Political scientists would argue that the rigors of running for political office coupled with the glaring microscope of press attention would normally weed out any candidate suffering from mental illness. Whether political leaders gain office democratically or from unconstitutional means, the degree of mental illness among the top leadership of nations around the world in recent history has been remarkably high. Continue reading
With 1.5 million residents now under orders to evacuate their homes in preparation for Hurricane Florence’s landfall in Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, the region faces the possibility of catastrophe should the storm damage one or more of the nuclear power plants which lie in its potential path. Continue reading
Trump and his appointees are on a binge of deregulation that masks another kind of trickle-down economics, where the gains go to the top and the rest of us bear the risks and losses. Continue reading
This summer featured at least a dozen stories of black Americans across the country having the police called on them for little or no reason at all. Continue reading
When the nation’s founders selected what is now the District of Columbia to serve as the capital of the United States, engineers and architects were faced with the task of building a capital city on what was essentially a swamp. Donald Trump and his cronies and grifters have done their damnedest to turn Washington back into a swamp, one inhabited by slimy and scaly denizens eager to cash in on government access and control. Continue reading
While progressives pointed out that it would have been worthy of more applause if the offer of support had come back when he had the actual power to do something about it, Medicare for All proponents applauded the huge paradigm shift denoted by the newest high-profile endorsement of the popular proposal: former President Barack Obama. Continue reading
Who in US presidential history even comes close to Trump? While corporations run America for all intents and purposes, it has been unusual for a hardcore businessman to take the helm. Founders like Washington and Jefferson were plantation owners. Most were lawyers, military (9 generals), political hacks (including lots of governors, senators and VPs), even a university president (Wilson, Yale). But businessman? Who bragged of making and losing and making a fortune? Continue reading
Trump is ramping up his lies through his three amplifiers: Fox News, his rallies, and his Twitter account. Continue reading
A foreign country seeps into one’s consciousness via large events and personalities, mostly, as in war, earthquake, tsunami, coup d’état, unprovoked bombing, Gaddafi and Assad, etc., but it’s the lesser turbulences that will begin to yield more revealing clues about any society. Continue reading
Every person who believes in a free press should pay attention to Facebook’s war with one of their own groups called “LUV News.” Continue reading
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced a new home grown mad cow case recently in a cow raised for beef in Florida. The 6-year-old cow tested positive for atypical H-type BSE but, “never entered slaughter channels, and at no time presented a risk to the food supply, or to human health,” says USDA. Continue reading
According to Friday’s payroll jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy created 200,000 new jobs in August. These jobs, assuming that they exist, are reported to be in low paid domestic service jobs such as transporting and selling goods, ambulatory health care services, and waiting tables and mixing drinks. There are none in manufacturing or in the “high tech clean fingernail” jobs that neoliberal economists promised the American work force in exchange for letting the industrial and manufacturing jobs go to Asia. Continue reading
As Washington was still reeling from the contents of Bob Woodward’s new exposé of the inner workings of the Trump administration, a current senior-level official of that administration penned an anonymous op-ed column in The New York Times revealing an unprecedented “resistance” movement within the White House. The movement has, according to the anonymous source, managed to circumvent several of Donald Trump’s anti-constitutional decisions and desires. The opinion piece, titled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” was only published by the “paper-of-record” under an anonymous by-line because the author is a high-ranking official of the Trump White House. Continue reading
If compassion were contagious, they’d mandate a vaccine to prevent transmission. Continue reading
It used to be that if you talked back to a teacher, or played a prank on a classmate, or just failed to do your homework, you might find yourself in detention or doing an extra writing assignment after school. Continue reading
Israel wants to change the rules of the game entirely. With unconditional support from the Trump administration, Tel Aviv sees a golden opportunity to redefine what has, for decades, constituted the legal and political foundation for the so-called ‘Palestinian-Israeli conflict.’ Continue reading
While WMR has been a frequent critic of the often pusillanimous Bob Woodward of Watergate infamy, his new book, “Fear: Trump in the White House,” does paint a picture of the Trump White House that comes as no surprise to those who have tracked Mr. Trump’s business methods and political chicanery. Woodward, who enjoyed special access to previous administrations, always delivering puff piece descriptions of them in his past “chronicles” of politics on the Potomac, does land several body blows on Trump. Continue reading
The reason India’s Dalits hate Gandhi is that, to the Dalits, he helped preserve the caste system, or Varna, in post-independence India. Continue reading
It’s practically unanimous: Nine out of 10 establishment economists agree that America’s solid job growth and the low unemployment rate truly make ours “The Land of Opportunity.” Continue reading
Before Brett Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s nominee for the U. S. Supreme Court, was a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, White House staff secretary for George W. Bush, and a member of the Bush-Cheney 2000 legal team in the 2000 Florida presidential vote recount, he was a member of Independent Counsel Ken Starr’s investigation team looking into the July 1993 suicide of Bill Clinton’s deputy White House counsel, Vince Foster. Kavanaugh also helped draft the Starr Report, which recommended the impeachment of Clinton. Continue reading
The infamous Trumputin consigliere Paul Manafort worked with the GOP operatives who stole Ohio’s 2004 presidential election at the same time they teamed up to install the Kremlin’s chosen mafia don in Ukraine. Continue reading
John McCain personified the worst of United States, and his death ceremony brought out the most worthless elements of Black America. Continue reading
Back in 2004, I was involved in giving John McCain an award for his stand against media consolidation. There were several times after that when something outrageous he said or voted for or against made me regret I’d ever been involved! Continue reading
The past is not dead; it is people who are sleeping. The current night and daymares that we are having arise out of murders lodged deep in our past that have continued into the present. No amount of feigned amnesia will erase the bloody truth of American history, the cheap grace we bestow upon ourselves. We have, as Harold Pinter said in his Nobel address, been feeding on “a vast tapestry of lies” that surrounds us, lies uttered by nihilistic leaders and their media mouthpieces for a very long time. We have, or should have, bad consciences for not acknowledging being active or silent accomplices in the suppression of truth and the vicious murdering of millions at home and abroad. Continue reading
It’s hard to believe that I have been publishing online for 20 years, from September 5, 1998, as Online Journal and, in early February 2011, rebranded as Intrepid Report. Continue reading
Three months after President Donald Trump proposed penalizing immigrants for using public assistance programs, families appear to have received his message loud and clear—likely risking the health of young immigrant children across the country. Continue reading
I and others have warned that enactment of the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act now before Congress would threaten free speech and free inquiry on America’s college campuses and beyond. Continue reading
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is right to reject American mediation. The United States has forfeited its role as a broker, let alone an honest broker in this 70-year-long conflict. President Trump’s Middle East “deal of the century” has turned out to be a mirage, an empty promise devoid of substance. Instead, he is going full steam ahead to bring the Palestinian people to their knees in the hope that they will be forced to accept any scraps off Israel’s table. Continue reading
I am getting that Iraq déjà vu feeling again, only this time with respect to Iran. Continue reading
In August 1921, sheriff’s deputies in West Virginia—later joined by federal troops—massacred striking mineworkers using machine guns and aerial bombardment, in what’s now known as the Battle of Blair Mountain. Continue reading
The Russian government and President Putin are coming under pressure not from US sanctions, which are very good for Russia as they force Russia into independence, but from Russian patriots who are tiring of Putin’s non-confrontational responses to Washington’s never-ending insults and military provocations. Russian patriots don’t want war, but they do want their country’s honor defended, and they believe Putin is failing in this job. Some of them are saying that Putin himself is a West-worshipping Atlanticist Integrationist. Continue reading
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How the U.S. does propaganda
Posted on September 12, 2018 by Eric Zuesse
A typical example was on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Saturday,” on September 8, when the program-host Scott Simon interviewed the Obama administration’s adviser on the Middle East, Robert Malley, in a segment titled “What’s Next In The Syrian War: Idlib”. Continue reading →