israel’s supporters and apologists almost always referring to Hamas’ firing of rockets into Israel as the cause of the hostilities.

A Nobel Peace Prize for the IDF? By Missy Comley Beattie

Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, remarked that Israel’s armed forces deserve a Nobel Prize for their “unimaginable restraint” during Operation Protective Edge.

Tuessday

Common sense likely to silence the drums of war By Ben Tanosborn

Empire-hawks have had the upper hand in American politics for several decades and, given the shifting economic power taking place in the world, they are now seemingly suicidal, ready to lead us into nuclear holocaust. Just like Jim Jones did with his followers 36 years ago in Jonestown. This time, however, the Kool-Aid is being dispensed by the US mainstream media laced with a different poison: raw propaganda against the Russian Federation and its malefic leader, Vladimir Putin.

London turns up propaganda effort ahead of Scottish independence referendum By Wayne Madsen

(WMR)—With just six weeks before Scottish voters head to the polls to vote on their country restoring its once cherished independence from the United Kingdom, British government authorities are turning up the heat on the pro-independence forces led by Scotland’s ruling Scottish National Party and First Minister Alexander Salmond.

The battle for Ukraine’s soul By Stephen Lendman

Many previous articles explained the geopolitical importance of crisis conditions in Ukraine.

We have had enough of Elie Wiesel and his ilk By Gilad Atzmon

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the London Times refused to run an ad featuring Elie Wiesel speaking out against Hamas’ use of children as human shields.

Freedom Rider: Climate change—point of no return By Margaret Kimberley

Time’s up, or so planet earth seems to be telling humanity. Extreme weather conditions around the globe, including rising temperatures, droughts, crop failures, melting sea ice, rising sea levels, disappearing glaciers and the loss of plant and animal species all point in only one direction. The tipping point towards the sixth great extinction is taking place right now.

Wednesday

Cold War Two By William Blum

During Cold War One those of us in the American radical left were often placed in the position where we had to defend the Soviet Union because the US government was using that country as a battering ram against us. Now we sometimes have to defend Russia because it may be the last best hope of stopping TETATW (The Empire That Ate The World). Yes, during Cold War One we knew enough about Stalin, the show trials, and the gulags. But we also knew about US foreign policy.

Hashtag Genocide: Why Gaza fought back By Ramzy Baroud

My old family house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza was recently rebuilt by its new owner into a beautiful three-story building with large windows adorned by red frames. In Israel’s most recent and deadliest war on Gaza, the house sustained significant damage. A large hole caused by Israeli missiles can be seen from afar, in a part of the house where our kitchen once stood.

Terrorists must be crushed, not ignored By Linda S. Heard

A photograph seen on social media of fighters from the misnamed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) could have come straight out of an historical documentary on the Middle Ages. If some seer had told me five years ago that 10,000-15,000 deranged killers could have established a caliphate over 30 percent of Syria and 35 percent of Iraq, he wouldn’t have had his palm touched with my gold. But at a time when crazed killers, who slaughter thousands without blinking are mushrooming, the fact that ISIL exists is less astonishing than the fact those murderers have been permitted a virtual free hand to behead, crucify and threaten Iraqi minorities with ‘death by the sword’ if they refuse to convert to their twisted brand of religion that has nothing to do with Islam.

Obama’s Africa Leaders’ Summit: A corporate and military love fest By Wayne Madsen

President Barack Obama’s much-heralded “Africa Leaders’ Summit,” held in Washington, DC amid an epidemic of the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa, was a grandiose photo opportunity for African leaders and corporate tycoons eager to further the exploitation of the African continent. Although Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma canceled their trips to Washington in order to deal with the Ebola epidemic ravaging their nations, other African leaders were happy to rub shoulders with American billionaire businessmen and senior officers of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) . . .

Remembering Robin Williams By Michael Winship

Two memories of Robin Williams. The last time I was in his presence was during the 2007-08 Writers Guild strike. Robin showed up to walk our picket line at the Time Warner Center on Columbus Circle, just a couple of blocks from where the Moyers & Company offices are now.

Thursday

Bill Clinton’s three crucial neocon-inspired decisions that led to three major crises in our times By Rodrigue Tremblay

An eye-popping new book has alleged that U.S. President Bill Clinton had his White House phones tapped in real time, for the benefit of the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The book also reveals how the Israeli prime minister could have used taped conversations of the American president regarding Mr. Clinton’s 1990s sexual scandal in the White House, to exert pressure on him to release from prison a convicted Israeli spy, Jonathan Pollard, who had been arrested in 1985, for espionage against the United States. In fact, the Israeli surveillance activities in the United States may be very widespread.

Will they EVER leave Cuba alone? No. By William Blum

The latest exposed plot to overthrow the Cuban government . . . Oh, pardon me, I mean the latest exposed plot to bring democracy to Cuba . . .

Ghost of Richard Nixon haunts Hillary Clinton By Wayne Madsen

As the nation reflects on the 40th anniversary of the resignation of President Richard Nixon from office, Washington’s pundits are wondering aloud about “future Nixons” who might assume the presidency. One name that keeps popping up again and again as a person who has the “air of Nixon” about her is all-but-declared 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

A nation of Monday morning quarterbacks By Richard John Stapleton

A recent poll purported to have found 57 or so percent of US voters would now vote for Mitt Romney if they had the chance, whereas only 26 or so percent would vote for Barack Obama. Assuming these percentages are representative of the actual percentages among the population, so what? Who cares whether voters would now vote for Romney or Obama. Such percentages tell you little or nothing about the relevant underlying issue: how well Obama has performed and how well Romney would have performed had he been elected.

God bless Amtrak—ride the rails, avoid the TSA! By Lisa Simeone

I’m sitting in the Metropolitan Lounge of the magnificent Union Station in Chicago, waiting to board the fabled Southwest Chief on my way to Santa Fe.

Friday

MH17, Gaza and the “genius” of Western propaganda By Mathew Maavak

Not a month goes by without the West invoking yet another affront to humanity, another crime against humanity, another wave of sanctions, or yet another UN Security Council resolution. This is what North Korea would be like if it is ever armed with social media.

Cuomo turns on the charm for Israel; Palestine denies him an invitation By Jerry Mazza

Yes, New York’s charming governor, Andrew Cuomo, is paying for the trip to Israel for his staff and himself from his multi-million dollar war chest, while Palestine declares him persona non grata, denying him an invitation.

Cry for Argentina: Fiscal mismanagement, odious debt or pillage? By Ellen Brown

Argentina was the richest country in Latin America before decades of neoliberal and IMF-imposed economic policies drowned it in debt. A severe crisis in 2001 plunged it into the largest sovereign debt default in history. In 2005, it renegotiated its debt with most of its creditors at a 70% “haircut.” But the opportunist “vulture funds,” which had bought Argentine debt at distressed prices, held out for 100 cents on the dollar.

Extremism is the side effect of Israeli brutality By Linda S. Heard

It’s indisputable that Hamas is winning in the court of global public opinion and understandably so, when almost 2,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 440 children. The sight of toddlers’ mutilated bodies has even galvanized housewives in Kentucky to lend their support on social media to Hamas, which is becoming increasingly viewed as a group of heroic freedom fighters instead of the terrorist organization designated by the US, the UK and several other western nations.

Postcard from the end of America: Wisconsin By Linh Dinh

Before we start, I must admit that I didn’t set foot in Wisconsin this time, but only saw it from the train as I crossed it going West, then East. (I had been to Madison and Milwaukee before.) This, then, is really a train postcard, but the long distance train is a community in itself. In fact, Americans seldom have such thorough conversations as when they’re trapped on a long distance train. If only more of us could be confined that way, we would relate to each other a whole lot better, but such a wish also conjures up citizens being packed into boxcars as they’re sent to hard labor, or much worse. How many Americans will cross this country without seeing any of it?