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.

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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.

Emanuel running scared; White House, Hillary camps alarmed by Wayne Madsen

 

December 9-10, 2015 -- Emanuel running scared; White House, Hillary camps alarmed by Wayne Madsen
President Obama and putative Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton held a previously unscheduled and unannounced 90-minute luncheon meeting at the White House on December 7. Although the White House termed the meeting "personal," WMR learned that chief on their agenda was the political scandal in Chicago surrounding former Obama chief of staff and former Clinton administration White House aide Rahm Emanuel. Obama and Clinton fear that an indictment of Emanuel for covering up the shooting death by Chicago police of an unarmed black teen in order to skate to re-election as mayor could upset Chicago and Illinois politics and harm Clinton's current lead in the polls.

Emanuel, who was re-elected mayor of Chicago last month after defeating his Hispanic challenger, Jesus "Chuy" Garcia, in the April run-off primary, is mired in a major scandal arising from his covering up of the existence of a Chicago Police Department tape showing Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke pumping sixteen rounds into Laquan McDonald, a 17-year old African-American, in 2014.

On December 7, just as Obama and Clinton were secretly meeting at White House, the U.S. Justice Department announced it was conducting a criminal probe of the Chicago Police Department. At the same time, Emanuel, who has had a tortured relationship with the press, called a news conference to announce that he would support the federal probe of the police. Last week, after publicly supporting his police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, an import from the New York Police Department, Emanuel suddenly asked for his resignation.

At the news conference, Emanuel, who is normally brash and ill-tempered with the media and others, looked like a deer caught in the headlights. After having rejected a federal probe of his police department, Emanuel reversed himself and said he welcomed it. Mrs. Clinton publicly stated she had faith in Emanuel. Clinton said she was “confident that he’s [Emanuel] going to do everything he can to get to the bottom” of the emerging scandal.

Illinois Republican Governor Bruce Rauner, a longtime friend of Emanuel, like Mrs. Clinton, expressed "shock" after seeing the video of McDonald's shooting but refrained from criticizing the mayor. However, Rauner, whose wife Diana Mendley Rauner, like Emanuel, is Jewish and a strong supporter of Zionist causes, did criticize Obama for not ordering a federal investigation of the Chicago police earlier. The Obama White House is said to have been livid over Rauner's criticism and believes it would not have been made without a "wink and a nod" from Emanuel's backers.

Rauner's chief operating officer is former Republican Governor of Hawaii Linda Lingle, another supporter of Zionist causes who is helping to deflect criticism away from Emanuel. Emanuel also has a powerful ally in Obama's Cabinet, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker,
the founder of PSP Capital Partners and Pritzker Realty Group and an heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune and a financial backer of Emanuel.

Emanuel has also appointed as a senior adviser to his Task Force for Police Accountability former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, an African-American and a close friend of Obama. Emanuel hopes to avoid any potential indictment for covering up the McDonald shooting by using Patrick, the head of the Department of Justice’s civil rights division under President Bill Clinton, to use his connections with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, also an African-American, and her senior staff to intercede on his behalf.


The "smoking gun" video that may bring down Emanuel and his political ambitions.

Emanuel and his political supporters have every reason to be worried. Emanuel stands accused of covering up the existence of the police dash cam video showing that Van Dyke shot McDonald without provocation. On April 15, 2015, the Chicago City Council, with Emanuel's obvious blessing, offered to pay the McDonald family $5 million in a settlement. The offer came just a week after Emanuel defeated Garcia and a campaign in which Emanuel convinced the city's African-American voters that he was a better choice than Garcia, a Cook County Commissioner.

On May 26, 2015, a freelance journalist filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the police dash cam video showing the shooting of McDonald. The city denied the request citing an ongoing investigation of the incident. In November, a judge ordered the city to release the explosive tape that enraged the city's African-American residents and prompted Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez to charge Van Dyke with first degree murder.

However, it was known to Alvarez, McCarthy, and Emanuel what was on the 2014 video  and Emanuel stands accused in the court of public opinion and by a number of newspapers of covering up the tape's existence in order to glide on to re-election. It is certain that if the tape were made public earlier, Garcia would have garnered the support of a majority of Chicago's African-Americans and defeated Emanuel in the April Democratic primary. Emanuel, the scion of a hard line Zionist family -- his father, a former Irgun terrorist from Israel once stated that Arab women were only suited to be cleaning ladies in the White House -- harbors his own presidential ambitions in 2020 or 2024. That is why Emanuel, former U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald, and U.S. Judge James Zagel arranged for former Democratic Governor and Emanuel's predecessor in Illinois's 5th Congressional District, Rod Blagojevich, to receive a 14-year federal prison sentence for corruption. Blagojevich, who insists he is innocent, is not slated for release until 2025.

Emanuel has called on all his Zionist friends to bail him out of his current political morass. With several quarters calling for his resignation, Emanuel is being hit with the age-old political scandal question arising from the Watergate affair: "What did he [Emanuel] know and when did he know it?"

Emanuel even has his own version of Richard Nixon's secretary Rose Mary Woods's infamous 18 1/2 minute gap in an Oval Office audio tape. The manager of a Burger King testified before a grand jury that Chicago police erased 86 minutes from his restaurant's security video tape that showed the shooting of McDonald. The FBI confiscated the Burger King's video recorder and then stated that there was no evidence that the videotape had been altered. When it comes to mishandling and tampering with evidence of a crime, from the Kennedy assassination in Dallas to the crash of TWA flight 800 off Long Island and 9/11, the FBI has no peers. And when it comes to whether to believe a Burger King manager and the FBI, the Burger King manager wins any veracity contest hands down.

In addition to McCarthy, Emanuel fired Scott Ando, the chief administrator of the so-called "Independent" Police Review Authority and replaced him with a former assistant attorney flunky for Fitzgerald in the U.S. Attorney's Office, Sharon Fairley. Fairley's "independence" is dubious since she served as Emanuel's general counsel and deputy inspector general during the cover-up of the McDonald shooting. Police confiscated the Burger King tape which was subsequently turned over to the FBI.

As far as the U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois, Zachary Fardon, Emanuel has little to be concerned with. Fardon replaced Fitzgerald in 2013 and formerly assisted him in prosecuting and convicting former GOP Governor George Ryan after the governor commuted the death sentences of Illinois's death row inmates after citing police and prosecutorial misconduct in their trials. Fardon's assistant U.S. Attorney is Gary Shapiro, another pal of Emanuel.

By going after corrupt law enforcement officers and prosecutors, Ryan painted a target on his back. Ryan went to prison because he went after Fitzgerald's and Fardon's corrupt cronies. Blagojevich followed Ryan into prison after threatening to expose Obama's and Emanuel's political and personal cronyism in Chicago.

Emanuel created a number of enemies on his way up the political ladder. His enemies include Chicago public school teachers, public employee unions, the African-American community, the Hispanic community, former Democratic Governor Pat Quinn -- defeated by Emanuel's pal Rauner -- and the Assyrian Chaldean Christian community in the 5th district. During his campaign for Congress, Emanuel had the Assyrians convinced that he, like them, was of Assyrian Christian descent. Emanuel never mentioned that he was a Zionist Jew who served in the Israeli Army during Operation Desert Storm. Now that Emanuel's political blood is in the water, his enemies are coalescing and are ready to pounce on the political circle of wagons Emanuel believes he has formed around himself in Chicago, Springfield, and Washington, DC. Emanuel, who has been a "divide and conqueror" for all of his political life -- he once called progressive and liberal Democrats "fucking retarded" -- now stands to be politically "drawn and quartered" by enemies who are uniting in the common goal of seeing Emanuel "perp walked" off to prison.

The CIA's jihadist formation team by Wayne Madsen

The CIA's jihadist formation team
by Wayne Madsen
By 1980, the Central Intelligence Agency had decided that it would use the most violent of Muslim jihadists to help bring down the Soviet Union. Target number one was the pro-Soviet secular government of Afghanistan, a land where men and women were co-equals, jihadism and Islamist radicalism was banned, and which was much more democratic than the CIA-backed Islamist regimes that followed it.

The formation of the jihadist "Arab Legion" that would go to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets and the socialist Afghan government was largely conducted out of the CIA station at the U.S. embassy in Cairo. There, CIA officials, using Saudi-supplied cash and lots of it, worked with Egyptian intelligence officers, many covert Muslim Brotherhood supporters, to select the most radical Islamist mercenaries to head off to Pakistan and then across the border with Afghanistan to take on the Afghan and Soviet armies. President Jimmy Carter's radically anti-Soviet national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish nationalist, actually began supporting the Afghan mujaheddin against the ruling People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan six months before the Soviet invasion of the country. The mujaheddin had already been attacking Afghan military and other government installations with the encouragement of the CIA. When Secretary of State Cyrus Vance objected to the U.S. policy of supporting Afghan terrorists, he was forced out of the Carter administration as a result of pressure on Carter from Brzezinski.

Chief among the CIA's support team in Cairo were Omar Abdel Rahman, the "blind shaikh," who was later convicted for his involvement in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Dr. Ayman al Zawahiri, now the reported chief of "Al Qaeda," which was, according to the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, a database of the CIA's Islamist contacts, mercenaries, and financiers around the world; and Osama bin Laden, the wealthy scion of the founder of the Saudi Bin Laden construction firm.

In 1980, the CIA chief of station in Cairo in 1980 responsible for organizing the Islamist Arab Legion for the Afghan front was Murat Natirboff, who, in 1980, was 59 years of age, relatively old for an active station chief. Murat is the Russian derivative of the Arabic word "murad," which means "will" or "purpose." Murad was the name of the son of the 16th century Moghul emperor of India, Akbar. The Natirboffs had strong Muslim roots in the Soviet Union. The family had fled the Northern Caucasus in the 1920s during the Russian civil war. Eventually, they settled in the United States. Murat's brother, Elmourza "Elmo" Natirboff, was a pilot for Bahamas Airways and a veteran of the Soviet Air Force during World War II. "Elmo" was the co-pilot for World War II Soviet ace pilot Boris Sergievsky.

It is clear that Natirboff was central CIA cog in formulating a pan-Islamic "jihad" against the USSR. In the mid-1980s, Natirboff turned up at the U.S. embassy in Moscow where his official job was "counselor for regional affairs." In fact, Natirboff was the CIA's station chief and his main target, in addition to spying on Soviet activities against the CIA-supported mujaheddin in Afghanistan, was to stir up Islamist opposition to Communist rule in the predominantly Muslim republics of the USSR, including those in the North Caucasus. The restive region was where another CIA officer, Graham Fuller, was making contact with Chechens and other Muslim groups in hopes of starting a Muslim "second front" against the Soviets from within their own "soft underbelly" of the Caucasus region. Fuller would appear in the news later. The nephews of his former son-in-law, Tamerlan and Dzkokhar Tsarnaev, were charged with carrying out the Boston Marathon bombing. Ruslan Tsarni, formerly Tsarnaev, was married to Fuller's daughter, a marriage obviously born out of Fuller's dalliances with anti-Soviet Muslim operatives during and after the Afghanistan campaign.

In Moscow, Natirboff was front and center in the espionage charges brought against U.S. News & World Report reporter Nicholas Daniloff in 1986. Daniloff got involved in a nasty espionage operation that involved David Goldfarb, a Soviet Jewish "refusenik" and Natirboff. Daniloff was eventually released by the Soviets after he pleaded nolo contendre to the spy charges. 
The North Caucasus-American "grandfather" of Al Qaeda, Taliban, and ISIL: Murat Natirboff, CIA station chief Cairo, 1978-80.

David Goldfarb is said to have refused a KGB request that he help frame Daniloff. However, David Goldfarb was merely the Jewish refusenik connection to the CIA and Natirboff, which combined with in the Muslim radicalization program, were central elements of the CIA's overall operations to destabilize the Soviet Union. David Goldfarb's son, Alex Goldfarb, was the attorney for ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko and exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Alex Goldfarb issued forth statement after statement accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of being behind the radiation poisoning of Litvinenko in London in 2006. In fact, and as originally reported by WMR, Litvinenko, who had joined with the Chechen Islamist guerrillas battling Russian forces, was killed by Berezovsky in order to place blame on Putin.

Alex Goldfarb, an Israeli national who claimed to have been a former radiation specialist in microbiology at Kurchatov Research Institute of Nuclear Energy when he declared that Litvinenko was assassinated by a radiation weapon ordered into London by Putin, never wrote a single paper dealing with nuclear physics or nuclear chemistry. He also claims to have been a lawyer. The truth of the matter is that Goldfarb, like his father, were participants in a Mossad and CIA operation to use Muslim radicals to bring down first the USSR and then the Russian Federation. David Goldfarb worked with the CIA Islamophile Natirboff while his son worked with the Chechen liaison operative Litvinenko. Lording over Alex Goldfarb was George Soros, who funded Goldfarb's medical research in New York, and Berezovsky, who, along with Soros, funded Goldfarb's front NGO, theInternational Foundation for Civil Liberties, an anti-Russian government organization. In 1994, Goldfarb ran Soros's Russian Internet Project, which developed the Internet across the Russian Federation. In 1995, Goldfarb was involved in Soros operations in Georgia aimed at overthrowing the Georgian President, Eduard Shevardnadze, the last foreign minister of the Soviet Union.

When Berezovsky was found dead in his bathroom of his Berkshire, England manor house, Goldfarb was strangely silent about the suspicious death that even involved British police dispatching a nuclear, chemical, and biological hazardous materials team to the estate. Berezovsky's death came after the exiled oligarch sent a letter to Putin, in which he apologized to the Russian leader for his past actions and requesting to be allowed to return to Russia. Berezovsky was also in a position to brief Putin on the anti-Russian activities involving Goldfarb, Soros, and other exiled Russian Jews, some of whom were providing support to Chechen and other Islamist groups via countries like Turkey, Ukraine, and Georgia.

The CIA was able to cobble together an anti-Soviet/Russian coalition that involved Muslim jihadists and Jewish Zionists. The effects of that dangerous duo have been felt since the fall of the socialist Afghan government and the USSR: the 9/11 attack; joint Israeli and jihadist support for the Islamist rebels in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen; and the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris in early 2015.

All of these operations grew out of the CIA's station in Cairo in 1979-80. Natirboff's deputy in Cairo was Charles T. Englehart, a veteran of the CIA station in Karachi, Pakistan, a country that would become a central player in deploying the Arab Legion of jihadists into Afghanistan. The Cairo station's number three man was Mati Lohuaru, a German native and Arabic speaker who had been assigned to the CIA stations in Beirut and Kuwait, the latter of which helped fund the Arab Legion.

A key mujaheddin support figure from 1979 to 1980 was CIA case officer in Islamabad Gary Schroen. Ironically, Schroen, who was CIA station chief in Islamabad from 1996 to 1999, was tapped after the 9/11 attack to lead a CIA team into Afghanistan to find and kill Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden reportedly escaped from Tora Bora in Afghanistan into Pakistan after a battle with U.S. forces. But what were Schroen's actual orders from Langley with regard to the leader of Al Qaeda and his one-time comrade-in-arms against the Soviets? Was it "find and kill" bin Laden or "find and help him to escape?"

Another Arab Legion player was Jackson Sigler, the CIA station chief in Jeddah from 1978 through 1980. Sigler was a central player in arranging for Saudi financial and other support for the Islamist fighters being recruited around the Arab world to head off to Pakistan to join the mujaheddin forces gearing up for the anti-Soviet operations in Afghanistan. Sigler's deputy in Jeddah was Charles E. Waterman. Waterman, a national intelligence officer for the Middle East, was fired by the CIA in 1985 for leaking top secret CIA information to "Middle Eastern interests." Waterman was a strong believer that the U.S. intelligence community should have been organized along Israeli lines, which he considered to be more successful. When he was investigated by the FBI, Waterman was protected by the CIA's general counsel Stanley Sporkin, a friend of director William Casey and a pro-Israeli asset within the CIA. Sporkin was later nominated by Ronald Reagan for a federal judgeship amid howls of protest from Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

However, Waterman was also a confirmed Arabist but one tilting toward the Saudis and Gulf monarchies. According to Robert Dreyfus's book "Devil's Game," Waterman did not feel that the Wahhabist-oriented Muslim World League (MWL) and World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) were anything to worry about. Waterman, who knew the group supported Islamic student movements around the world, was happy that "charitable" organizations like WML, WAMY -- both linked to the Muslim Brotherhood -- fight against "left-wing students" and the CIA was fine with that.

Waterman's success in helping recruit Arab volunteers for the mujaheddin would later pay off handsomely. Waterman's K Street lobbying firm, Jefferson Waterman International (JWI), would help client dictators around the world evade international sanctions. Among JWI's clients were the Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman, the Burmese military junta, Gambia's brutal dictator Yahyah Jammeh, and Liberian dictator Charles Taylor.



A not-so-insignificant "gem" of a Charles Waterman memo from the Reagan years.

There are strong suspicions that current CIA director John O. Brennan harbors loyalty toward the Saudi Wahhabist/jihadist cause. While that may be surprising to some people, consider the fact that in 1980, an anti-Russian from the Islamist hotbed of the North Caucasus was the CIA's point man in Cairo responsible for organizing the muhajeddin mercenaries, some of whom would later form the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). Brennan appears to be following a long CIA tradition.

Syria crisis has Pentagon's sock puppet software working overtime by Wayne Madsen

Syria crisis has Pentagon's sock puppet software working overtime

by Wayne Madsen

The U.S. Defense Department's and the U.S. Cyber Command's offensive information warfare operations to program "sock puppet" software to post U.S. propaganda messages on social media and web page comment sites has been working overtime since Turkey's downing of a Russian war plane in contested Syrian-Turkish airspace.

In 2013, the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which is based in Tampa, issued a contract to California-based Ntrepid Corporation for an "online persona management program" that would permit a single military member to operate 10 separate online identities in cyberspace. The operation is code named "Operation Earnest Voice"  and its area of coverage includes the Middle East, including Syria and Iraq. Through a procedure known as "traffic mixing," military personnel would blend their Internet personae with users in other U.S. military commands and government agencies, including U.S. Cyber Command and the Central Intelligence Agency, to maintain "powerful deniability." Other classified U.S. contracts support sock puppets acting as Wikipedia editors to alter the online encyclopedia's entries to keep in line with U.S. propaganda and disinformation aims.

online persona management service" that will allow one U.S. serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world. - See more at: http://www.occupy.com/article/revealed-sock-puppet-software-allows-us-military-creat-fake-online-identities#sthash.Wwu1p52L.dpuf

An example of an anti-Russian sock puppet program in action was recently discovered on the George Soros- and Democratic Third Way-influenced social media website, Democratic Underground (DU), which is often quoted by Soros acolyte Thom Hartmann. Interestingly, Hartmann also continues to broadcast from the studios of RT in Washington, which makes the following use of a sock puppet program all the more interesting.

On November 25, a DU user with the handle of "dantana21" posted a video of RT's CrossTalk program, which featured three guests agreeing that Turkey's shootdown of a Russian Sukhoi-24 fighter bomber was a senseless provocation. A sock puppet program using the handle "uhnope," and which has been wall papering the DU site with non-stop anti-Russia propaganda for well over a year, experienced a glitch and, after launching into a predictable attack on RT, went into a happy Thanksgiving mode.

The "uhnope" sock puppet came back and posted the same message using the handle "uppityperson." Both sock puppets also asked the RT video poster how his girls were doing. "Dantana21," aware that these posts were sock puppets, replied that he had no girls.

Rather than delete the "uhnope" and "uppityperson" sock puppet personae, DU, which is primarily used by gay and lesbian single-issue activists and Israel supporters to push their agendas, deleted the user dantana 21 and the RT video. RT has been informed on numerous occasions that its host Hartmann has close ties to Soros web operations like DU and DailyKos, however, the Moscow-based management of the network has chosen to ignore these repeated warnings to its own detriment.

Hartmann's past employment includes a stint at Radio Free Europe in Berlin at a time when the network was funded totally by the CIA. His expertise is in neuro-linguistics.



It is noteworthy that DU has banned any excerpts from or links to WMR articles.

Engineered bedlam: a fictional and real-life theme by Wayne Madsen

 Engineered bedlam: a fictional and real-life theme

by Wayne Madsen
From the newly-established Syrian and other Asian migrant camps in Europe to acts of terrorism throughout the world, there is but one small group of elitists who owe their loyalty to a single individual that benefits from global bedlam. While this is the theme of the last four James Bond movies, including the latest, "SPECTRE," the theme actually has a real-life counterpart.

WMR reported in 2010 that international Quantum hedge fund tycoon George Soros was so upset with the Bond movie, "Quantum of Solace" and its not-so-veiled references to "Quantum" as an all-powerful international villainous organization, he tried to buy, through front men, MGM and the Bond production company, EON Production of London, which films at the famed Pinewood Studios near Heathrow International Airport outside of London.

Soros's and his friend Leonard Blavatnik's ploy failed and in the latest Bond movie, "SPECTRE," the screen writers launch a full-blown blast at Soros.This is a spoiler alert. If you have not seen the film, you may not want to read on!



It turns out that all of 007's villains in the last four films all worked for the same uber-wealthy man, an individual who heads up Quantum and is known by one name, Franz Oberhauer, but was born under another, Ernst Stavro Blofeld. George Soros was born Gyorgy Schwartz and it is claimed that the name Soros is Esperanto for "to soar." Schwartz's father. Tivadar Schwartz, said he chose Soros as his family's last name so they could, as Hungarian Jews, easily blend into Nazi-occupied Hungary. Tivadar was a proponent of Esperanto as a global language.

It is unusual that MGM and EON survived Soros's hostile takeover bid. On April 26, 2010, WMR reported: "Blavatnik, a one-time Soviet Jewish refusenik who emigrated to the United States and a Soros ally -- is pressuring MGM to sell to him. Production has ceased on the Quantum sequel, given the working title of "Bond 23,"  even after a major script re-writing, said also be as a result of pressure from Soros." "Bond 23" turned out to be Skyfall and after the Soros-Blavatnik bid failed, Quantum again became Bond's chief nemesis.

Before Soros's MGM takeover bid collapsed, there was some suspicious activity involving MGM stock, activity that pointed to Soros's "stock-in-trade" -- shorting shares of stock. WMR reported: "MGM was bought by a group of investors in 2005 for $5 billion. They stood to take a financial bath because MGM was not expected to fetch more than $2 billion. Two of the MGM investors, Sony Corporation and Comcast, wrote off their investments as losses." These behind-the-scenes machinations drove down the value of MGM stock, making it vulnerable to a takeover by Soros and Blavatnik. However, in May 2010, the Soros deal went sour. The Quantum-fighting Bond, played by actor Daniel Craig, continued to battle against Quantum another day.

Soros is considered a major enemy by Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) so there should be no surprise that the agency would martial its fictional top agent Bond to battle the Soros doppelganger chief of Quantum. In 1992, Soros committed the sin of trying to short the British pound. An attack upon sterling in Britain is considered an attack on the Queen herself. From that time onward, MI-6 had Soros in its figurative sights. MI-6 has always held huge sway over Bond movie scripts and the last four were no different. In "SPECTRE," Bond is told that all of his last several enemies, including one Israeli Mossad veteran, all worked for Oberhauser/Blofeld, the real head of Quantum.

Bond also discovers that most of the world's terrorist attacks, coups, revolutions, and other upheavals are all the work of Quantum, which is trying to unite the world's intelligence agencies under the framework of "NINE EYES," which will actually be controlled by -- you guessed it -- Quantum. In real life, the National Security Agency (NSA) and its English-speaking allies are united under the FIVE EYES intelligence-sharing pact.

In "SPECTRE," one of the NINE EYES countries, South Africa, is the only one to vote against combining the nations' intelligence surveillance databases, thus preventing the plan moving forward. It changes its vote to "yes," after a huge terrorist bomb strikes Cape Town.

In "SPECTRE," a "cocky" Tony Blair-like character named Max Denbigh becomes "M's" [Ralph Fiennes] boss ("C") and makes a secret agreement with Quantum to close down the 007 program and MI-6 itself. M and Bond not only have to face off against Quantum but also the chief of British intelligence. The similarities between Denbigh and Blair may also be rooted in reality. The following is from WMR's 2010 report: "In 2007, Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild hosted a swank and ritzy reception in London for outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife Cherie. Blair hob-nobbed with a select group of American and other billionaires hoping to land lucrative work after his success in steering Britain into a bloody occupation of Iraq as a favor for George W. Bush. Among the billionaires present were Blavatnik; Ron Burkle, the grocery chain magnate who gave Bill Clinton work after he left office; oilman Sid Bass, Lehman Brothers' manipulative CEO Richard Fuld -- who was busy setting up shadow Lehman business deals through Hudson Castle; fashion mogul Calvin Klein; billionaire cosmetic heirs Leonard and Ronald Lauder -- a few months later Ronald Lauder was elected president of the World Jewish Congress; and Mexican telecommunication billionaire Carlos Slim Helu." All would make excellent candidates for Blofeld's Quantum "round table" of international tycoons and brigands who periodically meet in secret to chart out the next catastrophes and financial mega-schemes.
The Bond script's lines about Quantum ultimately causing the world's destabilization could have very well been written by the actual head of MI-6.

More about Soros as the "Quantum of Chaos" can be read in WMR's new book by the same title: "Soros: Quantum of Chaos," available at the WMR bookstore.

U.S. tries to drive wedge between Putin and Assad by Wayne Madsen

U.S. tries to drive wedge between Putin and Assad by Wayne Madsen
President Obama's policy of initiating "constructive engagement" with Russian President Vladimir Putin was prompted by advice given to the American president by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan. Obama has relied on the two for most of his guidance on Middle Eastern affairs. However, both Erdogan and Brennan are fierce critics of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Assad's government is highly skeptical of the actual reasons behind the Obama-Putin rapprochement, fearing that it is a ploy to convince Moscow to abandon its long time ally in Damascus.

Last November, Putin was virtually isolated at the G20 Summit in Brisbane and attendees lined up, one after another, to lambaste Putin over the retro-cession of Crimea back to Russia from Ukraine and Putin's support for eastern Ukrainian Russian-speaking rebels. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott even threatened to "shirt front" Putin, which is an Australian football term meaning chest bump, at the summit. One iconic photo from the summit showed Putin eating lunch alone at a table. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he told Putin, "l'll shake your hand, but I only have one thing to say to you: Get out of Ukraine!" Putin, disgusted with the childish behavior from the G20 leaders, including Obama, left Australia early to return home to Moscow.

However, at this year's G20 summit in Antalya, in Islamic State-friendly Turkey and not far from Syria, G20 leaders could not wait to sidle up to Putin. Gone were Abbott, who was ousted in an political party back benchers' coup by Malcolm Turnbull, and Harper, who was roundly defeated by Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. Turnbull and Trudeau are friendlier to Russia than their predecessors.


Putin dining alone at the G20 Summit in Brisbane in November 2014.

Putin in negotiations with Obama at G20 in Antalya, Turkey. Obama national security adviser Susan Rice [back turned toward camera] and interpreter join discussion. Assad fears that Obama is trying to convince Putin to abandon Assad in favor of Turkish- and Saudi-controlled opposition forces.
There is solid evidence that there is a propaganda campaign designed to split Moscow from Damascus. Although it has been proven by Syrian Catholic Mother Superior Agnes Mariam and others that the CIA- and Saudi-backed Free Syrian Army launched the sarin gas attack against civilians in Ghouta in a "false flag" operation designed to pin blame on Assad, the same neoconservative and Israel Lobby meme of Assad "gassing his own people" is making its rounds again on the Zionist-controlled MSNBC and The Daily Beast. In addition, the neocons, upset with the G20's decision to work with Putin and Assad, has put forward a conspiracy theory making its rounds in the Zionist-owned media that Putin and Assad jointly created the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Consequently, as a result of the negotiations between Putin and Obama, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's recent Oval Office talks in Washington with Obama, Syria's government is concerned that there is a plan afoot by Washington, Moscow, and Jerusalem to divide the Middle East into spheres of influence, with Moscow being guaranteed port and pipeline access in Syria, Iraq, and a planned independent Kurdistan comprising Kurdish areas in Iraq and Syria. Syria has activated its public relations resources in Europe, particularly in France and Germany, to advance the story that Putin has opted to work with Obama, Erdogan, and Netanyahu to redraw the borders of the Middle East, with Assad being the chief casualty.

Damascus is playing a trick of its own in putting forth the Russ-American secret "new Middle East" plan. Syria's interpretation of the plans for the redrawing of the Middle East map includes having Saudi Arabia split into three different nations: a Shi'a-dominated oil-rich Nejd in the east, an insulated Saudi rump state around Riyadh, and a Turkish-influenced Hejaz in the west, which would include the two Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The Syrian interpretation has resulted in the Saudis becoming alarmed at being shut out entirely from the Syrian and Kurdish negotiations and the specter of thousands of jihadis it has supported in Syria and Iraq heading to Saudi Arabia looking for revenge after their defeat on the Syrian and Iraqi battlefields.

Assad and his government, however, should rest a bit easier, according to WMR's sources in Europe. Putin has no plans to abandon Assad, even though Moscow supports the plan for United Nations-brokered peace talks between Assad and the Syrian rebels, not including the Islamic State and its allies.

Russia remains suspicious of Obama's and CIA director Brennan's lack of enthusiasm for combating ISIL. The day before the Friday 13th ISIL attacks in Paris, Obama said that he favored merely "containing" ISIL in Syria and Iraq, not wiping it out. It is known that ISIL has received recruiting, financial, military, and intelligence support from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar. In addition, the CIA, Mossad, the Israel Defense Force, and Turkish MIT intelligence has provided ISIL and its allies with weapons, ammunition, and logistics support in Syria and Iraq. Only after the Paris terrorist attacks did the U.S., belatedly, order its A10 attack planes to strike a convoy of 116 ISIL oil tanker trucks smuggling oil out of Syria. The U.S. had previously chose not to attack ISIL oil trucks. ISIL received much of its financial support from the sale of smuggled oil on the world's petroleum spot market.

Putin is acutely aware that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his government is quietly assuring, through Ukrainian nationalist leaders like Dmitry Korchinsky, that top ISIL commanders will be given asylum in Ukraine as long as they carry their war on against Russia in the Donbas region and Chechnya. Korchinsky, the leader of the neo-Nazi Ukrainian "Brotherhood," actively participated in the Maidan Square uprising against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych Korchinsky and his nationalist activists received support from the George Soros network, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland and U.S. ambassador to Kiev Geoffrey Pyatt (both of whom are Jewish), the CIA, and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Obama and the other members of the "Quint," Britain, the U.S., France, Germany, and Italy, said they had no plans to relax Western sanctions imposed against Russia over Ukraine. As long as Ukraine is prepared to welcome ISIL guerrillas to its soil to fight against Russia, Assad can rest easy that Putin will never sacrifice him in favor of the duplicitous interests of the United States and European Union.

Soros operatives hide terrorist links of some Syrian migrants by Wayne Madsen

 

November 16-17, 2015 -- Soros operatives hide terrorist links of Syrian migrants by Wayne Madsen
Groups like Human Rights Watch, the International Rescue Committee, the International Organization of Migrants, and other non-governmental organizations are spewing forth enormous amounts of disinformation to convince Europe and the rest of the world that there are no Islamic State terrorists among the sea of refugees from Syria, Iraq, and other countries who swamped Europe in recent months.

The NGOs have suggested that those who claim that there are terrorists among the migrants already in Europe are xenophobes and racists ignore the fact that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) recently claimed that 4000 of its members had been embedded among the refugees who are already in Europe. ISIL said, before the Friday the 13th ISIL massacre in Paris, that its refugee sleeper agents were under orders to carry out terrorist attacks in retaliation for French military attacks on ISIL positions inside Syria.

George Soros-funded network of non-governmental organizations are advancing the meme that none of the terrorists who went on the killing spree through Paris entered Europe with the masses of refugees. The Soros-owned and -operated Human Rights Watch has suggested that the Syrian passport found next to one of the dead terrorists in Paris was a fake.

Even after French authorities determined that one of the dead terrorists in Paris was, in fact, Ahmad Almohammad, a Syrian refugee from Idlib who entered Europe from Turkey on October 3 through the Greek isle of Leros with a Syrian passport, Soros’s operatives cried foul and suggested the Syrian passport was a fake. The Soros gang demanded that the refugee flow from the Middle East, Asia, and North Africa continue unabated despite the bloodshed in Paris, the discovery of an ISIL support cell in the Brussels suburb of Molenbeek, and the arrest in Germany of a Montenegrin man who was driving to Paris with a small arsenal of weapons in his car. Montenegro, like other Balkans countries, have been used as "soft" entry points for Muslim migrants  entering Europe from refugee centers in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan.

In fact, Almohammad transited from Greece to Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Austria, and then into Germany and, ultimately, to France. One such call to maintain the current migratory status quo came from the Emergencies Director of Human Rights Watch, Peter Bouckaert. The current European "welcome mat" has enabled terrorists like Almohammed and others to carry out their deadly tasks.

It should be noted that in 2010 Soros “leased” Human Rights Watch for $100 million over a ten-year period. Since that time, the NGO has served Soros’s sordid global interests, including undermining the government of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and concocting phony news reports about “barrel bombs” and chemical weapons attacks by Syria’s army. Bouckaert claimed the Syrian passport found on the dead terrorist migrant was fake. Bouckaert had no evidence to back up his statement and his claim turned out to be false.

Because of pressure from groups like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, International Organization of Migration, and other Soros-financed geopolitical tools, as well as ISIL propagandist media operations like Al Jazeera, the Syrian government relaxed its stringent passport renewal policies after it was criticized for doing nothing to help Syrians who had fled the civil war ravaging the country. In April 2015, Syrians abroad, even those who left the country illegally, members of exiled opposition groups, and Syrians who dodged the military draft, were permitted to renew their Syrian passports at Syrian consulates in Turkey, Greece, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates. This was a direct concession by Assad to the Syrian opposition before peace talks were due to commence in Geneva.

The Syrian opposition claimed that Assad's government was somehow responsible to provide the refugees with passports because they fled their homes so fast, they had no time to collect identity papers, birth records, and other documents, including passports. Syrian government consulates and embassies were extremely liberal in providing anyone claiming to be a Syrian refugee with passports and other documents, including "family booklets" that record all the names of a Syrian citizen's family members.

It was in Greece where Almohammad was issued his emergency Syrian passport, which Human Rights Watch misrepresented as counterfeit. Is Human Rights Watch perhaps trying to divert attention away from the fact that terrorists are obtaining valid passports to enter Europe?        
Soros-financed NGOs pressured Syria to grant emergency passports and other documents to Syrian refugees, thus enabling ISIL terrorists to enter mainland Europe and carry out terrorist attacks like the Friday 13th massacre in Paris.

HRW and other Soros-influenced NGOs also forced suspension of the Dublin II rules. The rules require the forcible return by European Union member states of a refugee to the country where he or she first entered European Union territory. Germany suspended the rules and claimed responsibility for any refugee, including those who first entered European Union space through Greece. Almohammad is a prime example of Germany providing cover for an ISIL terrorist. Almohammad was in Germany before he traveled to France.

George Soros certainly shares in the civil liability for the ISIL terrorists arriving in France amid the throngs of refugees from the Middle East. Soros's current real-time net worth is $24.5 billion. That is more than enough to pay compensation to the families of the Friday the 13th massacre victims and other victims from past and future terrorist attacks carried out by ISIL "refugees" who entered Europe courtesy of Soros's various migrant assistance programs.

The Clintons see Haiti only as a gold mine by Wayne Madsen

The Clintons see Haiti only as a gold mine

by Wayne Madsen
Another Haitian first round presidential election, held on October 25, has served to be another exercise in rampant vote tabulation fraud. Dr. Maryse Narcisse, the candidate of former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s political party, Fanmi Lavalas, has claimed that recent election was based on massive fraud by the Haitian government. The two people who benefit the most from Haitian election fraud and the continuation of lackeys of the United States as presidents of Haiti are Bill and Hillary Clinton.

In 2010, current president Michel Martelly claimed that his third place finish against the government-backed candidate in the first-round was the result of fraud. Martelly’s challenge was successful and he was moved up to second place finisher and in the final round he was elected president. In the most recent first round election, Martelly’s handpicked successor, Jovenal Moise, was said to have led with 32.8 percent of the vote, followed by Jude Celestin, backed by former president Rene Preval, with 25.2 percent. Third place finisher, Moise Jean-Charles, who is very popular in Haiti, was locked out of the final round.

The Clintons will do everything in their power to prevent Aristide loyalists from becoming president of Haiti. Aristide's anti-globalization policies are a direct threat to the Clintons' massive investments in Haiti.

Even though Mr. Clinton sent U.S. troops to Haiti in 1994 to restore the elected president Aristide, a Roman Catholic Marxist-oriented “liberation theology” priest who was overthrown in a September 1991 coup, Clinton’s 1994 military operation “Uphold Democracy” could be renamed “Operation Uphold the Clintons’ Wealth.” Clinton would soon double cross Aristide after it became clear that the Haitian president’s new party, Fanmi Lavalas, was heading toward the same left progressivism as Hugo Chavez’s Fifth Republic Movement, which was victorious in 1999. Clinton forced Haiti to undergo painful World Bank-imposed austerity measures, a virtual death knell for the hemisphere’s poorest nation.

In 1996, Preval, to whom Clinton took an immediate liking because of his commitment to privatize Haiti’s state-owned enterprises, was elected president to succeed Aristide. Aristide supporters in parliament clashed with the Preval loyalists. In 1999, Preval dissolved the parliament and ruled by decree for the remaining year he had in office. Preval’s actions were supported by the phony “pro-democracy” Clinton who, in 1999, was busy trying to restore his political capital after his impeachment by the House of Representatives in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, backed Preval’s unconstitutional actions.

In 2000, Aristide ran again for president of Haiti. The U.S. State Department, under Clinton’s longtime consigliere Madeleine Albright, backed Haiti’s opposition in boycotting the presidential vote, which clearly showed that turnout was over 60 percent and that Aristide won with over 92 percent of the vote.

After Aristide was overthrown in a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-inspired and planned coup in 2004, Clinton ecstatically danced on the political grave of Aristide, who was exiled first to the Central African Republic and then to South Africa. In 2009, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is owned and operated by the U.S. government, appointed Bill Clinton as the UN Special Envoy to Haiti. Clinton ensured that the populist opposition loyal to Aristide, the man he helped regain office after the 1991 military coup, remain suppressed. Aristide was anathema to Clinton’s plans to squeeze every imaginable profit from the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Clinton was able to use the “peacekeeping” United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) as personal centurions to ensure that Clinton’s political and business cronies were not threatened by the populist forces of Aristide, who returned from exile to Haiti in 2011, and his Lavalas party. MINUSTAH forces targeted, and continue to target, Aristide forces in brutal attacks. Perhaps in keeping with the spirit of the sordid sexual deviancy history of the UN Special Envoy Clinton, MINUSTAH forces in Haiti were accused of various sexual crimes, including Uruguayan forces gang raping a Haitian teenage boy, a Nepalese soldier torturing to death a 16-year old Haitian boy, Pakistani officers raping a 14-year old mentally challenged Haitian boy, and Sri Lankan troops raping Haitian children. Neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton ever mentioned these outrageous actions while the U.S. president served as UN Special Envoy. Topping off these MINUSTAH crimes was the introduction of cholera into Haiti by Nepalese troops.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried every trick in the book to prevent Aristide’s return to Haiti, including having President Obama apply pressure on South African president Jacob Zuma. These efforts failed. Aristide and his wife made a triumphant return to Haiti on March 18, 2011.

A year before Aristide’s return, in 2010, things got much worse for Haiti and Mr. Clinton was there to strangle the nation to an even greater degree. The 2010 earthquake decimated Haiti and killed some 300,000 people and left the country’s infrastructure in tatters. President Barack Obama, in a body blow to Haiti, Obama asked Clinton and former President George W. Bush, the president responsible for the 2004 coup against Aristide, to join Bill Clinton in Haiti relief efforts. 

Bill Clinton used the devastating Haitian earthquake, and, ironically, George W. Bush, to line his own pockets and those of his wife, brother-in-law, and other cronies with quake relief money.

Mr. Clinton launched the following high-tech appeal on the web site of his William J. Clinton Foundation: "Text 'HAITI' to '20222' and $10 will be given to the Clinton Foundation's Haiti Relief Fund, charged to your cell phone bill." Clinton also solicited for donations of up to $1000 for the Clinton Foundation's Haiti Relief Fund. Most of the millions of dollars Clinton and Bush raised in Haiti relief never made their way to the Haitian people but into the pockets of the Clinton family and their cronies in Haiti and elsewhere. The Clinton aid money that did reach Haiti was siphoned off to benefit not only Haiti’s wealthy elite but also wealthy businessmen from the neighboring Dominican Republic who were moving their operations into Haiti.

The CIA-linked U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and members of the Arkansas Rice Growers Association (ARGA), the latter political cronies of the Clintons, wreaked havoc on Haiti's once thriving rice growing business. Once a net exporter of highly-nutritional rice, a combination of USAID policies and one-sided Clinton-era trade deals destroyed the Haitian rice industry and made the country dependent on expensive and non-nutritional genetically-engineered bleached white rice from Arkansas agri-businesses. In 2008, the soaring price of rice worldwide and price-fixing by U.S. agri-businesses linked to Clinton resulted in food riots breaking out in Haiti. By 2010, the time of the quake, Haiti was already an economic basket case.

Just like old King Leopold, who prized his personal country Congo because of its immense mineral wealth, particularly diamonds and gold, the Clintons became highly invested in Haiti’s emerging gold mining industry. The Clintons’ investments in Haiti, which had long been protected by MINUSTAH, would soon be guarded by an Israeli company, HLSI, the vice president of which, Eva Peled, a former officer in the Israel Defense Force, also happened to be the chief executive officer of Geomines and vice president of the Mitrelli Group.

In October 2015, HLSI signed an agreement with Haiti’s government to provide land, air, and sea border security for Haiti. The Geomines/Mitrelli team are major investors in Haitian gold mining operations. To ensure it gained full access into Haiti, the Mitrelli Group lavished generous donations on the Clinton Foundation. One of Geomines partners in the Haiti mining operations, VCS Mining of Delaware, named Hillary Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, to its advisory board in 2013. Rodham received generous stock options in VCS that stand to make him millions of dollars if VCS strikes gold. VCS Mining’s president, Angelo Viard, has also contributed generously to the Clinton Foundation, as well as to Democratic candidates, including his advisory board’s newest member’s sister, Hillary Clinton. VCS just happened to have been awarded two gold mining permits by the Martelly government, the first issued by Haiti in more than five decades.

Haiti’s new private “army,” the Israeli firm HLSI, touts its capability to find land mines. However, the same thermal imaging technology can be used to find minerals like gold and diamonds. Hence, HLSI is concentrating its “security” efforts around Haiti’s gold mining operations.

Haiti is sensitive to the presence of Israelis in the country. Some of Haiti’s earliest slave owners were Jews, such as the Gradisse family of Cap-Haitien and Gonaives and Simon Isaac Henriquez Moron of Grand’ Anse, Haiti. Israel also secretly supplied weapons to the repressive dictatorships of “Papa Doc” Francois Duvalier and his son, “Baby Doc” Jean-Clause Duvalier. One of Haiti’s richest businessmen, Gilbert Bigio, a Syrian Jew who is also Israel’s honorary consul in Haiti, is more committed to helping Israel than his native Haiti. It was the Haitian elite, individuals like Bigio, who benefited from Bill Clinton’s earthquake relief money.

Supplementing the HLSI security protection for Clinton/Israeli business investments in Haiti are the armed guards led by Martelly’s son, Olivier Martelly. These armed thugs, reminiscent of the dreaded Duvalier-era Tonton Macoutes, are known as the “Galil Gang” because of the Israeli Galil guns they carry. In September 2015, Olivier was reportedly arrested by federal authorities in Miami on drug smuggling charges. However, the younger Martelly was said to have been quietly released after a flurry of phone calls were made that, according to Haitian opposition sources, may have involved pressure exerted by Bill and Hillary Clinton on the Obama Justice Department.

Jeb Bush interfered with FBI murder investigation while in Caracas by Wayne Madsen

 Jeb Bush interfered with FBI murder investigation while in Caracas

by Wayne Madsen
Knowledgeable FBI sources have told WMR that while Jeb Bush was the vice president for Texas Commerce Bank's operations in Caracas, Venezuela from 1977 to 1979, he provided the Central Intelligence Agency with high-level interference against an FBI investigation of two right-wing Cuban exile leaders for their roles in the September 21, 1976 terrorist car bombing in Washington, DC. The car bomb killed former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier and his American adviser Roni Moffitt on Sheridan Circle in broad daylight.

WMR previously reported, for the first time, that Jeb Bush received a top-level security and operational briefing from the CIA in 1977, prior to his two-year stint in Caracas in a job that is normally reflective of a CIA non-official cover (NOC) posting. 

When the FBI sought to interview Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban exile who ran a private investigative CIA front company in Caracas called Company of Commercial and Industrial Research CA, a front for CIA anti-Cuba terrorist activities in the region, and his colleague Orlando Bosch, Bush pressed the government of President Carlos Andres Perez and Venezuela's intelligence agency, DISIP, to provide interference against the FBI's wish to interview both Cubans. Although the CIA, at the time, was headed by President Jimmy Carter's friend and Annapolis classmate Admiral Stansfield Turner, George H. W. Bush, the previous CIA director, counted many loyalists among the CIA ranks, who symied the FBI's investigation of Carriles and Bosch. Eventually, the FBI did manage to collect enough evidence to have three Cuban-Americans in the employment of the Chilean intelligence service DINA and the CIA -- Alvin Ross Díaz and two brothers, Guillermo and Ignacio Novo Sampoll, indicted for the murders of Letelier and Bosch. The FBI was also investigating Carriles and Bosch for ordering the bombing of Cubana flight 455, which was blown up by two time bombs on October 6, 1976, after taking off from Bridgetown, Barbados.


Jeb Bush thanking CIA security director for his 1977 pre-Caracas intelligence briefing. Jeb's tasking in Caracas included covering up the 1976 murders of Orlando Letelier and Roni Moffitt and running interference for the CIA is stymieing the FBI's investigation of two Caracas-based Cuban CIA agents.

A U.S. CIA agent, Michael Townley, the son of John Vernon Townley, a veteran CIA agent in Chile and Venezuela, was found guilty of placing the car bomb that killed Letelier and Moffitt. However, after his 62 month prison sentence, Townley was released into the Federal Witness Protection Program. The three Cuban-Americans found guilty later saw their convictions overturned on a technicality and they were released into the Cuban-American community of Miami-Dade where Jeb Bush has received much of his political support over the years. Another wanted fugitive in the murder of Letelier and Moffitt, Virgilio Paz Romero, was captured in 1991 in Boynton Beach, Florida where he lived under an assumed name. He was given a 12 year prison sentence after pleading guilty but was paroled after just six years.


Wanted for accessory to murder: One-time CIA NOC agent Jeb Bush.

After blocking the FBI's probe of the CIA's Cuban exile CORU (Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations) operations in Caracas in the 1976 car bombing in Washington and the downing of the Cubana airliner, both accomplished with the knowledge and support of then-CIA director George H W Bush, Jeb started up his various businesses in Miami with the assistance of the city's wealthy Cuban-American elite. However, Jeb Bush's political career in Florida was built on the graves of Letelier, Moffitt, and the passengers and crew of Cubana flight 455.

There are open homicide cases against the Cuban murderers of Letelier, Moffitt, and the 73 passengers and crew of Cubana flight 455 before Argentine, Chilean, Venezuelan, and Spanish courts. Jeb Bush faces potential extradition to all four countries to answer questions under oath about his participation in the cover-up of CIA assassination squads operating out of Caracas in the late 1970s.

The Anti-Empire Report #140 by William Blum – Published November 3rd, 2015

The Anti-Empire Report #140

By William Blum – Published November 3rd, 2015

Are you confused by the Middle East? Here are some things you should know. (But you’ll probably still be confused.)

• The US, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the Gulf monarchies have all in the recent past supported al Qaeda and/or the Islamic State (ISIS) with arms, money, and/or manpower.
• The first example of this was in 1979 when the United States began covert operations in Afghanistan, six months before the Russians arrived, promoting Islamic fundamentalism across the southern tier of the Soviet Union against “godless communism”. All the al-Qaeda/Taliban shit then followed.
• In addition to Afghanistan, the United States has provided support to Islamic militants in Bosnia, Kosovo, Libya, the Caucasus, and Syria.
• The United States overthrew the secular governments of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and is trying to do the same with Syria, thus giving great impetus to the rise of ISIS. Said Barack Obama in March of this year: “ISIS is a direct outgrowth of al-Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion. Which is an example of unintended consequences. Which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.” 
• More than a million refugees from these wars of Washington are currently over-running Europe and North Africa. God Bless American exceptionalism.
• The Iraqi, Syrian and Turkish Kurds have all fought against ISIS, but Turkey – close US ally and member of NATO – has fought against each of them.
• Russia, Iran, Iraq, and Lebanese factions have each supported the Syrian government in various ways in Damascus’s struggle against ISIS and other terrorist groups, including the (much celebrated but seldom seen) “moderate” ones. For this all four countries have been sharply criticized by Washington.
• The United States has bombed ISIS in Syria, but has used the same occasions to damage Syria’s infrastructure and oil-producing capacity.
• Russia has bombed ISIS in Syria, but has used the same occasions to attack Syria’s other enemies.
• The mainstream media almost never mentions the proposed Qatar natural-gas pipelines – whose path to Europe Syria has stood in the way of for years – as a reason for much of the hostility toward Syria. The pipelines could dethrone Russia as Europe’s dominant source of energy.
• In Libya, during the beginning of the 2011 civil war, anti-Gaddafi rebels, many of whom were al-Qaeda affiliated militias, were protected by NATO in “no-fly zones”.
• US policy in Syria in the years leading up to the 2011 uprising against Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, which began the whole current mess, was designed to promote sectarianism, which in turn led to civil war with the goal of regime change. 
• US Secretary of State John Kerry declared on October 22 that in resolving Syria’s civil war the country “should not be broken up, that it must remain secular, and that Syrians should choose their future leader.” (All of which actually describes Syria under Assad.) Then Kerry said: “One thing stands in the way of being able to rapidly move to implement that, and it’s a person called Assad, Bashar Assad.”

Why does the government of the United States hate Syrian president Bashar al-Assad with such passion?

Is it because, as we’re told, he’s a brutal dictator? But how can that be the reason for the hatred? It would be difficult indeed to name a brutal dictatorship of the second half of the 20th Century or of the 21st century that was not supported by the United States; not only supported, but often put into power and kept in power against the wishes of the population; at present the list would include Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, and Israel.

The United States, I suggest, is hostile to the Syrian government for the same reason it has been hostile to Cuba for more than half a century; and hostile to Venezuela for the past 15 years; and earlier to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; and to Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Chile; and so on continuing through the world atlas and history books.

What these governments have had in common can be summarized in a single word – independence … independence from American foreign policy; the refusal to be a client state of Washington; the refusal to be continuously hostile to Washington’s Officially Designated Enemies; insufficient respect and zeal for the capitalist way of life.

Democratic Socialism

The candidacy of Bernie Sanders, a “democratic socialist”, for the US presidency has produced an unprecedented barrage of discussion in the American media about just what is this thing called “socialism”. Most of the discussion centers around the question of government ownership and control of the economy versus private ownership and control. This is, of course, a very old question; the meat and potatoes of the Cold War ideological competition.

What’s markedly different now is that a few centuries of uninhibited free enterprise have finally laid painfully bare the basic anti-social nature of capitalism, forcing many of even the most committed true believers to concede the inherent harm the system brings to the lives of all but the richest.

But regardless of what the intellects of these true believers tell them, they still find it very difficult emotionally to completely cut the umbilical cord to the system they were carefully raised to place the greatest of faith in. Thus, they may finally concede that we have to eliminate, or at least strictly minimize, the role of the profit motive in health care and education and maybe one or two other indispensable social needs, but they insist that the government should should keep its bureaucratic hands off everything else; they favor as much decentralization as possible.

The most commonly proposed alternative to both government or private control is worker-owned cooperatives or publicly owned enterprises managed by workers and consumer representatives. Sanders has expressed his support for worker-owned cooperatives.

There is much to be said about such systems, but the problem I find is that they will still operate within a capitalist society, which means competition, survival of the fittest; which means that if you can’t sell more than your competitors, if you can’t make a sufficient net profit on your sales, you will likely be forced to go out of business; and to prevent such a fate, at some point you may very well be forced to do illegal or immoral things against the public; which means back to the present.

You cannot follow the mass media without being confronted every day with story after story of one corporation or another trying to swindle the public in one way or another; the latest egregious case being that of the much revered Volkswagen, recently revealed to have manipulated the measurement of the car’s pollution emission. The fact that half of the company’s Supervisory Board – responsible for monitoring the Management and approving important corporate decisions – consists of employee representatives elected by the employees did not prevent this egregious fraud; the company is still obliged to strive to maximize profit and the firm’s stock-market value. It’s the nature of the corporate beast within a capitalist jungle.

Only removal of the profit motive will correct such behavior, and also keep us from drowning in a sea of advertising and my phone ringing several times each day to sell me something I don’t need and which may not even exist.

The market. How can we determine the proper value, the proper price, of goods and services without “the magic of the marketplace”? Let’s look at something most people have to pay for – rent. Who or what designed this system where in 2015 11.8 million households in the US are paying more than 50 percent of their income to keep a roof over their head, while rent is considered “affordable” if it totals some 30 percent or less of one’s income.  What is the sense of this? It causes more hardship than any other expense people are confronted with; all kinds of important needs go unmet because of the obligation to pay a huge amount for rent each month; it is the main cause of homelessness. Who benefits from it other than the landlords? What is magical about that?

Above and beyond any other consideration, there is climate change; i.e., survival of the planet, the quality of our lives. What keeps corporations from modifying their behavior so as to be kinder to our environment? It is of course the good old “bottom line” again. What can we do to convince the corporations to consistently behave like good citizens? Nothing that hasn’t already been tried and failed. Except one thing. Unmentionable in a capitalist society. Nationalization. There, I said it. Now I’ll be getting letters damning me as an “Old Stalinist”.

But nationalization is not a panacea either, at least for the environment. There’s the greatest single source of environmental damage in the world – The United States military. And it’s already been nationalized. But doing away with private corporations will reduce the drive toward imperialism sufficiently that before long the need for a military will fade away and we can live like Costa Rica. If you think that would put the United States in danger of attack, please tell me who would attack, and why.

Most Americans, like other developed peoples, worship the capitalism they were raised with. But do they? See the chapter in my book Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower: “The United States invades, bombs, and kills for it but do Americans really believe in free enterprise?” Written in 2000/2005, the examples given in the chapter may need some updating, but the ideas expressed are as valid as ever.

Nationalization, hand-in-hand with a planned society, would of course not preclude elections. On the contrary, we’d have elections not ruled by money. What a breath of fresh air. Professor Cornel West has suggested that it’s become difficult to even imagine what a free and democratic society, without great concentrations of corporate power, would look like, or how it would operate.

Who are you going to believe? Me or Dick Cheney?

I’ve spent about 30 years compiling the details of the criminal record of US foreign policy into concise lists, and I’m always looking for suitable occasions to present the information to new readers. The new book by Dick Cheney and his adoring daughter is just such an occasion.

“We are, as a matter of empirical fact and undeniable history, the greatest force for good the world has ever known. … security and freedom for millions of people around the globe have depended on America’s military, economic, political, and diplomatic might.” – Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, “Why the world needs a powerful America”

Well … nothing short of a brain and soul transplant would change the welt anschauung of Dr. Strangelove and his carefully-conditioned offspring, but for all of you out there who still live in a world of facts, logic, human rights, and human empathy, here’s the ammunition to use if you should happen to find yourself ensnared in the embrace of the likes of the Cheney reptiles (including mother Lynne who once set up a website solely to attack me and seven others for holding a teach-in on September 18, 2001 in which we spoke of US foreign policy as the main provocation of what had happened exactly a week earlier.)

These are the lists:

Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:

• Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
• Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
• Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
• Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
• Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries. 
• Plus … although not easily quantified … more involved in the practice of torture than any other country in the world … for over a century … not just performing the actual torture, but teaching it, providing the manuals, and furnishing the equipment.

Open Letter to the War Politicians of the World

Jürgen Todenhöfer is a German journalist and former media manager; from 1972 to 1990 he was a member of parliament for the Christian Democrats (CDU). He was one of Germany’s most ardent supporters of the US-sponsored Mujahideen and their guerrilla war against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Several times he traveled to combat zones with Afghan Mujahideen groups. After 2001 Todenhöfer became an outspoken critic of the US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has published several books about visits he made to war zones. In recent years he twice interviewed Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and in 2015 he was the first German journalist to visit the ‘Islamic State’.

Dear Presidents and Heads of Governments!

Through decades of a policy of war and exploitation you have pushed millions people in the Middle East and Africa into misery. Because of your policies refugees have to flee all over the world. One out every three refugees in Germany comes from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. From Africa comes one out of five refugees.

Your wars are also the cause of global terrorism. Instead of some 100 international terrorists like 15 years ago, we now are faced with more than 100,000 terrorists. Your cynical ruthlessness now strikes back at us like a boomerang.

As usual, you do not even consider to really change your policy. You care only about the symptoms. The security situation gets more dangerous and chaotic by the day. More and more wars, waves of terror and refugee crises will determine the future of our planet.

Even in Europe, the war will one day knock again at Europe’s door. Any businessman that would act like you would be fired or be in prison by now. You are total failures.

The peoples of the Middle East and Africa, whose countries you have destroyed and plundered and the people of Europe, who now accommodate the countless desperate refugees, have to pay a high price for your policies. But you wash your hands of responsibility. You should stand trial in front of the International Criminal Court. And each of your political followers should actually take care of at least 100 refugee families.

Basically, the people of the world should rise up and resist you as the warmongers and exploiters you are. As once Gandhi did it - in nonviolence, in ‘civil disobedience’. We should create new movements and parties. Movements for justice and humanity. Make wars in other countries just as punishable as murder and manslaughter in one’s own country. And you who are responsible for war and exploitation, you should go to hell forever. It is enough! Get lost! The world would be much nicer without you.

– Jürgen Todenhöfer 

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

The annual vote in the United Nations General Assembly on the resolution which reads: “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” was just held. This year set a new record for “yes” votes, with the addition of the Marshall Islands and Palau (heretofore each voting “no” or abstaining) and Micronesia (heretofore abstaining). All three countries had established diplomatic relations with Cuba earlier this year, which of course the United States had also done, but without any change in Washington’s vote. Here is how the vote has gone in the past (not including abstentions):

Year	Votes (Yes-No)	No Votes
1992	59-2	US, Israel
1993	88-4	US, Israel, Albania, Paraguay
1994	101-2	US, Israel
1995	117-3	US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1996	138-3	US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1997	143-3	US, Israel, Uzbekistan
1998	157-2	US, Israel
1999	155-2	US, Israel
2000	167-3	US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2001	167-3	US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2002	173-3	US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2003	179-3	US, Israel, Marshall Islands
2004	179-4	US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2005	182-4	US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2006	183-4	US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2007	184-4	US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau
2008	185-3	US, Israel, Palau
2009	187-3	US, Israel, Palau
2010	187-2	US, Israel
2011	186-2	US, Israel
2012	188-3	US, Israel, Palau
2013	188-2	US, Israel
2014	188-2	US, Israel
2015	191-2	US, Israel

Each fall the UN vote is a welcome reminder that the world has not completely lost its senses and that the American empire does not completely control the opinion of all other governments. The real reason for Washington’s eternal hostility toward Cuba has not changed since the revolution in 1959 – The fear of a good example; the fear of an alternative to the capitalist model; a fear that has been validated repeatedly over the years as many Third World countries have expressed their admiration and gratitude toward Cuba.

How the embargo began: On April 6, 1960, Lester D. Mallory, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, wrote in an internal memorandum: “The majority of Cubans support Castro … The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. … every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.” Mallory proposed “a line of action which … makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” 

Later that year, the Eisenhower administration instituted its suffocating embargo against its everlasting enemy.

Nothing of any real importance has changed recently. Guantánamo Prison still exists in all its imperialist beauty and torture. The US has not renounced its “regime-change” policies toward Cuba. Not a penny of Cuba’s near-trillion-dollar lawsuit for compensation has been paid. Washington has recently threatened to revoke the tax exempt status of IFCO/Pastors for Peace, one of the most respected and experienced Cuba advocacy groups. I still can’t go to Cuba as a tourist, or to present a book of mine at a Cuban Book Fair (for which I’ve been blocked in the past). And the United States still does not relax its death grip on the embargo, including continuing to prohibit the sale of medicines to Cuba.

A note to readers

A number of you have remarked to me about Killing Hope being unavailable in stores and, usually, from Amazon, and often from myself. This is because one of the book’s publishers, Common Courage (Maine), and its editor Greg Bates, have blocked publication and distribution of the book by a new US publisher. Common Courage is essentially out of business but refuses to face up to the fact. Bates stole a royalty payment sent to me by my British publisher via Common Courage. This theft, among other things, nullified my contract with Common Courage. It’s complicated, but I feel obliged to offer some explanation to those of you who have been unable to find a copy of the book.

Notes

1. The Independent (London), March 18, 2015
2. The Wikileaks Files: The World According to US Empire (2015), Introduction by Julian Assange, chapter 10
3. Newsweek, September 21, 2015
4. William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (2005), Chapter 18
5. See Jürgen Todenhöfer’s Facebook and website. Some minor corrections to spelling and grammar have been made.
6. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960, Volume VI, Cuba(1991), p.885

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this website are given.