After Obama in Hiroshima: Israel’s Gigantic Nuclear Elephant

By contributors | May. 29, 2016 |

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The criminalization of truth when it comes to Israel’s nuclear capabilities means that its arsenal has been converted into a gigantic elephant in the room.

The online version of a recent Economist magazine article comes equipped with the tantalizing headline “Israel’s atomic angst: A textile factory with a difference.” The summary reads: “One of the world’s oldest nuclear plants helped build the Jewish state’s secret nuclear arsenal.”

The textile reference is to a spontaneous alibi deployed in 1960 by an Israeli official accompanying then-U.S. Ambassador to Israel Ogden Reid on a flyover of the Negev Desert. An intensive construction operation near the town of Dimona, site of the now-aging nuclear plant, caught the inquisitive ambassador’s eye — and “textile factory” was apparently the first thing that came to the official’s mind.

The magazine offers a photograph of the Dimona reactor and cupola, complete with the caption: “Tough times in the garment trade.”

And you thought The Economist couldn’t do sarcasm.

The article notes that at a conference in April, representatives of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission reported “1,537 small defects and cracks” in the reactor’s aluminum core. While the typical lifespan of such reactors is said to be 40 years, Dimona has kept on ticking for 53.

Despite having ostensibly done its time on earth, however, there doesn’t seem to be a funeral in sight for Dimona. The Israeli newspaper Haaretzexplains that, “for political, scientific and economic reasons, Israel has no capability or desire to replace the core, an operation that would mean building a new reactor.”

As for related items that might also be conceived of in terms of ticking,The Economist cites the common estimate that Israel possesses between 80 and 200 nuclear warheads. Of course, self-imposed immunity from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty has not prevented the Jewish state from throwing a permanent hissy fit over Iran’s alleged nuclear ambitions.

Meanwhile, the essential criminalization of truth when it comes to discussing Israel’s own nuclear capabilities means that its arsenal has been converted into a gigantic elephant in the room—and a very dangerous one at that.

For what happens to insiders who dare draw attention to the beast, one need look no further than the case of former Israeli nuclear technicianMordechai Vanunu, kidnapped by the Mossad in 1986 and imprisoned for 18 years, 11 of them in solitary confinement.

Blocked from leaving the country (and recently hit with new charges), Vanunu is still seen by the state as a “security threat”—a far greater threat, no doubt, than stockpiles of weapons capable of eliminating vast swathes of humanity, or nuclear reactor cores containing 1,537 flaws.

The United States, for its part, never really bought into the whole “textile” factory scenario, and the American intelligence community suspected almost from the start what the Israelis were up to. But aside from some pressure from John F. Kennedy — who, as Avner Cohen and William Burr detail at the National Security Archive, pushed for international inspections of Israeli nuclear facilities — the U.S. has pretty much been wholeheartedly strung along by ambiguous Israeli explanations of its supposedly peaceful activities at Dimona.

In their book “Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars,” American journalist Dan Raviv and Israeli journalist Yossi Melman document a political convergence in 1969 that proved most auspicious for Israel’s nuclear industry: the respective ascents to power of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, U.S. President Richard Nixon, and Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.

“The trio,” Raviv and Melman write, “agreed that no more inspections of Dimona would be required …  Moreover, the new White House team had apparently concluded that an unquestionably strong Israel would be good for American interests: pushing the Arab countries to negotiate peace by dispelling their dreams that they could, with Soviet assistance, wipe out the Jewish state.”

The special relationship has proved enduring, with American weaponslending a hand as Israel regularly wipes out portions of area Arab populations. American companies were also among the entities that previously supplied Israel with key materials for nuclear weapons. Never mind that nukes are a pretty good way to increase one’s own chances of self-destruction.

Meanwhile, should The Economist be seeking to augment its arsenal of sarcasm, “Spies Against Armageddon” provides plenty of robust material. Consider the section on how, while shopping for their nuclear program in the 1960s, the Israelis relied on none other than former Nazis in West Germany.

One character, a Luftwaffe officer-turned-businessman who Raviv and Melman note was “still convalescing from his wartime injuries,” paid a personal visit to Israel to make the acquaintance of Israeli defense officials: “The Israelis referred to him as ‘the Nazi pilot,’ and they went out drinking together in Tel Aviv.”

Shipments destined for Dimona were also procured from Degussa, a German company that “had profiteered during the war from gold teeth and other metal items stolen from murdered Jews.”

Half a century later, as the old reactor plugs away into eternity, one can think of at least 1,537 reasons it shouldn’t exist in the first place.

Belén Fernández is the author of “The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work,” published by Verso. She is a contributing editor at Jacobin magazine.

Via TeleSur

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Related video added by Juan Cole:

RT: “‘Israel may have one of biggest nuclear stockpiles in the world’ – whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg”

Posted in Israel/ Palestine,Nuclear weapons,War | 2 Responses | Print |

Trump won because small town America is dying By Wayne Madsen Report

Trump won because small town America is dying
By Wayne Madsen Report
The well-paid political pundits who live in uber-wealthy Potomac, Maryland and Great Falls, Virginia call it "fly over" country. It is the transcontinental swath of land that extends from rural Virginia, a two-hour drive from Washington, DC, to the small towns of eastern Washington and the decrepit border towns of southwest Texas. Fly-over land also includes all-but-vacant town centers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, and Georgia.

These blighted places on the map are where Donald Trump scored huge victories against the establishment Republican candidates who talk a lot but never deliver. These Republicans, the ones with the last names of Bush, Romney, McCain, Kasich, Fiorina, Rubio, and Cruz sold out middle America a long time ago to domestic and foreign special interests. These Republicans take their orders from Wall Street even as they made pitches for votes on Main Street.

Trump "trumped" his opponents because under the stewardship of the elitist Republicans, Main Street died. And if one doesn't believe Main Street, USA is dead, just take a drive to some of the blighted small towns and even larger cities across "fly over" country.

WMR recently spent some time in towns where contrivances like Wal-Mart (on whose board Hillary Clinton once proudly sat), Costco, and Amazon (whose owner also owns The elitist newspaper The Washington Post) have driven everything and everyone out of business.

  
Abandoned store fronts in Summerton, SC. The GOP and Democratic Party elitists and their Wall Street and globalist pals turned small town America into Junk Shop, USA.

Things are especially grim in the South, where the centers of small towns look like the movie sets of post-apocalyptic movies. Towns like Skippers, Virginia; Wilson, North Carolina; Manning, South Carolina; and others throughout the South were never even a thought among the Washington political class and the Wall Street investors when America's textile, tobacco, and manufacturing jobs were eliminated. These once booming towns are now decrepit monuments to America's industrial and agricultural zenith.

   
Left: Abandoned gas station in Gresham, South Carolina; right: Abandoned motel in Manning, South Carolina.

The people who live in these emaciated American towns, places like Summerton, South Carolina; Marion, Indiana; El Paso, Texas; and Callahan, Florida cast their votes for Trump because he offers something the candidates of the elite class could never offer: hope. When Trump talks about sanctioning American companies that move plants to Mexico and China, he receives an instant positive reaction from what the globalist politicians and bankers created: "Junk Shop, USA." Junk Shop is where people eke out a living on the gray economy, bartering for goods and services due to lack of cash. Junk Shop, USA is where antique shops and flea markets are the only real businesses left. As Trump would say, "It's disgusting!"


The Republicans and Democrats, owned and operated by Wall Street and the global bankers, turned middle America into a vast "Junk Shop" of antique stores, flea markets, people on food stamps, and meth addicts. Trump won in middle America because he convinced voters he will improve their status in life. Now, Trump must deliver.

The elitist court jesters like Jon Stewart and Greg Guttfeld can make all the fun they want of those "country rubes" who have voted and will vote for Trump in November. The last laugh, however, may go to Trump and his supporters when the population of "fly-over" country delivers its electoral votes to Trump in November. Expect some pundits to contemplate suicide as small town and rural America deliver to Trump the electoral votes of Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Arizona, Washington state, and Pennsylvania. And while the political elites of Potomac, Maryland and The Hamptons cry themselves to sleep on election night, the citizens of "fly-over" country will be having the ultimate laugh.

Solid links found between Rafael Cruz's employer and plot to kill JFK by Wayne Madsen Report

 May 1, 2016 -- SPECIAL REPORT -- McLean, Virginia (WMR)-- Solid links found between Rafael Cruz's employer and plot to kill JFK

by Wayne Madsen Report
A long-since forgotten dossier maintained by the Central Intelligence Agency on New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation of the links between Lee Harvey Oswald, expatriate Cubans in New Orleans, and the CIA points to solid links between Rafael Cruz's ultimate oil industry employer, Schlumberger of France and the Netherlands Antilles, and the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963.

Cruz's relationship with Schlumberger eventually led to the purchase by the company of Rafael B. Cruz & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm that employed both Rafael, the father of presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Eleanor Darragh Wilson Cruz, Senator Cruz's mother.

The April 27, 1967 issue of the New Orleans States-Item featured a story written jointly by the States-Item and the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News that points to CIA undercover agent Gordon Novel as having played a part in the CIA's false flag "Fair Play for Cuba" operations in New Orleans that also employed Oswald and, as WMR previously reported, Rafael Cruz. While flying the "pro-Fidel Castro" flag, Fair Play for Cuba, which was headquartered in the same building and office space that also housed former FBI agent and JFK assassination co-conspirator Guy Banister, was a front for anti-Castro activities in the New Orleans area beginning as early as 1961.

Garrison issued arrest warrants for Novel and Oswald and Banister associate Sergio Arcacha Smith, the leader of a militant anti-Castro organization also working out of Banister's Newman Building office of Guy Banister Associates, a detective agency in downtown New Orleans.

By the CIA's own admission, Arcacha Smith was paid by the CIA indirectly. Arcacha Smith's Frente Revolucionario Democratico (FRD) office in New Orleans received funds from the FRD headquarters in Miami. The FRD was created by the CIA's anti-Castro Miami operation JMWAVE. FRD leader Dr. Jose Miro Cardona directed CIA funds to Aracacha Smith and Novel, according to the CIA's own records.

On April 1, 1967, Novel was arrested in Gahanna, Ohio, outside of Columbus on a warrant issued by Garrison that stated Novel and Archacha Smith burglarized an oil services firm's munitions bunker in Houma, Terrebonne Parish, near New Orleans, in 1961. Novel and Arachaca Smith were arrested and charged with burglarizing the Houma bunker by Terrebonne Parish District Attorney Wilmore Broussard. The records of the case were later stolen from the custody of the Houma Police Department. A declassified CIA document revealed a third person was involved in the "theft" of munitions from the Schlumberger warehouse. Like Oswald, the third man, Layton Patrick Maartens, was an ex-U.S. Marine.

Upon his arrest, Novel began "graymailing" the CIA by telling all about his role with covert CIA activities in Louisiana prior to the assassination of Kennedy. Novel said that he was a New Orleans French Quarter bar owner who also served as an electronics expert for the CIA. Novel operated a CIA front in New Orleans called the Evergreen Advertising Agency. Through the company, Novel prepared special Christmas tree radio commercials aired in late 1960 and early 1961 by 300 stations in the United States and Canada that contained code phrases designed to alert CIA agents to the date of the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba on April 17, 1961. The key code phrases were "Star Christmas Trees" and "Holiday Trees." A formerly SECRET EYES ONLY dated May 31, 1967, confirmed that the coded radio messages were part of a CIA operation code named JMHOPE.

Novel's statements were determined to be factual by a psychiatrist and polygraph examiners. Novel also told the Dayton Daily News, "I think Garrison will expose some CIA operations in Louisiana."

The Washington Daily News of March 27, 1967 reported that Novel was in McLean, Virginia during the weekend of March 25-26, 1967. In McLean, Novel was administered a polygraph by the Washington, DC firm REDEX, operated by private detectives Lloyd Furr and Richard L. Bast. The CIA later accused REDEX, Furr, and Bast of being "unscrupulous and untrustworthy." Novel was determined to be telling the truth by the REDEX polygraph examiners.

On March 29, 1967, Novel called the FBI New Orleans office from an unknown location and reported that he had "not furnished Garrison with any information about "Double Check" of Miami. Operation Double Check was a CIA "cover and funding" mechanism for recruiting and paying American pilots participating in the Bay of Pigs operation.

Novel again called the FBI office on March 29 to report that Walter Sheridan, a former FBI and National Security Agency operative who joined NBC News to shred Garrison's investigation of the Kennedy assassination and trial of Clay Shaw, was present during the polygraph of Novel in McLean. McLean is adjacent to Langley, Virginia, the home of the CIA's headquarters.


Rafael B. Cruz, third from left, carrying pro-Castro poster at demonstration at University of Texas in January 1959. Other pro-Castro CIA agents in 1958 included David Ferrie and Donald Norton. Norton hid out in Calgary, a CIA safe city for JFK assassination conspirators.

On May 22, 1967, Novel and a friend Gary Edwards were sitting in a WKDA-AM radio truck in downtown Nashville, Tennessee while preparing to do an interview that "would blow the New Orleans investigation wide open." A sniper opened fire on the truck and Novel and Edwards were injured by flying glass. Edwards immediately returned to Washington, DC and it was determined his real name was Gerald Mundy. Novel returned to Columbus. Nashville police discovered five bullet indentations on the truck's right side.

What Novel revealed to the press was that the CIA unit in New Orleans transferred munitions from the oil services company's bunker, leased by Schlumberger Well Services Company of Houston, to three destinations in New Orleans: Novel's Evergreen Advertising Agency building, the home of CIA contract pilot David Ferrie, and the office of Guy Banister in the Newman Building on Lafayette Street. In early 1961, an associate of Banister revealed that he saw as many as 100 boxes of munitions in Banister's storeroom. They were all marked "Schlumberger," the same firm with which Rafael Cruz had a contractual relationship. Inside the boxes were rifle grenades, land mines, and small missiles. The munitions from Schlumberger were eventually transported by boat to Cuba.


CIA's use of highly-restricted EYES ONLY caveat in document on Schlumberger's Bay of Pigs weapons smuggler Gordon Novel.

Garrison charged that the director of the New Orleans International Trade Mart, Clay Shaw, who Garrison also indicted for conspiring to kill President Kennedy, was ultimately in charge of the weapons movement from Schlumberger to Cuba. Shaw was also the director of a CIA front company called World Trade Center Corporation, which moved its headquarters from Switzerland to Rome and then to Johannesburg, South Africa, after Kennedy's assassination. The World Trade Center Corporation and George H. W. Bush's Zapata Corporation, whose ships moved weapons to Cuba for the Bay of Pigs invasion, were under the control of a CIA foreign commercial operations program code-named WUBRINY/LPDICTUM.

Rafael Cruz's eventual employer Schlumberger has always been a virtual CIA front in its own right. As late as 1986, the CIA's proprietary airline charter company Stern Air of Dallas, flew explosives for Schlumberger to such locations as Pakistan and Qatar. Stern Air also flew CIA missions to such countries as Chile, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua, Scotland, Ireland, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, South Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Somalia, Angola, Rhodesia, South Africa, Libya, and Zaire.


Schlumberger used CIA proprietary airline Stern Air to ship explosives around the world. Rafael Cruz sold his consulting firm to Schlumberger subsidiary.

One of Schlumberger's major stockholders was William Casey, who served as Reagan's CIA director. The husband of the heiress to the Schlumberger fortune, Jean de Menil, was a board member of one of Clay Shaw's other CIA front companies, Permindex Corporation of Montreal. De Menil's wife, Dominique Schlumberger de Menil, a member of Houston's oil elite, was tied to French Secret Army Organization (OAS) plots to assassinate French President Charles De Gaulle in the early 1960s.

Garrison's investigation of the CIA's New Orleans links to the Kennedy assassination were stymied by the fact that several witnesses sought by Garrison fled Louisiana to other states and countries, one of which was Canada. Rafael Cruz left New Orleans for Calgary, Alberta in 1967, the same year Garrison indicted Clay Shaw. Cruz was not the only New Orleans resident tied to the Kennedy assassination to flee to Calgary. CIA agent Donald P. Norton, who claimed he delivered an attaché case containing $50,000 in cash to Oswald in Monterrey, Mexico in exchange for documents handed over by Oswald. Norton, a musician, said he was instructed by the CIA to proceed to Calgary where he played the piano in a well-known Calgary restaurant. The Vancouver Sun and The Albertanconfirmed Norton's activities on behalf of the CIA. Norton also took on a public persona and even appeared on CHCT-TV in Calgary. Norton also worked for the Alberta Piano Company, Ltd., where he gave piano lessons. Norton claimed his CIA contact was a well-known oil company employee in Calgary.

Norton, who had owned a record production company in Athens, Georgia, said he worked for Ferrie in 1958 and was ordered to deliver $150,000 to pro-Castro revolutionaries in Havana. Rafael Cruz also claims to have supported the Castro revolution before he left Cuba in 1957 and later, while attending the University of Texas in Austin in 1959. Oswald, Ferrie, Shaw, and a photographed man said by imagery experts to be Rafael Cruz, were all involved with the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba operation in New Orleans in 1963. Norton said Ferrie used the alias Hugh Pharris. Norton said he met with Shaw in Alabama in 1962 before traveling to Monterrey to meet one "Harvey Lee," a CIA alias used by Oswald. Norton was questioned by Garrison's investigators and they concluded that his information largely matched up with their investigation's results. Norton said he moved to Calgary and ultimately to Vancouver for peace of mind. He said the CIA fired him in 1968.

The CIA documents shine a light on CIA activities related to the Kennedy assassination in New Orleans and Calgary. As much as the Cruz campaign denies any connections between Rafael Cruz and the Cuban-CIA conspirators in New Orleans, the document trail linking the elder Cruz to the presidential assassination plotters grows longer.

SPECIAL REPORT. Mysterious "Mr. X" in photo with Lee Harvey Oswald -- FBI couldn't identify him By Wayne Madsen Report

SPECIAL REPORT. Mysterious "Mr. X" in photo with Lee Harvey Oswald -- FBI couldn't identify him By Wayne Madsen Report
Significant questions have surfaced about not only the father of Texas Republican senator and presidential contender Ted Cruz, Rafael B. Cruz, Sr., but now also the senator's Cuban grandparents, Rafael and Emilia Cruz.

WMR has been at the forefront of asking questions about the Cruz family from Cuba and our recent report about a male bearing a striking resemblance to Rafael Cruz, Sr. appearing handing out "Fair Play for Cuba" pamphlets at the International Trade Mart in New Orleans in August 16, 1963, has generated a firestorm of comments on the web.

In 1957, Rafael Bienvenidos Cruz, the son of an employee of the U.S. intelligence-linked RCA Corporation with the same name, Rafael Bienvenidos Cruz, left Cuba for the United States. Cruz claims he fought with Castro against the fascist government of Fulgencio Batista but soured on the revolution. However, Cruz left Cuba two years before the Castro revolution and there is no solid evidence that Cruz fought with Castro's forces. However, in from the early days of the Cuban revolution in the early 1950s to the time before Castro took power, some in the CIA supported Castro against Batista while the United States officially backed the Batista regime. One of these was Bob Chapman, the CIA station chief in Santiago in eastern Cuba where the Castro forces were strongest. He and his predecessor, Bill Patterson, allegedly steered covert U.S. aid to Castro against the wishes and without the knowledge of Earl Smith, the pro-Batista U.S. ambassador in Havana. In any event, Ted Cruz's father's story about supporting Castro against Batista could have been told by any CIA agent operating in eastern Cuba at the time.

RCA, which employed Rafael B. Cruz, Sr.'s father, was a major player in CIA operations throughout the world, and especially in Latin America, where it helped install CIA clandestine radio stations and operated signals intelligence bases for the U.S. National Security Agency. RCA's chairman and CEO, General David Sarnoff, was involved in a number of anti-Communist fronts linked to the CIA. Sarnoff also directed his NBC network to help train CIA agents in developing anti-Communist propaganda. The grandfather Cruz's links to RCA may have helped him and his wife obtain visas to enter the United States in 1966. Sarnoff supported supplying anti-Communist guerrilla forces behind the lines in the Baltic States, China, Poland, Hungary, Albania and "other areas" with clandestine radios and other equipment.

Cruz arrived in Austin where he enrolled in the University of Texas. This is a strange story since he claimed he left Cuba with only $100, which he said was sewn into his underwear. Cruz eventually gained U.S. permanent residency and a degree in mathematics from the University of Texas. In 1959, Cruz married Julia Ann Garza on January 1, 1959, and, after Cruz graduated from the University of Texas in 1961, the couple moved to New Orleans from Dallas after the birth of their second daughter on November 18, 1962.



Cruz, Sr. maintains that he moved to New Orleans from Dallas after his divorce from Julia. However, a 1967 New Orleans phone book listing for Cruz, Sr. lists him and Julia living in the same residence in New Orleans. Cruz is listed with the profession of "geophysical computer" technician and residence of H201 French Street. It is but one of several anomalies in the official Cruz biography.



The FBI analyzed the news footage of accused John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald passing out pro-Castro pamphlets on August 16, 1963. The photo of a group of supposed pro-Castro activists was taken on August 16, 1963 in front of Clay Shaw's International Trade Mart in New Orleans. An FBI New Orleans memo dated November 26, 1963, states that WDSU photographer Johann Rush did identify Oswald and spoke to him. Rush said he could not identify "Mr. X," the man standing behind Oswald to his left as one Barry Baguglia.
The Baguglia name arose with U.S. Secret Service agent John Rice who sauid WDSU TV news people told him that Mr. X might be one Barry Baguglia. Rush denied he mentioned Baguglia and that he never heard of him. WDSU's John Corporon, Jim Mitchie, Bill Slatter, and Mike Lala told the FBI they never heard of a Barry Baguglia. It turns out that the Secret Service's Special Agent Garretts was the one who passed on the name Baguglia. Garretts claimed he received the Baguglia name from Herman Kohlman, Assistant District Attorney for Orleans parish. Kohlman later told the FBI that he never mentioned the name Baguglia to Garretts. What Kohlman told Garretts was that his Orleans detectives had arrested Alvin Roland Beauboeuf at David Ferrie's apartment and that Garretts may have confused the name Beauboeuf with Baguglia. The FBI concluded that the man present with Oswald wearing a white shirt and narrow tie was not Baguglia: ". . . it does not appear that there is any basis for the comment made by RICE that one of the five or six people handing out literature in front of the International Trade Mart was a person who might be BARRY BAGUGLIA."



The individual who bears a resemblance to Rafael B. Cruz, Sr. was never identified by the FBI or the 1978 House Select Committee on Assassinations. This "Mr. X" -- who resembles Rafael B. Cruz, Sr. -- remains an enigma. However, all those appearing in the photo at the trade mart, including Oswald's Cuban assistants, were identified by Chauncey Holt, the man on the far right, as being members of the CIA's Mongoose operation to overthrow Fidel Castro's government. On August 17, 1963, the day after the pamphleteering at the trade mart, Oswald appeared on an interview program at WDSU-AM radio called "Latin Listening Post" with host William Stuckey.

On August 21, 1963, Oswald appeared with Stuckey and WDSU-TV's Bill Stuckey on an interview program, Conversation Carte Blanche, that also included Ed Butler, the Executive Vice-President of the Information Council of the Americas (INCA), headquartered in New Orleans and involved in distributing anti-communist educational materials throughout Latin America, and Carlos Bringuier, Cuban refugee and New Orleans Delegate of the Revolutionary Student Directorate (DRE), one of the more active of the anti-Castro refugee organizations. Bringuier had gotten into a physical altercation with Oswald on August 9, 1963, during a Fair Play for Cuba pamphleteering operation in downtown New Orleans. But Oswald and Bringuier actually worked in the same ground floor offices of the infamous Newman Building, where Guy Banister Associates was located 5312 Lafayette Street while Oswald's "pro-Castro" Fair Play for Cuba Committee was located around the corner but within the ground floor office, but with an address of 544 Camp Street. Between September 6 and 9, 1963, Oswald was seen in the company of Clay Shaw, according to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison.


Photo from WDSU-TV New Orleans footage of the August 16, 1963 pro-Castro demonstration in front of the International Trade Mart. Man in sun glasses at far right is Chauncey Holt, said to have been the accountant for mobster Meyer Lansky. Mr. X [the man in the white shirt and necktie to Oswald's left rear], according to an FBI New Orleans memo dated November 25, 1963, never handed out Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets but was merely holding them.  The annotations on the identities of two of the men -- Bud Belcher and Leroy Young, both CIA agents involved with MONGOOSE -- came from Holt.


Left-to-right: Comparison photographs of Rafael B. Cruz, Sr. taken sometime in the late 1950s; "Mr. X" seen with Oswald in New Orleans on August 16, 1963; and Cruz now.

Oswald, earlier during the day of August 16, 1963, is said to have walked into the state employment office and offered to pay anyone who would help him hand out pamphlets during the noon lunch hour at the trade mart. One was Charles Hall Steele, Jr., who told the Warren Commission that Oswald paid him $2 to hand out pamphlets at the trade mart for 15 to 20 minutes. Steele, after dropping off his girlfriend, met Oswald and Mr. X on Canal Street. According to Steele's testimony, Mr. X was already with Oswald and would have likely been one of the Cuban MONGOOSE agents that was coordinating Oswald's pro-Castro street activities. The fact that the FBI memo states that Mr. X never handed out pamphlets, as did Oswald, indicates that the individual was serving as a coordinator of the activity at the trade mart. It is known that MONGOOSE involved CIA assets in Louisiana and Houston, Texas, places where Rafael B. Cruz, Sr. had resided.

The height of Rafael Cruz, Sr. listed on his draft registration form from 1967 is also curious. He claimed he was 6 foot. In recent photographs of him standing next to his son, Ted, the elder Cruz is shorter than Ted, who is 5' 7". Individuals do grow shorter with age but not by six inches. The elder Cruz's Selective Service form does show signs of the height entry being altered. The 1967 form also lists Cruz's address as 2246 Carondelet Street in Apartment 2-B, not the French Street address listed in the phone directory listing Cruz along with his wife, who he was reported to have divorced prior to leaving Dallas.



The draft registration form also lists Cruz's employer on July 26, 1967 as "Geophysics & Computer Service, Inc." This company is the French-based Compagnie Générale de Géophysique(CCG). The date July 26, 1967 is also significant for Cubans. Castro called his revolutionary popular front the "July 26 Movement." CCG is linked to the large Schlumberger oil conglomerate, which, along with Halliburton, is one of the two largest oilfield drilling companies in the world. Schlumberger had been active with the CIA and Zapata Offshore Company, which was owned by George H. W. Bush. Moreover, Jean de Menil, the son-in-law of Schlumberger founder Conrad Schlumberger, was a key figure in Permindex, the New Orleans-based CIA front headed up by Clay Shaw that was a key target of Garrison's investigation of the New Orleans connection to JFK's assassination in Dallas. The year 1967, when Rafael Cruz, Sr. departed New Orleans, allegedly with his second wife (and Ted Cruz's mother) Eleanor Darragh Wilson, was the same year that Garrison's official investigation of the New Orleans connection to Kennedy's assassination commenced with an indictment of Shaw, the same man whose office was located inside the International Trade Mart where Oswald and Mr. X were involved with handing out Fair Play for Cuba pamphlets on August 16, 1963.

Ted Cruz's mother Eleanor also reportedly worked for the Schlumberger affiliate. When the Cruzes left for Calgary in 1967, they worked under the aegis of Rafael B. Cruz & Associates, Ltd., which was owned by Rafael B. Cruz, Sr.

Mystery also surrounds Ted Cruz's mother Eleanor. She was married to Texas native Alan Wilson and lived with him in London from 1960 to 1966. In 1965, their infant son Michael died from crib death. Alan Wilson, who still lives in London, told McClatchy News Service that Michael was not his son. In his autobiography, Senator Ted Cruz not only claims Michael was the son or his mother and Alan but also claims the baby died in 1965. In fact, Michael, according to London vital statistics records, died in 1966 and well after the Wilsons were divorced. Eleanor Cruz, who lives in Houston, has been mum on her marriage to Wilson and her marriage to Cruz, which lasted from 1969 to 1997. Rafael B. Cruz, Sr., a Canadian citizen, became a U.S. citizen in 2005. Ted Cruz did not renounce his Canadian citizenship until 2013.

Enter a small London-based British firm called Strategic Communications Laboratories, Ltd. (SCL). Specializing in mass deception, psychological warfare, influence operations, and behavioral modification, the firm, thought to have ties with British intelligence and the CIA, has been in business since 1993. The firm's U.S. subsidiary, Cambridge Analytics, is now advising the Cruz for President campaign. SCL has proudly admitted that it has influenced elections in Ukraine, Romania, India, Kenya, Thailand, Latvia, Nigeria, and South Africa. 

Allen Dulles threatened Truman and Ike by The Wayne Madsen Report

Allen Dulles threatened Truman and Ike
WMR previously reported on a little-known letter sent by Warren Commission member and former CIA director Allen Dulles to former President Harry Truman in Independence, Missouri. The letter was dated January 7, 1964 and Truman responded to it on January 14, 1964. A copy of the Dulles letter to Truman, in which a certain "subject" was discussed, was not found in the Truman Library archives.

The exchange of correspondence between Dulles and Truman came just a few weeks after Truman published an OP ED in several newspapers lamenting the fact that he had ever created the Central Intelligence Agency. On December 7, 1963, Truman began writing his OP-ED for his national syndicator, the Newspaper Alliance of North America, just a few weeks after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas.

According to a researcher of the assassination of Kennedy, Dulles's letter to Truman, in which the nation's former top spook requested a personal meeting with the former president while en route from Washington to Dallas to investigate the November 22, 1963, assassination on behalf of the Warren Commission, was to warn Truman against any further attacks on the CIA and, by insinuation, any suggestion the CIA was somehow involved with the murder of the president.


Truman and Eisenhower gaze on the coffin of Kennedy. Soon, they would both receive a threatening message from Allen Dulles.

The gist of what Dulles told Truman is that the former president had not been in the Oval Office for over a decade and that the CIA had changed its mission since Truman created the agency in 1947. Dulles, according to our source, told Truman that post-Truman Cold War events necessitated CIA operations in Guatemala, Iran, and other countries that Truman criticized in his OP ED.




Truman apparently warned JFK about the CIA's plans to destabilize his administration and possibly harm him.

The JFK assassination researcher told WMR that Dulles also threatened former President Dwight Eisenhower on a visit to his Gettysburg, Pennsylvania ranch. Eisenhower twice, in response to his hearing of Kennedy's assassination, told a television interviewer: "the American people will not be 'stampeded,'" a possible reference to a potential whitewash of those behind the assassination.

There has not yet been any documentation, such as that regarding Dulles's trip to Independence, uncovered about Dulles's trip to Gettysburg. Dulles allegedly told Eisenhower and Truman that he was aware of their conversations with Kennedy between 1962 and his assassination in 1963 warning him to be on guard against plans by the CIA to destabilize his administration and personally harm him.


JFK with former President Hoover.

There is no evidence whether Dulles also threatened former President Herbert Hoover who, in 1963, was ailing at the age of 89 at his residence in New York's Waldorf-Astoria hotel. It is known that Hoover maintained a close friendship with JFK as  both a senator and as president and even served as Kennedy's personal liaison to Richard Nixon after Kennedy defeated him in the 1960 presidential election. Hoover also took ill after hearing about Kennedy's assassination. Hoover remained too ill to travel to Kennedy's funeral in Washington.

The threats made against Truman and Eisenhower by Dulles are relevant to this day and the 2016 presidential election.

Before the United States considers a Ted Cruz presidency, perhaps his Cuban-Canadian father, Rafael Cruz, Sr., should come totally clean about his whereabouts from 1963, the year Kennedy was assassinated, to 1967, the year he departed New Orleans for Calgary, Canada. 1967 is also the year that New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison began his prosecution of New Orleans businessman and CIA asset Clay Shaw, who was connected to Rafael Cruz through corporate interfaces.

Cruz and his second wife Helen Darragh, Ted Cruz's mother, sold their Rafael B. Cruz & Associates oil services firm to the French-based Compagnie Générale de Géophysique (CCG) in 1974. CCG was linked to the large Schlumberger oil conglomerate. Schlumberger had been active with the CIA and Zapata Offshore Company, which was owned by George H. W. Bush. Moreover, Jean de Menil,the son-in-law of Schlumberger founder Conrad Schlumberger, was a key figure in the Permindex, the New Orleans-based CIA front headed up by Clay Shaw that was a key target of Garrison's investigation.

Was the father of presidential hopeful Cruz involved in the JFK assassination? by Wayne Madsen Report

Was the father of presidential hopeful Cruz involved in the JFK assassination?
by Wayne Madsen Report
Previous questions have surfaced about the 1960s activities of Rafael Cruz, Sr., the father of GOP presidential hopeful Rafael Cruz, Jr. (Ted Cruz). Based on the presence of the elder Cruz, an anti-Castro activist, in Dallas and New Orleans before the November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy, there is a strong reason to believe that Cruz was associated with Central Intelligence Agency's anti-Castro operations.

Furthermore, a Cuban hired by alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and who bears a striking resemblance to Cruz is seen in an iconic photograph of Oswald and a group of Cubans Oswald hired who were distributing "Hands off Cuba!" pamphlets in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. The photo of Oswald and other Cubans he hired for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was taken outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans on August 16, 1963. WMR has been informed by a source that the individual to Oswald's left is none other than Rafael Cruz. The photograph at the trade mart was favorably compared to a 1957 photograph of Cruz attached to an official Cuban Ministry of Education document.


Photo of Rafael Cruz, Sr. attached to a 1957 Cuban Ministry of Education secondary education graduation certificate.


Man to Oswald's left, in center with tie, is reportedly Rafael Cruz, the father of the man who wants to be the next president of the United States. Photograph taken on August 16, 1963 outside the International Trade Mart in New Orleans.


Another view of the purported Cruz [far left].

   
Blown-up photo of Rafael Cruz with Fair Play for Cuba in New Orleans in 1963 [left]. Rafael Cruz today with his son at a FreedomWorks event in Salt Lake City in 2013 where Rafael Cruz falsely stated he fled Castro-led Communist Cuba [right]. What else has the elder Cruz lied about?


Someone should print this original pamphlet in color and hand it to Rafael Cruz, Sr. and ask him if he handed them out in New Orleans on August 16, 1963.

Oswald was arrested along with three Cubans on August 9, 1963, not necessarily the same Cubans he was later photographed with at the trade mart, after he got into what is considered to have been a "staged" fight with anti-Castro Cuban activist and lawyer Carlos Bringuier. Before Oswald's very public fight with Bringuier and Oswald's subsequent arrest, the ex-Marine offered to help the DRE train its commandos to fight against the Castro government in Cuba.

G. Robert Blakey, the Special Attorney at the Department of Justice in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section from 1960 to 1964 and the chief counsel of the House Special Committee on Assassinations, affirmed that the men seen with Oswald passing out pamphlets at the trade mart on August 9 were never identified. In fact, Blakey told PBS's Frontline in 1993, "when he [Oswald] distributed the literature, one of the two people was hired. The other person we've never been able to identify."

On August 9, 1963, Oswald was found guilty of disturbing the peace and he was fined 10 dollars. It is known that Oswald worked with Bringuier and Clay Shaw in anti-Castro activities linked to the CIA. Bringuier's Student Revolutionary Directorate (DRE), an anti-Castro organization, used the same 544 Camp Street address as Oswald's Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Moreover, Bringuier had in his possession Oswald's personal copy of the book, Guidebook for Marines.

On February 11, 2016, WMR provided a history of Cruz's ties to New Orleans during the time of the CIA's and organized crime's plot to kill Kennedy:
In 1957, Rafael Cruz, a former salesman for the U.S. intelligence-linked RCA Corporation, left Cuba for the United States. Cruz claims he fought with Castro against the fascist government of Fulgencio Batista but soured on the revolution. However, Cruz left Cuba two years before the Castro revolution. 

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

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

Guy Banister Associates was located on the ground floor of the Newman Building at 5312 Lafayette Street while Oswald's "pro-Castro" Fair Play for Cuba Committee was located around the corner but on the ground floor of the same building but with an address of 544 Camp Street. Banister was a retired FBI agent who continued to carry out tasks for the bureau and the CIA. The Newman Building housed a number of anti-Castro groups, including the Cuban Revolutionary Council, Crusade to Free Cuba Committee, the Cuban Democratic Revolutionary Front, Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean, and Friends of Democratic Cuba. While living in New Orleans, Cruz was also active with anti-Castro movements and the chances that he did not cross paths with Banister and the other anti-Castro activists, including CIA agent Sergio Arcacha Smith, are highly unlikely for such a close-knit community at the time.
While living in New Orleans with his wife and two young daughters, Cruz claimed residency at two addresses, one a low-rent apartment building off of Jackson Avenue. Cruz worked for an oil company in New Orleans. He has been less than forthcoming about the details of his time in New Orleans and the time line that included his move from Dallas.

Cruz and his wife Julia divorced in New Orleans or Dallas, allegedly in 1962 or 1963, but this detail is also clouded in mystery. Cruz apparently registered for the draft in 1967 claiming the New Orleans' Jackson Street address. Draft registration was a requirement for resident aliens like Cruz. Cruz apparently waited until the age of 28 to register for the draft, which, because he waited so long, was a criminal offense at the time. While liable for the draft and possible service in Vietnam, a country where fellow Cuban immigrant Otto Macias gladly volunteered to serve, Cruz took off for Calgary, Canada with his second wife, Eleanor Darragh. Darragh, a native of Delaware who graduated from Rice University in Houston, worked for the same oil company in New Orleans that employed Cruz. Their son, Rafael "Ted" Cruz, Jr., now a candidate for president of the United States, claims that his mother and father worked for the same company in New Orleans but there is actually no record of an Eleanor Darragh Wilson Cruz living in New Orleans at the time.

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

We Are The Cops Of The World

SPECIAL REPORT. U.S. fomenting "constitutional coups" in BRICS alliance by Wayne Madsen Report

SPECIAL REPORT. U.S. fomenting "constitutional coups" in BRICS alliance

by Wayne Madsen Report
When President Obama flies over Brazil on his way from Cuba to Argentina, he will be flying over the latest member of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South African (BRICS) alliance to feel the effects of the Central Intelligence Agency's new brand of coup generation. After trying to mount an electoral defeat of Brazil's progressive leftist president, Dilma Rousseff, through a combination of presidential candidate assassination, "rent-a-mob" street demonstrations, and corporate media propaganda, the Langley spooks are now trying to run Rousseff from office through a "Made in America" impeachment process. Aware that Rousseff's progressive predecessor and mentor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has been targeted by Brazilian prosecutors on the CIA's payroll, for arrest and prosecution for bribery, she has appointed him to her government with ministerial rank. 

Bribery charges, involving Brazil's state-owned oil company Petrobras and, in the case of Lula, construction firms, have also been leveled against Rousseff. George Soros, whose operatives in Brazil have been involved in launching "themed revolution" street protests, has made no secret of his desire to see Petrobras totally privatized so he can sink his fangs into the company and drain it for all it is worth. Soros operatives have turned thousands of people out into the streets of Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, and Rio de Janeiro in the "green and yellow" revolution. Protesters carry green and yellow banners and signs and dressed in green and yellow clothes have been confronted by an equal number of government supporters dressed in the red color of the ruling Workers' Party.

The anti-Rousseff/Lula movement bears a signature Soros name, "Vem Pra Rua," Portuguese for "To the Street." As with the disastrous Soros-inspired and CIA-nurtured Arab Spring protests in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia and Euromaidan protest in Ukraine, the Vem Pra Rua movement is basically nothing more than a politically-motivated capitalist campaign using Facebook, Twitter, and pro-insurrection television and radio networks, newspapers, and websites.

Vem Pra Rua's protests were marked by quickly-manufactured inflatable dolls of Lula in black and white prison garb and a placard cartoon drawing of Rousseff with a red diagonal "No" sign drawn through it.

Brazilian prosecutors on Langley's payroll recently arrested the popular Lula after staging a massive police raid of his house. Police also arrested the former First Lady of Brazil, Lula's wife Marisa Leticia. Lula said he felt that he was kidnapped by the police. In 2009, Honduran troops actually kidnapped President Manuel Zelaya in the middle of the night and detained him in a military cell prior to expelling him from the country. That operation, like the one against Lula and Rousseff, was backed not only by the CIA and NSA, but by the U.S. Southern Command in Miami. The Honduran coup was also backed by the Supreme Court of Honduras. To prevent a further political arrest of her predecessor, Rousseff has made Lula her chief of staff, a cabinet position that affords Lula protection from continuing prosecutorial harassment and legal proceedings by the federal court.


Soros's and the CIA's latest themed uprising, the Green and Yellow Revolution in Brazil. Soros's "revolutions" only serve the interests of Wall Street, the Pentagon, and Israel.

On March 16, Judge Sergio Moro, who is in charge of Operation "Lava-jato" ("Carwash"), the two-year investigation of Petrobras and the alleged bribery involving Rousseff and Lula, released two taped intercepts of phone calls between the president and former president. The bugged phone conversation involved Rousseff's plans to appoint Lula to her cabinet as a way to afford him some protection from the CIA's judicial-backed coup operation now in play. When the classified National Security Agency documents leaked by whistleblower Ed Snowden illustrated how NSA had spied on Rousseff's office and mobile phones, President Obama said he had ordered an end to such spying on world leaders friendly to the United States.

Rousseff, in a 2013 speech to the UN General Assembly in New York, said the following about the NSA spying on Brazilians: "Personal data of citizens was intercepted indiscriminately. Corporate information, often of high economic and even strategic value,  was at the centre of espionage activity . . Also, Brazilian diplomatic missions, among them the permanent mission to the UN and the office of the president of the republic itself, had their communications intercepted." President Obama followed Rousseff on the General Assembly's podium and, in answer to Rousseff's blistering attack on the U.S. and NSA, stated, "We have begun to review the way that we gather intelligence, so as to properly balance the legitimate security concerns of our citizens and allies, with the privacy concerns that all people share." Obama did not say that the U.S. would not use intercepted phone calls and email to bring down foreign leaders.

The NSA's wiretaps of Brazilian leaders and businessmen involved systems with such cover terms as SILVERZEPHYR, BLACKPEARL, FLYING PIG, and ROYALNET.

NSA spying on Rousseff and Lula continuing. Intercepted phone calls being turned over to Brazilian judge with CIA ties.

Judge Sergio Moro's name appears in one of the leaked State Department cables. On October 30, 2009, the U.S. embassy in Brasilia reported that Moro attended an embassy-sponsored conference in Rio de Janeiro held from October 4-9. Titled "Illicit Financial Crimes," the conference appears have been an avenue for the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to train Brazilian federal and state law enforcement, as well as other Latin American police officials from Argentina, Paraguay, Panama, and Uruguay, in procedures to mount bogus criminal prosecutions of Latin American leaders considered unfriendly to the United States. Former Argentine president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and members of her leftist political party also faced investigations by prosecutors and judges on the CIA's payroll. The State cable from Brasilia states: "Moro . . . discussed the 15 most common issues he sees in money laundering cases in the Brazilian Courts." Moro is also taking inspiration for his prosecution of Lula and Rousseff from the prosecutors in the Watergate affair that brought down President Richard Nixon.

The recent intercepts of Rousseff's phone conversations with Lula, believed to have been gathered by NSA and turned over to Moro by the U.S. embassy in Brasilia, shows that Obama lied. The American president's forthcoming visit to Latin America has avoided Air Force One touching down in Latin America's biggest power, Brazil. Obama, who once prepared Latin America analytical reports for CIA front company Business International Corporation, is keenly aware that Brazil is now undergoing a "constitutional coup" aided and abetted by the CIA and Soros. Obama cannot be seen giving the imprimatur of legitimacy to a government being actively targeted by Langley and other U.S. intelligence agencies, including NSA.

The transcript of one phone call between Rousseff and Lula is hardly a reason to impeach Rousseff and throw her and Lula into prison, regardless of the aims of Soros, the CIA, and their Brazilian lackeys:
Phone call between Rousseff and Lula, 16 March

Rousseff: Hello.

Lula: Hello.

Rousseff: Lula, let me tell you something.

Lula: Tell me, my love.

Rousseff: It’s this, I am sending Messias [Jorge Rodrigo Araújo Messias, deputy head of legal affairs at the cabinet office] round with the papers, so that we have them, just in case of necessity, that is the terms of office, right?

Lula: Uh-huh. Ok, ok.

Rousseff: That’s all, wait there, he is heading there.

Lula: OK, I’m here. I’ll wait.

Rousseff: Right?

Lula: OK.

Rousseff: Bye.

The phone call is hardly an impeachable offense but a tactical move to protect Lula from a runaway prosecutor.
----
The CIA previously used judicial cover in its coups against Honduras's Zelaya in 2009 and Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo in 2012. Both Zelaya and Lugo were ousted by a relatively new CIA methodology for deposing leaders its dislikes -- the "constitutional coup" -- using legislatures and high courts to justify ousters brought on by Soros-financed street demonstrations and manipulation of private media, including newspapers and television. Rousseff and Lula are using the legal powers afforded to the Brazilian presidency to bring charges against Moro.

Lula sees Moro as the CIA rat he is. He condemned Moro's witch hunt, saying that "with the press leading the investigative process they [the prosecutors] are going to re-found the republic. We have a totally cowardly Supreme Court, a totally cowardly High Court, a totally cowardly parliament  . . . a speaker of the house who is fucked, a president of the senate who is fucked, I don’t know how many legislators under threat, and everyone thinking that some kind of miracle is going to happen."

In South Africa, the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), which receives its support from Soros and the Jewish-dominated South African diamond and gold industry, is targeting president Jacob Zuma. The CIA has traditionally maintained strong influence over the DA, especially when it was led by Tony Leon, a former visiting fellow at the right-wing libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, DC. The tactics in South Africa are similar to those in Brazil. There are calls for Zuma to resign because of alleged bribes received by the wealthy Gupta family and influence peddling by the family. The charges against Zuma also extend to the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which has, since the apartheid era, been the target of the CIA. Even the South African Communist Party, a member of the ANC government, has taken on the taint of a Soros-infiltrated party by demanding Zuma reveal the full nature of his connections with the Guptas or face the political "consequences."

As far as Brazil is concerned, it is apparent that the CIA and Soros want to see Rousseff and Lula gone and in prison by the time the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics opens in August. The goal of the anti-government agitators in Brazil is to see a head of state chosen by the usual globalist suspects opening the Olympiad before an international audience.

Attention! Coup Attempt in Brazil!

17/03/2016 Miguel do Rosário

Por Diego

Don’t be mistaken, what is underway in Brazil is an attempt at a coup. 

Following the illegal tapping by the Federal Police of a private conversation between President Dilma Rousseff and former President Lula, at the orders of lower court judge and selectively disclosed by the media, we hereby express our deepest concern about the erosion of the rule of law in Brazil. Today’s events are extremely serious and have a real potential to escalate into social unrest and bloodshed.

On 31 March 1964 a military coup was trigged against the legally constituted government of João Goulart. This was a day that lasted 21 years. Only in 1988 was a new Constitution drafted and Brazil began its democratization process. Similarly, to 1964, the current coup attempt is backed by the largest Brazilian media group - Rede Globo. Unlike 1964, the current coup attempt is the result of an ideologically-driven judiciary that has three purposes: to overthrow a democratically elected President; prevent former President Lula from running in the 2018 elections; and ultimately making the Brazilian Workers Party illegal.

There is no doubt that Brazil is undergoing extremely serious political instability. President Dilma Rousseff was re-elected for her second term in 2014. At the beginning of her second term, Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil company, became involved in corruption scandals. However, only an extremely naïve person would believe that the Brazilian Worker’s Party invented corruption. In his memoirs, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the former PSDB president reported that on he was told that a huge corruption scheme taking place at Petrobras while he was President. Unlike Dilma, Cardoso did not have the courage to initiate any investigation.

While the Cardoso administration carried out 48 federal police investigations in 8 years, under the Brazilian Worker’s Party 250 were carried out. Concomitantly to a significant increase in federal police operations aimed at tackled corruption, both the Lula and Rousseff administrations strengthened and devolved more powers to judiciary. Prior to 2003 most investigations were the responsibility of the government. 

Despite the fact that over the past several months the Federal Police has intentionally and illegally leaked information about ongoing investigations involving people linked to the Brazilian Worker’s Party, last week events escalated with the kidnaping for a few hours of former President Lula. Using the term ‘kidnapped’ is no exaggeration, as Brazilian legislation does not permit the occurrence of this type of event.

As a result of the above events, President Dilma decided to invite Lula to became the chief of staff of the government in order to re-establish governability. The opposition accused Dilma of offering this position so that Lula would enjoy an immunity granted to ministers. This is completely wrong … Those who make these claims forget that in this case Lula would be judged in the Supreme Court, a significant disadvantage as unlike all other citizens he would lose the benefits of surfing the various judicial spheres …

For those who did not see the coup coming, it is now more than evident. On the same day that Lula was appointed to the Cabinet, the Federal Police backed by a lower court judge, decided to publish conversations between Lula and Dilma with the intention to causing a social convulsion that could potentially lead to the overthrown of Dilma as President. 

Brazilians must ensure that the rule of law is re-established and that the democratically elected government can continue its mandate. Tomorrow we will take to the streets to defend the democratically elected president and demand respect for our constitution and for the rule of law! 

Não Passarão!