Author Archives: Wayne Madsen

Although Donald Trump’s presidency is well-known for its antipathy toward the press, one of the main targets for Trump’s ire was Spy magazine, which was published from 1986 to 1998. Spy’s editors, Kurt Anderson and Graydon Carter, set an editorial policy for its many articles on Donald Trump and his New York social life that referred to the real estate magnate as the “casino operator from Queens.” That got under Trump’s skin because he believed he had become a member of Manhattan’s royal elite and did not deserve to be connected to “working class” Queens. When Spy wasn’t dishing on Trump by describing him as a shady casino owner from Queens, it referred to him as a “short-fingered vulgarian,” further setting off the short-tempered egotist. Continue reading →

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues its deadly march around the world, a number of relatively dormant conflicts, as well as several well-known flash points, stand ready to place the world on the edge of a major armed conflict. History shows us that during times of stress—economic depression, religious strife, vacuums of political leadership, and public health crises like that which is now plaguing the world—the chances for war increase commensurately. Continue reading →

Likability is a trait that politicians across the political spectrum seek to achieve during their careers. Achieving popularity among the masses requires empathy and rationality, two elements that politicians of the right-wing, many of whom believe they are “populists,” lack. With the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, an overwhelming majority of those political leaders who have seen their popularity rise are those who cared more for the health and safety of their constituents than in the value of stock market shares. Continue reading →

The University of Pennsylvania was founded in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin in 1740 to serve as a center of liberal arts education to train the next generation of colonial American leaders in commerce, government, and public service, three disciplines that were never mastered by one of the university’s graduates, Donald Trump. In fact, according to the information provided in the blockbuster book, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” by Dr. Mary L. Trump, Trump’s niece and a clinical psychologist, the University of Pennsylvania should invalidate Trump’s Bachelor of Science degree in Economics because Trump paid a friend, Joe Shapiro, to take his college admission SATs. A sharper mind than the simpleminded Trump, Shapiro’s performance on Trump’s SATs earned Trump admission into Fordham University for two years and a follow-on transfer to Penn. Continue reading →

Donald Trump’s son-in-law and special assistant in charge of everything and his “Stupid Rasputin,” Jared Kushner, has made his move. Kushner, who favors a return to economic normalcy during the Covid-19 pandemic, does not feel the same about the November 3 election. Continue reading →

There are growing signs that the coronavirus pandemic will radically alter the geo-political map of the world. The governors, prime ministers, premiers, chief ministers, and administrators of sub-national governments have been almost unanimous in decrying the lack of support from central governments during the current COVID-19 crisis. Not least among these have been the governors of the American states of New York, Michigan, Washington, and other states and U.S. territories. Continue reading →

Throughout the world in countries that elected right-wing anti-government libertarian leaders—from the United States and Brazil to the United Kingdom and Australia—incompetence and lack of preparedness for the Covid-19 pandemic will directly lead to hundreds of thousands of needless deaths. The political rhetoric of those leaders who practice “barbarian laissez-faire” policies have been exposed by Covid-19 as worthless pablum designed to enthrall their unthinking supporters. Continue reading →

The coronavirus pandemic has had a deadly toll on the world’s population. However, the pandemic has also seen another, collateral, victim. Various forms of federations, where a central executive should provide an equal safety and health umbrella over all of the constituent parts of the federal entity, have seen the centers shirk their responsibilities and either failed to act for the nation as a whole or played favorites with certain member constituencies. Two of the most egregious failures of federal structures during the pandemic have been two countries led by megalomaniac far-right conspiracy-believing presidents, namely, the United States and Brazil. Continue reading →

Contrary to ruminations from far right-wing Republicans, including Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marco Rubio of Florida, as well as fundamentalist crackpot Jerry Falwell, Jr., that COVID-19 involves either a willful or accidental biological warfare operation set in motion by China or North Korea, the facts are that the deadly virus involves no military or intelligence service. The fact that every military and intelligence service on the planet has been negatively impacted and severely hobbled by the virus is evidence that there are no strategic military winners and only losers with respect to the pandemic. It is Donald Trump’s senior Republican officials and evangelical supporters who are pushing such nonsense that COVID-19 is a biological warfare attack. It is proof of the paucity of any level of military or intelligence expertise in the Republican Party and the Trump administration. Continue reading →

In the 2016 science fiction sequel, Independence Day: Resurgence, actor Jeff Goldblum, describing the targeting priorities of aliens invading the Earth, says, “They like to get the landmarks.” In both Independence Day and its sequel, movie viewers were treated to scenes of macabre-looking extraterrestrials destroying the Empire State Building, the White House, Los Angeles’s Tower Records building, and London’s Tower Bridge and “the Eye” wheel. Continue reading →