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
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Bezos, McConnell, and COVID capitalism
As a former secretary of labor, I often receive mail from workers with job complaints, who apparently believe I still have some authority. But the email I received a few days ago from a worker at Amazon’s Whole Foods delivery warehouse in Industry City, Brooklyn, New York, was particularly distressing. Continue reading
Welfare for the wealthier? What else is new?
In Joe Biden’s “Emergency Action Plan to Save the Economy,” the president-elect proposes to “[f]orgive a minimum of $10,000 per person of federal student loans.” Continue reading
My Christmas List
The special gifts I’ve arranged for special people.
Ho ho ho, wait till you hear about the gifts I gave to some of America’s power elites for Christmas. Continue reading
Intrepid Report couldn’t publish yesterday because our modem went down
You know the old saw that says if anything can go wrong, it will. There’s nothing like seeing “no Internet connection” the first thing in the morning when you boot up the computer. Continue reading
Will Biden’s America stop creating terrorists?
Joe Biden will take command of the White House at a time when the American public is more concerned about battling coronavirus than fighting overseas wars. But America’s wars rage on regardless, and the militarized counterterrorism policy Biden has supported in the past—based on airstrikes, special operations and the use of proxy forces—is precisely what keeps these conflicts raging. Continue reading
Bernie Sanders and our winter of progressive discontent
While Sanders is ill-positioned and uninclined to push back very hard against the evident trajectory of Biden's decisions, many progressives are starting to throw down gauntlets against the corporate and militaristic aspects of the incoming presidency.
Bernie Sanders is not in a good political position right now. Yes, he continues to speak vital truths to—and about—power. His ability to reach a national audience with progressive wisdom and specific proposals is unmatched. And, during the last several decades, no one has done more to move the nation’s discourse leftward. But now, Sanders is in a political box. Continue reading
Joe Biden’s biggest challenge
“Life is going to return to normal,” Joe Biden promised in a recent address to the nation. He was talking about life after COVID, but he might as well have been making a promise about life after Trump. 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
2020: I’m so sick of superlatives
“2020: The Worst Year Ever,” reads the cover of Time magazine’s December 14 issue. 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
Yes, the election was rigged. No, not like that.
Many (though not nearly all) of my friends on the Republican side of the bipartisan aisle are utterly convinced that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” to produce a fake victory for Joe Biden — that Donald Trump actually won, and had his victory stolen via a vast conspiracy to manufacture false votes and fraudulently switch real ones. 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
In ‘huge victory for polar bears and our climate,’ court rejects Trump approval of offshore drilling project in Arctic
While welcoming the win, activists vowed to continue fighting against destructive oil and gas extraction in the region.
Climate action advocates and wildlife defenders celebrated Monday after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit rejected the Trump administration’s approval of Liberty, a proposed offshore oil-drilling project in federal Arctic waters that opponents warned would endanger local communities, animals, and the environment. Continue reading
Tump’s COVID policy a crime against the people
For the first time, a non-partisan report has cataloged, all in one place, the federal government’s weak, disjointed, leaderless defense against the coronavirus. Continue reading
Biden says he’ll take on inequality. Good! You need to hold him to it
“It’s time we address the structural inequalities in our economy that the pandemic has laid bare,” President-elect Joe Biden said last week, as he introduced his economic team. Continue reading
This holiday season, choose a new food future
What better symbol of agri-industry’s vision of “food” than the ubiquitous Butterball turkey so many ate for Thanksgiving?
America certainly has an abundance of food, even though many Americans do not. We face a momentous choice of whether to pursue a food future rooted in the ethic of sustainable agri-culture — or one based on the exploitative ethic of agri-industry. Continue reading
Erik Prince: Back in action for the Pentagon
Erik Prince, the founder of the discredited former mercenary firm Blackwater USA and brother of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, has apparently landed a major secret Pentagon contract for mercenary services in Africa. The announcement of the contract was practically simultaneous with Donald Trump’s order to withdraw some 7,000 U.S. military personnel from Somalia. The moves by Trump and the Pentagon, which has seen several Trump loyalists embedded in key positions after Trump’s firing of Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and other Pentagon officials on November 9, is yet another monetization of government services by Trump and his grifter supporters prior to Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20. Continue reading
Trump launches ‘despicable’ last-minute attack on Social Security with rule aiming to restrict disability benefits
"Joe Biden needs to undo these cruel regulations—and clean house at SSA—on day one."
Just weeks away from relinquishing power to incoming President-elect Joe Biden, the Trump administration is quietly launching a last-minute assault on Social Security by rushing ahead with a rule that, if implemented, could deny critical benefits to hundreds of thousands of people with disabilities. 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
Make the bad man stop: An end to the bullying Trump years can’t come soon enough
Two movie scenes sum up four years of ignorance and devastation.
During these last few weeks since the election, watching the further decline of President Donald Trump as he descends even more into madness, denial, destructiveness and self-proclaimed victimhood, two magical movie moments keep popping into my head. Continue reading
Home of Florida virus truth teller raided by law enforcement
The home of Rebekah Jones, a Florida state official who was fired for refusing to manipulate coronavirus data to justify premature re-opening of the economy, was raided Monday by the Florida Department of Law enforcement. Continue reading
Why Jeh Johnson would be a better defense secretary than Michèle Flournoy
President-elect Biden’s choice for secretary of defense has turned out to be one of the most controversial and difficult of his cabinet appointments. The early front-runner, Michèle Flournoy, was originally seen as a shoo-in and was touted as a great breakthrough for women, but her hawkish views have provoked serious concerns. Biden now appears to be also considering two Black Americans promoted by the Congressional Black Caucus: Jeh Johnson and retired General Lloyd Austin. 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
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 →