Author Archives: Wayne Madsen

Trump has his own “deep state” and it’s more dangerous than any other

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

Trump’s undermining of the electoral process gives U.S. Third World nation status

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

The media’s normalization of Trump’s coup attempt

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

Members of the Supreme Court should be investigated for role in insurrection

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

Trump, Kushner and other real estate thieves should take notice of Berlin

Voters in Berlin not only re-elected a Social Democratic-Green-Left coalition government but also voted for a non-binding referendum that calls for the Berlin government to purchase at a fair market value some 243,000 apartments owned mainly by two German companies, Vonovia and Deutsche Wohnen SE. The cost of purchasing the rental units is estimated to be some $45 billion. Housing costs have skyrocketed in the German capital as German real estate companies continue to charge tenants usurious rents. Continue reading

Voters in four elections reject anti-public health parties

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

Neo-fascist party in Canada makes a mark in election; its vote count shouldn’t fool anyone

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

Qanon-aligned Trumpists seeking political power at the local level

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

Trump’s COVID-19 adviser was FBI’s “person of interest” in post-9/11 anthrax attacks

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

9/11: The day before

Monday, September 10, 2001 was, for many people, just another beginning of the work week. For this reporter, I had just returned to Washington on September 9 from a previous week’s speaking engagement in Helsinki. I vividly recall that just after my flight took off from JFK Airport in New York, the plane flew just south of the southern tip of Manhattan. I had a picture postcard view of the World Trade Center towers, which were brilliantly reflecting the setting sunlight from the west. I recall thinking to myself that those two buildings represented one of the greatest marvels of modern construction. Little did I realize that in less than 48 hours, those gleaming buildings would be replaced by a gigantic heap of rubble, office furniture, and, most grotesquely of all, human remains. Continue reading

The hypnotic effects of news intros have lulled us into wars, complacency, and worse

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 abortion law is based on similar measure in Nazi Germany

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 actions make it a prime candidate for international sanctions

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

Republican Party: Spam like we’ve never seen it

The Republican Party has surpassed assorted phony Nigerian princes and erectile dysfunction pill pushers in flooding email in-boxes across the nation with appeals for cash. At the top of the list is the former guy (Donald Trump). His emails, sent from “Save America,” lead with “Joe Biden Must Resign.” And for a contribution to Trump, he can allegedly make that happen. Save your money, Joe Biden isn’t going anywhere. Continue reading

Bannon continues to unite global fascists against free and fair elections

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

Israel privatized communications intelligence intercept technology

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

Selfishness over selfless citizenship will sustain the pandemic and create further mutations

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

Foreign cash bought the White House for Trump

Projection sums up the entire four years of Donald Trump’s chaotic administration in that while he and his cohorts were trying to convince the world that Joe Biden was tied financially in some way to Ukraine and China, his administration was bought and paid for by foreign interests. In addition to cash outlays to Team Trump, Steve Bannon’s international bloc of fascist parties and individuals contributed in kind with social media gaslighting and other propaganda campaigns designed to perpetuate unfounded rumor on Biden, Covid-19, and other subjects. Continue reading

With Trump or Biden in the White House, Putin wins

When Donald Trump was in the White House, things could not have been better for Russia’s would-be czar, Vladimir Putin. With Joe Biden now in the White House, things cannot be better for Vladimir Putin. This seems counterintuitive, but why? Biden is such a fossilized politician of the past when it comes to 21st century diplomacy, he does not understand, nor do his staff of academician and think tank foreign policy and national security wonks, that the way to marginalize Putin is not by supporting dodgy characters like Alexei Navalny. Navalny has, in the past, made common cause with Russian far-right nationalists, including neo-Nazis. Nor is backing sexual deviants like the Pussy Riot group a way to hit back at Putin. What people like Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, CIA director William Burns, and others fail to realize is that the strongest pro-democracy and pro-ethnic rights party in Russia is the Russian Federation Communist Party, the only force that Putin continues to fear. Continue reading

Was Pegasus used by Trump and Kushner to blackmail U.S. politicians?

Revelations by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Israeli sales of NSO Group’s Pegasus smart phone surveillance program closely matched the foreign trips of former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu have raised the possibility that Jared Kushner, who participated in Netanyahu’s diplomatic trips to countries using Pegasus, also used Pegasus to eavesdrop on the communications of Republicans who, virtually overnight, became loyalists of Donald Trump. Continue reading

Mossad has a “Who’s Who?” communications file of world leaders and businessmen thanks to Pegasus malware program

Chalk it up as a given that Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency has back door access to smart phone users whose devices were penetrated by the malware Trojan horse called Pegasus by its Israeli vendor, NSO Group. As is always the case when Israel gets caught spying, they have denied doing anything wrong in selling Pegasus to various brutal regimes around the world to spy on journalists, opposition politicians and activists, and businessmen. Continue reading

Pegasus’s victims, Erik Prince, and Israel’s contempt for international law

It should come as no surprise that among the most avid customers for the Israeli NSO Group’s Pegasus smart phone tracking and surveillance system are some of the world’s most repressive regimes. These include Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Bahrain, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and the Saudi/UAE puppet regime representing the largely defunct Yemen Arab Republic. The perfidy of these Arab governments in dealing with the harshest elements of Israel’s government, namely, its military-intelligence complex, goes a long way in explaining why the Palestinian people continue to constitute one of the world’s most persecuted population. Continue reading

Pegasus and NSO at center of sweeping and dangerous Mossad surveillance operation

A joint report by several media organizations around the world and Amnesty International has revealed that the Israeli intelligence-linked NSO Group has provided an invasive smart phone tracking software known as Pegasus to some of the world’s most brutal regimes to spy on journalists, politicians, and human rights advocates. The conclusions about NSO Group and Pegasus provide addition proof that Israel’s intentions are predominantly malign in the area of intelligence and security operations. Continue reading

Critical race theory bugbear really targets the teaching of critical thinking

The right-wing is using the mantra of critical race theory as part of an overall assault on public education’s teaching of critical thinking. The ability of students to question subjective subjects like history, religion, politics, and race relations lies at the heart of the right’s attempt to wipe school curricula clean of topics over which they will accept only their biased, bigoted, and incorrect versions. Continue reading

Haiti assassination bears all the markings of an Erik Prince operation

With the Haitian National Police confirming what WMR suspected in our July 8 report, that foreign mercenaries were behind the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse on January 7, it is past time for the United States to clip the wings of American mercenary brigands like Erik Prince, Kent Kroeker, Jordan Goudreau, and others. The assassination team that was sent into Haiti to dispatch Moïse included two Haitian-Americans and 26 Colombians. Police Chief Leon Charles produced 17 captured members of the assassination team to the press on July 8 in Port-au-Prince, along with confiscated Colombian passports, weapons, and communications equipment, and other gear. The two Haitian-Americans arrested by police were identified as James Solages and Joseph Vincent. Four of the Colombians identified are Alejandro Giraldo Zapata, John Jairo Ramírez Gómez, Víctor Albeiro Piñera, and Mauricio Grosso Guarin. There have been a few reports that members of the assassination team were masquerading as agents for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which maintains a sizable presence in Colombia. Continue reading

Haiti the latest victim of the mercenary bonanza started by Erik Prince

In a case of “you reap what you sow,” foreign mercenaries speaking Spanish and English are believed to have staged a daring July 7 assassination of the president of Haiti, Jovenel Moïse, at his home in Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital. Some of the English-speakers reportedly had “Southern accents.” Moïse’s wife, Martine Moïse, was severely wounded in the attack. She was flown to Miami where she is listed in serious but stable condition at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Continue reading

Welcome to the age of buffoonery

What explains a few thousand people showing up during a rainstorm in order to hear Donald Trump’s all-too-familiar old white guy grievance speech in Sarasota, Florida, the one-time home of Ringling Brothers Circus? Even more bizarre is why thousands arrived early in circus town to listen to the neo-Nazi ramblings of a Florida congressman—Matt Gaetz—criticizing the American military and promising to vote for Trump for House Speaker if the Republicans regain control of the House in 2024. It obviously did not matter one whit to the crowd of Trump supporters and cannibal/pedophile-obsessed Qanon cultists that Gaetz is under federal investigation for the sexual trafficking of underage girls. Continue reading

Trump Organization indicted as a criminal enterprise; WMR called it one in 2017

A Manhattan grand jury indicted the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, on multiple felony fraud charges. The indictment, filed in state court in New York on July 1 named three Trump entities, the Trump Corporation, Trump Organization, and Trump Payroll Corporation, along with Weisselberg. On June 2, 2017, after an extensive investigation of the Trump Organization and its various corporate artifices and contrivances, WMR reported that the company “encompasses at least two dozen different countries involved in money laundering, registration of dummy corporations, and providing passports for key members of the Trump Organization and its criminal syndicate partner, the Kushner Companies.” The latter operation is run by Trump’s son-in-law and former White House adviser, Jared Kushner. Continue reading

Biden’s hypocrisy on press freedom

President Biden condemned China on June 24 for exerting pressure on Hong Kong to close down the special region’s only remaining pro-democracy newspaper, Apple Daily. Biden said, “It is a sad day for media freedom in Hong Kong and around the world,”adding, “through arrests, threats, and forcing through a National Security Law that penalizes free speech, Beijing has insisted on wielding its power to suppress independent media and silence dissenting views.” Continue reading

Mike Gravel: fond recollections

Last week, when I received an email from former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel’s wife, Whitney, I figured the news would not be good. Mike, whose longshot presidential campaign I supported after he announced his candidacy for the 2008 Democratic nomination on April 17, 2006, had been transferred to hospice care in California. Sadly, Mike succumbed on June 26 to multiple myeloma, a cancer of the blood plasma cells. Mike’s family and I were hoping he would, at least, make it to June 29—today—the 50th anniversary of his reading of the then-classified Pentagon Papers in the Senate and, thus, into the Congressional Record. Continue reading

The many-tentacled Kraken of present-day fascism

Counter-intelligence and counter-terrorism analysts make a dangerous mistake when they lump all of the present-day fascist movements—of which there are several—under one monolithic description. The manifestation of fascism within American politics, with the Republican Party now clearly espousing fascist and anti-democratic principles, has resulted in various fascist factions vying for political control of both the party and national, state, and local government. Continue reading

A few words to ponder

In a world ravaged by a deadly viral pandemic and a nation recovering from a violent coup attempt, the words of famed science fiction writer Philip K. Dick are prescient. Continue reading