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Who will protect Georgia’s vote count?
The whole world is watching Georgia’s US Senate runoff elections. Set to finish January 5, the elections will decide who controls the balance of power in the pivotal next US Congress. Continue reading
Happy holidays: Better days are coming
Intrepid Report will resume publishing January 4, 2021
We are halfway through the holiday season. Thanksgiving and Chanukah are behind us and Christmas and the New Year are ahead. The biggest celebration will happen on January 20 when Donald J. Trump will be gone from the White House, either voluntarily or forcibly removed. Continue reading
Why progressives must not give Joe Biden a political honeymoon
Silence or merely faint dissent would enable the third Democratic president in four decades to again sacrifice progressive possibilities on the altar of corporate power.
The third time would not be a charm. Continue reading
No, Joe, don’t roll out the red carpet for torture enablers
We need political leaders and intelligence community officials who acknowledge that torture is illegal under international law, inhumane, and ineffective.
It was painful enough to live through the U.S. invasion of Iraq that caused untold devastation and human misery for no justifiable reason. Continue reading
America’s destructive denialisms
The refusal of tens of millions of Americans to recognize the election results is part of a much larger denialism—of COVID-19, of climate change, and U.S. decline.
The presidential election wasn’t close. Joe Biden won the popular vote by more than 7 million votes, which translates to a margin of 4.5 percent. His Electoral College victory was larger than either of George W. Bush’s. Continue reading
More brave new food: FDA approves an “innovative animal biotechnology product”
This month the FDA approved the first “intentional genomic alteration” (IGA) in pigs. The “animal biotechnology product” is called a “GalSafe” pig. It is designed to eliminate a substance called “alpha-gal sugar” found on the surface of pigs’ cells that could cause people with Alpha-gal (AGS), syndrome to have allergic reactions to red meat. The recently identified condition of AGS usually begins with a tick bite that sensitizes someone to later allergic reactions to beef, pork, and lamb. Continue reading
Tackling the infrastructure and unemployment crises: The “American System” solution
A self-funding national infrastructure bank modeled on the “American System” of Alexander Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt would help solve not one but two of the country’s biggest problems.
Millions of Americans have joined the ranks of the unemployed, and government relief checks and savings are running out; meanwhile, the country still needs trillions of dollars in infrastructure. Putting the unemployed to work on those infrastructure projects seems an obvious solution, especially given that the $600 or $700 stimulus checks Congress is planning on issuing will do little to address the growing crisis. Various plans for solving the infrastructure crisis involving public-private partnerships have been proposed, but they’ll invariably result in private investors reaping the profits while the public bears the costs and liabilities. We have relied for too long on private, often global, capital, while the Chinese run circles around us building infrastructure with credit simply created on the books of their government-owned banks. Continue reading
School privatization zealot Betsy DeVos reportedly urging career education staff to obstruct Biden agenda
One House Democrat said he can't wait for January 20, "when this disgrace is pushed out the door and her bags are dropped at the curb."
After spending much of her nearly four-year tenure in government attacking public schools and pushing privatization schemes, outgoing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is now reportedly encouraging career staffers at her department to obstruct President-elect Joe Biden’s policy agenda. Continue reading
Pompeo’s ugly Christian Dominionist dogma infects global relations
The most tarnished legacy of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will be his introduction to U.S. foreign policy the racist dogma of the Christian Reconstructionist/Dominionist Evangelical Presbyterian Church, which, along with its sister Presbyterian denominations – the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church (ARPC) and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (OPC) – are rife with warnings of a “yellow peril” endangering Western Christian “civilization.” Continue reading
Big Brother in disguise: The rise of a new, technological world order
It had the potential for disaster. Continue reading
Study of 50 years of tax cuts for rich confirms ‘trickle down’ theory is an absolute sham
"Major tax cuts for the rich since the 1980s have increased income inequality, with all the problems that brings, without any offsetting gains in economic performance."
Neoliberal gospel says that cutting taxes on the wealthy will eventually benefit everyone by boosting economic growth and reducing unemployment, but a new analysis of fiscal policies in 18 countries over the last 50 years reveals that progressive critics of “trickle down” theory have been right all along: supply-side economics fuels inequality, and the real beneficiaries of the right-wing approach to taxation are the super-rich. Continue reading
When the people rose: How the Intifada changed the political discourse around Palestine
December 8 came and went as if it was an ordinary day. For Palestinian political groups, it was another anniversary to be commemorated, however hastily. It was on this day, thirty-three years ago, that the First Palestinian Intifada (uprising) broke out, and there was nothing ordinary about this historic event. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: Master Biden speaks
The civil rights groups’ rather basic requests for voting rights protections and the need for federal intervention to address police brutality were minimized and dismissed by the president-elect. Continue reading
Meet Shiva
Shiva is the deity of transcendence, the cosmic force that returns all matter and energy, all manifestation and activity, back to its Source. This return is the final stage of an evolutionary process that begins with creation through the power of Brahma, maintenance through the power of Vishnu, then dissolution through the power of Shiva back into the unified field of pure consciousness, the same unified field that quantum physics has discovered. This ground state is the universe’s interface with God. Manifested forms dissolve in it into waves of a nonmaterial, abstract field, and new forms continually emerge from it to continue the cycle. Continue reading
Trustbusters target Facebook, but anti-monopoly effort shores up capitalism
Coming on the heels of a Justice Department lawsuit against Google filed in October, social networking giant Facebook is now in the crosshairs of the trustbusters at the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of more than 48 state and territorial governments. Anti-monopoly momentum is picking up as regulators, long regarded as asleep at the wheel, are escalating legal action against companies that have virtually eliminated competition in the digital economy. Continue reading
From TMAP to Warp Speed: How Big Pharma algorithms fast-track unapproved drugs and vaccines
Five of the pharmaceutical companies developing COVID-19 vaccines through the USA’s Operation Warp Speed have paid out a total of nearly $6 billion to settle lawsuits charging them with fraud related to “off-label” marketing of atypical antipsychotics and antidepressants that were mandated through the Texas Medication Algorithm Project (TMAP), which evolved into President George W. Bush’s federal “New Freedom Commission on Mental Health.” AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, Janssen Pharmaceutical, and Pfizer, which are currently funded with over $7 billion from Operation Warp Speed, financed the nationwide rollout of fraudulent TMAP algorithms in order to bilk Medicaid programs and other public revenues to pay for drugs like Risperdal, Seroquel, Geodon, Paxil, and Wellbutrin, causing serious side-effects, including death. Continue reading
Does the chicken price fixing scandal surprise anyone?
The modern chicken industry is among the most egregious in the world. Worker abuse, animal abuse, abuse of small farmers, pollution of waterways, contaminated food products and financial wrongdoing regularly appear in the news. Big fines have no effect on an industry in which one company can make as much as $41 billion a year. Yes billion. Continue reading
We are experiencing a zombie apocalypse
Public health workers, election officials, and political office holders — from city commissioners to governors — are all reporting death threats and other threatened acts of violence by a group of people who seem to have become zombified as mindless sycophants of Donald Trump. For those who have been in range of the dead-eye stares of mouth-agape Trump supporters pounding on windows and doors, it is literally out of a scene of a George Romero zombie flick. Yes folks, we have a zombie apocalypse on our hands! Continue reading
Why the failed fascist coup of 1933 could succeed in 2021
Smedley Butler won’t be around next year to save us. Continue reading
The United States of America is a military ‘democracy’
So the United States wants to play hardball with China; and, naturally Russia, by resurfacing the Cold War era doctrine of Containment, along with Nuclear Triad upgrades, a 500 ship US Navy, new Long Range Bombers—and a replacement for the F-35—hypersonic weapons and, of course, more bodies for the all-volunteer US military. That means more dollars have to be funneled to the Pentagon and its suppliers. But there is more: US military initiatives in Artificial Intelligence, Quantum Computing, Autonomous Combat Drones (undersea and air), Space Based Weapons, and Synthetic Biology all add to the truckloads of dollars needed to take on China and Russia, never mind North Korea and Iran. Continue reading
Freedom Rider: Black demands for the Biden administration
The Black Misleaders give the impression of exercising black empowerment when they are in fact only promoting themselves. Continue reading
‘Long live the (dead) peace process’: Abbas prioritizes US ties over Palestinian national unity
No one seemed as excited about the election of Joe Biden being the next president of the United States as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. When all hope seemed lost, where Abbas found himself desperate for political validation and funds, Biden arrived like a conquering knight on a white horse and swept the Palestinian leader away to safety. Continue reading
Right-wing generals calling for a military coup: A long history
History books record that there were a mere handful of cases in which generals plotted the overthrow of a far-right regime to institute moderate or leftist government. In the vast majority of cases, however, generals’ putsches are fascist affairs having dire consequences for the rule of law and human rights. Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and Donald Trump national security adviser, circulated an on-line petition calling for Trump to suspend the U.S. Constitution, declare martial law, and have the Pentagon oversee a “re-vote” of the presidential election, one that would assuredly have Trump “win” over the current President-elect, former Vice President Joe Biden. Continue reading
With rent freezes about to expire, Mnuchin lobbies for more Wall Street bailouts
As millions of Americans stand on the brink of economic annihilation, the money keeps flowing to Wall Street thanks to carefully contrived mechanisms to maintain a dying financial system afloat.
Many prophetic scenes depicted in a series of Mayan codices written in the early days of the Spanish colony, and translated and compiled in El Libro de los Libros del Chilam Balam, describe a world foreign to its original authors. But, one which was barreling down on them and their civilization even as the Mayan high priests recorded their visions for each stop on their cyclical calendar system. Continue reading
Largest US federal workers union blasts Trump-GOP push for pay freeze as ‘demeaning, dishonest, and cruel’
"It's sad that even on his way out, President Trump still can't resist the opportunity to stick it to the government workers."
The largest federal workers union in the United States condemned President Donald Trump on Thursday for throwing his support behind the Senate GOP’s effort to freeze the pay of civilian government employees in 2021, a move that would effectively slash their pay given rising insurance premiums. Continue reading
Debunking the ‘opium of the people’ maxim: Football is about politics and class struggle
Noam Chomsky is right when he says that, in the US, sports creates the necessary “fantasy world” required to shield people from understanding, organizing, and attempting to “influence the real world.” Continue reading
Unacceptable foreign occupations by US forces
Interfering in the internal affairs of other countries is flagrantly illegal under the UN Charter and other international law—that’s automatically US constitutional law. Continue reading
The road to a more just society runs through Congress
Think about all the dreams for a better world that could come to be realized if our elected officials worked for the big majority of Americans instead of for Big Business interests.
We know their names! We’ve given immense power to Five Hundred and Thirty-Five People to do good or bad. One Hundred Senators and Four Hundred and Thirty-Five Representatives. Unfortunately, some 1,500 corporations control most Members of Congress. Think about all the dreams for a better world that could come to be realized if our elected officials worked for the big majority of Americans instead of for Big Business interests. Continue reading
My Cousin Vinny gets out-bonkered by the ultimate Karen and it is… something
In his latest masterful maneuver to overturn the election, Trump attorney Rudy Guiliani, fresh off his peak successes with hair dye and Four Seasons Total Landscaping, went to a Michigan House Oversight Committee hearing Thursday to present what he’d touted as “extraordinary witnesses” with compelling proof of egregious election fraud in the state. Continue reading
Warp speed ahead: COVID-19 vaccines pave the way for a new frontier in surveillance
Like it or not, the COVID-19 pandemic with its veiled threat of forced vaccinations, contact tracing, and genetically encoded vaccines is propelling humanity at warp speed into a whole new frontier—a surveillance matrix—the likes of which we’ve only previously encountered in science fiction. Continue reading
The king’s man: Blinken’s appointment reassures Israel that little will change under Biden
Right-wing Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has nothing to worry about as the man who will directly handle America’s foreign policy in the Middle East is a loyal friend of Israel. Crisis averted. Continue reading
Pardon Julian Assange
Posted on December 17, 2020 by Stephen Lendman
The US Constitution gave presidents “power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment (Article II, Section 2).” Continue reading →