Intrepid Reporter: Fear and hatred unite Americans; US military more secure, progressive, War & Peace Part I: Armenia & Israel

Intrepid Report Newsletter

Update 1: Intrepid Report really, really needs your help By Bev Conover Update: While donations got off to a good start, they have now slowed. We still need to raise $1,700. If Intrepid Report is important to you, please donate whatever you can. Every dollar helps and we thank those who have donated. Monday Why we’re the murder capital of the world By Jack Balkwill One of the many important discussions we do not see in our corporate media is the question, “Why is the USA the most violent nation of earth?” The answer is complex, and follows in this article, but first I will attempt to make the case. #BlackLivesMatter and the conspiracy of privilege in America By Zarefah Baroud In the early morning of July 5, 37-year-old father of five, Alton Sterling, was shot in both his chest and his back by law enforcement officers outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Uncontrolled refugeeism lacks political wisdom By Ben Tanosborn Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orban, Nigel Farage and myriad other populist, right-wing leaders sprouting over much of the Western World, are being tagged by the political ruling class as an ill-conceived, hate-fest phenomenon; and often portrayed as the mutant offspring of fascism. Such interpretation, however, might be only serving as ear plugs against the loud, real voices of people who fear a real threat to their economic wellbeing or their cultural identity. Death of a nation? By Linh Dinh A hundred-and-fifty-one years after the abolition of slavery, America has a half white, half black president, a black Nobelist in literature, whites who attribute not just every form but instance of black dysfunction to white racism, blacks who demand reparations, the mainstreaming of innumerable black slang terms, including “diss,” a new phrase “negro fatigue” and the bumper sticker, “IF I HAD KNOWN THIS, I’D HAVE PICKED MY OWN COTTON.” Scripture, memorials, lies, life, and death culture By Missy Comley Beattie I’m waiting for a call that could be either good or bad news and the longer I wait, the more anxious I become, knowing that the longer I have to wait makes it more likely that the news will not be what I want to hear. I’ve avoided this particular caring for someone, this caring enough that you engage in exactly this—this worrying and waiting. I should have run when I could’ve although that would have meant choosing solitude. As a neighbor said about my reluctance to take a chance: “If you want to make an omelet you have to break some eggs.” Tuesday The three ‘Maidens of War’ are angling for a kill By Wayne Madsen By the time the 43rd G-7 summit convenes from May 26–27 next year in Taormina, Sicily, German chancellor Angela Merkel will be joined by at least one female colleague, British Prime Minister Theresa May, described as “Margaret Thatcher on steroids,” and quite possibly a third, the war hawk Hillary Clinton representing the United States. Sicily may not be able to withstand the presence of two highly-volatile threats on the island, the unpredictable Mount Etna, along with the three “Maidens of War”—Merkel, May, and Clinton. Nice brings to mind Operation Gladio By Paul Craig Roberts Commentators who have learned to distrust official explanations, such as Peter Koenig and Stephen Lendman have raised questions about the Nice attack. Bathrooms are the new battlefields for politicians By Walter Brasch When I was a junior at San Diego State, I had a sudden urge to need a restroom. The closest one was clearly marked, “Faculty Men Only.” The nearest one for male students was on the other side of the building. Round and round it goes, why and how all US voters should and can learn something about Jill Stein, MD By Richard John Stapleton A lot of water has gone under the bridge lately. Great Britain voted to withdraw from the European Union. Bernie Sanders conceded that Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary and endorsed her for president. The US stock market has regained most of its losses. The world situation remains largely unchanged, fraught with conflicts and problems, insecurities, and uncertainties. Robert F. Kennedy and the girl in the polka-dot dress A review of Fernando Faura’s ‘The Polka-Dot File: on the Robert F. Kennedy Killing’ By Edward Curtin There is a vast literature on the CIA-directed assassination of President John Kennedy. Most Americans have long rejected the Warren Commission’s findings and have accepted that there was a conspiracy. There is much less research on the assassination of JFK’s brother, Senator Robert Kennedy, and, if asked, far fewer people would say it was a conspiracy and a cover-up. They may not even know the alleged assassin’s name. Wednesday Fear and hatred unite Americans; US military more secure, progressive By John Stanton Law enforcement officers were ambushed and killed in Baton Rouge and Dallas by those using guerilla warfare style tactics. Is this any different that the Sunni “terrorists” who killed U.S. soldiers in Iraq? Republican National Convention, Cleveland: Worst organized convention in recent memory By Wayne Madsen A Republican convention that sees the host Republican governor boycotting it is doomed to failure. And that is exactly the case in Cleveland, where, as of 5:00 pm on opening day a schedule with times allotted to various speakers has still not been produced. This has confused not only the schedule-driven TV and radio media but also delegates. One Trump delegate from Tennessee confided he had never seen a convention without a fixed schedule. Justice Ginsburg’s gaffe—she spoke the truth Her comments may have been ‘inappropriate,’ but they weren't wrong, and her views highlight the fallacy of a judiciary free of political judgment. By Todd Gitlin What a week for the separation of powers! Not since December 2000, when a five-member majority of the Rehnquist Supreme Court stopped the Florida vote recount and placed George W. Bush in the White House—on the ground (as stated by the late Justice Scalia) that otherwise, Bush would suffer “irreparable harm”—has it been so crystal-clear that the Supreme Court is a body of men and women, not laws. These men and women durably hold views that go beyond—way beyond—legal citations. There will be no second American Revolution: The futility of an armed revolt By John W. Whitehead America is a ticking time bomb. Fish show disturbing signs of prescription drug effects By Martha Rosenberg Sixty percent of Americans now take prescription drugs—more than ever before. This not only creates unprecedented problems for municipalities whose water filtration systems were developed before wide drug use—but for marine life. Thursday Trump triumphant, wins GOP nomination By Stephen Lendman On Tuesday evening, Trump became official GOP standard bearer, a billionaire tycoon representing America’s privileged class exclusively. What’s on display in Cleveland? The Republican id The triumph of Trump has demonstrated the cost of the devil’s bargain that party elites—and the media—have accepted over the years. By Eric Alterman What is on display at the RNC in Cleveland is the Republican id. We always suspected it would look something like this. But even though it reared its ugly head on occasion on Fox News or in Congress—on the lips of some right-wing preacher or billionaire hedge-fund manager. They would compare gays to Satan, progressive taxation to Naziism and people of color to criminals at best, animals at worst—but the more polite, polished folks who spoke for the party would always regretfully shake their well-coiffed heads and explain that wasn’t what the party was really about. War & Peace Part I: Armenia & Israel By Eric Walberg The world hovers on the edge of war, not only in Israel-Palestine, Syria, Ukraine, but in Eurasia’s ground zero, where Armenia and Azerbaijan are always on the cusp of a new outbreak of their unresolvable conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave in the centre of the post-Soviet ‘republic’ of Azerbaijan. The police are victimized by their training By Paul Craig Roberts It is too early to know if the shooting of police in Dallas and Baton Rouge are the beginnings of acts of retribution against police for their wanton murders of citizens. The saying is that “what goes around, comes around.” If police murders of citizens have provoked retribution, police and those who train them need to be honest and recognize that they have brought it upon themselves. Brave, yes . . . heroes, no! By Philip A Farruggio Empires especially have always used propaganda to control and influence the populace. It takes courage for a minority of ‘truth tellers’ to speak up. For too long many of we who ‘know better’ have remained silent on who the real heroes are. Friday Sweden—a victim of Russophobic propaganda By Siv O'Neall It is frightening to see how the Swedish government, which, I suppose, considers itself more open than the center-right government we had before 2014, nevertheless seems to be the vassals of the U.S. The ever-increasing realization in Europe that the Western Empire poses a threat to life all over the world has apparently escaped the Swedes. One after the other EU countries are now seeing that it is not Russia that is a threat to a possible future world peace. This possibility has now been torpedoed by Washington’s aggressive stance towards Russia and Putin. A deeply disturbing letter from Germany By Linh Dinh A friend in Frankfurt emailed me the following on July 19. The Get-Off-My-Lawn Party meets in Cleveland By Michael Winship Oh dear. Watching C-SPAN and waiting for Tuesday’s roll call confirming Donald Trump’s nomination to begin, the house band there in the hall, led by GE Smith, formerly of Saturday Night Live, played covers of The Temptations’ “I Can’t Get Next To You” and other golden oldies. Many rhythm-impaired white people were dancing in the aisles and stands, a lot of them badly. And they kept doing it every time there was a lull in the action and the music started up again, like a high school 50th reunion run amok. JFK turned to peace and was assassinated By Paul Craig Roberts Researchers who have investigated the assassination of President John F. Kennedy for 30 or more years have concluded that he was murdered by a conspiracy of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the Secret Service. See for example, JFK And The Unspeakable by James W. Douglass. Shortly before he was murdered, President John F. Kennedy gave an extraordinary speech at American University. In the speech he came out against continuation of the Cold War that risked all life on earth for the benefit of the profits of the military-security complex and the budgets and power of the Pentagon and CIA. From Nice to the Middle East: The only way to challenge ISIS By Ramzy Baroud I visited Iraq in 1999. At the time, there were no so-called ‘jihadis’ espousing the principles of ‘jihadism,’ whatever the interpretation may be. On the outskirts of Baghdad was a military training camp, not for ‘al-Qaeda,’ but for ‘Mojahedin-e-Khalq,’ an Iranian militant exile group that worked, with foreign funding and arms, to overthrow the Iranian Republic.