The FBI criminal-for-hire that helped entrap the Newburgh Four in an invented terror plot is the owner of a limo that crashed and killed 20 people—but he’s now back in Pakistan. Continue reading
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In Germany and America, invisible walls
Visiting Berlin for two weeks, and in the evening I go to bed in a small hotel room, tuning the radio to a German-language station. I understand barely a word but it features a strangely compelling, eclectic mix of Bach, Brubeck and Tim Buckley, unfortunately sometimes interrupted by electronic dance music, the dreaded EDM. Continue reading
Intrepid Report will resume publishing Monday, October 15
It’s time for me to take a break and spend time with visiting family. Continue reading
Creating a suspect society: The scary side of the technological police state
It’s a given that Big Brother is always watching us. Continue reading
Best government money can buy
Very few Americans know who Sheldon Adelson is and fewer still appreciate that, as America’s leading political donor, when he speaks the Republican Party listens. By virtue of his largesse, he has been able to direct GOP policy in the Middle East in favor of Israel, which might well be regarded as his true home while the United States exists more as a faithful friend that can be produced at intervals whenever Israel finds itself in need of a bit of cash or political cover. Continue reading
California mandates Net Neutrality, Trump regime sues
Trump’s FCC abolished Net Neutrality, essential digital democracy—letting users access online content without restrictions, limitations, or discrimination, a level playing field for everyone. Continue reading
It’s your post office. Keep it.
Take it from a postal worker: If the U.S. sells its public mail service, consumers will lose big time.
This summer, the White House proposed selling off the United States Postal Service to private corporations. Continue reading
America’s bullies
As a kid I was always a head shorter than other boys, which meant I was bullied—mocked, threatened, sometimes assaulted. Continue reading
End of hegemony: UN must reflect changing world order
There is a rational explanation of why India and Brazil, two countries with vast populations and large and growing economies, are not permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Continue reading
Breaking with Wall Street: L.A. takes it to the voters
“Wall Street owns the country.” That was the opening line of a fiery speech by populist leader Mary Ellen Lease in 1890. Franklin Roosevelt said it again in a letter to Colonel House in 1933, and Sen. Dick Durbin was still saying it in 2009. “The banks—hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created—are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill,” Durbin said in an interview. “And they frankly own the place.” Continue reading
Trump White House imposing U.S. laws on UN diplomats
In what amounts to a clear violation of the United States-United Nations Treaty of 1947, the Trump administration is denying visas to same-sex domestic partners of UN diplomats and staff. The U.S. is also requiring UN personnel in same-sex partnerships to get married or face the cancellation of current U.S. visas for domestic partners. For foreign diplomats being assigned to the UN and hoping to obtain visas for their same-sex partners, the U.S. is requiring them to get married before issuing visas. However, some of those affected by the U.S. visa ban live in countries where same-sex or even opposite sex domestic partnerships are illegal. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: The Kavanaugh farce
Now that it’s too late to prevent a total right-wing takeover of the Supreme Court, the Democrats pretend to be the party of opposition. Continue reading
Enemy of our future
If you look up the meaning of the term “reactionary,” you will probably get something like the following: “A reactionary is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante, the previous political state of society, which they believe possessed characteristics that are . . . absent from the contemporary status quo of a society.” Continue reading
America 2018: Even more gilded than America 1918
Wealth is more concentrated now than it was in John D. Rockefeller's day.
It took 100 years, but America has returned to its unequal past. With a vengeance. Continue reading
NAFTA 2.0 is another bad deal
US free trade deals are profoundly unfair. They facilitate offshoring of jobs to China and other low-wage countries. Continue reading
Washington’s sanctions machine
Perhaps it is Donald Trump’s business background that leads him to believe that if you inflict enough economic pain on someone they will ultimately surrender and agree to do whatever you want. Though that approach might well work in New York real estate, it is not a certain path to success in international relations since countries are not as vulnerable to pressure as are individual investors or developers. Continue reading
Under cover of Kavanaugh, Republicans passed huge tax cuts for the wealthy
While Americans watched the Senate, House Republicans passed an extra $3 trillion tax cut for rich people and corporations.
While Americans were transfixed by Senate hearings over Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual assaults, House Republicans quietly passed another enormous tax handout for the wealthiest Americans. Continue reading
Bolton’s red sky worldview: ICC, international law, and Iran
To be sure, on September 10, John Bolton, Trump’s national security advisor, pushed all the thematic buttons that might be expected of a luncheon speaker invited to address the Federalist Society, long known as the ideological home of rabid advocates of the so-called ‘new sovereignty.’ Continue reading
Sunstroked observations from the Orient
First, the good news. To those who can’t stand my scribbling, it’s clear this pitiful, barely gurgling font is drying up quickly, for lately all I feel like doing is vegetate at a sidewalk café, or wander mindlessly for miles, so that I can be just another anchovy in this demanding, forgetful stream. Continue reading
UK and US now overtly honor Al Qaeda
The United Kingdom is resettling Al Qaeda’s Syrian medical unit, called the “White Helmets,” as “refugees” in the UK. The White Helmets organization is funded by UK’s MI6 and America’s CIA, and is headed by Raed Saleh, who was prohibited from visiting the US because he’s a terrorist. These jihadists won’t just have UK honors (and they already have: a Hollywood Oscar-winning ‘documentary’ full of lies about how ‘heroic’ the White Helmets are), but, presumably, they’ll also obtain UK citizenship. Continue reading
How the American media were destroyed
In my September 24 column, “Truth Is Evaporating Before Our Eyes,” I used the destruction of the CBS news team that broke the Abu Ghraib story and the story of President George W. Bush’s non-performance of his Texas Air Force National Guard duties to demonstrate how accusations alone could destroy a Peabody Award winning, 26-year veteran producer of CBS News, Mary Mapes, and the established news anchor Dan Rather. Continue reading
Will Netanyahu regime wage more war on Gaza?
Haaretz and other Israeli media are screaming war, falsely suggesting Hamas seeks another conflict it clearly wants avoided. Continue reading
Britain is too soft on extremists
Britain’s treatment of dangerous radicals is not only absurd, but also highly dangerous. Bad enough that senior members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood were invited to apply for asylum in the United Kingdom on its Home Office website, the country is now welcoming an influx of White Helmets, a controversial rescue contingent active in Syria operating solely in ‘rebel’ areas. Continue reading
Let’s take our European grand tour now—while we still can
Being friends with America is sometimes a lot of hard work. For instance, Saddam Hussein used to be America’s BFF and just look what happened to him. America also “friended” all those Jihadi freaks and warlords in Afghanistan—and Afghans are still paying the price. Continue reading
Brett Kavanaugh, the All-American, privileged boy
Thursday’s Senate hearing with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh brought back memories. Continue reading
Kavanaugh, Ford, and power
Make no mistake: The drama that took place in hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018, was about power: On one side, the power of men who harass or abuse women and get away with it, the power of privileged white men to entrench their power even more on the Supreme Court, the power of men to take away a woman’s right to choose what she does with her body. Continue reading
The Florence death toll that factory farmers don’t want you to know about
There are roughly 9 million pigs in North Carolina—the same number as people. There are also 819 million chickens and 33.5m turkeys on a multitude of poultry farms and even fish farms. Continue reading
Trump comes up empty at UN on Iran sanctions
Donald Trump’s attempt to persuade members of the United Nations to comply with his “secondary sanctions” against Iran, scheduled for enactment by the United States on November 4, came up empty-handed. To varying degrees, member states, including the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council, rejected Trump’s attempt to apply extra-territorial jurisdiction over other nations’ trade and financial ties with Iran. Continue reading
When Africans cheered John Bolton: Criminals on the ICC
When US National Security Advisor John “The Walrus” Bolton threatened the International Criminal Court with US Sanctions many of us here in Africa cheered, long having given up hope that the ICC would ever be held to even the slightest account, least of all for its crimes against our continent. Continue reading
Empire of lies: Are ‘we the people’ useful idiots in the digital age?
“Who needs direct repression,” asked philosopher Slavoj Zizek, “when one can convince the chicken to walk freely into the slaughterhouse?” Continue reading
Bolton and Pompeo threaten Iran
John Bolton and Mike Pompeo are hardcore neocon extremists. A ruthlessly dangerous duo, they’re hostile to world peace, democratic values, rule of law principles, and independent nations Washington doesn’t control. Continue reading
Americans have no say over how they’re governed
Posted on October 15, 2018 by Stephen Lendman
Democracy in America is pure fantasy, the way it’s been from inception. Self-serving privileged interests run things. It’s never been any other way. Continue reading →