Trump names George Soros acolyte as charge in Havana By The Wayne Madsen Report

Trump names George Soros acolyte as charge in Havana By The Wayne Madsen Report
Donald Trump has named Phillip Goldberg, an arch-interventionist U.S. diplomat and acolyte of the "regime change" dogma of hedge fund mogul George Soros, as the interim chargé d'affaires of the U.S. embassy in Cuba. Goldberg's task will be to initiate Soros-inspired themed street demonstrations in Cuba when Cuban President Raul Castro steps down on April 19 of this year.

Goldberg will replace Lawrence Gumbier, who has served as chargé since last October. 
Goldberg [pictured, left] is not liked in Latin America. As ambassador to Bolivia, Goldberg's involvement in Bolivia's domestic politics earned him an expulsion in 2008 by the government of President Evo Morales. Goldberg also served as the chief of the U.S. mission in Kosovo, a Mafia-run state that would not have been created and thrived had it not been for the efforts and influence of Soros over European Union and U.S. State Department policies during the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. 

Goldberg, a former and assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, is an integral member of the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy and a "deep state" functionary of the highest order. Goldberg's placement in Cuba by Trump is yet another indication that Trump's rhetoric about his combating the "deep state" is pure political rhetoric having no basis in fact.

Cuban-American Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) have blocked the appointment of a full U.S. ambassador to Havana. President Obama nominated Cuba expert and diplomat Jeffrey DeLaurentis as ambassador but his nomination died in the Senate.

While in La Paz, Goldberg ran a major Central Intelligence Agency espionage operation out of the embassy. Before Goldberg, himself, was expelled from Bolivia in 2008, Assistant Regional Security officer at the U.S. embassy, Vince Cooper, was declared persona non grata by the Bolivian government and charged with espionage. Cooper had attempted to enlist U.S. Peace Corps volunteers and at least one Fulbright scholar in Bolivia to spy on Cuban and Venezuelan nationals in the country. One Fulbright scholar approached by Cooper, John Alexander van Shaick, blew the whistle on the espionage operation.

Goldberg supported secessionist movements in the energy resource-rich states of Santa Cruz, Beni, Pando, Cochabamba, and Tarija. Goldberg's activities, supported by the CIA station in La Paz and U.S. Special Forces in the country, sought to break away 35 percent of Bolivia's population to weaken Morales's government. Goldberg also supported the "Santa Cruz Autonomy Statute," which tried to withhold two-thirds of Santa Cruz's tax revenues from Morales's government and establish an autonomous state-wide police force.

Goldberg was also reportedly a part of a CIA terrorist operation in Bolivia that blew up agas pipeline from Bolivia to Sao Paulo, Brazil. The severing of the pipeline cut Bolivia's natural gas output to Brazil by 10 percent. Other Goldberg activities included coordinating anti-Morales actions by the right-wing governors of Santa Cruz, Pando, Beni, and Tarija. Opposition groups funded by the United States took over government buildings in the four states. The opposition also cut the gas flow to Brazil and Argentina by taking over gas installations.

Goldberg's actions left Morales no choice but to expel him from Bolivia in 2008. In solidarity with Morales, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez also expelled the U.S. ambassador in Caracas and Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega sent the U.S. ambassador in Managua packing. In expelling ambassador Patrick Duddy, Chavez said, "Yankees, go to hell," adding that the United States was "full of shit."

As U.S. ambassador to the Philippines, Goldberg immediately involved himself in that nation's 2016 presidential election. Goldberg endorsed and assisted the campaign opponents of the eventual victor, Rodrigo Duterte. In August 2016, irritated by Goldberg's election meddling, Duterte called Goldberg a "'bakla' son-of-a-bitch." Bakla is Tagalog for gay.
In dispatching Goldberg as his "man in Havana," Trump has left no doubt that he expects the U.S. diplomat to stir up political violence and disruption in Cuba after Castro's resignation in April. Trump's Cuba policy, which foresees Trump and Scion hotel properties edging out Marriott, Hilton, Sheraton, Sofitel, and other chains in a country governed in a post-Castro era by returning right-wing Cubans from south Florida, is as obvious as Goldberg's jaded diplomatic resumé. Goldberg also represents Trump's growing neo-conservative contingent, which includes ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and ambassador to Israel David Friedman, within key ranks in the State Department.

Fake news is not enough, now it's fake history BY THE WAYNE MADSEN REPORT

Fake news is not enough, now it's fake history 

BY THE WAYNE MADSEN REPORT

Donald Trump continues to push his full-throttled assault on the free press by claiming any news report that is critical of him or his policies constitutes "fake news." Not content with re-writing current events to fit Trump's agenda, some of his ardent supporters are now pushing the meme of "fake history" to discredit actual chronicles of past events in order to advance false or misleading historical claims or radical religious dogma. 

Altering history to achieve totalitarian rule was the basis for George Orwell's warning in the novel 1984: "Who controls the past, controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." Trump's affectation for "alternative facts" and baseless "fake news" are part of a treacherous attempt on his part to control the present. The efforts of Trump's alt-right supporters to create fake histories serve to control the past. The overall agenda represents a naked push to control the future.

Outside of the disciplines imposed by academic and archival research and historical and biographical documentation, fake history, like its evil twin fake news, is finding a hospitable nesting ground in social media. Facebook, Twitter, and Google are as responsible for promulgating false historical narratives as the alt-right's digital cesspools that include Breitbart News, the Daily Stormer, and Infowars. Although the governments of Britain, France, and Germany are attempting to enact laws against pushing fake news and history, there is no legislative solution to this problem. The only answer lies in educating the public, particularly school age youth, in relying on information that has passed the test of accuracy via scholarly vetting and accurate references.

Accurate referencing does not include movies like The Darkest Hour, which erroneously portrays wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as a dogged opponent of German Nazism and Italian fascism. Churchill's number one priority in World War II was to protect and preserve the British Empire. Unfortunately, Trump believes The Darkest Hour presents an accurate history of Churchill, which only further feeds the Oval Office occupant's fractured knowledge of history. It is Trump's myopic knowledge of history that led him to proclaim some sort of equity between neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia and those opposing their presence in the city that has a historical legacy that reaches from the Civil War and antebellum South back to Thomas Jefferson's founding of the University of Virginia in 1819.

Trump's racist supporters find the Civil War presents the greatest opportunity to proffer fake historical events. For example, the fake history of African-American Confederate battalions in the Civil War is a creation of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV), an outwardly racist organization, which along with its sister group, the League of the South, seeks to restore the Confederate State of America. There is no record of any African Americans having fought under the Confederate flag. The SCV has been able to enlist the support of a few African-Americans like Anthony Hervey of Mississippi, "honorary" SCV member H.K. Edgerton of North Carolina [pictured right], Karen Cooper of Virginia, and 2013 Virginia GOP lieutenant governor candidate Reverend E. W. Jackson to support the flying of the Confederate battle flag, the singing of "Dixie," displaying Confederate memorials, and the belief in blacks fighting for the Confederacy, but these individuals are cartoonish outliers within their own communities.

There is no evidence that any regimented black soldiers fought for the Confederacy. A belief among some Confederacy supporters that General Stonewall Jackson commanded two battalions of black Confederate soldiers is made from whole cloth. Only when the Union forces were on the verge of defeating the Confederacy in March 1865 did the Confederate Congress in Richmond authorize the military training of a small number of freed slaves. However, the war ended before any African-Americans could take up arms. Internet websites offering "proof" of black Confederate soldiers are echo chambers for the SCV and related neo-Confederate organizations trying to repaint the Confederacy as benevolent toward African-Americans and not the prime protector of slavery as a valued institution of the South's culture and economic system.

In a Superbowl ad, Fiat-Chrysler decided to use a speech of Dr. Martin Luther King to pitch  RAM trucks. King said, "You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve." The ad then ran the slogan: "Built to Serve." There has been a recent tendency to use King as a corporate logo to sell products. George Washington's and Abraham Lincoln's likenesses have been used to sell everything from bed linens and mattresses to recreational vehicles and refrigerators. For those fake historians anxious to turn King into a shill for Wall Street, it should be noted that, far from urging people to buy pickup trucks, King penned the following notes while in seminary: "capitalism has seen its best days in American, and not only in America, but in the entire world."

There are other attempts by the alt-right to promote fake history. The most absurd theory is that Adolf Hitler was a "socialist" and Franklin D. Roosevelt was a "fascist." In fact, the opposite -- with a few qualifications in the case of FDR -- was true. Hitler's party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party -- shortened as "Nazi" -- but the party was more interested in nationalism and conquest than in workers' rights or socialism as advanced by the Marxist and democratic labor parties of the interwar era.

Fake history also includes an attempt to portray Senator Joseph McCarthy as correct in his   pursuit of "Communists" embedded in the U.S. government and President Harry S Truman as a Communist "fellow traveler." These falsehoods were originally promoted by the far-right John Birch Society, which, under Trump, has experienced a resurgence, along with its discredited fake history claims. The exchange of telegrams [above] between McCarthy and Truman presents an accurate illustration of McCarthy's perfidy and Truman's rejection of McCarthy's spurious allegations: 

Promoting fake history is not the same as researching alternate views of history. Historical research is a dynamic pursuit and newly-discovered documentation often results in acceptable revisionist views of historical events. However, revisionist views of history are different than fake history, the latter having no proof of supporting evidence, but merely unsubstantiated rantings and ramblings found on dodgy websites. Trump, however, in his repeated attacks on "fake news,' has legitimized those who traffic in fake history.

Betsy DeVos, Trump's billionaire Secretary of Education, is encouraging taxpayer-funded voucher and charter schools to teach "Christian history." This curriculum includes discredited "creationism" and the rejection of the scientific evolution of species. DeVos is more interested in America's public schools building "God's Kingdom" than in promoting true education, a goal that can only exist in a secular environment free of religious dogma and sectarian indoctrination. DeVos's and the Republican Party's overall support for historical illiteracy is compounded by the offerings on what was once known as the History Channel. This eyesore of the vast wasteland known as cable television now offers such mindless fare as "Swamp People," "American Pickers," "Counting Cars," and "The Curse of Oak Island." Instead of accomplished historians being cited for their work, a charlatan like Bill O'Reilly can claim the mantle of historical "expert" because he wrote a "Killing Series" of pulp fiction novels masked as historical research on the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, and Jesus of Nazareth; the alleged assassination of General George Patton; and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan. Conservative commentator Glenn Beck is another purveyor of fake history in his writings and Blaze cable TV network blathering.

After the Dark Ages, Europe emerged into the era of the Renaissance. The arts and the study of history flourished. Hopefully, the United States will emerge from the dark age of Trump into a new renaissance where historical fact wins out over ludicrous claims based on ignorance and intolerance.

Trump's military parade in DC could cost millions in damage and disruption by The Wayne Madsen Report

Trump's military parade in DC could cost millions in damage and disruption by The Wayne Madsen Report

Donald Trump's vainglorious desire for a military parade along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC could result in millions of dollars in damage to streets, Washington Metro, and other key elements of the nation's capital's infrastructure. Trump recently tasked the Department of Defense to come up with a plan for a military parade that features armored vehicles, aircraft flying in formation, and marching military personnel. Trump got the idea after watching the French military parade held in Paris on Bastille Day while visiting Paris on July 14 last year.

The last time a military parade was held in Washington was after Operation Desert Storm in 1991. From a reviewing stand between 17th and 15th Streets, President George H. W. Bush viewed parading armored vehicles, mobile Patriot missile launchers, and troops dressed in camouflage combat uniforms. However, that parade was held along Constitution Avenue and consisted of two M1-A1 Abrams tanks, [pictured, left] each weighing 67-metric tons, and two 33-ton Bradley Fighting Vehicles. [pictured, right] The parade route was along Constitution Avenue, south of the White House Ellipse, and a safe distance from underground Metro stations and parking garages. However, there was still disruption to the capital's infrastructure, with street lights having to be removed and then re-installed and the armored vehicle treads from the tanks and Bradleys tearing up the asphalt along Constitution Avenue and side streets. Connecticut and Pennsylvania Avenues, as with many of DC's streets, are designed for a maximum of 30 gross weight tonnage per vehicle.

Another casualty of the 1991 parade was the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Sculpture Garden. The only thing the attack helicopters over the Mall managed to "attack" with their rotor wash were sculptures in the outdoor garden. Pebbles kicked up by the helicopters strafed the sculptures, many of them priceless, with gouges. The total cost of parade damage for Washington was $12 million, not counting the destruction caused to the Hirshhorn. The Pentagon refused to pay the Smithsonian for the damage caused by its helicopters.

It does not take much in the way of seismic vibration or shaking to dislodge the hundreds of sheet-metal acoustic panels located in Metro stations underneath Pennsylvania Avenue between the U.S. Capitol and the White House. These include the Orange/Blue/Silver Line's Federal Triangle and the Yellow/Green Line's Archives-Navy Memorial stations. In November 2010, construction above Farragut North station on the Red Line resulted in the ceiling tiles collapsing onto the subway platform.

According to various news reports, Trump desires a parade much more extensive than the 1991 affair, with a number of armored vehicles and missiles. The annual French Bastille Day parade in Paris does feature armored vehicles along the Champs Elysees but they are put on display to assuage the personal whims of the French president. Since World War II, the French have honored their annual French Revolution commemoration with a military parade to mark France's victory over Nazism.

Washington has seen military parades in the past, but these, like the 1991 parade, were to mark the end of wars. Parades in Washington were held following the Civil War, World War I, and World War II.

Trump originally wanted military vehicles, such as tanks, featured in his inaugural parade along Pennsylvania Avenue on January 20, 2017. Because of inadequate time to plan for such a display, only fighter plane fly-overs were scheduled for the parade but they were canceled due to rain.

While there is bi-partisan opposition in Congress to Trump's military parade, Defense Secretary James Mattis claimed that the Pentagon has been "putting together some options" for the parade. Although some of the "options" include holding the parade outside of Washington, Trump is intent on Pennsylvania Avenue. The city recently repaved the street following the 2017 inaugural parade. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser said Trump would have to pay for the parade. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) summed up the feelings of many congressional Republicans and Democrats about the proposed parade, "I don't think it's a particularly good idea. Confidence is silent. Insecurities are loud."

In a poll conducted by Military Times, which is largely read by active duty and retired military personnel and their families, 89 percent of the 51,000 respondents felt that the parade is "a waste of money," adding that "troops are too busy” for such an event. Many critics feel that such displays of military might are what can be expected from authoritarian regimes.