Author Archives: Wayne Madsen

A toxic combination of alt-right Breitbart writers and George W. Bush neocons are consolidating their control over the Trump administration as allegations concerning the president and his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, buffet the White House. Continue reading →

The Donald Trump administration and the Brexit severance of ties between the United Kingdom and the European Union have, in a matter of a little over a half year, changed the world from a post-Cold War “new world order” based on American supremacy to a global “disorder” of altered alliances on a multipolar geo-political chessboard. In many respects, the new global disorder has also placed in jeopardy various post-World War II contrivances, including NATO, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the Australia-New Zealand-United States (ANZUS) alliance. Continue reading →

President Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway’s fictitious account of an Islamist terrorist attack carried out by two Iraqi refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky has an eerily similar historical parallel. On August 31, 1939, the eve of the outbreak of World War II, the Nazi German propaganda machine falsely claimed that Polish troops crossed the German frontier and attacked a German radio station in the town of Gleiwitz. Continue reading →

The much anticipated constitutional crisis many feared would come about under President Trump’s bombastic style of leadership took only one week into his administration to be realized. Trump’s Executive Order banning visitors, including U.S. permanent resident “green card” holders and those with valid U.S. visas, was one of the most poorly planned and implemented White House regulation in recent memory. Continue reading →

In the U.S. Senate, some votes have more impact than others. That was certainly the case with the January 23 Senate vote to confirm Representative Mike Pompeo (R-KS) as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Quite aside from President Trump’s embattled relationship with the CIA, Pompeo’s confirmation by the Senate is similar to the Senate’s passage of the Iraq War Resolution in 2002, legislation that gave President George W. Bush the green light to engage in a costly invasion and occupation of Iraq. Continue reading →

Although this editor never had the opportunity to sit down with John F. Kennedy Jr. in July 1999 to discuss his offer to a small group of journalists he decided to hire to investigate his father’s assassination—Kennedy died in a suspicious plane crash shortly before the interview was scheduled—there was a surprise opportunity to discuss the matters of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination with his son. Continue reading →

Never has the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency so blatantly involved itself in an American election. However, the agency has a rich history of interfering in the elections of other nations, including Russia. The conclusions of an undisclosed CIA secret report on alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election has been summarily dismissed by the director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and several retired U.S. intelligence officers as deeply flawed and a propaganda tool concocted by the highly-politicized CIA director John Brennan and his cronies. Continue reading →

Kansas Republican Governor Sam Brownback desperately wants a position in the Trump administration. However, with almost all of Trump’s cabinet positions already spoken for, with the exception of Agriculture Secretary, it would appear that the uber-conservative governor and former U.S. senator may join New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, and former U.S. House Speaker on the also-ran list in Trump’s political version of “Celebrity Apprentice.” Continue reading →

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the architect of Europe’s devastating open-door migrant policy, is facing a challenger from within the ranks of her own increasingly tenuous governing coalition of her own Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, and a Christian Democratic sister party in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union. Merkel, who announced plans to run for a fourth term a chancellor next year, may not last long as German head of government if Bavaria’s Christian Social Union Prime Minister Horst Seehofer has his way. Continue reading →

With their bosses away campaigning, some for their political lives, a number of Republican staffers in Congress are growing anxious over their future employment. With the Senate now favored to be transferred to Democratic control, GOP staffers for members up for re-election on November 8, as well as Republican staffers assigned to various Senate committees and subcommittees, are shopping around their resumes. Continue reading →

The recent diplomatic row between the Philippines and the United States has come as a shock to U.S. State Department and Pentagon policy wonks but for astute observers of Southeast Asian politics, the decision of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to “pivot” to China and Russia was long in the making. Ever since the so-called “Yellow Revolution” that saw Corazon Aquino replace the Philippines autocratic ruler Ferdinand Marcos, the majority of Filipinos have roiled under one corrupt American-blessed president after another. Duterte, the fiery former mayor of Davao City in Mindanao, has channeled the disgust of many in the Philippines to adopt a hostile attitude in the face of a renewed U.S. military presence in Southeast Asia designed to counter China. Continue reading →

The United States, stung by the rapid deterioration in relations with its longtime ally, the Philippines, now stands on the precipice of losing another strategic ally in Asia. Reports that the much-revered king of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has sat on the throne for 70 years and is 88-years old, is gravely ill is prompting a belief that Thailand will join the Philippines in rejecting American dictates. Continue reading →

World leaders rushed to Jerusalem to pay their last respects to former Israeli President and Prime Minister Shimon Peres, who died at the age of 93. American President Barack Obama eulogized Peres with the following soliloquy about his fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate: “I would be the 10th U.S. President since John F. Kennedy to sit down with Shimon; the 10th to fall prey to his charms.” Continue reading →

Global hedge fund tycoon and political provocateur George Soros is leading a war of symbols, namely flags and banners either resurrected or conjured up by his myriad non-profit groups, to stir religious, racial, and ethnic tensions the world over. From the Serbian OTPOR! movement and its clenched-fist symbol adopted by protests groups around the world to the menacing black and white flag of the Islamic State, which first appeared during the Soros-backed “Arab Spring” rebellions, Soros’s “false flag” factories have been running at break-neck production speeds. Continue reading →

There is an ominous operation that will soon appear in south Chicago’s Jackson Park, one that will advance the cause of political disruption and international conflict around the world. The Barack Obama Center and Presidential Library will become a magnet for those malevolent forces wanting to advance Obama’s “existing international order” and a nightmare for nations and leaders hoping to stem the tide of globalization, free trade, open borders, and social and religious bedlam. Continue reading →

Not since the days of the Roman Empire have regional warlords commanded so much authority to craft their own military and diplomatic policies apart from the central government. The United States calls its warlords “combatant commanders” and the title is not misleading. These combatant commanders are always looking for new wars and conflicts, all of which are in the personal interests of them and their top military echelons, but certainly not in the general interest of the American people. Continue reading →

President Barack Obama has opted to ratchet up military tensions in Asia as one of his last foreign policy acts as president of the United States. Using climate change and free trade backdrops at the G20 Summit in Hangzhou, China, and the U.S.-ASEAN and East Asia Summits in Vientiane, Laos, as mirages intended to mask his aggressive military posture in the Asia-Pacific region, Obama seeks to cement his “pivot to Asia.” It is Obama’s sincere hope that his anticipated successor, his former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, will expand on the expansionistic and aggressive regional showdown with China and Russia that his administration launched with his Asia “pivot.” Continue reading →