False charges from the right-wing that President Biden is hampered by senility represents an old and worn-out tactic by malign players, who have used the tactic against elder statesmen who have served as presidents, heads of state, or heads of government. Biden finds himself in august company when it comes to the propaganda barrage directed at him, in Biden’s case, by domestic and foreign on-line troll campaigns. Charles De Gaulle, Konrad Adenauer, Deng Xiaoping, Jozef Broz Tito, Paul von Hindenburg, and other senior statesmen all faced similar false charges at specific times during their terms in office. Continue reading →
While most of the corporate media seek to outdo one another in normalizing seditionists, fascists, insurrectionists, died-in-the-wool racists, and anti-public health conspiracy zealots, the last vestiges of a once-vibrant press in the United States refuse to go quietly into the night. On November 28, the Editorial Board of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch launched a scathing blast at two Senate Republicans, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, for supporting the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The editorial, titled “It’s long past time for the Senate ethics panel to address Hawley’s Jan. 6 actions,” stated: “Ten months after a group of Senate Democrats lodged ethics complaints into the conduct of Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas regarding their roles in sparking the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the Senate Ethics Committee has shown no sign of movement.” Continue reading →
Notable from the tenor and direction of the House of Representatives Select Committee on January 6th’s most recent subpoenas for witness testimony and documents from Infowars’ Alex Jones and longtime Republican political dirty tricks operative Roger Stone is a clear indication that the committee’s investigators are on a trail that could ultimately point to Donald Trump being aware of the plans by insurrectionists to march on the U.S. Capitol. Those Oval Office plans could also include the physical occupation of the Capitol, as well. Continue reading →
During his four years in office, Donald Trump, accompanied by his unethical and immoral family, business associates, and advisers, turned Washington, DC, into a replica of wartime neutral cities like Tangier and Macao, where anything and everyone was for sale to the highest bidder. Fans of the 1942 film noir, “Casablanca,” which starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, may be surprised to know that it was not wartime Casablanca in Morocco that inspired director Michael Curtiz to develop a theme around Rick’s Café Américain, where foreigners of every political stripe — German Nazis, Vichy French, Free French, and European refugees — co-mingled in an environment of deceit and corruption. Continue reading →
In a reality-based world, the recent video summit between President Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping may have gone, in part, something like the following . . . Continue reading →
In school board meetings from the battleground county of Loudoun in Virginia to Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona, and other states the far-right is targeting public education in furtherance of a Nazification of school curricula. We have also seen the first moves to traditional de-legitimize institutions of higher learning in favor of universities and colleges, some only recently formed, that teach only far-right propaganda. Continue reading →
As it becomes increasingly clear that Republican members of the House and Senate actively supported Donald Trump’s attempted coup on January 6th, it seems that it was in an alternate universe that Democrats and Republican senators came together in 1975 to hammer then-Central Intelligence Agency director William Colby on his agency’s assassination program. Compare that to the present ongoing cover-up by Republicans in Congress to the coup plot and the first non-peaceful transfer of presidential power, outside of assassination, in the nation’s history. Continue reading →
Month after month of Democratic Party in-fighting in Congress, caused overwhelmingly by the Trotskyist bloc of Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent Socialist-VT) and House Progressive Caucus Representatives Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) on one side and the pro-corporate faction led by Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) on the other side cost the Democrats dearly in elections in Virginia and New Jersey. The failure of the Democrats to pass legislation to give the U.S. economy a post-pandemic kickstart led directly to victories by pro-sedition right-wing Republicans Glenn Youngkin—a former Carlyle Group executive—for the governorship of Virginia and a razor-thin loss for “Stop the Steal” activist Jack Ciattarelli for governor of New Jersey. Continue reading →
Republicans have placed the critical and factual teaching of history on the ballot of the Virginia gubernatorial race between Republican Glenn Youngkin, a Trump-supporter and former CEO of the sinister Carlyle Group, and Democratic former Governor Terry McAuliffe. Youngkin has vowed to eliminate the teaching of “critical race theory” (CRT) in Virginia schools. However, Virginia does not and never has taught the theory, which is found only in the graduate curriculum of select universities and colleges around the country. Emulating Senator Joe McCarthy, Youngkin has transformed the non-issue of CRT in Virginia schools into a rallying cry for Donald Trump’s base of ranting and raving whites across the commonwealth. Continue reading →
“It’s fine work. Monday bum Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ‘em to ashes, then bum the ashes. That’s our official slogan.” These are the words of Montag the fireman in the novel “Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s dystopian vision for a world where books are illegal. In that world, firemen don’t put out fires but start them, particularly in houses in which books are found. 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper catches fire. Continue reading →
Attorney General Merrick Garland and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have come under sharp pressure from Democrats on the way they are leading their respective departments. In Yellen’s case, it has been her foot dragging on “reworking,” as she put it, harsh U.S. sanctions on Cuba that were imposed by Donald Trump. In June, Yellen told the House Appropriations Committee that Treasury was “reviewing” Cuba sanctions. That is where she left it and no loosening of Cuba travel or trade restrictions have occurred so far this year. Continue reading →
Long the king of Washington political scandals, the Watergate office, residential, and hotel complex stands to be eclipsed by “Willardgate.” Watergate lent its name to countless other political “gate” scandals due to its being the location where the Democratic National Committee headquarters was burglarized by Richard Nixon re-election henchmen, an act that ultimately brought down the administration of Richard Nixon. Willardgate, however, may replace Watergate as the granddaddy of all DC scandals because, as with Guy Fawkes Day in England, Willardgate has become synonymous with “Treason and Plot.” Continue reading →
The first reports of U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Havana being stricken with ear ringing, dizziness, and severe fatigue, dubbed the “Havana Syndrome,” resulted in a series of botched investigations into the source of the illness by the Trump administration. There have been a number of theories about the source of what some experts now believe may have been a psychotronic weapon emitting pulsed radio frequency/microwave bursts directed at the U.S. and Canadian embassies and diplomatic housing areas in Havana. These bursts resulted in the targets suffering from the Frey effect, which manifests itself with ringing, buzzing, grinding, or clicking auditory sensations. Continue reading →
Donald Trump and his acolytes are often complaining about the “deep state.” When asked to describe their “deep state,” Trumpists are unable to provide a coherent answer. Some spew forth the stock villains often cited by the far-right: the CIA, the Federal Reserve, the Vatican, George Soros, the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, the globalists, and, of course, their traditional target, the Jews. Continue reading →
To the delight of autocrats around the world, from Brazil’s neo-fascist President Jair Bolsonaro to Hungarian quasi-dictator Viktor Orban, Donald Trump and his cult-of-personality Republican Party have driven the United States into a category that was once the domain of Third World nations. Widespread belief among Trump loyalists that elections are “fixed” has undermined faith in the American political process. It was similar propaganda put forth by Adolf Hitler that convinced many Germans in the 1930s that elections were merely a waste of time, a mindset that allowed Hitler to scrap Germany’s democratic constitution and declare a “Thousand Year” Nazi Reich. Continue reading →
It comes as no real surprise that on October 2, The New York Times ran what many objective journalists and pundits are calling a puff-piece by Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt on Donald Trump’s “coup lawyer” John Eastman. The sub-text of the headline states: “John Eastman was a little-known but respected conservative lawyer.” Critics of the article point out that Eastman was considered as a fringe attorney not much different than Trump’s “Kraken” lawyer, Sidney Powell, or the clearly unhinged Lin Wood, not to mention the lying drunk and flatulent Rudolph Giuliani. Continue reading →
At least two members of the dominant Trump faction on the Supreme Court are worthy of being investigated for their possible roles in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Justice Samuel Alito was considered the “go-to” member of the court by one-time Donald Trump election challenge attorney Sidney Powell. Powell, whose veracity on a number of issues has been shown to be severely lacking, may have acted out of character by revealing the game plan behind Trump’s encouragement of his supporters halting the congressional certification of the Electoral College count on January 6. Continue reading →
Certain far-right political parties that hoped to capitalize on their anti-vaccine and anti-public health messages to gain power in elections during the last month have come away sorely disappointed. Voters in California, Canada, Germany, and Iceland firmly rejected so-called “populist” parties and their candidates that argued against vaccination mandates and masking in public places. Continue reading →
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gambled his Liberal Party government’s political future by calling a snap election and, defying many polls, came out ahead of his main rival, the increasingly Trump-like Conservative Party. Following the September 20 national election, Trudeau will continue to govern with a 157-seat minority government in Parliament, having failed to achieve the 170-seats required to form a majority government. The Conservatives failed in their attempt to oust Trudeau and the Liberals, winning only 119 seats. As was the case before the snap election, Trudeau’s Liberals will be required to seek the support of either the third-place finisher, the Bloc Quebecois, and/or the fourth-place New Democratic Party (NDP). Continue reading →
With alarming frequency, Trumpists, including Qanon cultists and white nationalists, are running for political office across the United States at the local level, a strategy known as entryism. Entryists have no desire to improve government or public education. They seek office only to subvert good governance and civic responsibility. Continue reading →
The Trump administration and, specifically, Donald Trump’s trade negotiator, the virulent anti-China Peter Navarro, relied initially on advice for the COVID-19 virus on Dr. Steven Hatfill, the individual named by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft as a “person of interest” in the post-September 11, 2001 anthrax attacks on political figures and the media. Continue reading →
For the last 30 or so years, it has not mattered whether you tune into the televised news in Kansas City or Khartoum or Denver or Dar es Salaam, a few seconds of viewing and hearing news introductions have had the same effect: you are mesmerized by techniques developed by psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychological warfare experts to keep your attention and lure you into the trance-like state. Once you are hypnotized, you will have the tendency to believe whatever is being transmitted to you by news readers who are merely following what they are seeing on teleprompters. Continue reading →
Texas SB 8, also known as the Texas Heartbeat Act, is based on a law enacted in 1933 in Nazi Germany and signed into effect in May 1933 by Chancellor Adolf Hitler—Gesetz zur Anderung strafrechtlicher Vorschriften vom 26.Mai J933. Like the Texas law, the Nazi measure banned the advertising of abortions by doctors or hospitals. It also prohibited Aryan women from receiving abortions or being administered abortifacients, abortion-inducing substances, including herbal and prescription drugs. Continue reading →
Texas has now become a real-life version of the dystopian Republic of Gilead, the christofascist dictatorship depicted in Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and in the eponymous Netflix series. On the heels of Texas restricting suffrage to Hispanics, African-Americans, disabled, and others by instituting a voting law that unfairly targets minorities and permits violent neo-Nazi thugs to harass voters, it has now instituted a Gestapo-like informant system that rewards private citizens for suing women and others believed to be involved in having and enabling abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Many women are not even aware they are pregnant at four to six weeks. Continue reading →
Escaping a possible federal prison term thanks to a presidential pardon from Donald Trump, far-right political strategist Steve Bannon continues to engage in promoting international fascist solidarity, thumbing his nose at the 1799 Logan Act, which prohibits American citizens from engaging in their own foreign policy making. Continue reading →
As more details emerge about two Israeli companies, the corporate leadership of which largely consist of former officers of Unit 8200—Israel’s version of the U.S. National Security Agency—it is clear that Israeli intelligence has embarked on a policy of privately profiting from its signals intelligence capabilities. By transferring sophisticated communications intercept technology to the private sector, which, in turn, sells it to governments that are among some of the world’s worst human rights violators, Israel has again demonstrated that it places profits over propriety. Continue reading →
The COVID-19 coronavirus will continue to spread around the nation and mutate so long as there are selfish citizens who continue to disregard public health officials, the medical research community, and the president of the United States. As long as there are individuals who refuse to understand the seriousness of COVID-19 and its various mutations: Continue reading →
We interrupt the eulogies for Bob Dole for some important facts
Posted on December 8, 2021 by Wayne Madsen
We interrupt the eulogies for former Senator Bob Dole to bring the readers a few important facts. Normally, when some old politician dies, it is wise to follow the Latin dictum: De mortuis nihil nisi bonum (“Of the dead, [say] nothing but good”). However, in Bob Dole’s case, we must make a few exceptions. Continue reading →