Intrepid Report: Week of June 26, 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 Nightmarish Senate version of Trumpcare By Stephen Lendman Details of both programs are now known. House and Senate versions are thinly veiled schemes to shift the burden of increasingly expensive healthcare onto the backs of millions of Americans unable to afford a fundamental human right. Trump: I will defend Medicaid. Also Trump: I support bill that destroys Medicaid. By Jake Johnson White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters in an off-camera briefing on Friday that President Donald Trump remains “committed” to protecting recipients of Medicaid, a program he repeatedly vowed not to cut during his presidential campaign. Mueller v. Trump: The ultimate lawsuit By Steven Harper Eventually, Trump is likely to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump’s repeated statements about the Russia “hoax”—along with his apparent attempts to influence the FBI’s investigation—warrant a close look at the process by which he could do so. Equally important are the limited ways to stop him. Whether by design, inadvertence or a combination of both, Trump and his minions—including Newt Gingrich and Trump’s lawyers—have been laying the groundwork for what could become America’s defining moment. Rallying the people By Dave Alpert On October 20, 2011, Muammar Gaddafi, the head of the Libyan government, was killed by US and French sponsored “rebels.” Book review: ‘Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives’ By Martha Rosenberg What if you didn’t grow up amid America’s gun culture, but are still a member of the race which suffers the most from U.S gun violence? As Gary Younge, a black reporter who grew up in England demonstrates in a moving new book titled, “Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives,” it might cause you to ask hard questions other reporters duck. Tuesday The ‘world’s policeman’ retires on disability By Wayne Madsen Ever since the end of World War II, the United States, rightly or wrongly, but most of the time wrongly, has fancied itself as the “world’s policeman.” Even a disastrous and costly military intervention in Southeast Asia did not deter the United States from acting as the chief arbiter of what governments were “in” and which were “out” as evidenced by the Central Intelligence Agency interloping in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, Haiti, and Colombia. Two military interventions in Iraq and a U.S.-led military campaign directed against Yugoslavia were not enough to pry the United States from its self-appointed role as the chief “global cop.” In fact, American neoconservatives continued to fanaticize about the United States leading the world into a post-Cold War “new American century.” The secret Republican plan to unravel Medicaid By Robert Reich Bad enough that the Republican Senate bill would repeal much of the Affordable Care Act. Once again, mainstream media does Pharma’s bidding By Martha Rosenberg Taxpayers are stuck paying for the opioid crisis created by Big Pharma to make more money. Late last year, the Senate approved $1 billion of our money for “opioid prevention and treatment programs” as part of the 21st Century Cures Act. The elephant is always in the room By Philip A Farruggio This writer has made it my main purpose, for 15 years now, to focus on the single most important issue destroying our nation’s economy. Yes, for those who read me frequently, it is this obscene military spending coupled with extreme militarism! Films to chew on Why does gratuitous violence also attract the ‘compatible Left’? By Dr T P Wilkinson For years there have been two films from Hollywood that have drawn innumerable fans, especially among the “cultivated” (compatible) Left. These are Aliens with Sigourney Weaver and The Silence of the Lambs with Anthony Hopkins and Jody Foster. I have had to endure excerpts but have never been able to overcome the revulsion in order to actually sit through either film in its entirety. This was, of course, long before I recognised that I cannot watch “war films” anymore either, although I grew up on a steady fare of John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and all the other usual suspects who incarnated US war mythology from the 19th and 20th century. Wednesday U.S. Navy heading into cover-up mode in collision of the USS Fitzgerald By Wayne Madsen U.S. Navy sources report to WMR that the Navy is heading into familiar cover-up mode in the official investigation of the collision of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62) with the ACX Crystal, a Philippines-flagged container ship manned by a Filipino crew of 20. The collision, which killed seven U.S. Navy sailors who drowned in a flooded below-water line berthing compartment, took place near Japan’s Izu Peninsula on June 17 at 2:20 a.m. local time. The Crystal was under charter to a Japanese firm, Nippon Yusen KK (NYK), and was en route from Nagoya to Tokyo. The Crystal’s registration holder is Sinbanali Shipping, Inc. based in Manila, and its actual owner is Dainichi-Invest Corporation of Kobe, Japan. America’s rape and destruction of sovereign states By Stephen Lendman America’s sordid history reflects a despicable legacy of ravaging, colonizing and plundering one nation after another. The secret healthcare bill By Robert Reich The Senate’s bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act is not a healthcare bill. It’s a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, paid for by a dramatic reduction in healthcare funding for approximately 23 million poor, disabled, and working middle class Americans. The age of no privacy: The surveillance state shifts into high gear By John W. Whitehead The government has become an expert in finding ways to sidestep what it considers “inconvenient laws” aimed at ensuring accountability and thereby bringing about government transparency and protecting citizen privacy. Of Caesar, guns and trolls: The evil that men do By Michael Winship Over in New York’s Central Park, just a short distance from our offices, the curtain came down last week on The Public Theater’s controversial production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Controversial because the actor playing the assassinated Caesar looked and sounded like Donald Trump, right down to the overlong red necktie and clownish orange-blond nimbus of hair. Thursday California scheming: Single-payer betrayed by the Democrats again By Jim Kavanagh Nothing better illustrates the political bankruptcy of the Democratic Party—for all progressive intents and purposes—than California State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon’s announcement on Friday afternoon that he was going to put a “hold” on the single-payer health care bill (SB 562) for the state, effectively killing its passage for at least the year. It’s time for Medicare for All By Robert Reich Mitch McConnell is delaying a vote on the Senate Republican version of Trumpcare because he doesn’t yet have a majority. Behind the scenes at the Saudi-Qatari pissing contest By Thomas C. Mountain Saudi Arabia, with the bellicose support of President Trump, has launched a diplomatic and partial economic offensive against the ridiculously small state of Qatar and is dragging its allies, the United Arab Emirates in particular, into a potential major headache. All of Donald Trump’s lies By Bill Moyers This weekend, The New York Times performed a noble public service by publishing nearly every lie Donald Trump has told since taking the oath of office (just four months and a few days ago, but it seems like an eternity, no?). The op-ed chart of tiny but readable font fills the entire page, until at one point, in the mind’s eye, they appear to morph into termites burrowing deep into the foundation of democracy, leaving sawdust in their wake. Tyranny at home to fight tyranny abroad By Jacob Hornberger President Trump has reminded us of how the U.S. government destroyed the liberty of the American people in the name of fighting tyranny abroad. Exercising the same dictatorial method that his predecessors have employed—executive decrees—he has made it illegal again for most Americans to travel to Cuba and spend money there. Friday Trump, Republicans seek to euthanize 80 million young and old Americans Democrats will be accessories to the crime By John Stanton Who, exactly, are the people that the Republicans in the US Congress represent? Or, should we ask, do they have the best interests of their local constituents in mind? Sovereign debt jubilee, Japanese-style By Ellen Brown Let’s face it. There is no way the US government is ever going to pay back a $20 trillion federal debt. The taxpayers will just continue to pay interest on it, year after year. Pushing Gaza to suicide: The politics of humiliation By Ramzy Baroud Mohammed Abed is a 28-year-old taxi driver from the village of Qarara, near the town of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip. He has no teeth. What happens when America’s top investigative journalist reports what its media owners don’t want the public to know? By Eric Zuesse This isn’t only about U.S. President Barack Obama’s secret policy on Syria; it’s also about his successor, Donald Trump, adopting that secret policy, and about the U.S. press keeping this policy secret from the U.S. public—effectively blinding America’s voters so they can’t see, much less understand, the U.S. government’s ongoing international looting-operation, nor even the key parts of it. Nikki Haley’s recklessly belligerent remarks By Stephen Lendman Trump’s neocon UN envoy, Nikki Haley, sounds like Samantha Powers on steroids—her hostility toward Russia, Syria and world peace evident from her reckless comments.
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