Intrepid Report: Week of February 6, 2017

Intrepid Report Newsletter

We cannot keep publishing without your help. We rely on you to help us pay our monthly expenses. So please Donate Monday The Great Wall of Mr. T By William Blum So much cheaper. So much easier. So much more humane. So much more popular. . . . Just stop overthrowing or destabilizing governments south of the border. The only thing dumber than Trump is the reaction to Trump By Frank Scott The attack on mass consciousness by America’s ruling powers that began with a campaign to assure Trump’s candidacy so that their wholly owned subsidiary could win failed miserably but continues at greater excess and with dangerously traumatic success since his victory. Every ignorant, undiplomatic or semi-stupid action or utterance by the new CEO of Corporate America is met by imbecilic, bigoted and near moronic reaction from capital’s billionaire central through its professional upper class political/media servants. While conservative America has long been accused, often justifiably, of waving the banner of reactionary politics and narrow thinking, a failing economic system is helping reduce liberals and progressives to those who are simply not members of the American Nazi Party. Yet. The ‘Bowling Green Massacre’ and the Gleiwitz attack By Wayne Madsen President Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway’s fictitious account of an Islamist terrorist attack carried out by two Iraqi refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky has an eerily similar historical parallel. On August 31, 1939, the eve of the outbreak of World War II, the Nazi German propaganda machine falsely claimed that Polish troops crossed the German frontier and attacked a German radio station in the town of Gleiwitz. Torture prison head named deputy CIA director By Stephen Lendman On Thursday, Trump named Gina Haspel his deputy CIA director, agency head Mike Pompeo, saying: “Gina is an exemplary intelligence officer and a devoted patriot who brings more than 30 years of agency experience to the job. She is also a proven leader with an uncanny ability to get things done and to inspire those around her.” Divest from war and invest in people By Kathy Kelly All Trump, all the time. With a punishing, disorienting barrage of executive orders, President Trump is reversing hard fought gains made in environmental protection, health care, women’s rights, immigration policy, and nuclear weapons reduction—with even more executive orders promised. Tuesday It’s not about who sits in the Oval Office; it’s about the agenda for world domination By Dave Alpert TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP! Everyone is talking about Trump, the man who uses up all the oxygen in any room he enters. That tired old subject By William Blum Senator Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, declared two years ago, “Ultimately, freedom of speech is about ascertaining the truth. And if you don’t believe there’s a truth, you don’t believe in truth, if you’re an utter secularist, then how do we operate this government? How can we form a democracy of the kind I think you and I believe in . . . I do believe that we are a nation that, without God, there is no truth, and it’s all about power, ideology, advancement, agenda, not doing the public service.” Freedom Rider: Trump is the less effective evil By Margaret Kimberley The trope of supporting the Democratic Party as the lesser of two evils has proven to be a huge failure. Barack Obama epitomized the foolishness of this political choice. As Black Agenda Report pointed out he was not less evil than Republican presidents. He was just the more effective evil. As the first black president and with the Democrats’ undeserved reputation as the party of justice and peace, he was able to get away with more evildoing than any other president in recent memory. Could Trump’s hair drug threaten his physical and mental health? There can be a downside to a full head of orange hair By Martha Rosenberg Last week, President Trump’s doctor disclosed that the president takes finasteride, a drug marketed as Propecia, to treat male pattern baldness. While it is tempting to make jokes about Trump’s hair, and even the sexual side effects that accompany the drug, it also has many disturbing side effects that neither the president—nor any other man—should risk. Postcard from the End of America: Philly’s Italian Market By Linh Dinh I live a block from the Italian Market, see, and its ecology is more complex than anything I could ever aspire to describe, but better something than nothing, so let me give you a little tour of the Eyetalian Market. Wednesday They had a massacre and no one came By Bev Conover Yup, the massacre happened in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and the press never reported it, according to Trump adviser KellyAnne Conway. Trump ‘not fully briefed’ on order elevating Bannon to Security Council New York Times reports the lapse was a 'greater source of frustration to the president than the fallout from the travel ban' By Nadia Prupis President Donald Trump reportedly did not realize he was promoting chief strategist Steve Bannon to the National Security Council (NSC) Principals Committee when he signed the executive order dropping intelligence and defense officials from the top government panel and elevating the former Breitbart News chair in their place. Trump’s rollercoaster promises a wild ride By Linda S. Heard Oh for a quiet news day, preferably one when the ‘T’ word passes no TV anchor’s lips! But the new Leader of the Free World is set on taking not only Americans but all of us on the ride of our lives towards a major rearrangement of the world order. Russia is a threat to US world dominance By William Blum If anyone knows where to find this long list please send me a copy. How Big Pharma’s lust for profit turns their customers into guinea pigs Is patient safety being compromised in the rush to approve new drugs? By Martha Rosenberg There is a reason drug safety experts recommend waiting five years before taking a new prescription drug. Before new drugs are released to the public, they are tested on a shockingly small group of people for a shockingly short period of time. Risks and safety problems, therefore, often don’t emerge until millions try the drug as we saw with the withdrawn drugs Vioxx, Bextra, Baycol, Trovan, Meridia, Seldane, Hismanal, Darvon, Raxar, Redux and at least 11 others. Thursday Donald Trump as ‘Anti-Wilson’ By Dr T P Wilkinson A century ago, a Southern academic and racist emerged in Europe and the United States as a crusader to “make the world safe for democracy.” [1] Wilson had been inaugurated as president in 1913, the year before Europe’s imperialists plunged the world into four years of mass murder. That war alone, caused some four million direct battle casualties and untold millions of non-combatant deaths in the aftermath. Woodrow Wilson, despite the policies he actually pursued, would be turned into an icon of the 20th century’s most enduring myth—the benevolence and humanitarian virtue of the great slaveholder republic founded in 1776. Wilson could arguably be called the nation’s first celebrity politician and international celebrity export. This remarkable marketing accomplishment predated television. Trump chief adviser was aide to two CNOs during the largest pedophile crime in U.S. naval history By Wayne Madsen President Trump’s powerful political adviser Stephen Bannon served as an aide to two chiefs of Naval Operations, Admirals Thomas Hayward and James Watkins, during one of the largest pedophile crimes that ever took place within naval ranks in the then-207 years of the history of the U.S. Navy. Betsy DeVos confirmed as education secretary By Stephen Lendman Long ago, inner city kids like myself had wonderful public schools with dedicated teachers, preparing us for higher education when even top colleges and universities were affordable. Freedom Rider: Resist Trump, resist the Democrats By Margaret Kimberley Resistance is the new watch word for millions of people who oppose Donald Trump and his administration. This is a positive development against a president who made such open appeals to white American supremacy and the 21st century iterations of manifest destiny. The FBI: The silent terror of the Fourth Reich By John W. Whitehead Lately, there’s been a lot of rhetoric comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. The concern is that a Nazi-type regime may be rising in America. Friday Symbolic seduction: Women’s rights, partisan politics, ethnocentrism and ‘American Narcissism’ By Edward Curtin In 1929, Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew and U.S./CIA war and coup propagandist, and the founder of public relations, conducted a successful mind-manipulation experiment for the tobacco industry. Neocon Elliott Abrams for deputy secretary of state? By Stephen Lendman Trump is considering Elliott Abrams for the department’s number two position—perhaps an especially powerful one while Rex Tillerson transitions from Big Oil to diplomacy. The high-concept presidency The line has blurred between politics and entertainment. Donald Trump simplistically—and dangerously—sees the world as one big reality show. By Neal Gabler Anyone who has ever pitched a movie or television idea in Hollywood knows the tyranny of the “high concept.” It’s a staple of the entertainment world. A high concept is a simple, succinct, immediately comprehensible gimmick: Abraham Lincoln is a vampire hunter; the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and Jack Frost team up to defeat an evil villain; Superman and Batman face off as enemies; Pride and Prejudice is reimagined as a zombie war in 19th-century England; Lucifer comes to earth to consult with the LAPD. (By the way, these are all real movies or TV shows.) The uncomfortable truth: Are we hating Donald Trump for the wrong reasons? By Ramzy Baroud I fear that many of us are hating Donald Trump for the wrong reasons. Upsurge in nationalism does not bode well for world order By Linda S. Heard The factors that brought Western nations together under the US umbrella forged international institutions designed to achieve unity of purpose and preserve shared liberal democratic values to prevent another devastating world war. But many of those alliances and institutions are today being undermined by a wave of nationalistic sentiment deluging America and Europe, where mutual cooperation is gradually being replaced with every country for itself.