My main computer died last Friday and I have been struggling all week on a borrowed computer to keep Intrepid Report publishing. While a new computer is on the way, my equipment fund is empty. Hence, I turn to you for help. Continue reading
The recognition by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Joe Biden of Juan Guaidó as Venezuelan president is the latest demonstration of the consensus in Washington over the nefariousness of the Nicolás Maduro government. Not since Fidel Castro’s early years in power has a Latin American head of state been so consistently demonized. But the 1960s was the peak of the Cold War polarization that placed Cuba plainly in the enemy camp, and unlike Venezuela today, that nation had a one-party system. Continue reading
It’s easy to forget the condescension and amusement that greeted him when he announced his first campaign for president on May 26, 2015. Continue reading
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s speech at the Munich Security Conference this weekend was met with resounding approval from the gathering. Throwing barbs back at US Vice President Mike Pence over a myriad of issues Merkel expressed Europe’s dissatisfaction with the Trump administration’s belligerence and lack of diplomacy. Continue reading
The US is the only developed nation without some form of universal coverage. The world’s richest nation doesn’t give a hoot about its ordinary people, serving its privileged class exclusively. Continue reading
Pence is an evangelical Christian fascist, a neocon hardliner, an imperial war cheerleader, an Islamophobe, Russophobe, Iranophobe, and homophobe. Continue reading
US National Security Adviser John Bolton may be known for a lot of things, but “diplomat” is not one of them. In 2005, Bolton was never confirmed by the US Senate to be George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations because the walrus-mustachioed neoconservative ideologue had made past comments deriding the UN as a useless organization. In 1994, Bolton infamously said, “There is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States, when it suits our interests and when we can get others to go along… The [UN] Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost ten stories today, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” Continue reading
The fact that his predecessor was a smart, witty and popular black man makes Donald Trump crazy. Especially the black part. Continue reading
Washington’s political establishment went berserk when US Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) publicly noted that US-Israel relations are “all about the Benjamins”—slang for $100 bills, referring to money shoveled at American politicians by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Continue reading
With Trump the silences are usually as expressive of his intentions as the incoherent dogmas. Indeed, his Second State of the Union Address delivered in Congress on February 5, 2019 gives a clear insight into the political mentality of tormentor in chief when it comes to the human condition. Continue reading
Trump could not have become America’s president if he had not won the “vote” of his nation’s second-largest political donor in 2016, casinos-owner Sheldon Adelson. Continue reading
In the coming years or decades, life on earth in all forms could end from nuclear immolation or ecocide. Continue reading
The “Desperado in Chief” wants—NEEDS!!—a diversionary “national” emergency. Continue reading
The US health system is the most high cost and dysfunctional health care system in the world. The reason is that it is privatized. In the rest of Western civilization, the system is socialized. Continue reading
“Everyone in Syria really loves President Assad,” I keep telling anyone who will stand still long enough to listen—and yet almost nobody believes me. Even my Facebook friends are fairly tired of me always getting in their faces about the virtues of Bashar Assad. Continue reading
GREENSBORO, North Carolina—Two executives at the company that chartered the U.S. plane that was caught smuggling weapons into Venezuela last week have been tied to an air cargo company that aided the CIA in the rendition of alleged terrorists to “black site” centers for interrogation. The troubling revelation comes as Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has rejected a U.S. “humanitarian aid” convoy over concerns that it could contain weapons meant to arm the country’s U.S.-backed opposition. Continue reading
In an effort to strengthen one of the nation’s most popular programs as the GOP pushes for cuts, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and several congressional Democrats on Wednesday introduced the Social Security Expansion Act to ensure that seniors can retire in dignity and “everyone with a disability can live with the security they need.” Continue reading
Convicted Iran/Contra felon Elliott Abrams was appointed Trump regime point man for regime change in Venezuela—violence, chaos, and other horrific human rights abuses his specialty. Continue reading
American politicians from the two main parties have finally found something to agree upon: more intervention in Venezuela. Continue reading
A newspaper photograph last summer portrayed three guys in suits and ties shoveling dirt. They were Donald Trump, then-Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and the chairman of Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics conglomerate. Continue reading
Life in America has become a gut-wrenching, soul-sucking, misery-drenched, demoralizing existence. Continue reading
The British and French governments are voicing their complaints about the activities of Russian private military companies (PMCs) in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. In an utter display of hypocrisy, London and Paris are not as critical when their own PMCs, also known as “mercenaries,” are caught engaged in all sorts of skullduggery in various countries around the world. Continue reading
It’s time to think about the likely future of poor Afghanistan. It isn’t terribly bright, but we have to, so the sooner, the better. Continue reading
The ever-rightward moving Democrats are using their most reliable constituency to thwart Sanders. Continue reading
Israel is a nation-state. Criticizing its apartheid ruthlessness is unrelated to anti-Semitism. Claims otherwise turn truth on its head. Continue reading
The Trump administration is barreling ahead with plans to drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the largest refuge in the country and an area of global ecological importance. Continue reading
US controlled Haiti endured over 500 years of severe repression, slavery, despotism, colonization, reparations, embargoes, sanctions, deep poverty, starvation, unrepayable debt, overwhelming human suffering, and destructive natural disasters. Continue reading
“America will never be a socialist country,” Donald Trump declared in his State of the Union address. Someone should alert Trump that America is now a hotbed of socialism. But it is socialism for the rich. Everyone else is treated to harsh capitalism. Continue reading
One of the most disturbing aspects of the past two years of Donald Trump foreign policy has been the assumption that decisions made by the United States are binding on the rest of the world. Apart from time of war, no other nation has ever sought to prevent other nations from trading with each other. And the United States has also uniquely sought to penalize other countries for alleged crimes that did not occur in the US and that did not involve American citizens, while also insisting that all nations must comply with whatever penalties are meted out by Washington. Continue reading
On January 28, home invaders murdered 58-year-old Rhogena Nicholas and 59-year-old Dennis Tuttle of Houston, Texas. Nicholas and Tuttle wounded five of the (numerous) armed burglars before being slain. Continue reading
The case that will be documented here is that Venezuela’s people are suffering from a tragic national situation which actually cannot be reversed by anything that’s within the power of Venezuela’s government to do or to block. In order to understand this very unfortunate reality (if one wants to understand it), one must first understand the relevant parts of the broader situation in the world that affects Venezuela. What’s dooming the country isn’t merely a local situation, but instead is global and environmental. It also is economic, pertaining to the role that Venezuela is playing in the global economy. But the economic factor is definitely not of the kind that it’s commonly assumed and alleged to be. It is instead very different. Continue reading
Who gets taxed in the United States—and by how much—can change both drastically and fast. Back in early 1916, for instance, America’s richest faced income tax rates that posed, at worst, no more than a minor inconvenience. On income over $500,000, about $11.5 million in today’s dollars, deep pockets faced a mere 7 percent federal income tax levy. Continue reading
RSS
Venezuela under Washington’s gun
Posted on February 20, 2019 by Paul Craig Roberts
A full court press is took place in Florida Monday (Presidents’ Day) with Republicans, Democrats, expatriates from Cuba and Venezuela and the fascist warmonger ministry of propaganda that constitutes the US media all denouncing Maduro and blaming him for the hardships imposed on Venezuelans by Washington’s sanctions and attacks on Venezuela’s currency . Even “liberal” NPR is reading off the same fascist warmonger script. NPR managed to report on Venezuela without mentioning the sanctions, without mentioning the theft of Venezuela’s gold foolishly entrusted to the US and British central banks, or the orchestrated protests funded by US-financed NGOs that are small in comparison with the crowds that support Maduro that are never mentioned in the US media. In other words, NPR is just another part of the whorehouse brigade. Continue reading →