Intrepid Report Week of October 30, 2017

Intrepid Report Newsletter
We cannot keep publishing without your help. We have no paywalls or ads. Nor do we receive corporate or foundation funding. All we have is you to keep us publishing. We rely on you to help us pay our monthly expenses. So please Donate  Monday Mutual assured destruction By Philip M. Giraldi Sometimes it is possible to read or view something that completely changes the way one looks at things. I had that experience last week when I read an article at Lobelog entitled “A Plea for Common Sense on Missile Defense,” written by Joe Cirincione, a former staffer on the House Armed Services Committee who now heads the Ploughshares Fund, which is a Washington, DC, based global foundation that seeks to stop the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. White House places all blame for ‘astonishingly corrupt’ Whitefish contract on Puerto Rico Advocacy groups are calling for the deal to be cancelled and congressional Democrats are demanding an investigation By Jake Johnson Amid growing outrage over the “astonishingly corrupt” $300 million no-bid contract given to Whitefish Energy to rebuild Puerto Rico’s electrical grid, the Trump White House on Friday denied that the federal government had “any role” in crafting the agreement and placed all responsibility for the deal on shoulders of local Puerto Rican officials—despite language in the contract saying the Federal Emergency Management Agency “reviewed and approved” the agreement. Is NATO preparing for war on Russia? By Stephen Lendman Bilateral Russia/US relations are dismal—so far confined to a war of words, risking things turning hot. For Trump, words are stupid things By Michael Winship In Britain late last week, Conservative Member of Parliament Nicholas Soames, grandson of Winston Churchill, described Donald Trump as a “daft twerp.” Get ready to eat Chinese chickens By Martha Rosenberg China has sold rat meat billed as lamb, gutter oil billed as cooking oil and baby formula contaminated with melamine. In the U.S. its pet food killed many dogs and cats in 2007. But this spring the U.S. agreed to import cooked chickens from China. Why? Because China agreed to accept U.S. beef imports after a 13-year “mad cow” scare in which many countries refused U.S. beef. Tuesday Swamp Tales: Puerto Rico cancels $300 million Trump crony electrical grid rebuild contract By Harvey Wasserman The swampish saga would be hard to invent. In early October, Puerto Rico’s Energy Power Authority awarded a $300 million tax-funded contract to reconstruct the island’s hurricane devastated power grid to a two-person, two-year-old firm based in the small Montana hometown of Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. The company is financially backed by a major donor to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. ‘Death sentence for local media’: Warnings as FCC pushes change to benefit right-wing media giant Free press advocates say rule changes are "massive handout" to broadcaster Sinclair that would have far-reaching and negative impacts in communities nationwide By Jessica Corbett In a series of moves last week that have alarmed free speech advocates and critics of media consolidation, the Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) voted to abolish a rule requiring radio and television broadcasters to maintain studios near the communities they serve, and FCC chairman Ajit Pai announced further plans to end certain media ownership rules. The huge tax heist By Robert Reich You know the plot: The bank robbers set off a bomb down the street from the bank, and while everyone’s distracted they get away with the loot. Dak Lak By Linh Dinh It was a 200-mile journey from Saigon to Dak Lak, a highlands province that saw much fighting during the Vietnam War. Just north of Saigon, I passed quite a few grand villas, with two dog statues on gate columns, though some owners outdid their neighbors by having lions instead. Requiem for the Promised Land By Emanuel E. Garcia, MD Sometime in the early 1900s my maternal grandparents threw caution to the wind and left the countyside and seaside of Abruzzo, Italy, to settle in South Philadelphia. My grandfather died when I was barely a year old, but my grandmother I can remember. Try as she might, her English never got beyond a few words; yet she raised five children, one of whom became my mother. Wednesday Regulation is killing community banks–public banks can revive them By Ellen Brown Crushing regulations are driving small banks to sell out to the megabanks, a consolidation process that appears to be intentional. Publicly-owned banks can help avoid that trend and keep credit flowing in local economies. How America spreads global chaos By Nicolas J S Davies As the recent PBS documentary on the American War in Vietnam acknowledged, few American officials ever believed that the United States could win the war, neither those advising Johnson as he committed hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, nor those advising Nixon as he escalated a brutal aerial bombardment that had already killed millions of people. One year later, is Trump a blessing or a curse to the Deep State? By John W. Whitehead Here’s the question I pose to you: has Donald Trump been a blessing or a curse to the architects of the American police state? The flawed and corrupted genius of American republicanism By Richard Falk Trump as President makes us think as never before about viability of the American version of constitutional democracy, that is, the ‘republic’ that Ben Franklin promised the people at the time of Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Leading Democrats are way behind the public on health care 60 percent of Americans support single payer health care. So why is the party leadership dragging its feet? By Jim Hightower Good news, people—at last, congressional Democrats have gotten a clue, grown some spine, and are beginning to act like . . . well, like progressives. Thursday Reflections on how little is revealed by just-released JFK assassination documents and just some of the many reasons why there had to be a conspiracy By John Chuckman In the recent, and supposedly last, release of files pertaining to the Kennedy assassination, most of the corporate press did not dwell on the fact that the most important and secret files were kept from the public, but, of course, that was actually the big story. Flying under radar of Trump chaos, GOP set to confirm slew of ‘extremist’ judges ‘These nominees' collective records reveal the disturbing truth that this administration does not just tolerate radical anti-equality views among its judicial nominees, but requires them.’ By Jake Johnson In an under-discussed push to “reshape the courts in Donald Trump’s image for decades to come,” the Senate this week is quietly gearing up to confirm a slew of federal judges who critics say have records littered with “breathtaking hostility toward civil rights and equal justice.” Walls and militarized police: How Israel is exporting its occupation to the United States By Ramzy Baroud Israeli footprints are becoming more apparent in the US security apparatus. Such a fact does not bode well for ordinary Americans. Manafort’s lawyer covered up massive tax evasion by VIPs By Wayne Madsen Paul Manafort, the indicted former campaign manager for President Trump, should feel at ease knowing that Kevin Downing is his criminal defense attorney for his upcoming trial for tax evasion and other criminal counts. Downing, recently a partner with the Washington, DC, law firm of Miller & Chevalier, is an expert in white collar crime, particularly issues relating to offshore tax avoidance schemes, money laundering, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act bribery payments. Before entering private practice, Downing served as a federal prosecutor for 15 years in the Department of Justice’s Tax Division, the law enforcement arm for the Internal Revenue Service. Is it insanity, evil, or both that has the Western world in its grip By Paul Craig Roberts As the presstitute media has no allegiance to truth, one has to wonder if we can even believe obituaries. Friday Missing links for peace, civility, social well-being We will keep missing out if we insist on relying solely on our intellect, acquired knowledge, reason and intelligence; human potential encompasses much more. By Antonio Carlos Silva Rosa, M.A. I am fascinated with the insights the evolution of science provides, particularly astronomy, cosmology, quantum physics and medicine. Medical research and technology opened the doors to the insides of our brains, considered by ourselves superior and in many ways as complex, dynamic, fascinating as the universe itself. And scientists keep sending those ‘intelligent’ messages to outer space in hopes that other ‘intelligent’ beings will pick them up and beam back their replies to us to provide a human life-changing experience of a close encounter of some kind. They assume that beings ‘out there’ possess minds and intellects—lives like our own. Fears of radiation leak soar after North Korea nuclear site collapse kills 200 The disaster is believed to have resulted from Pyongyang's hydrogen bomb test, which sparked earthquakes and landslides By Jake Johnson Experts are issuing urgent warnings of a possible radiation leak following the collapse of a tunnel at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site, an accident that reportedly killed at least 200 people. Trump’s Trojan horse tax cut By Robert ReichThe goal of Trump and the Republican leaders is to pull off a giant redistribution of over $1 trillion from the middle-class, working-class, and poor to the rich, who are already richer than ever. Freedom Rider: Putin, Trump and Manafort By Margaret Kimberley The American propaganda campaign being waged against the Russian Federation and its president Vladimir Putin has reached a stage of perverse perfection. It is virtually impossible to put forth a dissenting opinion that will be accepted or considered worthy of consideration. The Democrats are leading the charge to silence and censor and they are getting buy-in from people who otherwise consider themselves to be progressive. Politics of identity, secessionism and communal plurality By Ben Tanosborn Patriotism is, fundamentally, if we follow George Bernard Shaw’s dictum, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it. And as I look around me here in the United States, or around much of the world for that matter, I see little room to contradict GBS. The Irish playwright had us diagnosed well . . . all victims of man’s oldest and greatest epidemic.
Disclaimer: You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to our newsletter at Intrepid Report.  Please add news_ltr@intrepidreport.com to your address book to ensure that our emails reach your inbox.  Copyright ? Intrepid Report . All rights reserved.