Intrepid Report needs your support
Bev Conover

Imagine, George Zimmerman, the accused murderer of Trayvon Martin, has thus
far raised nearly $250,000 in donations for his legal defense and living
expenses while Intrepid Report struggles to raise $25,000 a year. What is
wrong with that picture?
http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5943

Greek election: The limitations of today's 'democracy' and the feeding of
fascism
Ritt Goldstein

The storms of so-called 'economic reform and austerity' have swept our global
landscape, the far-right growing to new heights with the toxic precipitation
these storms brought, Fascism's supposedly long dead seeds thriving in the
nourishment of a malignant climate. But what of society's genuine populists,
our Left, our champions of social justice and all that's right.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5889>

Does the West have a future?
Paul Craig Roberts

Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral
conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5887>

Arrested development: The criminalization of America's schoolchildren
John W. Whitehead

For those hoping to better understand how and why we arrived at this dismal
point in our nation's history, where individual freedoms, privacy and human
dignity have been sacrificed to the gods of security, expediency and
corpocracy, look no farther than America's public schools.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5885>

Protect the sanctity of marriage, ban divorce!
Missy Comley Beattie

The title of the article is “Backers of North Carolina's Gay Marriage Ban:
State No Longer Vulnerable.” And this in the body: “North Carolina voters
approved a constitutional amendment Tuesday night banning gay marriage, but
the measure also goes one step further by not allowing civil unions.”
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5882>

Mission impossible: Finding a mini-van made in America by union workers
Walter Brasch

Last year, not one of the 491,687 new minivans sold in the United States was
made in America by unionized workers.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5880>

Indentured servitude for seniors: Social Security garnished for student debts
Ellen Brown

“The Social Security program . . . represents our commitment as a society to
the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or
old age could leave them or their families destitute.”-President Jimmy
Carter, December 20, 1977.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5901>

Press watchdog fails “Journalism for Beginners” in world press freedom report
Thomas C. Mountain

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) recently issued their annual
report on the status of freedom of the press in the world
<http://cpj.org/reports/2012/05/10-most-censored-countries.php> in which the
lead article charges, amongst other things, that there are no independent
journalists allowed in the East African country of Eritrea.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5899>

Housing subsidies: Capitalism's smoke and mirrors
Ben Tanosborn

I have always looked at government subsidies with suspicion . . . trying to
identify whether they are designed to assist (those in need) or to render
support (for a cause). And looking at housing subsidies has been no different.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5897>

Spiritual but not religious
Carla Binion

What do people mean when they say, “I'm spiritual but not religious?” The
Dalai Lama said, “My only religion is kindness.” John Lennon wanted to
imagine “no religion” as part of creating a loving world, and the
mystic-leaning Van Morrison sang of “no guru, no method, no teacher”-an idea
J. Krishnamurti promoted.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5895>

Life as a widow
Missy Comley Beattie

I bought a bike.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5893>

Al-Qaeda introduces new improved underwear bomb from Yemen
Jerry Mazza

The latest bomb plot and underwear bomber were foiled by the ever-vigilant
CIA in a sting in Yemen within the last few weeks. Fortunately, no targets or
plane tickets had been purchased by the time the plot was foiled.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5923>

The case of the missing terrorists
Paul Craig Roberts

If there were any real terrorists, Jose Rodriguez would be dead.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5919>

Why were risky, ineffectual bone drugs approved, some are asking
Martha Rosenberg

Like Vioxx, Merck's expensive “super aspirin” that caused thousands of
cardiovascular events before being recalled, Merck's Fosamax, the first
bisphosphonate bone drug, flew out of the FDA with only a six-month review.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5912>

Idiocy as WMD
Linh Dinh

Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote, “Dictatorships foster oppression,
dictatorships foster servitude, dictatorships foster cruelty; more abominable
is the fact that they foster idiocy.”
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5909>

Nuclear Israel: Image of apocalyptic horror
Dr. Ismail Salami

Imagine a world plunged in darkness and extreme cold with the sunlight
screened by a thick dust cloud. Imagine a world flung back into chaos. This
is an image conceived of a world abandoned to dereliction by doomsday weapons.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5906>

Iron Jawed Angels: America's distorted history
Sara S. DeHart

I am sure that China has multiple strengths but as with many, if not most
commercial American journalists, American virtues are highlighted to provide
the illusion that this nation actually provides that beacon on the hill-that
lights the way for others to follow.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5936>

The card-carrying flag-waving uniform-wearing borderless primitive but
sophisticated yet abstract terrorists called Al Qaeda
Sibel Edmonds

We have been reading about so many Al Qaeda members killed or captured here
and there every single day since the attacks on September 11, 2001. I mean
EVERY SINGLE DAY. Please be my guest and check out the headlines from today,
yesterday, the day before yesterday, last week . . . Go ahead and check the
headlines for every single day for the last ten years. You see what I mean?
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5933>

Freedom Rider: Protesting NATO
Margaret Kimberley

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is a cold war relic with no positive
use in the 21st century. Its original intent, or so it was claimed, was to
protect Western nations from a supposedly threatening Soviet bloc. The Soviet
Union collapsed, and now some of the old Soviet bloc states are NATO members
themselves. Why does this organization still exist?
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5931>

Sitting on a powder keg
Linda S. Heard

I woke up to an especially beautiful Alexandria morning yesterday, a clear
blue sky punctuated with meandering fluffy clouds. Savoring the aroma of
percolating coffee, I watered the multi-hued flowering plants on my terrace
before pausing to feel the sun's rays bathing my face.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5929>

Collective, community effort trumps polluters, for now
Grassroots movements stop biomass incinerators in two counties, one still at
risk
Linda Greene

Dr. William Sammons, an expert on the health and environmental effects of
biomass combustion, has traveled to southern Indiana from the East Coast
numerous times to testify at public hearings against burning biomass for
energy.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5927>

You call it trading. I call it stealing.
Jerry Mazza

Dear Mr. CEO of JPMorgan Chase, Mr. Jamie Dimon! There you are sitting with
egg on your face and $2 billion plus going deep into the red on bad bets.
You, the guy who fought for less and not more regulation is now in the middle
of a major mess. You, the guy who hates the Volker rule named after ex-Fed
Chief, Paul Volker, and says it went too far and that “if you want to be
trading, you have to have a lawyer and a psychiatrist sitting next to you
determining what 'was your intent' every time you did something.” That was
some expensive exaggeration, wouldn't you say?
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5955>

U.S. and Canada implementing Beyond the Border perimeter security initiatives
Dana Gabriel

Through the Beyond the Border agreement released in December 2011, the U.S.
and Canada are implementing initiatives that are working towards establishing
a North American security perimeter. This includes expanding trusted traveler
programs, as well as enhancing integrated law enforcement and information
sharing cooperation which has raised many privacy concerns that have yet to
be properly addressed.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5953>

Voter ID laws: Silencing the American people
John W. Whitehead

Despite the propaganda being advanced by the government, the purpose of voter
ID laws is not to eliminate voter fraud and protect the integrity of
elections. Rather, their aim is to silence and suppress as many American
voters as possible and increase the already widening chasm between the
electorate and our government representatives. In fact, voter ID laws are the
icing on the cake when it comes to public officials shutting Americans out of
the decision-making process, silencing dissent, and making sure that those in
power stay in power and have the last word on government policy. In other
words, voter ID laws are the final step in securing the American corporate
oligarchy, the unchallenged rule by the privileged and few.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5951>

The Palestinian Nakba: The resolve of memory
Ramzy Baroud

Many Palestinians remember and reference al-Nakba, also known as the
Catastrophe, on May 15 every year. The event marks the expulsion of nearly a
million Palestinians, while their villages were destroyed. The destruction of
Palestine in 1947-48 ushered in the birth of Israel. Older generations relay
the harsh and oppressive memory of their collective experience to younger
Palestinians, many of whom live their own Nakbas today.
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5949>

'We do not want to die in the rubble of neoliberalism!'
Pierre Larrouturou

“Systems often hold longer than we think, but they end up by collapsing much
faster than we imagine.” In those few words, the former chief economist of
the IMF International, Kenneth Rogoff , sums up the situation of the global
economy. As the Governor of the Bank of England, he asserts that “the next
crisis may be worse than 1930” . . .
<http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/5945>

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