Intrepid Report: Week of January 16, 2017 King CONG vs. Solartopia, The ‘post-truth’ mainstream media

Intrepid Report Newsletter
Monday The ‘post-truth’ mainstream media By Nicolas J S Davies For several months, Western officials and media outlets repeated thousands of times that there were between 250,000 and 300,000 civilians trapped under Syrian and Russian bombardment in East Aleppo. Western reports rarely mentioned the Syrian government’s estimate that there were only one-third that number of civilians in the rebel-controlled enclave—nor that its estimates were solidly based on what it had found in Homs and other rebel-held areas after it restored state control. Protests in Mexico push country to brink of revolution and nobody’s talking about it By Nick Bernabe (ANTIMEDIA) San Diego, CA—Long-simmering social tensions in Mexico are threatening to boil over as failing neoliberal reforms to the country’s formerly nationalized gas sector are compounded by open corruption, stagnant standards of living, and rampant inflation. King CONG vs. Solartopia By Harvey Wasserman As you ride the Amtrak along the Pacific coast between Los Angeles and San Diego, you pass the San Onofre nuclear power plant, home to three mammoth atomic reactors shut by citizen activism. Psycho-social breakdown By Frank Scott America’s ruling powers have maintained control by utilizing the divide and conquer strategy of identitarianism. Avoiding democracy by keeping people in real or imagined minorities has worked well, but there are times when that ruling force needs to unify people in order to keep its dominance and in those circumstances what works best is the outside menace that threatens “all of us.” In the recent past, it was an alleged international communist conspiracy, centered in the Soviet Union. When that ended more than twenty years ago, the terrorist menace presented itself and for the first time America experienced a threat within its own borders as a result of murderous policies acted out elsewhere. While that real fear has been fully exploited and is at least based on a material rather than mentally created reality, the present endangered status of our ruling oligarchy has brought about a new alleged menace for public consumption, this time from a capitalist Russia and embodied in Vladimir Putin. Yertle, the Commander-in-Chief By Michael Winship Dr. Seuss taught me to read. My older brother brought Seuss books home to me from the local public library because I was too young to have a library card of my own. Tuesday The smartest person in the room: Stories about fact, fiction, good, and evil Part One By Richard John Stapleton Several times in recent weeks I have been lured into clicking on Internet posts purporting to show the IQs of US presidents, including the president-elect now waiting to take over. America is No. 1 in all the wrong things By Stephen Lendman American exceptionalism is a great deception—except in negative terms. No nation in world history caused more harm to more people over a longer duration. Will Trump be handcuffed by the ‘Deep State’? By Linda S. Heard Say what you will about Donald Trump—and for sure there’s plenty to be said—he has a reputation for being his own man with a penchant for doing things in an unorthodox fashion. Nevertheless, he’s open to persuasion provided he trusts the person who’s giving advice. For instance, he’s changed his tune on waterboarding, which he now accepts is illegal, and he’s cautiously accepted that Russia was “probably” behind the DNC hacking. He’s also gone quiet on his plan to bar Muslims from entering the US which would jar with the Constitution. It’s not about Trump By Dave Alpert On January 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated as president of the United States. A large portion of the Amerikan people are justifiably angry and disgusted by Trump’s victory. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of the disgruntled will be in Washington, DC, to make their voices heard in their anti-Trump rallies and marches. Rise of right-wing demagogues threatens democracy worldwide: HRW President-elect Donald Trump's scapegoating of immigrants, minorities, and women exemplifies "politics of intolerance," Human Rights Watch's Kenneth Roth says By Nadia Prupis The rise of political populists threatens democracy worldwide, a new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) released Thursday says. Wednesday Obama commutes Chelsea Manning’s sentence Whistleblower to be released from military prison in May By Nika Knight President Barack Obama has commuted noted whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s prison sentence, and Manning will be released on May 17 of this year. Is it possible that Trump will move us away from our new Cold War? By Jack Balkwill I was just watching on CNN NATO troops moving into Eastern Europe in the latest “get tough” move against Russia. This intimidating buildup is frightening to those of us who understand the significance, and why it is being done. President Obama and the rest of our National Security State players have been demonizing the Russians in the public forum. Trump’s plan to neuter the White House press corps, and neuter our democracy By Robert Reich Tyrants don’t allow open questioning, and they hate the free press. They want total control. ‘The power to create a new world’: Capital versus humanity By Zarefah Baroud Catastrophic climate change is no longer a subject for argument, at least on a mainstream level within the science community. Yet, as temperatures continue to rise, American efforts to combat global warming, sadly seem to decline. MLK family’s doubts about the official version of April ’68 events By Wayne Madsen Although this editor never had the opportunity to sit down with John F. Kennedy Jr. in July 1999 to discuss his offer to a small group of journalists he decided to hire to investigate his father’s assassination—Kennedy died in a suspicious plane crash shortly before the interview was scheduled—there was a surprise opportunity to discuss the matters of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination with his son. Thursday What to expect from the Trump administration: A protectionist and pro-corporate American government By Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay Presidential candidate Donald Trump raised the hopes of many Americans when he criticized his political opponents for their close ties to Wall Street and, above all, when he promised to ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington, D.C. He may still fulfill that last promise, but as the quote above indicates, he may have to fight House Republicans on that central issue. Candidate Trump also raised the hopes of many when he promised to end costly wars abroad and to concentrate rather on preventing jobs from moving offshore, on creating more middle-class jobs at home and on preventing the American middle class from shrinking any further. A future for the Democratic Party? By Lawrence Davidson You would think that learning from experience is a common thing to do. But, for the Democratic Party’s leadership this seems not to be the case. After the landslide victory of Trump’s version of the Republican Party in the 2016 national election, it is fair to say that the Democratic Party is in big trouble. As Senator Bernie Sanders has observed, the party needs to reform. Chelsea Manning has sacrificed her life By Emanuel E. Garcia, MD I was pleasantly surprised by the announcement that President Obama would commute Chelsea Manning’s sentence so that she may be released in May. Nothing is real: When reality TV programming masquerades as politics By John W. Whitehead Donald Trump no longer needs to launch Trump TV. Ankara’s greatest challenge is fixing the economy By Linda S. Heard Once stable and prosperous, Turkey is battling on multiple fronts, but despite the country’s woes it has escaped the specter of widespread civil discontent until now. The failed coup, and the purges of alleged sympathizers from all walks of life, served to bring the nation together, sending President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s approval rating soaring to new heights. Friday A presidential inauguration that will live in infamy By Bev Conover Before this day is over, Donald Trump will be sitting behind the cash register . . . er, desk in the Oval Office but who will be running the store, if anyone, since he hasn’t bothered to fill even the key jobs crucial to running the country? Crumbling reactors and other nightmares of a Trump-Perry energy policy By Harvey Wasserman In the area of energy policy under the presidency of Donald Trump, two concerns loom above all others. Pavor nocturnus during the fortnight of Trump’s inauguration By Ben Tanosborn Entering 2017 in political America has been a true centennial celebration of surrealism, American style . . . at least in ideology and politics, if not in art. We may not quite have the quality-legacy of surrealism provided by Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx or Pablo Picasso to Europeans a century ago, but we are poised to receive an overdose of new political reality shortly after Donald Trump is installed as our 45th president today, January 20. Plan on it . . . count on it! Yemen: Obama’s parting gift to terror By Thomas C. Mountain Barack Obama saved his parting gift to terror, his worst crime, for last, the war on the Yemeni People. Obama’s last war has institutionalized a failed state and which will continue to inflict terror and suffering on 25 million Yemenis for generations to come. Remember Don Siegelman By Paul Craig Roberts I hope that President Obama commuted Manning’s unjust sentence not as a sop to transgenders, but as a sign that a bit of humanity still remains in the outgoing war criminal president. Manning did his duty and reported US war crimes by releasing the astounding video of US troops murdering innocent people and journalists walking along a street and then murdering a father and his two young children who stopped to help the wounded left on the street by the US helicopter gunship or drone or whatever the murder device was. The video reveals US troops playing video kill games with real people.