Fascist-ruled Honduras and Guatemala—the latter the home of 7-year old asylum-seeker Jakelin Caal, who died in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents—will soon be joined by El Salvador as a major refugee-producing Central American nation. Continue reading
The December 1 arrest by Canadian authorities in Vancouver of Huawei Technologies chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, based on a US extradition warrant, represents a draconian extraterritorial application of a dubious US law and claim of Huawei’s sanctions violations regarding Iran. Meng was arrested at Vancouver International Airport, while a transit passenger changing planes. Continue reading
Trump and his neocons have withdrawn from so many international organizations and agreements that his foreign policy has earned a shameful nickname: “the Withdrawal Doctrine.” Continue reading
On the 77th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other U.S. military installations in the Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island, Donald Trump marked the occasion by tweeting: “FAKE NEWS—THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!” Trump’s tweet was sent at 10:08 pm on December 6. At around 10:00 pm on December 6, a man with a southern accent phoned the CNN bureau in New York and warned it that five bombs had been placed in the building. “CNN Tonight,” which was broadcasting live, was forced off the air and the building was evacuated. The news network was forced to rely on taped programming. Continue reading
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.—Nearly a decade of vexatious civil litigation in Palm Beach County court between convicted underage sex molester Jeffrey Epstein and Fort Lauderdale trial attorney, Bradley Edwards, who represented pro bono many of Epstein’s victims, concluded rapidly on December 4 after Edwards’s attorney, Jack Scarola, announced an out-of-court settlement between Epstein and Edwards. Under the terms of the agreement, termed a “surrender” by Epstein, a confidential financial settlement was reached in favor of Edwards and an apology by Epstein to Edwards for wrongly suing him in an effort to “damage his reputation” and divert attention from Epstein’s victims. The Epstein suit was designed to force Edwards to abandon Epstein’s victims, including Courtney Wild, formerly known only as “Jane Doe 1,” who was recently identified in a three-part series on the Epstein case in The Miami Herald. Continue reading
The rumored nomination of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta as attorney general in the wake of Jeff Sessions’s firing is apparently what spurred the Miami Herald to publish a detailed 3-part series look at the sweetheart plea agreement worked out by Acosta with convicted child molester and Donald Trump’s close friend Jeffrey Epstein. The Miami Herald story resulted in a public rebuke for the story’s reporter, Julie Brown, from former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, who appears to have taken over as Trump’s “muscle” to attack journalists who investigate Trump and those tied to him. Continue reading
In a mere 48 hours, incessant Donald Trump lies, communicated via Twitter, have rocked the stock market, enraged union workers, and have further eroded public confidence in the ability of the White House and its enablers in Congress to govern. Continue reading
Donald Trump is attempting to do something that no previous recent president of the United States has attempted. Trump is trying to abrogate longstanding legal international treaties signed by some of his predecessors with sovereign Native American tribes. The Trump administration is using a requirement that Medicaid recipients work in return for health benefits to deny Native American tribes the right to govern themselves as sovereign entities. The Trump administration is denying an exemption for the work requirement for tribal nations by reclassifying Native Americans as a racial group subject to federal law, not as separate sovereign nations bound by distinct tribal laws. Continue reading
Former Donald Trump chief strategist and 2016 campaign manager Steve Bannon has become a neo-Nazi frequent flyer. Bannon established his organization, known simply as “The Movement,” with the help of some far-right Belgian politicians. In a worrying trend, The Movement is forging close ties with far-right parties and politicians around the world, including Brazil’s incoming president, Jair Bolsonaro, an admitted admirer of Adolf Hitler. Continue reading
Donald Trump, who threatened to misuse the Department of Justice to prosecute 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former FBI director James Comey as part of a political vendetta, will be meeting like-minded dictators at the G20 summit in Argentina, which will be held from November 30 to December 1. These authoritarian leaders have criminally prosecuted their political opponents, with many currently serving long prison sentences. Continue reading
America has always fancied itself as a “melting pot” of ethnicities and religions that form a perfect union. The Latin phrase, E Pluribus Unum, “out of many, one,” is even found on the Great Seal of the United States. However, as seen in a recent blow-up between First Lady Melania Trump and now-former Deputy National Security Adviser Mira Ricardel, old feuds from beyond the borders of the United States can result in major rifts at the highest echelons of the US government. Continue reading
Attempts by some to liken Donald Trump to Richard Nixon fail to understand the depths of fascism to which Trump has descended. A more accurate comparison of Trump to someone who imprisoned his political opponents, shut down the free press, and believed in a strong unitary executive is the late Chilean fascist military dictator, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. Continue reading
Last week, Donald Trump disgraced himself before his French hosts, US and Allied military veterans, and the entire world by remaining inside the residence of the US ambassador to France and snubbing a memorial service for US dead in World War I. Continue reading
Donald Trump traveled to Paris to, as he put it in a tweet, “celebrate” the centenary of the armistice that ended World War I. Trump not only decided to skip a planned visit to the Aisne-Marne American cemetery at Belleau Wood, but also the inaugural ceremony of the Paris Peace Forum. The forum, organized by French President Emmanuel Macron and attended by over 70 world leaders, is held in conjunction with the armistice centenary commemoration. Continue reading
Donald Trump’s erstwhile chief strategist and current occasional telephone adviser, Steve Bannon, has made no secret of his admiration for hedge fund tycoon George Soros and his ability to influence elections around the world to benefit neo-liberal politicians and parties. In creating his Brussels-based group, called simply, “The Movement,” Bannon is emulating Soros’s techniques on behalf of the liberal left in providing electoral advice to neo-Nazi, fascist, and white supremacist political parties around the globe. Continue reading
A few days after Brazil’s new neo-Nazi president, Jair Bolsonaro, declared victory in that nation’s presidential election, Donald Trump’s “wargasmic” neocon national security adviser, John Bolton, was in Miami unveiling the administration’s version of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil.” After Trump congratulated the Adolf Hitler-praising Bolsonaro on his victory, Bolton, speaking before a crowd of right-wing Cuban-Americans, warned Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua—nations Bolton called the “Troika of Tyranny”—that the United States and its new far-right allies, including Brazil and Colombia, would work together to overthrow the socialist governments of Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Bolton also referred to the three nations as the “Triangle of Terror.” Continue reading
They show up uninvited at your home, business, and vehicle on an average of ten times a day. They come from such relatively unknown places as Meadowview and Boones Mill, Virginia; Warsaw, Kentucky; Justin, Texas; and McKenzie, Tennessee. They try to take your personal details, your savings, and computer passwords. We are not talking about a zombie apocalypse but the scourge of robocalls, the lifeblood of the telemarketing industry. The direct marketing and scam pests run right through the Federal Trade Commission’s Do-Not-Call Registry like a hot knife through butter. Continue reading
The former chief strategist and campaign manager for Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, likes to use the term “globalist” in his zeal to create a worldwide, read that as “global,” movement of fascist, neo-Nazi, and racialist political parties. Bannon, the anti-globalist far-right obese version of Adolf Hitler, initially, had few takers for his plan for a Nazi Internationale. Unfortunately, for the entire planet, that has changed. Continue reading
Latin America’s “springtime of socialism” is at a close. After over a decade of progressive socialist presidents putting people ahead of cronyism, Latin America’s oligarchs, through the abuse of the courts, parliaments, and electoral systems, have put caudillos in office throughout the region. Unlike the past, when local generals, with a wink-and-a-nod from the local Central Intelligence Agency station chief, would call out the tanks and troops to oust democratically-elected presidents, today’s fascist leaders have discovered that social media, coupled with corrupt judges and legislators, can mount what are, essentially, soft “constitutional coups.” Continue reading
The Trump administration alliance of the neoconservatives and their penchant for false flag terrorist attacks and the alt-right, which has no problem with carrying out terrorist attacks and claiming credit for them, has proven to be a deadly combination. Continue reading
October 24 is marked around the world as United Nations Day, the anniversary marking the founding of the world body in 1945. However, in Washington, Donald Trump’s administration, which he described as “nationalist” at an October 22 Houston campaign rally for Texas Senator Ted Cruz, is planning for further U.S. withdrawal from various international organizations. These include the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a specialized agency of the UN that has been in existence for 153 years. Continue reading
The neocon foreign policy of Donald Trump took a drastic turn toward greater international isolation for the United States, when the White House announced the American withdrawal from the 144-year old Universal Postal Union (UPU), the world’s third-oldest international organization. The UPU, which was established as the General Postal Union by the Treaty of Bern of 1874, coordinates postal policies among its member nations. It was President Ulysses S. Grant who signed on to the Treaty of Bern and sent U.S. delegates to the founding Universal Postal Congress in the Swiss city, where the UPU headquarters remains to this day. Continue reading
Some of the world’s hottest points of conflict during the Cold War are, once again, in the headlines because of Donald Trump’s erratic and bombastic saber-rattling antics. Even a military pact between North and South Korea, one worked out between South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at their third summit in Pyongyang in September is being actively opposed by Trump’s pompous Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. In remarks in the South Korean parliament, Foreign Minister Kang Kyung said that Pompeo wanted Seoul to go slow on its talks with North Korea. It is known that Trump wants another summit with North Korea’s Kim. Little resulted from the first Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore, which was largely a much-ballyhooed photo op, but was heralded by some myopic Trump supporters as an epic event rivaling President Richard Nixon’s trip to China. Continue reading
Trump son-in-law and Middle East “peace negotiator” Jared Kushner was communicating with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) prior to and after the Saudis brutally murdered Washington-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi on October 2 at the Saudi consulate-general in Istanbul. Kushner and MBS reportedly used the WhatsApp encrypted messaging service. Continue reading
As Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, wields ever greater power over U.S. foreign and defense policy, with Defense Secretary James Mattis due to be the next victim of Bolton’s “house cleaning,” the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is preparing Libya for a neocon-led “nation-building” operation. Although Trump has slashed funding for USAID, the agency has found the necessary budget to begin to prepare Libya’s local municipal councils for elections. Continue reading
The actual reason why Donald Trump praised neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members who marched in the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, as “fine people” is that Trump actually believes in the global goals of the neo-Nazi and white supremacist cause. This is now seen in Trump’s support for the efforts of his erstwhile White House chief strategist, Steve Bannon, in creating an alliance and secretariat of far-right racist political parties in Europe and beyond. Bannon’s operation is called “The Movement.” Continue reading
Former president George W. Bush has been misinterpreted by many political observers as a “neo-moderate.” However, Bush’s phone calls to four wavering senators, in which he urged them to vote for Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, belies the actual reason behind his support for Kavanaugh. Serving as White House Staff Secretary for Bush from 2003 to 2006, Kavanaugh was part and parcel of theft of Ohio’s 20 electoral votes to Bush in 2004, which ensured Bush’s re-election and denied the presidency to Democratic candidate John Kerry. Bush’s phone calls to Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) were supplemented with an invitation for her to visit the Bush family at their Kennebunkport, Maine estate. Bush also phoned Senators Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Joe Manchin (D-WV), and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK). Out of the three, only Murkowski voted against Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Continue reading
In what amounts to a clear violation of the United States-United Nations Treaty of 1947, the Trump administration is denying visas to same-sex domestic partners of UN diplomats and staff. The U.S. is also requiring UN personnel in same-sex partnerships to get married or face the cancellation of current U.S. visas for domestic partners. For foreign diplomats being assigned to the UN and hoping to obtain visas for their same-sex partners, the U.S. is requiring them to get married before issuing visas. However, some of those affected by the U.S. visa ban live in countries where same-sex or even opposite sex domestic partnerships are illegal. Continue reading
Donald Trump’s attempt to persuade members of the United Nations to comply with his “secondary sanctions” against Iran, scheduled for enactment by the United States on November 4, came up empty-handed. To varying degrees, member states, including the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council, rejected Trump’s attempt to apply extra-territorial jurisdiction over other nations’ trade and financial ties with Iran. Continue reading
Donald Trump’s and his far right-wing flank of war-mongering zealots in the US Congress are calling for former Secretary of State John Kerry to be criminally investigated for violating the arcane Logan Act of 1799. Enacted during a time when President John Adams—who rolled back much of the foreign policy independence of the United States in favor of Great Britain, its former colonizer—wanted to deal out harsh punishment to those like then-Vice President Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Dr. George Logan, a Philadelphia Quaker, who were negotiating peace with the post-French Revolution Directory in Paris. Adams dearly wanted to ally the United States with Britain in a war with France. In pursuit of criminal sanctions against pro-French politicians like Jefferson, Logan, and others, Adams and his pro-British clique, which included former President George Washington, enacted the Logan Act and the Alien and Sedition Acts. Continue reading
WMR has learned from knowledgeable intelligence sources that the Central Intelligence Agency and Department of State are losing valuable expertise as a result of a Trump administration-led purge of those with different views on the Middle East, Iran, North Korea, Latin America, and overall geopolitical issues. Continue reading
RSS
The UN must totally break from US administrative control
Posted on January 15, 2019 by Wayne Madsen
Ever since it was decided to locate the headquarters of the United Nations in New York, the world body has been beset by constant meddling by the host country, that is, the United States, which is increasingly violating the letter and spirit of the 1947 treaty between the United States and United Nations regarding the headquarters of the UN. The treaty, signed on June 26, 1947 at Lake Success, New York between UN Secretary General Trygve Lie and US Secretary of State George Marshall guarantees the extraterritorial nature of the UN headquarters in Manhattan. Furthermore, it guarantees that the US will not interfere with the expeditious granting of US visas to foreigners and UN personnel transiting through US territory in furtherance of their responsibilities to their own governments and the UN. Continue reading →