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Freedom Rider: Media silent as Trump declares wars
Donald Trump’s attacks on Venezuela, Syria and Iran are criminal, but Joe Biden vows to be even worse. Continue reading
Ethiopia’s stubborn stance is perplexing
Egypt has shown patience and flexibility, now it’s beyond time for Ahmad to do the same
In spite of nine years of negotiations since Ethiopia took advantage of the chaotic Arab Spring to begin construction of the $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile the concerned parties—Cairo, Khartoum and Addis Ababa—are still far from reaching an agreement on various technical and legal issues. Time is now of the essence to agree a solution to avoid possible all out military conflict. Continue reading
Key U.S. ally indicted for organ trade murder scheme
When President Clinton dropped 23,000 bombs on what was left of Yugoslavia in 1999 and NATO invaded and occupied the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, U.S. officials presented the war to the American public as a “humanitarian intervention” to protect Kosovo’s majority ethnic Albanian population from genocide at the hands of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. That narrative has been unraveling piece by piece ever since. Continue reading
Trump’s record on foreign policy: Lost wars, new conflicts and broken promises
On June 13, President Donald Trump told the graduating class at West Point, “We are ending the era of endless wars.” That is what Trump has promised since 2016, but the “endless” wars have not ended. Trump has dropped more bombs and missiles than George W. Bush or Barack Obama did in their first terms, and there are still roughly as many US bases and troops overseas as when he was elected. Continue reading
The ADL’s ‘Task Force on Middle East Minorities’: A con job?
Hardly anyone—Jewish or otherwise—believes that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) genuinely cares about the welfare of Christian, Muslim, and other non-Jewish minorities in the Middle East. Continue reading
The ‘Palestinian Chair’: Exposing Israel’s direct role in US violence
The banning of deadly police practices by many American states and cities following the murder of an African American man, George Floyd, at the hands of Minneapolis police officers is, once more, shedding light on US-Israeli collaboration in the fields of security and crowd-control. Continue reading
Why the U.S. is a major human rights violator
The U.S. State Department annually publishes an extremely biased report on human rights around the world. Conveniently, the report omits one of the most systemic violators of human rights on the planet. Under Donald Trump, the United States has graduated from systemic human rights violator to human rights pariah, as witnessed by recent murders and assaults by police of innocent people on the streets of America. Although the United States has historically been more than willing to criticize the human rights policies of other countries, including in the venue of the United Nations, it has bristled at attempts to have brought forth in the international body its own human rights outrages. Continue reading
Quotable quotes from the Bolton book
John Bolton’s long-awaited book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” which Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr have attempted to suppress under the color of national security law, contains some very noteworthy quotes from others in their conversations with Bolton before and during the time he was Trump’s National Security Adviser. One thing is clear about the book. Bolton uses his “kiss and tell” offering to justify a boatload of discredited neoconservative policies directed against anti-imperialist nations, from Venezuela and Cuba to Iran, China, and North Korea. Bolton’s book is nothing more than a Heritage Foundation foreign policy white paper sprinkled with juicy tidbits exposing Trump and the coterie of back-biting criminals and jesters who surround him. Bolton spent a lot of ink on his favorite topics, including neocon regime change as seen in his photo with a veteran of the infamous Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Continue reading
Libya plagued by malevolent outside parties
Cairo Declaration may not go down well with Turkish designs on Tripoli
Since Western powers leapt into the fray to remove the long-standing Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, the oil-rich country, once the wealthiest in Africa, has been embroiled in conflicts. Continue reading
Who are the secret puppet masters behind Trump’s war on Iran?
On May 6, President Trump vetoed a war powers bill specifying that he must ask Congress for authorization to use military force against Iran. Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign of deadly sanctions and threats of war against Iran has seen no let-up, even as the U.S., Iran and the whole world desperately need to set aside our conflicts to face down the common danger of the Covid-19 pandemic. Continue reading
First of 5 Iranian tankers enters Venezuelan waters
First some facts establishment media suppress. Continue reading
Madam Jane predicts: COVID will show Americans what it’s like to live in the Middle East
“COVID-19 is America’s karmic payback for callously murdering all those babies in Iraq and Syria,” stated Madam Jane this morning. “Karma’s a bitch.” Continue reading
The face of post-COVID geopolitics
The post-COVID international geopolitical structure may resemble that which followed the most lethal pandemic that affected the world—the highly contagious Black Death of the 14th century. The bubonic plague killed between 75 and 200 million people in Asia, Europe, and North Africa. It is believed the bubonic/pneumonic plague was carried by black rat flea parasites that travelled to Europe and the Middle East first via the Silk Road from China and then on Genoese merchant ships sailing from Crimea. The fleas spread from their rodent hosts to humans. An eerie connection to COVID-19 is that among the first victims of the Black Death were 80 percent of the population of Hubei province, including the town of Wuchang, present-day Wuhan. Continue reading
The worst is yet to come: Contact tracing, immunity cards and mass testing
No one is safe. Continue reading
Arabs, UN must move to swiftly protect the status of Palestinian refugees
‘Heinous racism,’ is how the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor described a recent decision by Lebanese authorities to bar Palestinian refugee expats from returning to Lebanon. Continue reading
100 years of shame: Annexation of Palestine began in San Remo
One hundred years ago, representatives from a few powerful countries convened at San Remo, a sleepy town on the Italian Riviera. Together, they sealed the fate of the massive territories confiscated from the Ottoman Empire following its defeat in World War I. Continue reading
The temple of self-gratification
Author David Foster Wallace once said that America is, “One enormous engine and temple of self-gratification and self-advancement.” The spectacle of American consumerism comes galloping to mind. But the pageant of gluttony with which we sate ourselves on a weekly basis is a pale reflection, at least in its intensity, of American foreign policy. Continue reading
Trump must choose between a global ceasefire and America’s long-lost wars
As President Trump has complained, the U.S. does not win wars anymore. In fact, since 1945, the only 4 wars it has won were over the small neocolonial outposts of Grenada, Panama, Kuwait and Kosovo. Americans across the political spectrum refer to the wars the U.S. has launched since 2001 as “endless” or “unwinnable” wars. We know by now that there is no elusive victory around the corner that will redeem the criminal futility of the U.S.’s opportunistic decision to use military force more aggressively and illegally after the end of the Cold War and the horrific crimes of September 11. But all wars have to end one day, so how will these wars end? Continue reading
Portugal leads the way: How European countries fared in their treatment of refugees
As soon as the COVID-19 pandemic began spreading its tentacles throughout China and eventually to the rest of the world, the World Health Organization (WHO), along with other international groups, sounded the alarm that refugees and migrants are particularly vulnerable to the deadly disease. Continue reading
Hating Arabs as a common ground: Why Israel’s coalition government is likely to survive
Shortly after an agreement to form a “national emergency government” in Israel, leader of the Blue and White (Kahol Lavan) party, Benny Gantz, tweeted triumphantly that ‘democracy’ in Israel has been ‘safeguarded’. Continue reading
COVID-19[84]: I’m putting mainstream media on lock-down
If I have to listen to yet one more vacuous talking head blithely telling me that “we’re all in this together” one more freaking time, I’m gonna just go run screaming through the streets — with or without a face mask. Continue reading
UN ceasefire defines war as a non-essential activity
At least 70 countries have signed on to the March 23 call by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres for a worldwide ceasefire during the Covid-19 pandemic. Like non-essential business and spectator sports, war is a luxury that the Secretary General says we must manage without for a while. After U.S. leaders have told Americans for years that war is a necessary evil or even a solution to many of our problems, Mr. Guterres is reminding us that war is really the most non-essential evil and an indulgence that the world cannot afford—especially during a pandemic. Continue reading
Kushner’s Grand Theft Ventilator scheme
The government of Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley was shocked when the Trump administration seized over 150 ventilators ordered and pre-purchased by Barbados from five different foreign sources. Although Barbados Health and Wellness Minister Lieutenant Colonel Jeffrey Bostic said there are no shortage of ventilators in the country to deal with its current level of Covid-19 cases, the seizure by the U.S. has resulted in icy relations between Barbados and the United States. Continue reading
US prevents adoption of UN resolution to lift illegal sanctions to combat COVID-19
A UN General Assembly resolution introduced by Russia to lift illegally imposed US sanctions on Iran, Venezuela, and other nations was rejected by the Trump regime. Continue reading
No evidence of bio-warfare involved with COVID-19
Contrary to ruminations from far right-wing Republicans, including Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marco Rubio of Florida, as well as fundamentalist crackpot Jerry Falwell, Jr., that COVID-19 involves either a willful or accidental biological warfare operation set in motion by China or North Korea, the facts are that the deadly virus involves no military or intelligence service. The fact that every military and intelligence service on the planet has been negatively impacted and severely hobbled by the virus is evidence that there are no strategic military winners and only losers with respect to the pandemic. It is Donald Trump’s senior Republican officials and evangelical supporters who are pushing such nonsense that COVID-19 is a biological warfare attack. It is proof of the paucity of any level of military or intelligence expertise in the Republican Party and the Trump administration. Continue reading
How fascism won control in the West
“The West” is the nations that are essentially controlled, basically dictated-to, by America’s approximately 600 billionaires, who control the U.S. government, by coordinately funding (through their news-media and political donations, and also by their members-only private conferences) the careers of cooperative politicians, and who thereby defeat the politicians who act against increasing the percentage of the nation’s wealth that these few people hold, and against increasing their extractions from everybody else. (Those non-compliant politicians are derisively called “socialists” and equated with the communist Joseph Stalin instead of with the democratic socialist FDR and the leaders of the democratic socialist Scandinavian countries; and America’s dumbest voters, who always tip the ‘democratic’ balance favoring the billionaires’ propaganda, believe this propaganda from these billionaires’ organizations, which equate “socialism” with “communism,” and they think that they live in a democracy, which they don’t. Their beliefs are false both about history and about ideology.) Continue reading
Why is the U.S. so exceptionally vulnerable to COVID-19?
The United States has become the new center of the global coronavirus pandemic, with over 80,000 cases, more than China or Italy. More than a thousand Americans have already died, but this is surely only the very beginning of this deadly collision between the U.S.’s exceptionally inadequate public healthcare system and a real pandemic. Continue reading
Technology of death: The not-so-shocking report on Israeli weapons exports
The Middle East region, battered by wars and adjoining humanitarian crises that have left millions of people stateless, hungry and diseased, is in urgent need for peace, security and reconstruction. Thanks to the US, Russian, French, Israeli and other weapons manufacturers, however, it is now the dumping ground for military hardware, an ominous sign for the years ahead. Continue reading
Death at the Greek border: Syrian refugees should not be used as political pawns
In a surprising move, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced on February 29 that he will be re-opening his country’s border to Europe, thus allowing tens of thousands of mostly Syrian refugees into Greece and other European countries. Continue reading
12 ways the U.S. invasion of Iraq lives on in infamy
While the world is consumed with the terrifying coronavirus pandemic, today, March 19, the Trump administration will be marking the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq by ramping up the conflict there. After an Iran-aligned militia allegedly struck a U.S. base near Baghdad on March 11, the U.S. military carried out retaliatory strikes against five of the militia’s weapons factories and announced it is sending two more aircraft carriers to the region, as well as new Patriot missile systems and hundreds more troops to operate them. This contradicts the January vote of the Iraqi Parliament that called for U.S. troops to leave the country. It also goes against the sentiment of most Americans, who think the Iraq war was not worth fighting, and against the campaign promise of Donald Trump to end the endless wars. Continue reading
US National Security Strategy is meant to protect Wall Street, Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon
The United States’ National Security Strategy is based on foundational Instruments of National Power (INP). The INP consists of Diplomacy, Informational, Military, Economic, Financial, Law Enforcement, Information. Combined with the INP’s support, they combine to protect an economy and society that has an annual Gross Domestic Product of nearly $20 trillion (USD) and a per capita income of almost $60 thousand according to the CIA’s World Factbook. In that publication, the CIA notes that “US firms are at or near the forefront in technological advances, especially in computers, pharmaceuticals, and medical, aerospace, and military equipment…” Continue reading
Pandemic and hair trigger flash points: an explosive situation
Posted on July 23, 2020 by Wayne Madsen
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues its deadly march around the world, a number of relatively dormant conflicts, as well as several well-known flash points, stand ready to place the world on the edge of a major armed conflict. History shows us that during times of stress—economic depression, religious strife, vacuums of political leadership, and public health crises like that which is now plaguing the world—the chances for war increase commensurately. Continue reading →