Week of January 21, 2019

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 Martin Luther King Day and the unspeakable By Edward Curtin As Martin Luther King’s birthday is celebrated with a national holiday, his death day disappears down the memory hole. Across the country—in response to the King Holiday and Service Act passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton in 1994—people will be encouraged to make the day one of service. Such service does not include King’s commitment to protest a decadent system of racial and economic injustice or non-violently resist the U.S. warfare state that he called “the greatest purveyor of violence on earth.” JFK, MLK, Bobby & Leonard: Bad things happen when you color outside the lines By Jane Stillwater Did anyone else besides me watch that TV special on John F. Kennedy Jr the other night? Hmmm. Not sure what to think about it. Why are they showing it to us now? Maybe I’m being a bit paranoid (again) but it appeared to be the ultimate masterpiece of public-relations propaganda—American style. Would Trump have come after my family for being illegal? By Jack Balkwill My grandfather was an illegal alien. During the 1800s he travelled from England, where he was born, to Canada, which was British territory in those days, so he wasn’t required to have a passport. He travelled to the Canadian West, then crossed the border into Idaho, to be known, thereafter, as an American. The National Security Agency is a criminal organization By Paul Craig Roberts Years before Edward Snowden provided documented proof that the National Security Agency was really a national insecurity agency as it was violating law and the US Constitution and spying indiscriminately on American citizens, William Binney, who designed and developed the NSA spy program revealed the illegal and unconstitutional spying. Binney turned whistleblower, because NSA was using the program to spy on Americans. Another day, another disaster. And another, and another . . . It’s as if the country’s being run by Beetlejuice. By Michael Winship I’ve been trying to write something about the events of the past few days for the last week and a half, and every time I set out to achieve editorial brilliance, or at least try to keep typos and the splitting of infinitives to a minimum, something else wacky happens and it’s back to square one. I’d say it’s Sisyphean if only I knew what that meant. Tuesday Indefinite detention uncharged and untried a crime against humanity By Stephen Lendman These are troubled times. Rule of law protections don’t help. The US does whatever it pleases, operating by its own rules, inflicting harm on nations, groups and individuals, including its own citizens. Traditional 2019 State of the Union address fraught with security dangers By Wayne Madsen Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi’s request to Donald Trump to delay this year’s State of the Union address, scheduled for January 29, was based on advice she received from national security and counter-terrorism experts worried about a “Designated Survivor” scenario. The deep-pocket push to deep-six public schools The backstory to the showdown in Los Angeles between teachers and billionaires By Sam Pizzigati Back during the 1960s and 1970s, in cities, suburbs, and small towns across the United States, teacher strikes made headlines on a fairly regular basis. Teachers in those years had a variety of reasons for walking out. They struck for the right to bargain. They struck for decent pay and benefits. They struck for professional dignity. The indignity of work without pay Forty percent of conservative Republicans view the government shutdown as inconsequential By Leo Gerard In the midst of the longest government shutdown in history, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown last week launched a “Dignity of Work” listening tour. AI wants to reprogram you Driverless cars cost jobs and threaten pedestrians. Investors' advice? Just get out of the way! By Jim Hightower With chaos in the White House, worsening climate disasters, more wars than we can count, and a wobbling economy here at home, the last thing we need is another big challenge. But—look out!—here comes a doozy! Wednesdaay From the barracks to the courtroom: US ‘lawfare’ in action By Wayne Madsen Somewhere along the line in recent history, some US think tank in the employ of the Central Intelligence Agency must have come up with the idea that overthrowing governments in Latin America by military coups came with bad optics for the coup plotters. Often, democratically-elected Latin American leaders were demonized by a cabal of military officers who left their barracks and laid siege to the presidential palaces. After taking control of the national radio stations, these generals would announce they had seized control of the government to “protect” the people from “communism” or some other concocted bogeyman. Call for global ban as poll shows overwhelming public opposition to ‘horrifying’ killer robots Weapons that require no input from humans in selecting and killing targets undermine "the right to life and other human rights," critics say By Julia Conley World leaders have shown little leadership in moving to ban autonomous weapons that would require no human involvement when selecting and killing targets, but a new survey shows that the global population overwhelmingly opposes the development of such “killer robots.” High-profile human rights groups fail to condemn unlawful US mistreatment of Marzieh Hashimi By Stephen Lendman The silence of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, and other high-profile human rights groups over Mazieh’s unlawful arrest, detention and abusive treatment by the FBI is deafening. Tax dollars can buy happiness The deeper meaning of hygge—and why citizens of Denmark are so much happier than Americans By Leo Gerard Corporatists castigated two lawmakers in recent weeks for daring to offer economic Xanax prescriptions to cure rampant American economic anxiety. Trump’s assault on the rule of law By Robert Reich The “rule of law” distinguishes democracies from dictatorships. It’s based on three fundamental principles. Trump is violating every one of them. Thursday Mike Pence calls for coup d’état in Venezuela By Stephen Lendman Since Hugo Chavez established Bolivarian social democracy in Venezuela, a vibrant system, a model for other nations, the US plotted to replace it with fascist tyranny. Government shutdown to cause the suffering of the public is a violation of federal anti-terrorism law By Wayne Madsen 18 U.S. Code § 2331 specifically states that a national of the United States who commits an act dangerous to human life to intimidate or coerce a civilian population or influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion is liable to be charged for violating federal domestic terrorism laws. Trump puts the white in the red, white and blue By Michael Winship WASHINGTON, DC—As the old saying goes, putting a shoe in an oven don’t make it a biscuit. Pompeo turns reality upside down By Philip M. Giraldi The speech made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the American University in Cairo on January 10 deserves more attention than it has received from the US media. In it, Pompeo reveals his own peculiar vision of what is taking place in the Middle East, to include the impact of his own personal religiosity, and his belief that Washington’s proper role in the region is to act as “a force for good.” The extent to which the secretary of state was speaking for himself was not completely clear, but the text of the presentation was posted on the State Department website without any qualification, so one has to assume that Pompeo was representing White House policy. The fall of Davos Man By Robert Reich The annual confab of the captains of global industry, finance, and wealth is underway in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum. Friday Washington has appointed a president for Venezuela By Paul Craig Roberts After listening since 2016 to the American presstitutes complain, without providing a mere scrap of evidence, of Russia meddling in US elections, a person would think that the last thing Washington would do would be to meddle in other countries’ elections. Uncle Sam wants your DNA: The FBI’s diabolical plan to create a nation of suspects By John W. Whitehead Uncle Sam wants you. US blunders have made Russia the global trade pivot By Mathew Maavak The year 2019 had barely begun before news emerged that six Russian sailors were kidnapped by pirates off the coast of Benin. It was perhaps a foretaste of risks to come. As nations reel from deteriorating economic conditions, instances of piracy and other forms of supply chain disruptions are bound to increase. False ‘victories’: Is the PA using the ‘State of Palestine’ to remain in power? By Ramzy Baroud The ‘State of Palestine’ has officially been handed the chairmanship of the G-77, the United Nations largest block. This is particularly significant considering the relentless Israeli-American plotting to torpedo Palestine’s push for greater international recognition and legitimacy. We don’t need a new deal; we need a whole new deck By Frank Scott The gap between the earth’s wardens of wealth and the nearly eight billion humans under their control has grown wider and more dangerous but is beginning to be understood by some as a systemic problem and not simply a matter of evil leaders and villainous followers. When people see and feel their futures ranging from problematic at best to non-existent at worst, we get the resultant turmoil and changes taking place in nations moving in many directions at once but all of them against established power over things as they are.
Please add news_ltr@intrepidreport.com to your address book to ensure that our emails reach your inbox. Copyright ? Intrepid Report . All rights reserved.editor@intrepidreport.com