Author Archives: Wayne Madsen

Donald Trump, who believes everything that is real is fake and everything that is fake is real, has delved into another academic discipline for which he believes he is an eminent expert. After promulgating his own fake weather forecasts, political opinion polls, and news, Trump has now proclaimed his own fake history. After abandoning to invading Turkish forces the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) forces, who have been allied with US Special Forces battling the Islamic State caliphate jihadists in Syria, Trump stated, “They [the Kurds] didn’t help us in the World War II, they didn’t help us with Normandy, as an example.” Continue reading →

With a dangerous right-wing and quasi-fascist administration in power in Washington, one that rejects internationalism and consensus-building, it is past time for the United Nations to move its headquarters and member states’ permanent missions to a more neutral location. One can understand why the UN was originally located in New York. The Rockefeller family donated the land on Turtle Bay on the East River for the construction of UN Headquarters. After World War II, the United States was in a prime position to nurture the UN, something it failed to do after World War I when Washington rejected membership in the League of Nations. Continue reading →

The Central Intelligence Agency, founded largely by a bunch of self-entitled graduates of America’s Ivy League universities and alum of secretive fraternities – particularly Yale and the Skulls and Bones — appears to be re-indulging in some of its worst antics of the Cold War years. Many CIA plank owners joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II, a convenient way for them to avoid combat and killing Nazis, for whom they had some ideological sympathies. Continue reading →

Modern diplomacy can generally be traced back to the late 19th century and the intercession of professional diplomats in the foreign relations between major and minor powers of the era. International negotiations to resolve problems were primarily handled by diplomats prior to politicians giving their assent to peace treaties and compacts. The Congress of Berlin of 1878 and 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire) helped resolve the Russo-Turkish War and Russo-Japanese War, respectively. These early diplomatic efforts would eventually lead to treaties establishing the League of Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the United Nations, in addition to a variety of regional and specialized international agencies. Each of these international agencies brought into being a corps of international diplomats who, for the most part, were committed to hammering out disputes between nations through negotiations and not armed conflict. The lessons of World Wars I and II provided an impetus for nations to commit to dialogue rather than war. Continue reading →

Anyone who has ever cared for a relative or a close friend suffering from dementia is well aware of the effects of this debilitating disease. Living with a dementia sufferer is as bad, if not worse, for the care giver as it is for the person afflicted. Obsessive compulsiveness, irrational outbursts such as inappropriate laughing, crying or yelling, insensitive bigoted comments, and voicing strange ideas are only a part of a dementia patient’s overall symptoms. Continue reading →

Not since the Third Reich regime of Adolf Hitler have Nordic nations been forced to deal with a megalomaniac foreign leader like Donald Trump. Trump has summarily criticized the prime ministers of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, lied about a conversation with the president of Finland; and is likely to soon turn his Twitter venom on the prime minister of Iceland. The five Nordic leaders serve as heads of government of five countries that annually top the world’s list of happiest nations because of their policies that put the health and welfare of their people first. Continue reading →

Donald Trump wants to buy Greenland, an autonomous constituent part of the Kingdom of Denmark. If any other US president proffered such an idea, it would be viewed as a joke. But with Trump, it is a serious proposal, according to White House insiders who passed the information to The Wall Street Journal. Continue reading →

Further pushing his cruelty from caged migrant children separated from their families at the southern border to yet other children coming home from school in Mississippi to find their parents having been hauled off by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detention centers, Donald Trump has now turned his attention to needlessly harming animals. Trump is a well-known critic of pet owners, including his own vice president, referring to them as “low class.” Continue reading →

Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to transform the Department of Justice into a phalanx of private vendetta-seeking lawyers and the FBI into his own private security force. The practice of “lawfare,” abusing the constitution and legal system to target particular political leaders, has been used by the Central Intelligence Agency with great success in Brazil, Ecuador, and Paraguay. Continue reading →

As witnessed during Donald Trump’s recent attendance at the G20 Summit in Osaka and his side trip to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Korea, relying solely on the counsel of one’s daughter and son-in-law resulted in Trump displaying for the world his total ignorance of the fundamentals of international relations and geopolitics. Trump insisted on placing his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, on center stage in Osaka for the G20 conclave and at Panmunjom for a hastily arranged meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Ms. Trump acted as if she was on some sort of sorority house outing and was keen to impress her friends with inane statements that stepping into North Korea with her father was “surreal.” Continue reading →

For a nation that was founded by some of the most intelligent people who then lived on the planet—Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, to name but a few—the United States has plummeted into a new age, not one of enlightenment, but one of stupidity. Continue reading →

With ten minutes left to spare, someone prevailed on an amoral Donald Trump to call off the planned U.S. military attack on Iran. Trump later claimed that he did not want the deaths of 150 Iranians, the number estimated by the Pentagon who would have been killed in the pre-dawn attack, on his conscience. However, Trump has no conscience, so there must have been another reason. Continue reading →

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was recently castigated by the usual suspects after she likened U.S. southern border political asylee detention centers as “concentration camps.” AOC refused to back down from her description of the camps, which are even housing children separated from their parents in sub-human conditions. On June 8, AOC tweeted: “This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying. This is not hyperbole. It is the conclusion of expert analysis.” Continue reading →

Donald Trump has installed far-right Christian fundamentalist stalwart Ken Cuccinelli as acting director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Cuccinelli, a former Attorney General of Virginia and failed Republican candidate for governor of the Old Dominion, was appointed to his present position with the strong backing of Trump’s immigration policy adviser, Stephen Miller. Continue reading →

The Donald Trump administration, aided and abetted by the Republican Congressional Conference, will go down in history as a regime of liars, grifters, dime store propagandists, common criminals, and schoolyard bullies. The evidence that “Team Trump” can and probably will lie the United States into a war with Iran, just as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lied America into a war with Iraq, is seen in the latest tomfoolery regarding recent attacks on two tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The attacks follow by almost a month similar suspicious attacks on four ships at anchor in the Gulf of Oman, off the coast of the United Arab Emirates sheikhdom of Fujairah. Although Iran was blamed by members of the Trump administration for the May 12 attacks, no evidence was provided to bolster such claims. Continue reading →