Intrepid Report: Week of March 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 Aristocracy deceives public about the deep state By Eric Zuesse The “deep state” is the aristocracy and its agents. The Trump ‘resistance’: Liberal fascism? By Frank Scott Calls for impeachment of a president are fairly common among justifiably frustrated Americans, but the conditions of failing global capitalism are bringing about less predictable and more dangerous reactions than usual. Freedom Rider: Liberals expose themselves By Margaret Kimberley George W. Bush vowed not to criticize Barack Obama. “He deserves my silence.” He added for good measure, “I love my country more than I love politics. I think it is essential that he be helped in office.” If anyone needed additional proof that Obama was a servant of the ruling classes Bush certainly provided it. Response to Senator Chuck Schumer Re: Israel’s nuclear weapons and Mordechai Vanunu By Eileen Fleming A day before President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer spoke at the National Press Club Newsmaker on February 27. Wading through peanut butter By Missy Comley Beattie In the interest of research, I watched Matt Lauer’s interview with war criminal George W. Bush online. When the former tool of Empire told Lauer, another tool of Empire, that a free press is indispensable to democracy, I recalled journalist Helen Thomas who was moved from her front-row seat at White House press conferences to the back because the Bush administration didn’t like her confrontational questions. Digging around, I found that Thomas called out the Obama administration’s press handling: “ . . . we have had some control but not this control. I mean I’m amazed, I’m amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency . . .” She continued by adding that not even Nixon tried to control the press as much as Obama did. Tuesday Who are John Schindler and Malcolm Nance and why should anyone care? By Wayne Madsen The 24/7 cable “news” networks are giving air time to any “national security experts,” regardless of their credentials and backgrounds, to bash Russia. The current political firestorm over Trump campaign officials meeting with Russian ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak has taken on the aura of the “Red baiting” of the 1950s and Senator Joe McCarthy looking for Communists in every nook and cranny inside the federal government. MSNBC has been the worst network regarding the mole hunt for modern-day Alger Hisses burrowed within the Trump inner circle. However, CNN follows a close second in the resurrection of a version of the John Birch Society among Democrats and Russia-bashing Republicans like Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Ben Sasse. 3 terrifying reasons for Trump’s latest rant By Robert Reich Early Saturday morning, March 4, the 45th president of the United States alleged in a series of tweets that former president Barack Obama orchestrated a “Nixon/Watergate” plot to tap Trump’s phones at his Trump Tower headquarters last fall in the run-up to the election. Trump concluded that the former president is a “Bad (or sick) guy!” The futility and corruption of the drug war By Jacob Hornberger I just finished watching the much-acclaimed series “Narcos” on Netflix. What a fantastic program. And what an excellent depiction of the futility and corruption of the war on drugs. Ohio’s crumbling nukes face judgment day By Harvey Wasserman The likely explosion of an American nuclear power plant is the ultimate terror in the age of Trump. If Sessions had nothing to hide, why did he try to hide it? People in power don't investigate themselves. Let's have a special prosecutor to connect the dots of the Russian connection. By Michael Winship There’s something out there that has a lot of people scared, but no one’s telling the full story. Yet. Wednesday A new global construct and realigned relationships By Wayne Madsen Like a scene out of a Hollywood epic movie, Saudi Arabian King Salman journeyed to Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, with an entourage of 1000 aides and servants, including ten Cabinet ministers and 25 Saudi princes traveling aboard four Boeing 747s and two Boeing 777s. Indonesian president Joko Widodo termed the visit part of a “strategic partnership” between Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. Salman also visited Malaysia, which has been embroiled in a major political scandal arising from the acceptance by its prime minister, Najib Razak, of a $1 billion “gift” from a stated-owned Saudi company. Political opponents of Razak have termed the gift a bribe. Trump’s new travel ban By Stephen Lendman President Trump’s new executive order, issued Monday, reworked his earlier one—rejected at the federal district and appeals court levels. The lead up to war By Dave Alpert On Friday morning, I turned my TV on and, lo and behold, on MSNBC, they were talking about Jeff Sessions and his treasonous act of actually talking to Russian officials. So, at 8 am I switched to the alternative news, Amy Goodman and Democracy Now!, and predictably found that her “alternative” news reporting was also focused on Jeff Sessions and how he might have conspired with the Russians to ensure Donald Trump’s victory as president of the United States. Trump’s 10 steps for turning lies into half-truths By Robert Reich Earlier this year the Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief insisted that the Wall Street Journal wouldn’t label Trump’s false statements as “lies.” Lying, said the editor, requires a deliberate intention to mislead, which couldn’t be proven in Trump’s case. ‘America First’ has its pitfalls By Linda S. Heard President Donald J. Trump had repeatedly said, “My job is not to represent the world. My job is to represent the United States of America.” That’s a great patriotic sound bite guaranteed to appeal to his following, but he appears to have forgotten that the US is not an island unto itself and isolationist policies will have all kinds of causal repercussions. Thursday The United States and the Russian devil: 1917–2017 By William Blum Conservatives have had a very hard time getting over President Trump’s much-repeated response to Fox News anchor Bill O’Reilly’s calling Russian president Vladimir Putin “a killer.” Replied Trump: “There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. You think our country is so innocent?” Trump’s pay or die healthcare plan By Stephen Lendman Proposed Trumpcare is a boon to America’s privileged and sickness industry, a bane for most others—leaving millions more uninsured than under Obamacare. Pharma funded ‘patient’ groups keep drug prices astronomical By Martha Rosenberg It happens with regularity during citizen open-mike sessions at FDA drug advisory committee hearings. A queue of “patients” materializes out of nowhere to testify, often in tears, about the crucial need for a new drug or new use approval. Some are flown in by Pharma. The elephant (and jackass) in the room By Philip A Farruggio When the Bush/Cheney gang was in control, the bought and paid for Congress kept allotting more and more billions (over 50% of our federal tax dollars) for military spending. You see, it really did not register in the so called Defense budget because it was slotted as ‘Discretionary spending,’ thus the scam. Postcard from the End of America: Dexter, Michigan By Linh Dinh And so I was back in my friend’s house in this most tranquil, on the surface, country town. Outside was a young cherry tree with three bowling balls at its base, one for each dog buried beneath. A roofer’s ashes had also been scattered over its branches, but nothing remained of the short-lived man. Before my 74-year-old friend, Rudy, reclaimed the house, the roofer lived here. Friday Trump’s presidency failed in record time By Eric Zuesse Trumpcare—his promised replacement for Obamacare—is so blatantly atrocious that an excellent NBC News article on it is headlined, and documents that “Experts: The GOP Health Care Plan Just Won’t Work”. This was even before the Congressional Budget Office has had a chance to price out its costs to taxpayers (which can only sink it even deeper). The government is still the enemy of freedom By John W. Whitehead My friends, we’re being played for fools. From the mixed-up files of Mr. Donald J. Trump By Michael Winship Assume for a moment, as many have suggested, that the whole Trump/Putin/Russia calamity is a deliberate distraction, a deflection to shift our gaze from the destruction of government and democratic principles that Trump, Bannon and their cohorts—aided and abetted by a compliant Congress—seem intent on implementing. How should we react to terrorism? By William Blum I hadn’t planned on returning to this subject so soon, if ever, because of the distasteful experience of last summer when at least 50 of my subscribers canceled because I said that terrorism carried out by Islamics was to some extent motivated by their religion, an hypothesis rejected by what I see as the “politically correct” who took it to be an unjust attack upon an ancient and noble religion. The fact that I, a leftist, a comrade, would say such a thing was especially hard for them to take. Only the Israeli dead matter: Israel’s failure at investigating its bloody wars By Ramzy Baroud At a glance, Israel appears a true democracy. Take a closer look, and that facade of democracy will soon dissipate, turning into something else entirely.
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