The recent coup d’état in Bolivia that overthrew President Evo Morales was not merely a standard right-wing putsch aided and abetted by the US Central Intelligence Agency but also placed into power politicians affiliated with a rising fundamentalist Protestant movement in Latin America that can be termed “Christo-fascist.” Many of the far-right and out-of-the-mainstream Protestant sects that have gained power in Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, and, now, Bolivia have decried traditional Roman Catholicism in Latin America as heretical to their religious ideology and even pro-Communist. As for mainstream Protestant religions, the fundamentalist sects view them as hopelessly liberal, as well as heretical. Continue reading →
Donald Trump, who has a schoolboy’s view of Native Americans as having been “savages” who besieged wagon trains of “peaceful” European settlers, has chalked up on his record of seedy deeds the military overthrow of Bolivia’s first Native American president, Evo Morales, an ethnic Aymara. Trump has been eyeing Morales, the leader of Bolivia’s Movement toward Socialism (MAS) party, for some form of retribution ever since Morales scolded Trump in person during a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on September 26, 2018. Continue reading →
Frankfort, the capital of Kentucky, which most people get wrong in trivia contests, may soon be in the headlines around the world. What Republican state Senate President Robert Stivers said about the close gubernatorial election that saw Democratic Attorney General Andrew Beshear edge out a close victory over Republican incumbent Matt Bevin, a Trump loyalist, should normally shock the nation. But in the era of Trump, taking non-democratic actions to maintain political power is the new reality. Continue reading →
A year ago, the corporatists and anti-socialist militarists in the Donald Trump administration appeared ecstatic over the electoral successes of neo-fascism in Latin America. Jair Bolsonaro, a self-proclaimed admirer of Adolf Hitler and who is nicknamed the “Trump of the Tropics,” sat in the presidential palace in Brazil; billionaire right-winger Sebastian Pinera had, once again, become president of Chile; and Lenin Moreno, the one-time leftist and progressive ally of former Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, had invited the US military back into his country and made common cause with the Lima Group, an anti-Nicolas Maduro bloc subservient to Washington. Continue reading →
Historically a cipher and pass-through for the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been transformed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, at the urging of Donald Trump, into an aggressive business intelligence operation designed to financially benefit Trump’s top donors in private industry. USAID is a component of the U.S. State Department and is officially tasked with managing U.S. foreign assistance programs, mostly in developing countries. Continue reading →
The revelations that businessmen tied to Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash and other foreign interests funneled campaign cash into the coffers of several Republican Party politicians, including the president, senators, U.S. representatives, and governors is like a case of déjà vu. In 1940, the United States first began to take seriously foreign cash donations to U.S. political campaigns in the months preceding the U.S. entry into World War II. Continue reading →
One of the tropes Israel and its international phalanx of lobbyists has used since the state’s inception in 1948 is that “Poor Little Israel” requires Western money and diplomatic support because the small country is surrounded by hostile Arab countries. Neither of these contentions have ever been true. Continue reading →
By Donald Trump’s own admission and through documents provided by an Intelligence Community whistleblower and former U.S. special envoy for Ukraine Paul Volker it is known that the Trump administration pressured at least four countries to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. The countries identified as being involved in the Trump operation thus far are Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Australia, and China. The attack on the Democratic Party’s leading presidential candidate in 2020 is far worse than that carried out by Richard Nixon henchmen G. Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, Donald Segretti, and Charles Colson in the Watergate scandal and events surrounding it. Continue reading →
In July 2018, White House leaks indicated that Donald Trump gave his personal mobile phone number to various foreign leaders. Although Trump is known to have phoned some foreign leaders over his official White House landline, he is also known to call some leaders using his mobile phones on a whim and while some of his calls’ recipients, in Asia, for example, are asleep. Trump is also known to use multiple cell phones to call foreign leaders. Criminals, including narco-lords and drug smugglers, often use multiple “burner” phones in the hope they can evade detection and eavesdropping by law enforcement. Continue reading →
The disclosure by the British Parliament of the “Most Sensitive” Operation YELLOWHAMMER document describes a United Kingdom ripe for the machinations of Britain’s proto fascists, who make up a large part of the Tory government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. YELLOWHAMMER’s prediction of economic and social chaos in the United Kingdom resulting from a hard-British exit (BREXIT) from the European Union will have dire consequences for the rule of law and democracy throughout the United Kingdom. Continue reading →
Shortly before proroguing Parliament, British Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson was ordered to release a classified report titled Operation Yellowhammer, a government-wide survey of how a no-deal British exit from the European Union (Brexit) would affect citizens of the United Kingdom and its territories, including three crown dependencies. The document that was officially released by the British government contains a redacted paragraph (number 15). However, WMR was able to obtain the paragraph and included it in our unredacted copy of the Yellowhammer document. Continue reading →
The indictment of wealthy investor Jeffrey Epstein by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) on charges of international sex trafficking and a wider conspiracy to commit such activity has sent shock waves throughout the political, business, and social strata of the United States and other countries. Continue reading →
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and the person Trump appointed to broker a Middle East peace agreement recently called Palestinians “hysterical and stupid.” That is particularly galling language coming from a notorious New Jersey, New York, and Maryland slumlord and the son of a federally convicted criminal. Kushner’s father and real estate mogul, Charles Kushner, spent fourteen months in prison after being convicted of tax fraud and witness tampering, among other crimes. Jared Kushner believes his father was wrongly convicted and imprisoned. But the wunderkind son-in-law of Trump has no problem in maintaining the status quo in the Middle East, one that has led to the large-scale incarceration of the people of the Gaza Strip in virtual desert ghetto. Continue reading →
Billionaire Wall Street hedge fund financier Jeffrey Epstein was arrested by federal authorities on July 6 at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. Epstein was returning on his private jet from a trip to Paris. After his arrest, Epstein was taken to the Metropolitan Corrections Center in Manhattan while awaiting arraignment in federal court at Foley Square on July 8. Epstein’s old friend, Donald Trump, was spending the weekend at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey gold club, 44 miles from the Teterboro airport where Epstein was arrested. Continue reading →
During an ego-fellating interview with Donald Trump in Japan, Fox News opinion show host and unofficial Trump national security adviser Tucker Carlson and Trump discussed America’s homeless population and agreed that it should be called “filth.” Trump and Carlson singled out San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York as examples where homeless people represent such urban “filth. Trump, moreover, lied about the U.S. homeless problem existing for merely the past two years. Trump also concocted a story about homeless people causing police officers walking the beat to become sick because of the “filth.” Trump also iterated to Carlson that the administration “may intercede” to clean the “filth” from cities like Washington, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Continue reading →
The ecologically-sensitive Galapagos Islands, home to many species not found anywhere else in the world and made famous by scientist Charles Darwin in his seminal work on evolution, “On the Origin of Species,” will soon be the location of yet another US military base. Under Donald Trump, the Pentagon is expanding its network of overseas bases to include some of the world’s most pristine regions. Based on prior actions, a US military presence leaves a permanent footprint of hazardous materials, plain garbage, and petroleum and its by-products in and around air and naval bases. Continue reading →
One of the obvious signs of fascism is the co-option by a despot of the legal system, which includes law enforcement and the judiciary. The Weimar Republic of Germany enjoyed a robust and relatively fair legal system prior to the rise of the Nazis. After Adolf Hitler came to power, the German legal system was steadily replaced by one based on the Führerprinzip, which deemed that Hitler was above the law. German citizens who were designated by the Nazis as being outside the German community (Volksgemeinschaft) were not afforded any legal rights under the Third Reich. Continue reading →
Trump designates November as a de facto “white peoples’ month”
Posted on November 12, 2019 by Wayne Madsen
Not content with the annual November observance of National Native American Heritage Month, which has been promulgated by every president since George H. W. Bush in 1990, Donald Trump issued a proclamation, published in the Federal Register, also naming November as “National American History and Founders Month.” The White House observance of November to honor the white European settlers who initiated the genocide of the Native American peoples in North America fits into Trump’s championship of white nationalist causes and further erodes his relationship with America’s tribal nations and communities. Continue reading →