The Anti-Empire Report #144 by William Blum

The Anti-Empire Report #144


By William Blum – Published March 11th, 2016




14

American exceptionalism presents an election made in hell


If the American presidential election winds up with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated, and I’m somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I’m PAID to do so, paid well … I would vote for Trump.


My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment. And when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is an unholy disaster. From Iraq and Syria to Libya and Honduras the world is a much worse place because of her; so much so that I’d call her a war criminal who should be prosecuted. And not much better can be expected on domestic issues from this woman who was paid $675,000 by Goldman Sachs – one of the most reactionary, anti-social corporations in this sad world – for four speeches and even more than that in political donations in recent years. Add to that Hillary’s willingness to serve for six years on the board of Walmart while her husband was governor of Arkansas. Can we expect to change corporate behavior by taking their money?


The Los Angeles Times ran an editorial the day after the multiple primary elections of March 1 which began: “Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States,” and then declared: “The reality is that Trump has no experience whatsoever in government.”


When I need to have my car fixed I look for a mechanic with experience with my type of auto. When I have a medical problem I prefer a doctor who specializes in the part of my body that’s ill. But when it comes to politicians, experience means nothing. The only thing that counts is the person’s ideology. Who would you sooner vote for, a person with 30 years in Congress who doesn’t share your political and social views at all, is even hostile to them, or someone who has never held public office before but is an ideological comrade on every important issue? Clinton’s 12 years in high government positions carries no weight with me.


The Times continued about Trump: “He has shamefully little knowledge of the issues facing the country and the world.”


Again, knowledge is trumped (no pun intended) by ideology. As Secretary of State (January 2009-February 2013), with great access to knowledge, Clinton played a key role in the 2011 destruction of Libya’s modern and secular welfare state, sending it crashing in utter chaos into a failed state, leading to the widespread dispersal throughout North African and Middle East hotspots of the gigantic arsenal of weaponry that Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi had accumulated. Libya is now a haven for terrorists, from al Qaeda to ISIS, whereas Gaddafi had been a leading foe of terrorists.


What good did Secretary of State Clinton’s knowledge do? It was enough for her to know that Gaddafi’s Libya, for several reasons, would never be a properly obedient client state of Washington. Thus it was that the United States, along with NATO, bombed the people of Libya almost daily for more than six months, giving as an excuse that Gaddafi was about to invade Benghazi, the Libyan center of his opponents, and so the United States was thus saving the people of that city from a massacre. The American people and the American media of course swallowed this story, though no convincing evidence of the alleged impending massacre has ever been presented. (The nearest thing to an official US government account of the matter – a Congressional Research Service report on events in Libya for the period – makes no mention at all of the threatened massacre.)


The Western intervention in Libya was one that the New York Times said Clinton had “championed”, convincing Obama in “what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state.” All the knowledge she was privy to did not keep her from this disastrous mistake in Libya. And the same can be said about her support of placing regime change in Syria ahead of supporting the Syrian government in its struggle against ISIS and other terrorist groups. Even more disastrous was the 2003 US invasion of Iraq which she as a senator supported. Both policies were of course clear violations of international law and the UN Charter.


Another foreign-policy “success” of Mrs. Clinton, which her swooning followers will ignore, the few that even know about it, is the coup ousting the moderately progressive Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in June, 2009. A tale told many times in Latin America. The downtrodden masses finally put into power a leader committed to reversing the status quo, determined to try to put an end to up to two centuries of oppression … and before long the military overthrows the democratically-elected government, while the United States – if not the mastermind behind the coup – does nothing to prevent it punish the coup regime, as only the United States can punish; meanwhile Washington officials pretend to be very upset over this “affront to democracy”. (See Mark Weisbrot’s “Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side The United States Government is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras”.)


In her 2014 memoir, “Hard Choices”, Clinton reveals just how unconcerned she was about restoring Zelaya to his rightful office: “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere … We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”


The question of Zelaya was anything but moot. Latin American leaders, the United Nations General Assembly, and other international bodies vehemently demanded his immediate return to office. Washington, however, quickly resumed normal diplomatic relations with the new right-wing police state, and Honduras has since become a major impetus for the child migrants currently pouring into the United States.


The headline from Time magazine’s report on Honduras at the close of that year (December 3, 2009) summed it up as follows: “Obama’s Latin America Policy Looks Like Bush’s”.


And Hillary Clinton looks like a conservative. And has for many years; going back to at least the 1980s, while the wife of the Arkansas governor, when she strongly supported the death-squad torturers known as the Contras, who were the empire’s proxy army in Nicaragua.


Then, during the 2007 presidential primary, America’s venerable conservative magazine, William Buckley’s National Review, ran an editorial by Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett was a policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan, a treasury official under President George H.W. Bush, and a fellow at two of the leading conservative think-tanks, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute – You get the picture? Bartlett tells his readers that it’s almost certain that the Democrats will win the White House in 2008. So what to do? Support the most conservative Democrat. He writes: “To right-wingers willing to look beneath what probably sounds to them like the same identical views of the Democratic candidates, it is pretty clear that Hillary Clinton is the most conservative.”


During the same primary we also heard from America’s leading magazine for the corporate wealthy,Fortune, with a cover featuring a picture of Mrs. Clinton and the headline: “Business Loves Hillary”.


And what do we have in 2016? Fully 116 members of the Republican Party’s national security community, many of them veterans of Bush administrations, have signed an open letter threatening that, if Trump is nominated, they will all desert, and some will defect – to Hillary Clinton! “Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin,” says Eliot Cohen of the Bush II State Department. Cohen helped line up neocons to sign the “Dump-Trump” manifesto. Another signer, foreign-policy ultra-conservative author Robert Kagan, declared: “The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.”


The only choice? What’s wrong with Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate? … Oh, I see, not conservative enough.


And Mr. Trump? Much more a critic of US foreign policy than Hillary or Bernie. He speaks of Russia and Vladimir Putin as positive forces and allies, and would be much less likely to go to war against Moscow than Clinton would. He declares that he would be “evenhanded” when it comes to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (as opposed to Clinton’s boundless support of Israel). He’s opposed to calling Senator John McCain a “hero”, because he was captured. (What other politician would dare say a thing like that?)


He calls Iraq “a complete disaster”, condemning not only George W. Bush but the neocons who surrounded him. “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.” He even questions the idea that “Bush kept us safe”, and adds that “Whether you like Saddam or not, he used to kill terrorists.”


Yes, he’s personally obnoxious. I’d have a very hard time being his friend. Who cares?
CIA motto: “Proudly overthrowing the Cuban government since 1959.”


Now what? Did you think that the United States had finally grown up and come to the realization that they could in fact share the same hemisphere as the people of Cuba, accepting Cuban society as unquestioningly as they do that of Canada? The Washington Post (February 18) reported: “In recent weeks, administration officials have made it clear Obama would travel to Cuba only if its government made additional concessions in the areas of human rights, Internet access and market liberalization.”


Imagine if Cuba insisted that the United States make “concessions in the area of human rights”; this could mean the United States pledging to not repeat anything like the following:


Invading Cuba in 1961 at the Bay of Pigs.


Invading Grenada in 1983 and killing 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers.


Blowing up a passenger plane full of Cubans in 1976. (In 1983, the city of Miami held a day in honor of Orlando Bosch, one of the two masterminds behind this awful act; the other perpetrator, Luis Posada, was given lifetime protection in the same city.)


Giving Cuban exiles, for their use, the virus which causes African swine fever, forcing the Cuban government to slaughter 500,000 pigs.


Infecting Cuban turkeys with a virus which produces the fatal Newcastle disease, resulting in the deaths of 8,000 turkeys.


In 1981 an epidemic of dengue hemorrhagic fever swept the island, the first major epidemic of DHF ever in the Americas. The United States had long been experimenting with using dengue fever as a weapon. Cuba asked the United States for a pesticide to eradicate the mosquito involved but were not given it. Over 300,000 cases were reported in Cuba with 158 fatalities.


These are but three examples of decades-long CIA chemical and biological warfare (CBW) against Cuba. We must keep in mind that food is a human right (although the United States has repeatedly denied this.


Washington maintained a blockade of goods and money entering Cuba that is still going strong, a blockade that President Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, in 1997 called “the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation in the history of mankind”.


Attempted to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro on numerous occasions, not only in Cuba, but in Panama, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.


In one scheme after another in recent years, Washington’s Agency for International Development (AID) endeavored to cause dissension in Cuba and/or stir up rebellion, the ultimate goal being regime change.


In 1999 a Cuban lawsuit demanded $181.1 billion in US compensation for death and injury suffered by Cuban citizens in four decades “war” by Washington against Cuba. Cuba asked for $30 million in direct compensation for each of the 3,478 people it said were killed by US actions and $15 million each for the 2,099 injured. It also asked for $10 million each for the people killed, and $5 million each for the injured, to repay Cuban society for the costs it has had to assume on their behalf.


Needless to say, the United States has not paid a penny of this.


One of the most common Yankee criticisms of the state of human rights in Cuba has been the arrest of dissidents (although the great majority are quickly released). But many thousands of anti-war and other protesters have been arrested in the United States in recent years, as in every period in American history. During the Occupy Movement, which began in 2011, more than 7,000 people were arrested in about the first year, many were beaten by police and mistreated while in custody, their street displays and libraries smashed to pieces. ; the Occupy movement continued until 2014; thus, the figure of 7,000 is an understatement.)


Moreover, it must be kept in mind that whatever restrictions on civil liberties there may be in Cuba exist within a particular context: The most powerful nation in the history of the world is just 90 miles away and is sworn – vehemently and repeatedly sworn – to overthrowing the Cuban government. If the United States was simply and sincerely concerned with making Cuba a less restrictive society, Washington’s policy would be clear cut:
Call off the wolves – the CIA wolves, the AID wolves, the doctor-stealer wolves, the baseball-player-stealer wolves.
Publicly and sincerely (if American leaders still remember what this word means) renounce their use of CBW and assassinations. And apologize.
Cease the unceasing hypocritical propaganda – about elections, for example. (Yes, it’s true that Cuban elections never feature a Donald Trump or a Hillary Clinton, nor ten billion dollars, nor 24 hours of campaign ads, but is that any reason to write them off?)
Pay compensation – a lot of it.
Sine qua non – end the God-awful blockade.


Throughout the period of the Cuban revolution, 1959 to the present, Latin America has witnessed a terrible parade of human rights violations – systematic, routine torture; legions of “disappeared” people; government-supported death squads picking off selected individuals; massacres en masse of peasants, students and other groups. The worst perpetrators of these acts during this period have been the military and associated paramilitary squads of El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, Haiti and Honduras. However, not even Cuba’s worst enemies have made serious charges against the Havana government for any of such violations; and if one further considers education and health care, “both of which,” said President Bill Clinton, “work better [in Cuba] than most other countries” , and both of which are guaranteed by the United Nations “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and the “European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”, then it would appear that during the more-than-half century of its revolution, Cuba has enjoyed one of the very best human-rights records in all of Latin America.


But never good enough for American leaders to ever touch upon in any way; the Bill Clinton quote being a rare exception indeed. It’s a tough decision to normalize relations with a country whose police force murders its own innocent civilians on almost a daily basis. But Cuba needs to do it. Maybe they can civilize the Americans a bit, or at least remind them that for more than a century they have been the leading torturers of the world.








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Notes
“Libya: Transition and U.S. Policy”, updated March 4, 2016.
New York Times, February 28, 2016
Mark Weisbrot, “Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side The United States Government is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras”, Common Dreams, December 16, 2009
Roger Morris, former member of the National Security Council, Partners in Power (1996), p.415. For a comprehensive look at Hillary Clinton, see the new book by Diane Johnstone,Queen of Chaos.
National Review online, May 1, 2007
Fortune magazine, July 9, 2007
Patrick J. Buchanan, “Will the Oligarchs Kill Trump?”, Creators.com, March 08, 2016
William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (2005), chapter 14
Ibid., p.264
White House press briefing, November 14, 1997, US Newswire transcript
Fabian Escalante, Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro (2006), Ocean Press (Australia)
Huffington Post, May 3, 2012
Miami Herald, October 17, 1997, p.22A


Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to williamblum.org is provided.

SPECIAL REPORT. Scalia's hunting ranch was meeting place for secret society by Wayne Madsen Report

SPECIAL REPORT. Scalia's hunting ranch was meeting place for secret society
The story of the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia's last hours spent at the exclusive Cibolo Creek Ranch nestled in the Chinati Mountains, near Marfa, Texas, is as strange as the peculiar treatment his body received after his sudden death during his first night at the 30,000 acre compound. WMR's editor first speculated that there was more going on at ranch with Scalia and 35 other men during the Valentine's Day/President's Day weekend. First, it was a male-only "hunting" Valentine's Day weekend event for some influential married and family-oriented figures, including Scalia. Scalia's "friend" from Washington, who accompanied him from Washington to Houston where they boarded a private jet the Cibolo Creek Ranch airport, was also kept secret.

That was until the most unlikeliest of all sources, the "connected" Washington Post, revealed on February 24 that the hunting event attended by Scalia included a number of officials of the over three-century old International Order of St. Hubertus, founded in 1695 by Count Franz Anton von Sporck of the Kingdom of Bohemia, a vassal state of the Habsburg Empire. Today, the order is presided over by its "Grand Master His Imperial and Royal Highness Istvan von Habsburg Lothringen, Archduke of Austria, Prince of Hungary." The secretive hunting order, which upholds the Latin motto, "Deum Diligite Animalia Diligentes” or “Honoring God by Honoring His Creatures,” claims royal protection under "His Majesty Juan Carlos of Spain, the Grand Master Emeritus His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Andreas Salvator of Austria," as well as Istvan von Habsburg Lothringen.

As far as its motto of "honoring God's creatures," King Juan Carlos of Spain ultimately fell from power after hunting scandals. In 2012, the king was photographed in front of an elephant in Botswana, which was shot to death by hunters. In 2006, the king rejected as false a rumor that he shot a bear in Russia that was plied with vodka. As a teenager, Juan Carlos shot and killed his brother Alfonso in an accident in Portugal. The pistol was allegedly given to Alfonso as a gift from General Franco, Spain's dictator. Spanish priest Josémaria Escriva founded the far-right wing Catholic Opus Dei sect, of which Scalia was a member, in 1928, under the patronage of Franco.

The circumstances surrounding Alfonso's death in 1956 remain clouded in mystery. Juan Carlos, a member of the royal House of Bourbon, abdicated the Spanish throne in 2014.


Juan Carlos's reign began to unravel after he was pictured with an elephant, shot to death by hunters in Botswana.

Ranch owner, Houston billionaire businessman John B. Poindexter, has been reticent about revealing the identities of the other 35 guests who stayed at the ranch with Scalia. Nor has Poindexter provided the names of other special guests who have participated in similar gratis functions held about three times a year. Poindexter did reveal that when he discovered Scalia's lifeless body, a pillow was partially covering his face.

It is now known, thanks to the Post article, which normally would be derided by the corporate media as "conspiracy theory" speculation had it appeared in any web-based publication, that Scalia's friend from Washington is C. Allen Foster, a prominent Republican trial lawyer who has argued cases before the Supreme Court. Foster ran as the Republican candidate for Attorney General of North Carolina in 1984.


Scalia attorney friend C. Allen Foster who left the U.S. for a trip to Argentina after Scalia's funeral in DC. Argentina's new right-wing president, Mauricio Macri, is affiliated with the right-wing Catholic sect Opus Dei. Foster is with the law firm of Whiteford Taylor Preston at 1800 M Street, NW Washington. The International Order of St. Hubertus, American chapter uses a UPS rental mailbox, or "suite," at 2100 M Street.

Last year, Poindexter's firm had an age discrimination case before the Supreme Court, which it, Scalia included, decided not to hear, providing a victory for Poindexter, the defendant. Foster could not be reached by the Post because his office said he was traveling in Argentina.


The 2013 investiture in Madrid of the International Order of St. Hubertus. Cibolo Creek Ranch owner John B. Poindexter is in front row. Poindexter is also the leader of the green-caped order's Southwest Priory, consisting of Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Arkansas. The order's Maltese Cross symbol suggests a tie-in with the Catholic Knights of Malta.
St. Hubertus's American chapter began in 1966 under the auspices of San Francisco's elite Bohemian Club, which sponsors an annual Bohemian Grove encampment in a dense forest north of San Francisco. The event has drawn the world's movers and shakers, including David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, and was once condemned by President Richard Nixon on White House tapes as "the most faggy Goddamn thing you could ever imagine." The event features male-only nudism as part of male bonding pagan ceremonies.

Poindexter and Foster are prominent members of the St. Hubertus Order as are two other guests from the hunting outing at Cibolo Creek at which Scalia died. The Post identified two private jets that arrived at Cibolo Creek airport from San Antonio just after that carrying Scalia and Foster arrived at noon from Houston. The two other jets, which departed Sunday, February 14, are owned by Wallace "Happy" Rogers III and A.J. Lewis III, both of San Antonio. Both are Republicans, in the restaurant business, and officers of the male-only Order of St. Hubertus.

So far, the description of Scalia's last outing sounds as if it is torn from the pages of a Dan Brown novel. But it gets better. WMR caught site of a number of Mexican "diablo" artifacts at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, which is odd for a Roman Catholic order like St. Hubertus.

    
Amid the Satanic artifacts, a baby's crib [left]. The ranch only has single beds, including made up beds found in the outside passageways [center], except for the king size bed found in Scalia's suite [right], remade after Scalia's death with door locked. Photos: WMR.
Outside of Scalia's room, the "El Presidente" suite, is a wood-burning pit. There was evidence that on the evening that Scalia died, there was a party outside his suite. There was ash still in the pit, some broken glass, and cigar ashes in the ashtray. Scalia was an avid cigar aficionado. Also found was a box of self-striking matches next to the ashtray, which was alleviated by the WMR editor as a "souvenir." Inside the corridor leading to Scalia's room was a statuette that can only be described as satanic in nature. Scalia's dinner, his last meal, was served under a phalanx of devil masks hanging from the ranch's dining room. A painting reproduction outside the dining room evoked memories of the pre-St. Valentine's Day Roman pagan holiday of Lupercalia, celebrated around February 14th and known for drinking and orgies.

 
Fire pit outside of Scalia's suite showed signs of a recent party: broken glass, cigar ashes, cigarette butts, and ash residue in the pit [left]. A box of strike-anywhere matches [right] was found next to the ashtray. Photos: WMR.


Paintings at ranch highly suggestive of Roman pagan Lupercalia festival in mid-February, a pre-Valentine's Day celebration of sex and orgies. Photo: WMR.


Statuette found in passageway not too far from Scalia's room. Photo: WMR

    
The strict Catholic Scalia had these devil masks staring down at him during his last meal in the ranch's dining room. Photos: WMR.

Discrepancy in Presidio Sheriff's report on Scalia By Wayne Madsen Report

 Discrepancy in Presidio Sheriff's report on Scalia By Wayne Madsen Report
On February 23,Presidio County, Texas Sheriff Danny Doinguez released his sheriff's report on the unattended death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. The report contains a major discrepancy on how Scalia's body was transported from the Cibolo Creek Ranch to the Sunset Funeral Home in El Paso, where it was embalmed. Scalia's body was found in his bed at the ranch on the morning of February 13 after he flew by private plane into the ranch's airport, arriving around noon on February 12.

Dominguez noted in his report noted that a pillow partially covered Scalia's eyes but that it “did not seem to have inhibited Scalia’s breathing.” No autopsy was performed on Scalia's body nor did a qualified medical professional conduct an inquest, which is required under Texas state law. Presidio County District Attorney Rod Ponton claimed that there was nothing suspicious about Scalia's death.

News reports stated that the Alpine Funeral Home in Alpine, Texas was notified that a hearse was needed to transport Scalia's body to the Sunset Funeral Home in El Paso for embalming before being flown back to Washington, DC. However, Dominguez's report states that Scalia's body was transported to El Paso by a hearse sent by the Sunset Funeral Home.




Presidio County judge Cinderela Guevara pronounced Scalia dead over a telephone call with Dominguez, who was at the ranch, at 1:52 pm on February 13. Sarah Vasquez, a reporter for theBig Bend Sentinel, the local newspaper with which Dominguez and the county government has a close relationship, wrote in the February 13 issue that "Alpine Memorial Funeral Home was called to scene" of Scalia's death. But the Sheriff's report states that "at approximately 11:30 pm the El Paso Funeral Home arrived at the ranch to retrieve Scalia's body, and return to the funeral home." It adds, "at approximately 12:00 am (midnight) the funeral home departed the premises with Scalia's body," along with U.S. Marshals and Dominguez. The procession of the hearse and the marshals continued to El Paso, a three hour drive, after arriving in Marfa. Texas Department of Public Safety vehicles accompanied the procession to El Paso. The same Big Bend Sentinel report stated, that Scalia's body was to be "flown to a funeral home in El Paso per the family’s request." The Cibolo Creek Ranch airport can accommodate Gulfstream and Lear jets. If Scalia's body was to be flown anywhere, it could just have easily been flown back to Washington, DC directly from the ranch's airport.

WFAA/Associated Press reported on February 14 that "a funeral home in neighboring Alpine was called to come collect the justice’s remains, which were then transported to El Paso." It is noteworthy that Marfa, which is closer to the ranch than Alpine, also has a funeral home that could have accommodated the needs of the Scalia family, yet it was not used.

The San Antonio Express-News carried a photograph of the Alpine Funeral Home Cadillac hearse leaving the Cibolo Creek Ranch at around 5:00 pm on February 13. The photograph is clearly taken during daylight hours. However, the Sheriff's report states that the El Paso Funeral Home hearse left around midnight on the 13th. Media reports had the hearse arriving at the El Paso funeral home around 2:30 am on February 13th. Why the discrepancy? The Los Angeles Timeslater reported that George Van Etten, the ranch's property manager who works for owner John B. Poindexter, decided to use the Alpine Funeral Home hearse as a decoy to confuse the press. But why would Scalia's body be kept at the ranch for over six hours in order to confuse the press? Only the San Antonio Express-News had a crew outside the ranch's main gate. And why the cloak-and-dagger involved in transporting Scalia's body to El Paso if he died of a heart attack from natural causes?


Alpine Funeral Home hearse leaving Cibolo Creek Ranch at 5:00 pm on February 13. This hearse reportedly did not contain Scalia's body.

The Sheriff's report also identifies, for the first time, the close friend who traveled with Scalia from Washington to the ranch. His name is Allen Foster. Scalia has a friend in Washington named C. Allen Foster, a noted trial lawyer who has argued cases before the Supreme Court.

A tale of two Cubans -- one an American hero, the other not so praiseworthy BY Wayne Madsen

 A tale of two Cubans -- one an American hero, the other not so praiseworthy
BY Wayne Madsen
There are some similarities but many fundamental differences between Cuban immigrants to the United States Otto Macias and Rafael Cruz. Macias, who abandoned Cuba during the throes of the Cuban Revolution, later enlisted in the U.S. Army and was sent to Vietnam. Today, he lives back in Cuba and has seen his veteran's benefits cut-off by the U.S. government. Suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome since Vietnam, Macias returned to Cuba in 1980 to visit relatives and decided not to return to the United States. Macias is a true American hero. He is richly deserving of retroactive payment of his paltry $60 a month veterans' pension, which was cut off by the Department of Veterans Affairs less than a year after her took up residence in Cuba.

Macias's decision to stay in Cuba after opposing Fidel Castro's revolution and fighting against the Communists in Vietnam stands in stark contrast to another Cuban who departed for American shores. In 1957, Rafael Cruz, a former salesman for the U.S. intelligence-linked RCA Corporation, left Cuba for the United States. Cruz claims he fought with Castro against the fascist government of Fulgencio Batista but soured on the revolution. However, Cruz left Cuba two years before the Castro revolution.

Cruz arrived in Austin where he enrolled in the University of Texas. This is a strange story since he claimed he left Cuba with only $100, which he said was sewn into his underwear. Cruz eventually gained U.S. permanent residency and a degree in mathematics from the University of Texas. In 1959, Cruz married Julia Ann Garza and, after Cruz graduated from the University of Texas in 1961, the couple moved to New Orleans from Dallas after the birth of their second daughter on November 18, 1962.

Cruz was in New Orleans during 1963, the year that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison claimed his city was the focal point for the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. The plot involved a number of Cuban exiles. Accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald claimed, as part of his "fake defector" persona developed by the Central Intelligence Agency, to be a member of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The committee just happened to share an office address with Guy Bannister's private investigation agency.

Guy Banister Associates was located on the ground floor of the Newman Building at 5312 Lafayette Street while Oswald's "pro-Castro" Fair Play for Cuba Committee was located around the corner but on the ground floor of the same building but with an address of 544 Camp Street. Banister was a retired FBI agent who continued to carry out tasks for the bureau and the CIA. The Newman Building housed a number of anti-Castro groups, including the Cuban Revolutionary Council, Crusade to Free Cuba Committee, the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front, Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean, and Friends of Democratic Cuba. While living in New Orleans, Cruz was also active with anti-Castro movements and the chances that he did not cross paths with Banister and the other anti-Castro activists, including CIA agent Sergio Arcacha Smith, are highly unlikely for such a close-knit community at the time.

Otto Macias, disabled US Army Vietnam vet, living almost penniless in Havana

While living in New Orleans with his wife and two young daughters, Cruz claimed residency at two addresses, one a low-rent apartment building off of Jackson Avenue. Cruz worked for an oil company in New Orleans. He has been less than forthcoming about the details of his time in New Orleans and the time line that included his move from Dallas.

Cruz and his wife Julia divorced in New Orleans, allegedly in 1963, but this detail is also clouded in mystery. Cruz apparently registered for the draft in 1967 claiming the New Orleans' Jackson Street address. Draft registration was a requirement for resident aliens like Cruz. Cruz apparently waited until the age of 28 to register for the draft, which, because he waited so long, was a criminal offense at the time. While liable for the draft and possible service in Vietnam, a country where fellow Cuban immigrant Otto Macias gladly volunteered to serve, Cruz took off for Calgary, Canada with his second wife, Eleanor Darragh. Darragh, a native of Delaware who graduated from Rice University in Houston, worked for the same oil company in New Orleans that employed Cruz. Their son, Rafael "Ted" Cruz, Jr., now a candidate for president of the United States, claims that his mother and father worked for the same company in New Orleans but there is actually no record of an Eleanor Darragh Wilson Cruz living in New Orleans at the time.

Eleanor Wilson, married to Fort Worth, Texas native Alan Wilson, lived in London from 1960 to 1966. In 1965, their infant son Michael died from crib death. Alan Wilson, who still lives in London, told McClatchy News Service that Michael was not his son. In his autobiography, Senator Ted Cruz not only claims Michael was the son or his mother and Alan but also claims the baby died in 1965. In fact, Michael, according to London vital statistics records, died in 1966 and well after the Wilsons were divorced. Eleanor Cruz, who lives in Houston, has been mum on her marriage to Wilson and her marriage to Cruz, which lasted from 1969 to 1997. Ted Cruz was born in Calgary in 1970 and there is a major question about his eligibility to serve as president since Cruz maintained Canadian citizenship until 2013.

According to experts in Selective Service laws at the time, Cruz fits the description of a draft dodger. He only returned to the United States, with his 4-year old son Ted, Junior, in December 1974. In September 1974, President Gerald Ford offered amnesty for certain classes of draft evaders, including those like Cruz who registered late for the draft.

Cruz later claimed he became an evangelical Christian after returning to Canada from the United States to reunite with his wife and son. Today, Cruz [pictured left] is active with the Christian Dominionist movement that wants the United States transformed into a Christian theocracy.

It turns out that the oil company that Cruz and his wife worked for in Calgary was Rafael B. Cruz and Associates Ltd., which he sold to French-based Compagnie Générale de Géophysique (CCG) in 1974. CCG is linked to the large Schlumberger oil conglomerate, which, along with Halliburton, the two largest oilfield drilling companies in the world. Schlumberger had been active with the CIA and Zapata Offshore Company owned by George H. W. Bush. Moreover, Jean de Menil, the son-in-law of Schlumberger founder Conrad Schlumberger, was a key figure in the Permindex, the New Orleans-based CIA front headed up by Clay Shaw that was a key target of Garrison's investigation of the New Orleans connection to JFK's assassination in Dallas. Here, again, the senior Cruz's time line remains murky, an indication that he had some other sort of employment while in Calgary in Canada and New Orleans and Dallas in the United States.

Rafael Cruz, Sr. did not become a U.S. citizen until 2005. His early years remain clouded in mystery with strong suspicions that his later "finding Jesus" was after a long and clandestine career with the CIA, one that saw him cross paths with presidential assassins, oil company brigands, and other unsavory characters. Meanwhile, Otto Macias, a Vietnam War veteran and American hero, lives pensionless in Havana suffering from skin cancer and all-but-forgotten by the military for which he sacrificed so much. 

Why election anomalies are now the standard to be ignored by Wayne Madsen

 

Why election anomalies are now the standard to be ignored

by Wayne Madsen
After the "grand theft elections" of 2000 and 2004, where Republican election manipulators and engineers led by Karl Rove stole the electoral votes of Florida and Ohio for George W. Bush, the media ignores small electoral anomalies, especially from a few precincts in New Hampshire. But WMR does not ignore these anomalies because small glitches are always indicative of major election counting malfeasance.

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin infamously said, "Those who cast the votesdecide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything." Our present-day versions of Stalin, namely, the elitist presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush/Ted Cruz, live by Stalin's maxim. While Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump easily won the New Hampshire primary against their establishment foes, WMR noticed oddities in the election returns that merited no mention from the Tourette's afflicted and spittle-spraying Chris Matthews, the astoundingly stupid Wolf Blitzer, the Hillary-loving Rachel Maddow, the noted fabulist Brian Williams, or the team of carnival barkers at Fox News.

When we cover the election returns, we don't watch the bloviators on television but carefully watch the live returns coming in to media websites via the election reporting systems of state capital-based Secretaries of State. We do not trust the pooled news media election reporting services that have been so wrong in the past, such as the defunct Voter News Service made infamous in the 2000 election with its wrong calls on Florida.

In an system that promises one person, one vote, certain results should never be seen in election results, including a precinct where the statewide winner of an election does not receive a single vote. When weighed together, these precinct-by-precinct totals do not pass statistical probability muster.

Although most New Hampshire voting precincts use the Diebold AccuVote tabulating machines that optically scan paper ballots, these machines are, by no means, foolproof.

While Sanders and Trump were the runaway victors in New Hampshire, the real contest for the GOP was for the second- and third-place finishers, because these will be the candidates around which the establishment will gravitate toward in the upcoming primaries and caucuses. Ohio Governor John Kasich finished second and the third-place contest was a neck-and-neck race all night long between Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, with the two tied for third place at several points during the night. Cruz ended up winning third place. For Clinton, the game was to try to keep Sanders's percentage below the mid-fifty percentage range. The gambit failed.

Now for the anomalies, captured from Decision Desk HQ (a conservative website) and the New York Times by WMR during the evening. None of these have any rational explanation other than the fact that vote manipulation as seen in previous elections was at play:



From Decision Desk: We're to believe that Bush received an initial 95 votes and all others, including Trump, received no votes from Concord Ward 1?


From Decision Desk: Concord War 10 reports 154 votes for Bush, 100 for Cruz, 97 for Christie, 54 for Fiorina, and 26 for Carson, while first place finisher Trump and second place finisher Kasich have goose eggs?


From Decision Desk: Just like Concord Ward 10, Laconia Ward 6 reports 99 votes for Bush and none for the other candidates, including statewide winner Trump.


From Decision Desk: Barrington reported 357 votes for Cruz, 278 for Kasich, 93 for Fiorina, 2 votes for Jim Gilmore who received only 129 votes statewide, 31 votes for others, but no votes for Trump, Bush, Carson, or Rubio.


From Decision Desk: With 100 percent reporting, "other" received 4 votes and none for all the other candidates, including Trump with 31.3% statewide.


From the New York Times: Warren precinct reported 31.1% for Bush, 26.7% for Kasich, 15.6% percent for Cruz, but no votes for Trump. What is odd is that all the surrounding precincts broke for Trump by fairly wide margins:




Not to be outdone in the chicanery department, Croydon precinct showed Clinton at 77.3% with no votes for Sanders with the entire precinct reporting in. Later, Sanders won the precinct handily:



Sanders saw a flip in the results in Croydon after the precinct reported 100 percent of all votes at 77.3 percent for Clinton:

The CIA is responsible for ex-FBI agent's capture in Iran by Wayne Madsen

The CIA is responsible for ex-FBI agent's capture in Iran
by Wayne Madsen

Amid the euphoria over the release by Iran of five Iranian-American long term prisoners and ten U.S. Navy personnel briefly detained after their two patrol boats became dead in the water, drifting into sensitive Iranian waters, the family of Robert Levinson is not happy that the ex-FBI agent was not among those Americans freed by Iran. The five Iranian-Americans were exchanged for seven Iranians charged by the United States for violating sanctions imposed on Iran. Those sanctions have just been lifted as a result of Iran's compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran's nuclear program.

The secret about Levinson is that he was caught up in an "off-the-books" Central Intelligence Agency operation to spy in southern Iran. Levinson was contracted by ten CIA personnel, none of whom had the authority to run clandestine agents or assets, to travel in 2007 to Iran's Kish island from Dubai. Levinson posed as a businessman retained by the American tobacco industry to investigate counterfeit American cigarettes being trafficked through Kish, an island that is a frequent destination for tourists visiting Dubai because of its more freewheeling life style.

When this editor visited Tehran in 2014, I had the opportunity to inquire about Levinson's whereabouts. I also made it clear that his release would be viewed with appreciation in the United States, something that would help bring about closer relations between the United States and Iran. However, a media blitz launched by the Israel Lobby in the United States, in which I was attacked for my presence in a conference in Iran, helped to derail my inquiries. Senator Mark Kirk, the closeted Republican homosexual from Illinois, led the charge. 

I was the only conference attendee who was invited to fly to Shiraz where I was driven to speak to an Islamic university in Fasa and a townhall meeting, presided over by a local ayatollah, in Jahrom. These cities lie at the heart of Iran's most conservative Shi'a belt. The area is akin to America's "Bible Belt" of the south. The region's conservative nature is why Lebanon's Hezbollah feels safe in training its military members at a training base in Jahrom.

I was the only American that many of the people in these towns had ever met. I preached good will by the American people to the people of Iran and my speeches were met with intense attention and warm applause. I answered some tough questions about U.S. support for the Shah, Israel's influence in the United States, and the CIA's overthrow of Prime Minister Mohamed Mossadeq. 

It is noteworthy that to win over the Iranian people on any deal that would see a thaw in U.S.-Iranian relations, the goodwill of the conservative Shi'as of the south is an absolute necessity. I was glad to have contributed in a small way to that thaw. However, I do not expect any thanks from John Kerry or his  State Department.

Although the loud and arrogant Israel Lobby damaged any attempt to get a full reading on Levinson, I was able to ascertain some facts. This information was also passed to the FBI agents who visited me after my return to the States and inquired about my trip. I was shocked that they were not at all interested in any information on the fate of their fellow FBI agent, Levinson. Perhaps they already knew his fate.

Iranian sources indicated that Levinson was never held by the Iranian government. Kish island and the mountainous high desert of southern Iran is plagued by organized criminal syndicates. Although the Iranian government has tried to subdue these gangs, which are very much involved in smuggling in and out of Kish island, its efforts have not met with great success. Levinson's cover story about trying to track down smugglers of counterfeit brand name U.S. cigarettes may be what put a price on his head in the first place. The CIA agents who contracted with Levinson, three of whom were fired for running Levinson without authority, knew little about plausible cover stories. Seven other CIA agents received official reprimands in their personnel records. To send a cigarette smuggling investigator into Kish would be akin to sending an amateur narcotics smuggling investigator into Medellin.

Last photos seen of Robert Levinson. The poor English is a clue that his captors wrote the messages.

The CIA's massive error in allowing Levinson to travel with a problematic cover to Iran, resulted in the CIA paying Levinson's family $2.5 million to forestall a lawsuit that could have seen sensitive and embarrassing details of the CIA's botched operation coming to light. The CIA was also forced to change its operational policies in order to to restrict analysts, such as the ten who ran Levinson, running agents abroad.

Iran was loathe to admit to the United States that because it has little control over criminal gangs in the south, including the group Iran has been battling smuggling gangs in southern Iran, it had little information about Levinson's fate. The largest smuggling gang, the "Criminals of the Mountain" mafia, operates in the mountains overlooking Jahrom in Fars province where this editor inquired about Levinson. The mountains are also perfect hiding spots to keep hostages for ransom.

The White House and State Department, which continue to push the bogus story that Levinson was a "private citizen involved in private business in Iran" and that he "went missing during a business trip to Kish Island, Iran," actually may have come to some sort of agreement with Iran. The official cover story protects the CIA and the Obama administration from charges that they countenanced an authorized spying mission against Iran while Iran does not have to admit that Levinson ended up in the hands of brigands in the south over which Tehran has little control.

The last "proof-of-life" photograph of Levinson was received in early 2011 by his family, which includes seven children.

There may be another reason Levinson was never released. It is known that Criminals of the Mountain and other syndicates, including Baluchis and Arabs, operating in southern Iran and the Persian Gulf are used by the Saudis and Turks to conduct weapons smuggling and espionage in Iran. Levinson may have acquired intelligence about Saudi and Turkish interlocutors with Iranian criminal gangs, something that would have certainly ensured his execution. If the Turks or the Saudis paid the gang that kidnapped Levinson the requested ransom demand, the ex-FBI agent's fate would have been sealed.

We are the Cops of the World

Is Pennsylvania the center of the pedophile mafia? by Wayne Madsen Report

SPECIAL REPORT. Is Pennsylvania the center of the pedophile mafia?

 by Wayne Madsen Report
If the pedophile mafia operating at the highest echelons of the United States government had a central state, it might as well be Pennsylvania. Not only have Republicans and Democrats in the state banded together to unseat Pennsylvania's first female and Democratic Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, who has been undauntedly persistent in her attempt to rid the state of pedophile enablers, but they have rolled over and permitted convicted former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky to receive a $211,000 check for his withheld state pension from his conviction for child molestation. Six percent interest was added by a state court that ruled the state Pension Forfeiture Act was improperly applied to Sandusky in 2012 after he was convicted of sexually molesting 10 boys. Sandusky's monthly state pension of $4900 a month will also resume this month. 

The same state court system indicted Kane for releasing so-called "grand jury protected" images obtained from the state's email system that showed that commonwealth supreme court justices, state prosecutors assigned to investigate Sandusky and his pedophile ring at Penn State, and state police officials sent and received pornographic images, some highly suggestive of pedophile content.

State Supreme Court Justice J. Michael Eakin, a Republican who was sitting in judgement over the embattled Kane, was suspended from the court for sending and receiving pornographic emails, some involving the images of children. Earlier, Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffrey, a Democrat, stepped down after his involvement in the porn emails was discovered. Making matters worse is that Commonwealth Superior Court Justice Anne Covey, a conservative pro-life Republican, made no secret of her goal to downgrade the interpretation of pedophilia in her court deliberations concerning the NCAA fines levied on Penn State. Covey's defense of Penn State and pedophile conduct on campus also affected the criminal trial of former Penn State president Graham Spanier, senior vice president Gary Schultz, and athletic director Tim Curley. 

Covey attended a State College fund raiser for her that was sponsored by two former members of Sandusky's Second Mile Foundation's board, board chairman Bob Poole and board member Lance Shaner. Penn State's unapologetic cheerleader Franco Harris also held a fund raiser for Covey. Covey's malfeasance on behalf of Penn State as a member of the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court was so egregious that the Pennsylvania Bar Association refused to endorse Covey for election to the Supreme Court.

Pennsylvania is a state that seems to reward pedophiles and their enablers and punishes those who combat against the scourge of child molestation and exploitation.

President Judge of the Commonwealth Court Dan Pellegrini, elected to the court in 1989, wrote in the court's opinion that the pension forfeiture law did not apply to Sandusky because he had previously retired from Penn State in 1999 and that the criminal charges against him were from a time period when he could no longer be considered an employee of Penn State. Such a weasel-worded ruling indicates that Pellegrini, himself, is, like his bench colleague Covey, more of a defender of the pederast elite than an unbiased example of jurisprudence. 

It was Pellegrini who, in 2013, issued an order calling for the cessation of the issuance of same-sex marriage licenses, particularly in tony Montgomery County, a band of wealthy suburbs west of Philadelphia, also known as the "Main Line." It was Montgomery County district attorney Risa Vetri Ferman who brought criminal charges against Kane in an attempt to have her removed from office. Vetri's brother is Hollywood producer Adam Vetri, who received a Director's Guild of America award nomination for a less-than-forgettable show called "Steve Austin's Broken Skull Challenge, Welcome to the Gun Show." Risa Vetri Ferman is a member of Beth Sholom synagogue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, coincidentally the same synagogue where Benjamin Netanyahu and his father and mother were members when they lived in Elkins Park.

 
From "Uncle Eddie" Savitz [left] to Jerry Sandusky [right] Pennsylvania and its pedophile-enabling political leaders and judges have ensured that a safe haven has always existed in the state for child molesters and perverts.

Risa Ferman appears to have "advocacy washed" her resume by championing the battle against the exploitation of children on the Internet. Ironically, Ferman sought to prosecute Kane for trying to rid the state government of officials who trafficked in sexually-explicit images of children while they also blocked an aggressive investigation of Sandusky and his wider pedophile network. Ferman is adept at receiving awards for her alleged work against child abuse but Kane has actually sought to get to the root of the problem in Pennsylvania: Ferman's pals among the wealthy elite in the state who abet or participate in child molestation. Ferman is also a blogger for the George Soros-influenced Huffington Post.

One such member of the Philly elite who was convicted of child abuse was "Uncle Eddie" Savitz, who was also known as "Big Eddie," "Fat Eddie," and "Dr. Feel Good." Savitz was vice president and actuary of the Savitz Organization, a major Philadelphia insurance brokerage company where Savitz's brother, Sanuel, served as president.

Savitz, the son of a Philadelphia arcade owner (where else to prey on kids?), lived in the luxurious Wanamaker House on Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square where he became known as the "got to guy" for young teenage boys eager to receive quick cash or concert and sporting event tickets. The young boys merely exchanged their soiled underwear or such acts as oral/anal sex, vomiting or defecating into Uncle Eddie's mouth, engaging in penis "sword fights" with Savitz, or urinating on Savitz. Savitz stored the feces of the underage males in pizza boxes in his apartment. Although Savitz was a grotesque pervert, his first arrest in 1978 for indecent assault was suspended in lieu of a rehabilitation program. His criminal record was then expunged. The District Attorney of Philadelphia who cut the sweetheart deal for Savitz was Ed Rendell, the future mayor of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania's second Jewish governor after Shapp. In 1990, Savitz again eluded justice when he was found not guilty of purchasing a boy's soiled underpants.

                      Pennsylvania's de facto state motto: "Kids for Cash."

Not until 1992 was Savitz arrested in a sting operation after a court-ordered camera and wiretap was installed in his Rittenhouse Square home. When Savitz offered to pay two 15-year old boys for oral sex, detectives broke in and arrested Savitz. The police discovered 5000 pornographic photos of young boys and 312 bags of boys' soiled underpants. Savitz was also found to be HIV-positive. Common Pleas judge Howland Abramson the cut Savitz's bail from $20 million to a more affordable $4 million.

Unbelievably, after slashing Savitz's bail, Abramson said from the bench that he feared that Savitz would not only flee Philadelphia if he came up with the $4 million but would engage in the very same sordid activity. Had Savitz come up with the bail money, Abramson ruled that he would have had to check himself to the locked unit of the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital in West Philadelphia and submit to electronic monitoring. The deal is similar to that given to pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein in West Palm Beach, Florida where his prison sentence consisted of mere night time stays at a country club jail with the right to travel out of state. It was clear that in Pennsylvania someone was pulling Abramson's judicial robe but in pedophile-friendly Pennsylvania, this should have come as no shock. Ed Rendell, the D.A. who cut the sweetheart deal with Savitz when he was first arrested and who, like Savitz, was also known as "Fast Eddie," was sworn in as mayor of Philadelphia a few months before Savitz's third arrest in March 1992.

In March 1993, Savitz is said to have died in prison from complications from AIDS a week before his trial was to begin. Members of Philadelphia's upper crust, habitués of the such august institutions as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia Orchestra, Philly Pops, and the National Museum of American Jewish History, expressed "shock" that one of their own was a vile sex pervert and pedophile.

Sources in Philadelphia believe that Savitz's operations were connected to those of Sandusky at Penn State and that both commercially trafficked in the type of pedophile filth found in Savitz's home in Philadelphia. Greg Bucceroni, a former child prostitute and Savitz victim claimed that in 1979 and 1980 Savitz brought him to a fundraiser for Sandusky's Second Mile Foundation near Harrisburg. Thornburgh, a future U.S. Attorney General, was governor at the time.

Pennsylvania's pederast elite has, according to WMR's sources, run rampant in state government at least since the governorship of Milton Shapp in the 1970s and continuing to the present governor, Democrat Tom Wolf. Other governors who tolerated pederasty in state government included Republican Richard Thornburgh, Tom Ridge, and Mark Schweiker, Democrats Bob Casey, Sr. and Ed Rendell, and Wolf's predecessor, Republican Tom Corbett. Corbett also failed to carry out an adequate investigation of Sandusky and his non-profit foundation, the Second Mile Foundation, which was accused of pimping out young boys in return for donations, while serving as the commonwealth's Attorney General.

It is clear that Ferman, stung by allegations that she was engaged in a political witch hunt against Kane, diverted attention by obtaining an indictment of Philly native Bill Cosby for an alleged 2004 sexual assault ofAndrea Constand in Montgomery County. It was Ferman's last official act. Hollywood's feminist firebrand lawyer Gloria Allred stormed into Elkins Park demanding justice for all of Cosby's alleged victims. However, as far as the Hollywood-connected Ferman was concerned, her persecution and prosecution of Attorney General Kane has little to do with seeking justice for the young male victims of Sandusky and the wider network involving "Fast Eddie" Savitz, "Fast Eddie" Rendell, Milt Shapp, and other pedophile enablers.

How did our predictions for 2015 pan out? by The Wayne Madsen Report

How did our predictions for 2015 pan out?

Famed baseball player Yogi Berra, who we lost in 2015, once said: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." That considered,let's look back at our predictions made for 2015 and check the scorecard.

*****
Prediction #1: In the movie "Back to the Future - Part II," when Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, is propelled into the future 30 years, there were gravity-defying hover boards. That year was supposedly 2015. Instead, 2015 will see cops shooting teens on earth-bound skateboards and other teens on the street because the cops deem them to be a public "threat." This is prediction number #1: the United States will see a continuation of police violence aimed against the civilian population and the consequential revenge killings of police officers. Rather than random acts of violence against the police, we will be told by Homeland Security and the FBI that these attacks on the police are organized and, thus, we will see a more intrusive surveillance state in which local police departments will begin to have some of the same high-tech surveillance powers of the National Security Agency.

The record: In 2015, we did witness a continuation of police shooting youth, especially black teens, on the streets often without provocation. And police are in possession of sophisticated cell phone surveillance equipment. There were no widespread revenge killings of police officers, except for a few probable cases.

Prediction #2: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) will do exactly what its name indicates -- expand further into the Levant, that region that not only includes Syria but also Lebanon and Jordan. There will be an expansion of ISIL-held territory in Sunni areas of eastern Lebanon and northeastern Jordan near the Iraqi border. The U.S. and Iran will continue to cooperate militarily, albeit at a low-level, against ISIL in northern Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan.

The record: ISIL did further expand its territory in Iraq and Syria, that is, until Russia entered the conflict and ISIL gains were reversed. ISIL did attack Beirut in twin suicide bombings in November and in June the predominantly Christian village of Ras Baalbek in Lebanon was attacked by the Islamist group. In April, ISIL mercenaries from French, Belgian and Senegalese attacked the Jordanian-Iraqi border crossing at Turaibil.

Prediction #3: As a signatory to the International Criminal Court treaty, Palestine will begin the process of holding Israel responsible for crimes against humanity. The ICC's heretofore sole focus on Africa and the Balkans will begin to include the opening of investigations with a view toward prosecution of senior Israeli political and military leaders. More Western nations will recognize Palestine, including France, Italy, Austria, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's electoral loss to the opposition Liberal Party, led by Justin Trudeau, will curtail the present extremely close relations between Canada and Israel and result in a Canadian foreign policy more favorable to the Palestinian cause.

The record: In June, Palestine did hand over to the ICC a file on Israeli war crimes committed against the Palestinian people. The BelgianChamber of Representatives passed a resolution recognizing Palestine in February. Greece's parliament voted to recognize Palestine this month. Harper was defeated by Trudeau and Canada's Middle East policy moderated to a small extent.
Prediction #4: An agreement will be reached between Russia and the EU that will basically concede eastern Ukraine to a "federal-lite" Ukraine with the present self-declared republics of Donetsk and Lugansk retaining their Russian-language rights for education, the media, police services, and municipalities and regional government. However, political changes in Germany that will begin to spell the end of the Angela Merkel government will result in the EU conceding Crimea to Russia for a "cooling off" period of 10-15 years. The Ukrainian prime minister may have already tipped his hand on this prediction by suggesting that Crimea's future might best be left to the next generation.

The record: A "cold peace" did break out in eastern Ukraine with sporadic cease fire violations coming mostly from the Ukrainian side. Merkel was under tremendous pressure from Italy, Greece, and France to lighten up sanctions against Russia. A number of European right-wing parties supported Russia's annexation of Crimea.

Russia will continue, under Vladimir Putin, to shore up its Eurasian Union. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRICS economic alliance will both establish permanent headquarters, SCO in Shanghai, BRICS in New Delhi. The Eurasian Union, which will have strong ties to SCO and BRICS, will establish its secretariat in Moscow and begin accepting membership by Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Iran, and possibly, China, Mongolia, Egypt, and North Korea.  Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan will be holdouts as they worry about the value of the Russian ruble and the future of the Russian economy, which will begin to bounce back from sanctions only applied to any great degree during the coming year by the United States and Canada prior to the fall of Harper from power.

The record: The Eurasian Union established its secretariat in Moscow. SCO established its headquarters in Beijing instead of Shanghai. India and Pakistan were admitted as SCO members in 2015. Tajikistan took steps to join the Eurasian Union in 2015.

Prediction #5: Saudi King Abdullah, now 91 and ailing, will die. Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud will become King. Allegations that King Salman played a role in the 9/11 attack against the United States will force the disclosure, still in redacted form, of the 28 missing pages from the Congress's "Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001." The disclosure will pin on King Salman and current Saudi leaders involvement in the 9/11 attack. That fact, alone, will open a Pandora's Box of other leads on pre-knowledge of the 9/11 attacks, leads that will extend from the CIA to Israel.

The record: King Abdullah died in 2015 and was succeeded by the more conservative Wahhabist Salman. The Saudi lobby effectively helped block the release of the 28-pages.

Prediction #6: The source of the methane plumes on Mars will be identified by NASA as coming from very basic microbial life forms underneath the frozen Martian surface. However, this disclosure will shake the religious community between fundamentalists and pragmatists. Pope Francis will step in to support the thesis that life does exist beyond the Earth and it, too, was created by God.

The record: Although NASA did not conclude methane plumes on Mars were from microbial life, it did reveal that liquid water, a prerequisite for life as we know it, does flow on Mars.

Prediction #7: One former U.S. president will die and there will be a state funeral on a proclaimed federal holiday.

Although we had George H W Bush in mind, Jimmy Carter announced that he was suffering from brain cancer. Fortunately for Carter, his treatment was successful and he announced he was cancer-free.

Prediction #8: A Supreme Court vacancy will open up a battle royal between President Obama and the Republican-led Senate. One presidential nominee will fail to achieve Senate confirmation before another nominee is successful.

A Supreme Court vacancy did not open up. However, there is always the possibility of a vacancy in 2016, a volatile election year in which the Republicans control the Senate.

Prediction #9: Two politicians, in addition to Hillary Clinton, will declare their intention to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. Jeb Bush will force Marco Rubio to drop his plans to run for the GOP nomination. At year's end, there will be 10 Republican candidates for president and 3 Democrats. GOP candidates at or above 1 percent as of today: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Rand Paul, John Kasich, and Mike Huckabee. We're not counting the less than 1 percenters: George Pataki, Jim Gilmore, and Rick Santorum.

Will take a bow in this one. As of today, there are three Democratic presidential candidates: Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O'Malley. Although Bush turned up the political heat on Rubio, the junior senator from Florida remained a candidate.

Prediction #10: The Chicago Cubs will win the World Series. Close is only good enough in horse shoes and hand grenades and close was not good enough for the Cubbies. They did make it to the National League Championship playoffs but were done in by the Mets thus scotching a World Series slot.

Ahead: Our 2016 predictions.

Top ten Soros targets in 2016 by Wayne Madsen Report

Top ten Soros targets in 2016 by Wayne Madsen Report
George Soros has a list and he's checking it twice. The list is where he will concentrate the efforts of his Central Intelligence Agency-connected non-governmental organization (NGO) assets in 2016. While supporting the CIA's agenda, Soros always manages to maximize his profits from the chaotic situations he and his operations engineer around the world.

1. Soros will continue to facilitate the arrival of hundreds of thousands of additional, mainly Muslim migrants from the Middle East, Africa, and Asia to Europe. The political and border destabilization of Europe and the resulting introduction of draconian security measures by the European Union are high on Soros's agenda.

2. Soros is backing a themed revolution for the Srpska Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Republic of Serbia, itself. The Srpska Republic president, Milorad Dodik, is threatening to declare independence from the Bosnia-Herzegovina federation and join Serbia. Dodik has the backing of the Serbian government as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin. Soros has decided to pull out all the stops to overthrow the Serbian government in Belgrade and the Srpska Republic government in Banja Luka and thus ensure compliant and anti-Russian governments take over power in both republics.

3. Soros will martial his resources in Haiti to ensure that banana company mogul Jovenel Moise wins the presidential run-off in Haiti's postponed election. Moise is the hand-picked successor of current president Michel Martelly, a singer by profession. Soros's election engineers succeeded in knocking out of a first- or second-place finish the candidate representing former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who is despised by Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as Soros, for his leftist populist policies.

4. Soros's Open Society Institute and other NGO contrivances will continue to back the failed state of Ukraine. Soros will especially shore up Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the American Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, and Odessa regional governor Mikheil Saakashvili, the former Soros-installed president of Georgia who is now a wanted criminal by the government in Tbilisi. Soros will continue to see to it that Ukrainian regular and irregular military forces continue to cause border problems for the Russian autonomous republics of Lugansk and Donetsk in the east and that sanctions against officials of Lugansk, Donetsk, and Crimea are not only maintained but strengthened.

5. Soros will press the opposition-controlled National Assembly of Venezuela to rescind Venezuela's diplomatic recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two republics that broke way from Georgia.

6. Soros's operatives in China will continue to stir up political problems for Beijing in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao with increased street demonstrations. Soros will also step up his financial and political support for secessionists in Tibet, East Turkestan (Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous Republic), and Inner Mongolia.

7. With the Argentine presidency and the Venezuelan National Assembly falling under the control of right-wing fascist-oriented political parties, Soros will mobilize his Latin American assets to force Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff from the presidency. She has been battling an attempt by the Brazilian Congress to impeach her. Soros despises Rousseff for a number of reasons but chiefly they are her commitment to the BRICS alliance of Brazil, Russia, China, India, and South Africa; her family links to Bulgaria during its communist past; her rejection of Soros's "Third Way" politics; Rousseff's opposition to privatization of state-owned enterprises -- industries into which Soros wants to invest heavily; and Rousseff's opposition to Brazilian public schools being used to promote homosexual life styles. Soros's main goal is to have Rousseff replaced with a right-winger who will pull Brazil out of the BRICS bloc.



8. Another BRICS leader Soros sees as vulnerable is Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa. Soros's goal is to destroy the BRICS by peeling away South Africa and Brazil from the alliance, leaving only China and Russia as members after India can be persuaded the alliance is dead. Zuma and his African National Congress are also Soros targets because of their opposition to Israeli policies in Palestine and same-sex marriage. Soros backs the Democratic Alliance party, which receives much of its financial support from South African Zionists and the Jewish-dominated diamond industry.

9. Whoever the Republican U.S. presidential candidate turns out to be, Soros will throw his money and the backing of his NGOs to Hillary Clinton, a personal friend. Soros can be expected to finance intense opposition research and a massive 527 political action committee ad campaign against the GOP presidential candidate.

10. In the various presidential elections scheduled for 2016, Soros forces will back the most anti-Christian and pro-Muslim presidential candidates in the Central African Republic; Antonio Vitorino, a noted "Eurocrat," for president of Portugal; the pro-West Benin Prime Minster Lionel Zinsou for president of Benin; hedge fund manager Pedro Kuczynski for president of Peru; Juan Cohen for president of the Dominican Republic; all the anti-Putin candidates in the Russian election for the State Duma; pro-Saakashvili candidates in the Georgian parliamentary election; pro-NATO/EU parties in the Montenegro parliamentary election; and pro-EU/NATO parties in the Romanian parliamentary election.

Soros will work to defeat the Bolivian constitutional amendment referendum that will permit President Evo Morales to run for another term. They will also work against the re-election of Robert Fico as Prime Minister of Slovakia and the election of Samia Nkrumah, the daughter of Ghana's founding president Kwame Nkrumah as president of Ghana. In the Tanzanian constitutional referendum, the Soros forces will seek to protect the present union status quo and defeat any attempt by Zanzibar to secede and go its own way.