Author Archives: Wayne Madsen

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 →

The reconstitution of Executive Outcomes (E.O.), the South Africa-based mercenary firm that was involved in civil wars in Sierra Leone, Angola, and Rwanda in the 1990s, is troubling news for not only Africa, but other nations that have seen their fair share of mercenary force destabilization. Amid an outcry over its activities in Africa and other nations, E.O. ceased operations in 1998. The cessation of the firm’s activities came after South Africa passed legislation, the “Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act,” which required mercenary firms like E.O. to have South African government authorization prior to signing contracts with foreign entities. Continue reading →

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo committed an act of treacherous sedition when he commented on a smooth presidential transition at a Tuesday press conference at the Department of State. In answer to a Fox News’s reporter’s question about the transition, Pompeo relied, “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” Continue reading →

A postage stamp cost 3 cents, milk was 84 cents a gallon, a bottle of Coke was a nickle, bread was 14 cents a loaf, and a Democratic Senator from the State of Minnesota proposed a comprehensive national health insurance system that would reduce medical costs for a majority of Americans. The year was 1949 and the senator was Hubert Humphrey, who was later to serve as Vice President and the 1968 Democratic presidential candidate. Continue reading →

Several of the founders of the United States were gifted scientists and scholars of the Age of Enlightenment. Benjamin Franklin was not only a statesman, but he was known as one of the leading scientists of the world in his own right. Franklin, who had to deal with his age’s numerous religious extremists, medical quackery, and various misanthropes, would have little time for the anti-science foolishness of the Donald Trump administration. In fact, taking the political appointee sector of the Trump administration as a whole, the United States enjoyed more scientific expertise in government during its early days than it does today. Continue reading →

Israel may view the United Arab Emirates as one of its few allies in the Arab World. However, the UAE’s embrace of Israel does not enjoy universal support in the seven emirates that make up the oil-rich federation. One of the constituent emirates, Ras al Khaimah—sometimes referred to merely as “RAK”—has had a stormy relationship with the chief emirate in the unequal federation, Abu Dhabi. Israel and the Donald Trump administration may believe that the UAE is part and parcel of the Washington-Jerusalem security bulwark against Iran, but Ras al Khaimah has always marched to its own beat from the very inception of the UAE in 1971. Ras al Khaimah initially balked at becoming a member of the UAE and was technically independent between December 2, 1971, the date that Britain gave independence to the UAE—what was formerly known as the Trucial States—and RAK’s rather reluctant incorporation into the UAE on January 10, 1972. Continue reading →

The impeached U.S. president, Donald Trump, has taken a step never attempted by any of his predecessors. Trump, who every day is exposing his fascist policies and intentions, has announced that he is establishing a “1776 Commission” to re-write American history and force-feed it to every public and certain private school students throughout the United States. Trump’s move is intended to counter the 1619 Project of the New York Times, which is designed to place slavery and the slave trade in a central context in dealing with the history of pre- and post-colonial America. Continue reading →

The U.S. political class of pundits, pollsters, columnists, and endless cable news blathering talking heads are currently putting forth the notion that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is having a problem with support from the Hispanic community. This argument is based on a disingenuously false premise that the Hispanic community is a political monolith that is gravitating, as it has in recent years, to Republican candidates. To be sure, there is a conservative base to the Hispanic vote among the mostly white European exiles in South Florida, who came to the United States to flee, along with their offshore bank accounts, socialist and progressive governments that came to power after overthrowing Central Intelligence Agency-nurtured dictatorships of “caudillos” in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Continue reading →

Attorney General William Barr is less independent of aspirant dictator Donald Trump than Nazi Germany’s first Justice Minister, Franz Gurtner, was of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Barr has systematically turned the Justice Department into a political weapon designed to protect Trump from the Congress, the courts, and individual U.S. citizens exercising their rights under the Constitution. Barr has trashed the rule of law that has ensured that America’s system of democracy has prevailed since the birth of constitutional government. Continue reading →

The only benefit from the rise of neo-fascist leaders in heretofore democratic nations is that the various fascist, neo-Nazi, racial and religious supremacists, and far-right terrorists have reared their ugly heads to the degree where it is now easier to identify them and their circle of contacts and organizations. When the United States, Brazil, Colombia, Poland, Turkey, and other similarly afflicted nations return to political normalcy, the forces of the far-right, already self-identified, can be rolled up, stripped of their weaponry and access to the Internet as threats to public safety. These resurgent Nazis can also be subjected to ridicule and shamed by the general public to the point where they recede from politics and return to their subterranean lairs or be prosecuted and imprisoned for their crimes, which include mass murder and other acts of terrorism. Continue reading →

The Republican Party, founded in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854, is dead. The “Grand Old Party” as it was known has become a full-blown cult of personality vanity organization beholden to only one person, Donald Trump. National presidential nominating conventions have historically featured the rolling out from convention platform committees the party plank addressing such issues as foreign policy, social security, defense spending, education, health care, the environment, and other factors. The virtual Republican convention this year issued no such plank, a first in recent memory. Instead, the Republican Party issued a statement in which it notified members that there would be no new plank until the 2024 convention. In the meantime, the Republican Party’s plank is whatever Trump says it is. Continue reading →

Donald Trump’s assault on the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is an assault on the national sovereignty of the United States. By bolloxing up the postal system to interfere with voting in this year’s election and a reliance on voting by mail during the coronavirus pandemic, Trump has done more than severely damage a critical national infrastructure. The U.S. Post Office is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution as a protected government service. The Postal System is not a business and was never meant to be one. It is a service provided by the federal government to its citizens. Continue reading →

The release of a report by the U.S. Department of State’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), billed as the Donald Trump administration’s “dedicated center for countering foreign disinformation and propaganda, cites the Strategic Culture Foundation in Russia, Canada’s Global Research Center, and other online publications as “proxy sites” for Russian intelligence and the Russian Foreign Ministry. The State Department’s report is titled, “Pillars of Russia’s Disinformation and Propaganda Ecosystem” and it is not much different than the series of reports issued by the State Department’s “International Information Program” in the mid-2000s that were used to debase U.S. journalists and authors critical of the George W. Bush-Dick Cheney neo-conservative wars of choice. Those diatribes, like the recent one masquerading as a “special report,” were written on the U.S. taxpayers’ dime and represent a squandering of money. Continue reading →

Donald Trump has made no secret of his admiration for Nazism and Adolf Hitler. After neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, Trump called them “fine people.” Trump’s first wife, Ivana Trump, wrote that one of the only books Trump kept readily available was a compendium of Adolf Hitler’s speeches. According to Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, Donald Trump was raised in a household of constant racist and anti-Semitic words and deeds. Continue reading →