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.
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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.
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Another view of the purported Cruz [far left].
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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?
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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.
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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.
Posted by Macu at 4/07/2016 12:24:00 PM
Labels: CIA assassinations, Fair Play for Cuba Committee, FBI, JFK, JFK assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Rafael Cruz, Rafael Cruz Sr., Ted Cruz, Wayne Madsen Report
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
We Are The Cops Of The World
Posted by Macu at 3/29/2016 07:21:00 PM
Labels: Agent Orange, Dioxin, U.S. Imperialism
Friday, March 18, 2016
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.
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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.
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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.
Posted by Macu at 3/18/2016 10:41:00 PM
Labels: Brasil, BRICS, BRICS Development Bank, CIA Coup, Dilma Rousseff, George Soros, Lula, NSA Wiretaps, Petrobras, President Ignacio “Lula” da Silva, Wayne Madsen Report
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Attention! Coup Attempt in Brazil!
Attention! Coup Attempt in Brazil!
17/03/2016 Miguel do Rosário
abaixo_a_ditadura57665
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!
Posted by Macu at 3/17/2016 04:02:00 PM
Labels: Brasil, Brazil, Brazilian Coup
Friday, March 11, 2016
The Anti-Empire Report #144 by William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report #144
By William Blum – Published March 11th, 2016
14
American exceptionalism presents an election made in hell
If the American presidential election winds up with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated, and I’m somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I’m PAID to do so, paid well … I would vote for Trump.
My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment. And when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is an unholy disaster. From Iraq and Syria to Libya and Honduras the world is a much worse place because of her; so much so that I’d call her a war criminal who should be prosecuted. And not much better can be expected on domestic issues from this woman who was paid $675,000 by Goldman Sachs – one of the most reactionary, anti-social corporations in this sad world – for four speeches and even more than that in political donations in recent years. Add to that Hillary’s willingness to serve for six years on the board of Walmart while her husband was governor of Arkansas. Can we expect to change corporate behavior by taking their money?
The Los Angeles Times ran an editorial the day after the multiple primary elections of March 1 which began: “Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States,” and then declared: “The reality is that Trump has no experience whatsoever in government.”
When I need to have my car fixed I look for a mechanic with experience with my type of auto. When I have a medical problem I prefer a doctor who specializes in the part of my body that’s ill. But when it comes to politicians, experience means nothing. The only thing that counts is the person’s ideology. Who would you sooner vote for, a person with 30 years in Congress who doesn’t share your political and social views at all, is even hostile to them, or someone who has never held public office before but is an ideological comrade on every important issue? Clinton’s 12 years in high government positions carries no weight with me.
The Times continued about Trump: “He has shamefully little knowledge of the issues facing the country and the world.”
Again, knowledge is trumped (no pun intended) by ideology. As Secretary of State (January 2009-February 2013), with great access to knowledge, Clinton played a key role in the 2011 destruction of Libya’s modern and secular welfare state, sending it crashing in utter chaos into a failed state, leading to the widespread dispersal throughout North African and Middle East hotspots of the gigantic arsenal of weaponry that Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi had accumulated. Libya is now a haven for terrorists, from al Qaeda to ISIS, whereas Gaddafi had been a leading foe of terrorists.
What good did Secretary of State Clinton’s knowledge do? It was enough for her to know that Gaddafi’s Libya, for several reasons, would never be a properly obedient client state of Washington. Thus it was that the United States, along with NATO, bombed the people of Libya almost daily for more than six months, giving as an excuse that Gaddafi was about to invade Benghazi, the Libyan center of his opponents, and so the United States was thus saving the people of that city from a massacre. The American people and the American media of course swallowed this story, though no convincing evidence of the alleged impending massacre has ever been presented. (The nearest thing to an official US government account of the matter – a Congressional Research Service report on events in Libya for the period – makes no mention at all of the threatened massacre.)
The Western intervention in Libya was one that the New York Times said Clinton had “championed”, convincing Obama in “what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state.” All the knowledge she was privy to did not keep her from this disastrous mistake in Libya. And the same can be said about her support of placing regime change in Syria ahead of supporting the Syrian government in its struggle against ISIS and other terrorist groups. Even more disastrous was the 2003 US invasion of Iraq which she as a senator supported. Both policies were of course clear violations of international law and the UN Charter.
Another foreign-policy “success” of Mrs. Clinton, which her swooning followers will ignore, the few that even know about it, is the coup ousting the moderately progressive Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in June, 2009. A tale told many times in Latin America. The downtrodden masses finally put into power a leader committed to reversing the status quo, determined to try to put an end to up to two centuries of oppression … and before long the military overthrows the democratically-elected government, while the United States – if not the mastermind behind the coup – does nothing to prevent it punish the coup regime, as only the United States can punish; meanwhile Washington officials pretend to be very upset over this “affront to democracy”. (See Mark Weisbrot’s “Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side The United States Government is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras”.)
In her 2014 memoir, “Hard Choices”, Clinton reveals just how unconcerned she was about restoring Zelaya to his rightful office: “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere … We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”
The question of Zelaya was anything but moot. Latin American leaders, the United Nations General Assembly, and other international bodies vehemently demanded his immediate return to office. Washington, however, quickly resumed normal diplomatic relations with the new right-wing police state, and Honduras has since become a major impetus for the child migrants currently pouring into the United States.
The headline from Time magazine’s report on Honduras at the close of that year (December 3, 2009) summed it up as follows: “Obama’s Latin America Policy Looks Like Bush’s”.
And Hillary Clinton looks like a conservative. And has for many years; going back to at least the 1980s, while the wife of the Arkansas governor, when she strongly supported the death-squad torturers known as the Contras, who were the empire’s proxy army in Nicaragua.
Then, during the 2007 presidential primary, America’s venerable conservative magazine, William Buckley’s National Review, ran an editorial by Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett was a policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan, a treasury official under President George H.W. Bush, and a fellow at two of the leading conservative think-tanks, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute – You get the picture? Bartlett tells his readers that it’s almost certain that the Democrats will win the White House in 2008. So what to do? Support the most conservative Democrat. He writes: “To right-wingers willing to look beneath what probably sounds to them like the same identical views of the Democratic candidates, it is pretty clear that Hillary Clinton is the most conservative.”
During the same primary we also heard from America’s leading magazine for the corporate wealthy,Fortune, with a cover featuring a picture of Mrs. Clinton and the headline: “Business Loves Hillary”.
And what do we have in 2016? Fully 116 members of the Republican Party’s national security community, many of them veterans of Bush administrations, have signed an open letter threatening that, if Trump is nominated, they will all desert, and some will defect – to Hillary Clinton! “Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin,” says Eliot Cohen of the Bush II State Department. Cohen helped line up neocons to sign the “Dump-Trump” manifesto. Another signer, foreign-policy ultra-conservative author Robert Kagan, declared: “The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
The only choice? What’s wrong with Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate? … Oh, I see, not conservative enough.
And Mr. Trump? Much more a critic of US foreign policy than Hillary or Bernie. He speaks of Russia and Vladimir Putin as positive forces and allies, and would be much less likely to go to war against Moscow than Clinton would. He declares that he would be “evenhanded” when it comes to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (as opposed to Clinton’s boundless support of Israel). He’s opposed to calling Senator John McCain a “hero”, because he was captured. (What other politician would dare say a thing like that?)
He calls Iraq “a complete disaster”, condemning not only George W. Bush but the neocons who surrounded him. “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.” He even questions the idea that “Bush kept us safe”, and adds that “Whether you like Saddam or not, he used to kill terrorists.”
Yes, he’s personally obnoxious. I’d have a very hard time being his friend. Who cares?
CIA motto: “Proudly overthrowing the Cuban government since 1959.”
Now what? Did you think that the United States had finally grown up and come to the realization that they could in fact share the same hemisphere as the people of Cuba, accepting Cuban society as unquestioningly as they do that of Canada? The Washington Post (February 18) reported: “In recent weeks, administration officials have made it clear Obama would travel to Cuba only if its government made additional concessions in the areas of human rights, Internet access and market liberalization.”
Imagine if Cuba insisted that the United States make “concessions in the area of human rights”; this could mean the United States pledging to not repeat anything like the following:
Invading Cuba in 1961 at the Bay of Pigs.
Invading Grenada in 1983 and killing 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers.
Blowing up a passenger plane full of Cubans in 1976. (In 1983, the city of Miami held a day in honor of Orlando Bosch, one of the two masterminds behind this awful act; the other perpetrator, Luis Posada, was given lifetime protection in the same city.)
Giving Cuban exiles, for their use, the virus which causes African swine fever, forcing the Cuban government to slaughter 500,000 pigs.
Infecting Cuban turkeys with a virus which produces the fatal Newcastle disease, resulting in the deaths of 8,000 turkeys.
In 1981 an epidemic of dengue hemorrhagic fever swept the island, the first major epidemic of DHF ever in the Americas. The United States had long been experimenting with using dengue fever as a weapon. Cuba asked the United States for a pesticide to eradicate the mosquito involved but were not given it. Over 300,000 cases were reported in Cuba with 158 fatalities.
These are but three examples of decades-long CIA chemical and biological warfare (CBW) against Cuba. We must keep in mind that food is a human right (although the United States has repeatedly denied this.
Washington maintained a blockade of goods and money entering Cuba that is still going strong, a blockade that President Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, in 1997 called “the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation in the history of mankind”.
Attempted to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro on numerous occasions, not only in Cuba, but in Panama, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
In one scheme after another in recent years, Washington’s Agency for International Development (AID) endeavored to cause dissension in Cuba and/or stir up rebellion, the ultimate goal being regime change.
In 1999 a Cuban lawsuit demanded $181.1 billion in US compensation for death and injury suffered by Cuban citizens in four decades “war” by Washington against Cuba. Cuba asked for $30 million in direct compensation for each of the 3,478 people it said were killed by US actions and $15 million each for the 2,099 injured. It also asked for $10 million each for the people killed, and $5 million each for the injured, to repay Cuban society for the costs it has had to assume on their behalf.
Needless to say, the United States has not paid a penny of this.
One of the most common Yankee criticisms of the state of human rights in Cuba has been the arrest of dissidents (although the great majority are quickly released). But many thousands of anti-war and other protesters have been arrested in the United States in recent years, as in every period in American history. During the Occupy Movement, which began in 2011, more than 7,000 people were arrested in about the first year, many were beaten by police and mistreated while in custody, their street displays and libraries smashed to pieces. ; the Occupy movement continued until 2014; thus, the figure of 7,000 is an understatement.)
Moreover, it must be kept in mind that whatever restrictions on civil liberties there may be in Cuba exist within a particular context: The most powerful nation in the history of the world is just 90 miles away and is sworn – vehemently and repeatedly sworn – to overthrowing the Cuban government. If the United States was simply and sincerely concerned with making Cuba a less restrictive society, Washington’s policy would be clear cut:
Call off the wolves – the CIA wolves, the AID wolves, the doctor-stealer wolves, the baseball-player-stealer wolves.
Publicly and sincerely (if American leaders still remember what this word means) renounce their use of CBW and assassinations. And apologize.
Cease the unceasing hypocritical propaganda – about elections, for example. (Yes, it’s true that Cuban elections never feature a Donald Trump or a Hillary Clinton, nor ten billion dollars, nor 24 hours of campaign ads, but is that any reason to write them off?)
Pay compensation – a lot of it.
Sine qua non – end the God-awful blockade.
Throughout the period of the Cuban revolution, 1959 to the present, Latin America has witnessed a terrible parade of human rights violations – systematic, routine torture; legions of “disappeared” people; government-supported death squads picking off selected individuals; massacres en masse of peasants, students and other groups. The worst perpetrators of these acts during this period have been the military and associated paramilitary squads of El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, Haiti and Honduras. However, not even Cuba’s worst enemies have made serious charges against the Havana government for any of such violations; and if one further considers education and health care, “both of which,” said President Bill Clinton, “work better [in Cuba] than most other countries” , and both of which are guaranteed by the United Nations “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and the “European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”, then it would appear that during the more-than-half century of its revolution, Cuba has enjoyed one of the very best human-rights records in all of Latin America.
But never good enough for American leaders to ever touch upon in any way; the Bill Clinton quote being a rare exception indeed. It’s a tough decision to normalize relations with a country whose police force murders its own innocent civilians on almost a daily basis. But Cuba needs to do it. Maybe they can civilize the Americans a bit, or at least remind them that for more than a century they have been the leading torturers of the world.
14
Notes
“Libya: Transition and U.S. Policy”, updated March 4, 2016.
New York Times, February 28, 2016
Mark Weisbrot, “Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side The United States Government is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras”, Common Dreams, December 16, 2009
Roger Morris, former member of the National Security Council, Partners in Power (1996), p.415. For a comprehensive look at Hillary Clinton, see the new book by Diane Johnstone,Queen of Chaos.
National Review online, May 1, 2007
Fortune magazine, July 9, 2007
Patrick J. Buchanan, “Will the Oligarchs Kill Trump?”, Creators.com, March 08, 2016
William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (2005), chapter 14
Ibid., p.264
White House press briefing, November 14, 1997, US Newswire transcript
Fabian Escalante, Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro (2006), Ocean Press (Australia)
Huffington Post, May 3, 2012
Miami Herald, October 17, 1997, p.22A
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to williamblum.org is provided.
Posted by Macu at 3/11/2016 02:19:00 PM
Labels: Anti-Empire Report, William Blum
Thursday, February 25, 2016
SPECIAL REPORT. Scalia's hunting ranch was meeting place for secret society by Wayne Madsen Report
SPECIAL REPORT. Scalia's hunting ranch was meeting place for secret society
The story of the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia's last hours spent at the exclusive Cibolo Creek Ranch nestled in the Chinati Mountains, near Marfa, Texas, is as strange as the peculiar treatment his body received after his sudden death during his first night at the 30,000 acre compound. WMR's editor first speculated that there was more going on at ranch with Scalia and 35 other men during the Valentine's Day/President's Day weekend. First, it was a male-only "hunting" Valentine's Day weekend event for some influential married and family-oriented figures, including Scalia. Scalia's "friend" from Washington, who accompanied him from Washington to Houston where they boarded a private jet the Cibolo Creek Ranch airport, was also kept secret.
That was until the most unlikeliest of all sources, the "connected" Washington Post, revealed on February 24 that the hunting event attended by Scalia included a number of officials of the over three-century old International Order of St. Hubertus, founded in 1695 by Count Franz Anton von Sporck of the Kingdom of Bohemia, a vassal state of the Habsburg Empire. Today, the order is presided over by its "Grand Master His Imperial and Royal Highness Istvan von Habsburg Lothringen, Archduke of Austria, Prince of Hungary." The secretive hunting order, which upholds the Latin motto, "Deum Diligite Animalia Diligentes” or “Honoring God by Honoring His Creatures,” claims royal protection under "His Majesty Juan Carlos of Spain, the Grand Master Emeritus His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Andreas Salvator of Austria," as well as Istvan von Habsburg Lothringen.
As far as its motto of "honoring God's creatures," King Juan Carlos of Spain ultimately fell from power after hunting scandals. In 2012, the king was photographed in front of an elephant in Botswana, which was shot to death by hunters. In 2006, the king rejected as false a rumor that he shot a bear in Russia that was plied with vodka. As a teenager, Juan Carlos shot and killed his brother Alfonso in an accident in Portugal. The pistol was allegedly given to Alfonso as a gift from General Franco, Spain's dictator. Spanish priest Josémaria Escriva founded the far-right wing Catholic Opus Dei sect, of which Scalia was a member, in 1928, under the patronage of Franco.
The circumstances surrounding Alfonso's death in 1956 remain clouded in mystery. Juan Carlos, a member of the royal House of Bourbon, abdicated the Spanish throne in 2014.
Spain's King Juan Carlos has successfully undergone hip replacement surgery
Juan Carlos's reign began to unravel after he was pictured with an elephant, shot to death by hunters in Botswana.
Ranch owner, Houston billionaire businessman John B. Poindexter, has been reticent about revealing the identities of the other 35 guests who stayed at the ranch with Scalia. Nor has Poindexter provided the names of other special guests who have participated in similar gratis functions held about three times a year. Poindexter did reveal that when he discovered Scalia's lifeless body, a pillow was partially covering his face.
It is now known, thanks to the Post article, which normally would be derided by the corporate media as "conspiracy theory" speculation had it appeared in any web-based publication, that Scalia's friend from Washington is C. Allen Foster, a prominent Republican trial lawyer who has argued cases before the Supreme Court. Foster ran as the Republican candidate for Attorney General of North Carolina in 1984.
C. Allen Foster - Whiteford, Taylor & Preston LLP
Scalia attorney friend C. Allen Foster who left the U.S. for a trip to Argentina after Scalia's funeral in DC. Argentina's new right-wing president, Mauricio Macri, is affiliated with the right-wing Catholic sect Opus Dei. Foster is with the law firm of Whiteford Taylor Preston at 1800 M Street, NW Washington. The International Order of St. Hubertus, American chapter uses a UPS rental mailbox, or "suite," at 2100 M Street.
Last year, Poindexter's firm had an age discrimination case before the Supreme Court, which it, Scalia included, decided not to hear, providing a victory for Poindexter, the defendant. Foster could not be reached by the Post because his office said he was traveling in Argentina.
The 2013 investiture in Madrid of the International Order of St. Hubertus. Cibolo Creek Ranch owner John B. Poindexter is in front row. Poindexter is also the leader of the green-caped order's Southwest Priory, consisting of Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Arkansas. The order's Maltese Cross symbol suggests a tie-in with the Catholic Knights of Malta.
St. Hubertus's American chapter began in 1966 under the auspices of San Francisco's elite Bohemian Club, which sponsors an annual Bohemian Grove encampment in a dense forest north of San Francisco. The event has drawn the world's movers and shakers, including David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, and was once condemned by President Richard Nixon on White House tapes as "the most faggy Goddamn thing you could ever imagine." The event features male-only nudism as part of male bonding pagan ceremonies.
Poindexter and Foster are prominent members of the St. Hubertus Order as are two other guests from the hunting outing at Cibolo Creek at which Scalia died. The Post identified two private jets that arrived at Cibolo Creek airport from San Antonio just after that carrying Scalia and Foster arrived at noon from Houston. The two other jets, which departed Sunday, February 14, are owned by Wallace "Happy" Rogers III and A.J. Lewis III, both of San Antonio. Both are Republicans, in the restaurant business, and officers of the male-only Order of St. Hubertus.
So far, the description of Scalia's last outing sounds as if it is torn from the pages of a Dan Brown novel. But it gets better. WMR caught site of a number of Mexican "diablo" artifacts at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, which is odd for a Roman Catholic order like St. Hubertus.
Amid the Satanic artifacts, a baby's crib [left]. The ranch only has single beds, including made up beds found in the outside passageways [center], except for the king size bed found in Scalia's suite [right], remade after Scalia's death with door locked. Photos: WMR.
Outside of Scalia's room, the "El Presidente" suite, is a wood-burning pit. There was evidence that on the evening that Scalia died, there was a party outside his suite. There was ash still in the pit, some broken glass, and cigar ashes in the ashtray. Scalia was an avid cigar aficionado. Also found was a box of self-striking matches next to the ashtray, which was alleviated by the WMR editor as a "souvenir." Inside the corridor leading to Scalia's room was a statuette that can only be described as satanic in nature. Scalia's dinner, his last meal, was served under a phalanx of devil masks hanging from the ranch's dining room. A painting reproduction outside the dining room evoked memories of the pre-St. Valentine's Day Roman pagan holiday of Lupercalia, celebrated around February 14th and known for drinking and orgies.
Fire pit outside of Scalia's suite showed signs of a recent party: broken glass, cigar ashes, cigarette butts, and ash residue in the pit [left]. A box of strike-anywhere matches [right] was found next to the ashtray. Photos: WMR.
Paintings at ranch highly suggestive of Roman pagan Lupercalia festival in mid-February, a pre-Valentine's Day celebration of sex and orgies. Photo: WMR.
Statuette found in passageway not too far from Scalia's room. Photo: WMR
The strict Catholic Scalia had these devil masks staring down at him during his last meal in the ranch's dining room. Photos: WMR.
Posted by Macu at 2/25/2016 05:47:00 PM
Labels: Antonin Scalia, Argentina, C. Allen Foster, Juan Carlos, Opus Dei, Poindexter, SCOTUS, Wayne Madsen Report
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Discrepancy in Presidio Sheriff's report on Scalia By Wayne Madsen Report
Discrepancy in Presidio Sheriff's report on Scalia By Wayne Madsen Report
On February 23,Presidio County, Texas Sheriff Danny Doinguez released his sheriff's report on the unattended death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. The report contains a major discrepancy on how Scalia's body was transported from the Cibolo Creek Ranch to the Sunset Funeral Home in El Paso, where it was embalmed. Scalia's body was found in his bed at the ranch on the morning of February 13 after he flew by private plane into the ranch's airport, arriving around noon on February 12.
Dominguez noted in his report noted that a pillow partially covered Scalia's eyes but that it “did not seem to have inhibited Scalia’s breathing.” No autopsy was performed on Scalia's body nor did a qualified medical professional conduct an inquest, which is required under Texas state law. Presidio County District Attorney Rod Ponton claimed that there was nothing suspicious about Scalia's death.
News reports stated that the Alpine Funeral Home in Alpine, Texas was notified that a hearse was needed to transport Scalia's body to the Sunset Funeral Home in El Paso for embalming before being flown back to Washington, DC. However, Dominguez's report states that Scalia's body was transported to El Paso by a hearse sent by the Sunset Funeral Home.
Presidio County judge Cinderela Guevara pronounced Scalia dead over a telephone call with Dominguez, who was at the ranch, at 1:52 pm on February 13. Sarah Vasquez, a reporter for theBig Bend Sentinel, the local newspaper with which Dominguez and the county government has a close relationship, wrote in the February 13 issue that "Alpine Memorial Funeral Home was called to scene" of Scalia's death. But the Sheriff's report states that "at approximately 11:30 pm the El Paso Funeral Home arrived at the ranch to retrieve Scalia's body, and return to the funeral home." It adds, "at approximately 12:00 am (midnight) the funeral home departed the premises with Scalia's body," along with U.S. Marshals and Dominguez. The procession of the hearse and the marshals continued to El Paso, a three hour drive, after arriving in Marfa. Texas Department of Public Safety vehicles accompanied the procession to El Paso. The same Big Bend Sentinel report stated, that Scalia's body was to be "flown to a funeral home in El Paso per the family’s request." The Cibolo Creek Ranch airport can accommodate Gulfstream and Lear jets. If Scalia's body was to be flown anywhere, it could just have easily been flown back to Washington, DC directly from the ranch's airport.
WFAA/Associated Press reported on February 14 that "a funeral home in neighboring Alpine was called to come collect the justice’s remains, which were then transported to El Paso." It is noteworthy that Marfa, which is closer to the ranch than Alpine, also has a funeral home that could have accommodated the needs of the Scalia family, yet it was not used.
The San Antonio Express-News carried a photograph of the Alpine Funeral Home Cadillac hearse leaving the Cibolo Creek Ranch at around 5:00 pm on February 13. The photograph is clearly taken during daylight hours. However, the Sheriff's report states that the El Paso Funeral Home hearse left around midnight on the 13th. Media reports had the hearse arriving at the El Paso funeral home around 2:30 am on February 13th. Why the discrepancy? The Los Angeles Timeslater reported that George Van Etten, the ranch's property manager who works for owner John B. Poindexter, decided to use the Alpine Funeral Home hearse as a decoy to confuse the press. But why would Scalia's body be kept at the ranch for over six hours in order to confuse the press? Only the San Antonio Express-News had a crew outside the ranch's main gate. And why the cloak-and-dagger involved in transporting Scalia's body to El Paso if he died of a heart attack from natural causes?
Alpine Funeral Home hearse leaving Cibolo Creek Ranch at 5:00 pm on February 13. This hearse reportedly did not contain Scalia's body.
The Sheriff's report also identifies, for the first time, the close friend who traveled with Scalia from Washington to the ranch. His name is Allen Foster. Scalia has a friend in Washington named C. Allen Foster, a noted trial lawyer who has argued cases before the Supreme Court.
Posted by Macu at 2/24/2016 09:49:00 AM
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.
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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.
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Another view of the purported Cruz [far left].
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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?
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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.
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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.
Posted by Macu at 4/07/2016 12:24:00 PM
Labels: CIA assassinations, Fair Play for Cuba Committee, FBI, JFK, JFK assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, Rafael Cruz, Rafael Cruz Sr., Ted Cruz, Wayne Madsen Report
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
We Are The Cops Of The World
Posted by Macu at 3/29/2016 07:21:00 PM
Labels: Agent Orange, Dioxin, U.S. Imperialism
Friday, March 18, 2016
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.
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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.
Posted by Macu at 3/18/2016 10:41:00 PM
Labels: Brasil, BRICS, BRICS Development Bank, CIA Coup, Dilma Rousseff, George Soros, Lula, NSA Wiretaps, Petrobras, President Ignacio “Lula” da Silva, Wayne Madsen Report
Thursday, March 17, 2016
Attention! Coup Attempt in Brazil!
Attention! Coup Attempt in Brazil!
17/03/2016 Miguel do Rosário
abaixo_a_ditadura57665
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!
Posted by Macu at 3/17/2016 04:02:00 PM
Labels: Brasil, Brazil, Brazilian Coup
Friday, March 11, 2016
The Anti-Empire Report #144 by William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report #144
By William Blum – Published March 11th, 2016
14
American exceptionalism presents an election made in hell
If the American presidential election winds up with Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump, and my passport is confiscated, and I’m somehow FORCED to choose one or the other, or I’m PAID to do so, paid well … I would vote for Trump.
My main concern is foreign policy. American foreign policy is the greatest threat to world peace, prosperity, and the environment. And when it comes to foreign policy, Hillary Clinton is an unholy disaster. From Iraq and Syria to Libya and Honduras the world is a much worse place because of her; so much so that I’d call her a war criminal who should be prosecuted. And not much better can be expected on domestic issues from this woman who was paid $675,000 by Goldman Sachs – one of the most reactionary, anti-social corporations in this sad world – for four speeches and even more than that in political donations in recent years. Add to that Hillary’s willingness to serve for six years on the board of Walmart while her husband was governor of Arkansas. Can we expect to change corporate behavior by taking their money?
The Los Angeles Times ran an editorial the day after the multiple primary elections of March 1 which began: “Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States,” and then declared: “The reality is that Trump has no experience whatsoever in government.”
When I need to have my car fixed I look for a mechanic with experience with my type of auto. When I have a medical problem I prefer a doctor who specializes in the part of my body that’s ill. But when it comes to politicians, experience means nothing. The only thing that counts is the person’s ideology. Who would you sooner vote for, a person with 30 years in Congress who doesn’t share your political and social views at all, is even hostile to them, or someone who has never held public office before but is an ideological comrade on every important issue? Clinton’s 12 years in high government positions carries no weight with me.
The Times continued about Trump: “He has shamefully little knowledge of the issues facing the country and the world.”
Again, knowledge is trumped (no pun intended) by ideology. As Secretary of State (January 2009-February 2013), with great access to knowledge, Clinton played a key role in the 2011 destruction of Libya’s modern and secular welfare state, sending it crashing in utter chaos into a failed state, leading to the widespread dispersal throughout North African and Middle East hotspots of the gigantic arsenal of weaponry that Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi had accumulated. Libya is now a haven for terrorists, from al Qaeda to ISIS, whereas Gaddafi had been a leading foe of terrorists.
What good did Secretary of State Clinton’s knowledge do? It was enough for her to know that Gaddafi’s Libya, for several reasons, would never be a properly obedient client state of Washington. Thus it was that the United States, along with NATO, bombed the people of Libya almost daily for more than six months, giving as an excuse that Gaddafi was about to invade Benghazi, the Libyan center of his opponents, and so the United States was thus saving the people of that city from a massacre. The American people and the American media of course swallowed this story, though no convincing evidence of the alleged impending massacre has ever been presented. (The nearest thing to an official US government account of the matter – a Congressional Research Service report on events in Libya for the period – makes no mention at all of the threatened massacre.)
The Western intervention in Libya was one that the New York Times said Clinton had “championed”, convincing Obama in “what was arguably her moment of greatest influence as secretary of state.” All the knowledge she was privy to did not keep her from this disastrous mistake in Libya. And the same can be said about her support of placing regime change in Syria ahead of supporting the Syrian government in its struggle against ISIS and other terrorist groups. Even more disastrous was the 2003 US invasion of Iraq which she as a senator supported. Both policies were of course clear violations of international law and the UN Charter.
Another foreign-policy “success” of Mrs. Clinton, which her swooning followers will ignore, the few that even know about it, is the coup ousting the moderately progressive Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in June, 2009. A tale told many times in Latin America. The downtrodden masses finally put into power a leader committed to reversing the status quo, determined to try to put an end to up to two centuries of oppression … and before long the military overthrows the democratically-elected government, while the United States – if not the mastermind behind the coup – does nothing to prevent it punish the coup regime, as only the United States can punish; meanwhile Washington officials pretend to be very upset over this “affront to democracy”. (See Mark Weisbrot’s “Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side The United States Government is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras”.)
In her 2014 memoir, “Hard Choices”, Clinton reveals just how unconcerned she was about restoring Zelaya to his rightful office: “In the subsequent days [after the coup] I spoke with my counterparts around the hemisphere … We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”
The question of Zelaya was anything but moot. Latin American leaders, the United Nations General Assembly, and other international bodies vehemently demanded his immediate return to office. Washington, however, quickly resumed normal diplomatic relations with the new right-wing police state, and Honduras has since become a major impetus for the child migrants currently pouring into the United States.
The headline from Time magazine’s report on Honduras at the close of that year (December 3, 2009) summed it up as follows: “Obama’s Latin America Policy Looks Like Bush’s”.
And Hillary Clinton looks like a conservative. And has for many years; going back to at least the 1980s, while the wife of the Arkansas governor, when she strongly supported the death-squad torturers known as the Contras, who were the empire’s proxy army in Nicaragua.
Then, during the 2007 presidential primary, America’s venerable conservative magazine, William Buckley’s National Review, ran an editorial by Bruce Bartlett. Bartlett was a policy adviser to President Ronald Reagan, a treasury official under President George H.W. Bush, and a fellow at two of the leading conservative think-tanks, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute – You get the picture? Bartlett tells his readers that it’s almost certain that the Democrats will win the White House in 2008. So what to do? Support the most conservative Democrat. He writes: “To right-wingers willing to look beneath what probably sounds to them like the same identical views of the Democratic candidates, it is pretty clear that Hillary Clinton is the most conservative.”
During the same primary we also heard from America’s leading magazine for the corporate wealthy,Fortune, with a cover featuring a picture of Mrs. Clinton and the headline: “Business Loves Hillary”.
And what do we have in 2016? Fully 116 members of the Republican Party’s national security community, many of them veterans of Bush administrations, have signed an open letter threatening that, if Trump is nominated, they will all desert, and some will defect – to Hillary Clinton! “Hillary is the lesser evil, by a large margin,” says Eliot Cohen of the Bush II State Department. Cohen helped line up neocons to sign the “Dump-Trump” manifesto. Another signer, foreign-policy ultra-conservative author Robert Kagan, declared: “The only choice will be to vote for Hillary Clinton.”
The only choice? What’s wrong with Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate? … Oh, I see, not conservative enough.
And Mr. Trump? Much more a critic of US foreign policy than Hillary or Bernie. He speaks of Russia and Vladimir Putin as positive forces and allies, and would be much less likely to go to war against Moscow than Clinton would. He declares that he would be “evenhanded” when it comes to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (as opposed to Clinton’s boundless support of Israel). He’s opposed to calling Senator John McCain a “hero”, because he was captured. (What other politician would dare say a thing like that?)
He calls Iraq “a complete disaster”, condemning not only George W. Bush but the neocons who surrounded him. “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction.” He even questions the idea that “Bush kept us safe”, and adds that “Whether you like Saddam or not, he used to kill terrorists.”
Yes, he’s personally obnoxious. I’d have a very hard time being his friend. Who cares?
CIA motto: “Proudly overthrowing the Cuban government since 1959.”
Now what? Did you think that the United States had finally grown up and come to the realization that they could in fact share the same hemisphere as the people of Cuba, accepting Cuban society as unquestioningly as they do that of Canada? The Washington Post (February 18) reported: “In recent weeks, administration officials have made it clear Obama would travel to Cuba only if its government made additional concessions in the areas of human rights, Internet access and market liberalization.”
Imagine if Cuba insisted that the United States make “concessions in the area of human rights”; this could mean the United States pledging to not repeat anything like the following:
Invading Cuba in 1961 at the Bay of Pigs.
Invading Grenada in 1983 and killing 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers.
Blowing up a passenger plane full of Cubans in 1976. (In 1983, the city of Miami held a day in honor of Orlando Bosch, one of the two masterminds behind this awful act; the other perpetrator, Luis Posada, was given lifetime protection in the same city.)
Giving Cuban exiles, for their use, the virus which causes African swine fever, forcing the Cuban government to slaughter 500,000 pigs.
Infecting Cuban turkeys with a virus which produces the fatal Newcastle disease, resulting in the deaths of 8,000 turkeys.
In 1981 an epidemic of dengue hemorrhagic fever swept the island, the first major epidemic of DHF ever in the Americas. The United States had long been experimenting with using dengue fever as a weapon. Cuba asked the United States for a pesticide to eradicate the mosquito involved but were not given it. Over 300,000 cases were reported in Cuba with 158 fatalities.
These are but three examples of decades-long CIA chemical and biological warfare (CBW) against Cuba. We must keep in mind that food is a human right (although the United States has repeatedly denied this.
Washington maintained a blockade of goods and money entering Cuba that is still going strong, a blockade that President Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, in 1997 called “the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation in the history of mankind”.
Attempted to assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro on numerous occasions, not only in Cuba, but in Panama, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
In one scheme after another in recent years, Washington’s Agency for International Development (AID) endeavored to cause dissension in Cuba and/or stir up rebellion, the ultimate goal being regime change.
In 1999 a Cuban lawsuit demanded $181.1 billion in US compensation for death and injury suffered by Cuban citizens in four decades “war” by Washington against Cuba. Cuba asked for $30 million in direct compensation for each of the 3,478 people it said were killed by US actions and $15 million each for the 2,099 injured. It also asked for $10 million each for the people killed, and $5 million each for the injured, to repay Cuban society for the costs it has had to assume on their behalf.
Needless to say, the United States has not paid a penny of this.
One of the most common Yankee criticisms of the state of human rights in Cuba has been the arrest of dissidents (although the great majority are quickly released). But many thousands of anti-war and other protesters have been arrested in the United States in recent years, as in every period in American history. During the Occupy Movement, which began in 2011, more than 7,000 people were arrested in about the first year, many were beaten by police and mistreated while in custody, their street displays and libraries smashed to pieces. ; the Occupy movement continued until 2014; thus, the figure of 7,000 is an understatement.)
Moreover, it must be kept in mind that whatever restrictions on civil liberties there may be in Cuba exist within a particular context: The most powerful nation in the history of the world is just 90 miles away and is sworn – vehemently and repeatedly sworn – to overthrowing the Cuban government. If the United States was simply and sincerely concerned with making Cuba a less restrictive society, Washington’s policy would be clear cut:
Call off the wolves – the CIA wolves, the AID wolves, the doctor-stealer wolves, the baseball-player-stealer wolves.
Publicly and sincerely (if American leaders still remember what this word means) renounce their use of CBW and assassinations. And apologize.
Cease the unceasing hypocritical propaganda – about elections, for example. (Yes, it’s true that Cuban elections never feature a Donald Trump or a Hillary Clinton, nor ten billion dollars, nor 24 hours of campaign ads, but is that any reason to write them off?)
Pay compensation – a lot of it.
Sine qua non – end the God-awful blockade.
Throughout the period of the Cuban revolution, 1959 to the present, Latin America has witnessed a terrible parade of human rights violations – systematic, routine torture; legions of “disappeared” people; government-supported death squads picking off selected individuals; massacres en masse of peasants, students and other groups. The worst perpetrators of these acts during this period have been the military and associated paramilitary squads of El Salvador, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, Haiti and Honduras. However, not even Cuba’s worst enemies have made serious charges against the Havana government for any of such violations; and if one further considers education and health care, “both of which,” said President Bill Clinton, “work better [in Cuba] than most other countries” , and both of which are guaranteed by the United Nations “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and the “European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”, then it would appear that during the more-than-half century of its revolution, Cuba has enjoyed one of the very best human-rights records in all of Latin America.
But never good enough for American leaders to ever touch upon in any way; the Bill Clinton quote being a rare exception indeed. It’s a tough decision to normalize relations with a country whose police force murders its own innocent civilians on almost a daily basis. But Cuba needs to do it. Maybe they can civilize the Americans a bit, or at least remind them that for more than a century they have been the leading torturers of the world.
14
Notes
“Libya: Transition and U.S. Policy”, updated March 4, 2016.
New York Times, February 28, 2016
Mark Weisbrot, “Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side The United States Government is On With Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras”, Common Dreams, December 16, 2009
Roger Morris, former member of the National Security Council, Partners in Power (1996), p.415. For a comprehensive look at Hillary Clinton, see the new book by Diane Johnstone,Queen of Chaos.
National Review online, May 1, 2007
Fortune magazine, July 9, 2007
Patrick J. Buchanan, “Will the Oligarchs Kill Trump?”, Creators.com, March 08, 2016
William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower (2005), chapter 14
Ibid., p.264
White House press briefing, November 14, 1997, US Newswire transcript
Fabian Escalante, Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro (2006), Ocean Press (Australia)
Huffington Post, May 3, 2012
Miami Herald, October 17, 1997, p.22A
Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to williamblum.org is provided.
Posted by Macu at 3/11/2016 02:19:00 PM
Labels: Anti-Empire Report, William Blum
Thursday, February 25, 2016
SPECIAL REPORT. Scalia's hunting ranch was meeting place for secret society by Wayne Madsen Report
SPECIAL REPORT. Scalia's hunting ranch was meeting place for secret society
The story of the late Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia's last hours spent at the exclusive Cibolo Creek Ranch nestled in the Chinati Mountains, near Marfa, Texas, is as strange as the peculiar treatment his body received after his sudden death during his first night at the 30,000 acre compound. WMR's editor first speculated that there was more going on at ranch with Scalia and 35 other men during the Valentine's Day/President's Day weekend. First, it was a male-only "hunting" Valentine's Day weekend event for some influential married and family-oriented figures, including Scalia. Scalia's "friend" from Washington, who accompanied him from Washington to Houston where they boarded a private jet the Cibolo Creek Ranch airport, was also kept secret.
That was until the most unlikeliest of all sources, the "connected" Washington Post, revealed on February 24 that the hunting event attended by Scalia included a number of officials of the over three-century old International Order of St. Hubertus, founded in 1695 by Count Franz Anton von Sporck of the Kingdom of Bohemia, a vassal state of the Habsburg Empire. Today, the order is presided over by its "Grand Master His Imperial and Royal Highness Istvan von Habsburg Lothringen, Archduke of Austria, Prince of Hungary." The secretive hunting order, which upholds the Latin motto, "Deum Diligite Animalia Diligentes” or “Honoring God by Honoring His Creatures,” claims royal protection under "His Majesty Juan Carlos of Spain, the Grand Master Emeritus His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Andreas Salvator of Austria," as well as Istvan von Habsburg Lothringen.
As far as its motto of "honoring God's creatures," King Juan Carlos of Spain ultimately fell from power after hunting scandals. In 2012, the king was photographed in front of an elephant in Botswana, which was shot to death by hunters. In 2006, the king rejected as false a rumor that he shot a bear in Russia that was plied with vodka. As a teenager, Juan Carlos shot and killed his brother Alfonso in an accident in Portugal. The pistol was allegedly given to Alfonso as a gift from General Franco, Spain's dictator. Spanish priest Josémaria Escriva founded the far-right wing Catholic Opus Dei sect, of which Scalia was a member, in 1928, under the patronage of Franco.
The circumstances surrounding Alfonso's death in 1956 remain clouded in mystery. Juan Carlos, a member of the royal House of Bourbon, abdicated the Spanish throne in 2014.
Spain's King Juan Carlos has successfully undergone hip replacement surgery
Juan Carlos's reign began to unravel after he was pictured with an elephant, shot to death by hunters in Botswana.
Ranch owner, Houston billionaire businessman John B. Poindexter, has been reticent about revealing the identities of the other 35 guests who stayed at the ranch with Scalia. Nor has Poindexter provided the names of other special guests who have participated in similar gratis functions held about three times a year. Poindexter did reveal that when he discovered Scalia's lifeless body, a pillow was partially covering his face.
It is now known, thanks to the Post article, which normally would be derided by the corporate media as "conspiracy theory" speculation had it appeared in any web-based publication, that Scalia's friend from Washington is C. Allen Foster, a prominent Republican trial lawyer who has argued cases before the Supreme Court. Foster ran as the Republican candidate for Attorney General of North Carolina in 1984.
C. Allen Foster - Whiteford, Taylor & Preston LLP
Scalia attorney friend C. Allen Foster who left the U.S. for a trip to Argentina after Scalia's funeral in DC. Argentina's new right-wing president, Mauricio Macri, is affiliated with the right-wing Catholic sect Opus Dei. Foster is with the law firm of Whiteford Taylor Preston at 1800 M Street, NW Washington. The International Order of St. Hubertus, American chapter uses a UPS rental mailbox, or "suite," at 2100 M Street.
Last year, Poindexter's firm had an age discrimination case before the Supreme Court, which it, Scalia included, decided not to hear, providing a victory for Poindexter, the defendant. Foster could not be reached by the Post because his office said he was traveling in Argentina.
The 2013 investiture in Madrid of the International Order of St. Hubertus. Cibolo Creek Ranch owner John B. Poindexter is in front row. Poindexter is also the leader of the green-caped order's Southwest Priory, consisting of Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico, and Arkansas. The order's Maltese Cross symbol suggests a tie-in with the Catholic Knights of Malta.
St. Hubertus's American chapter began in 1966 under the auspices of San Francisco's elite Bohemian Club, which sponsors an annual Bohemian Grove encampment in a dense forest north of San Francisco. The event has drawn the world's movers and shakers, including David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, and was once condemned by President Richard Nixon on White House tapes as "the most faggy Goddamn thing you could ever imagine." The event features male-only nudism as part of male bonding pagan ceremonies.
Poindexter and Foster are prominent members of the St. Hubertus Order as are two other guests from the hunting outing at Cibolo Creek at which Scalia died. The Post identified two private jets that arrived at Cibolo Creek airport from San Antonio just after that carrying Scalia and Foster arrived at noon from Houston. The two other jets, which departed Sunday, February 14, are owned by Wallace "Happy" Rogers III and A.J. Lewis III, both of San Antonio. Both are Republicans, in the restaurant business, and officers of the male-only Order of St. Hubertus.
So far, the description of Scalia's last outing sounds as if it is torn from the pages of a Dan Brown novel. But it gets better. WMR caught site of a number of Mexican "diablo" artifacts at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, which is odd for a Roman Catholic order like St. Hubertus.
Amid the Satanic artifacts, a baby's crib [left]. The ranch only has single beds, including made up beds found in the outside passageways [center], except for the king size bed found in Scalia's suite [right], remade after Scalia's death with door locked. Photos: WMR.
Outside of Scalia's room, the "El Presidente" suite, is a wood-burning pit. There was evidence that on the evening that Scalia died, there was a party outside his suite. There was ash still in the pit, some broken glass, and cigar ashes in the ashtray. Scalia was an avid cigar aficionado. Also found was a box of self-striking matches next to the ashtray, which was alleviated by the WMR editor as a "souvenir." Inside the corridor leading to Scalia's room was a statuette that can only be described as satanic in nature. Scalia's dinner, his last meal, was served under a phalanx of devil masks hanging from the ranch's dining room. A painting reproduction outside the dining room evoked memories of the pre-St. Valentine's Day Roman pagan holiday of Lupercalia, celebrated around February 14th and known for drinking and orgies.
Fire pit outside of Scalia's suite showed signs of a recent party: broken glass, cigar ashes, cigarette butts, and ash residue in the pit [left]. A box of strike-anywhere matches [right] was found next to the ashtray. Photos: WMR.
Paintings at ranch highly suggestive of Roman pagan Lupercalia festival in mid-February, a pre-Valentine's Day celebration of sex and orgies. Photo: WMR.
Statuette found in passageway not too far from Scalia's room. Photo: WMR
The strict Catholic Scalia had these devil masks staring down at him during his last meal in the ranch's dining room. Photos: WMR.
Posted by Macu at 2/25/2016 05:47:00 PM
Labels: Antonin Scalia, Argentina, C. Allen Foster, Juan Carlos, Opus Dei, Poindexter, SCOTUS, Wayne Madsen Report
Wednesday, February 24, 2016
Discrepancy in Presidio Sheriff's report on Scalia By Wayne Madsen Report
Discrepancy in Presidio Sheriff's report on Scalia By Wayne Madsen Report
On February 23,Presidio County, Texas Sheriff Danny Doinguez released his sheriff's report on the unattended death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia. The report contains a major discrepancy on how Scalia's body was transported from the Cibolo Creek Ranch to the Sunset Funeral Home in El Paso, where it was embalmed. Scalia's body was found in his bed at the ranch on the morning of February 13 after he flew by private plane into the ranch's airport, arriving around noon on February 12.
Dominguez noted in his report noted that a pillow partially covered Scalia's eyes but that it “did not seem to have inhibited Scalia’s breathing.” No autopsy was performed on Scalia's body nor did a qualified medical professional conduct an inquest, which is required under Texas state law. Presidio County District Attorney Rod Ponton claimed that there was nothing suspicious about Scalia's death.
News reports stated that the Alpine Funeral Home in Alpine, Texas was notified that a hearse was needed to transport Scalia's body to the Sunset Funeral Home in El Paso for embalming before being flown back to Washington, DC. However, Dominguez's report states that Scalia's body was transported to El Paso by a hearse sent by the Sunset Funeral Home.
Presidio County judge Cinderela Guevara pronounced Scalia dead over a telephone call with Dominguez, who was at the ranch, at 1:52 pm on February 13. Sarah Vasquez, a reporter for theBig Bend Sentinel, the local newspaper with which Dominguez and the county government has a close relationship, wrote in the February 13 issue that "Alpine Memorial Funeral Home was called to scene" of Scalia's death. But the Sheriff's report states that "at approximately 11:30 pm the El Paso Funeral Home arrived at the ranch to retrieve Scalia's body, and return to the funeral home." It adds, "at approximately 12:00 am (midnight) the funeral home departed the premises with Scalia's body," along with U.S. Marshals and Dominguez. The procession of the hearse and the marshals continued to El Paso, a three hour drive, after arriving in Marfa. Texas Department of Public Safety vehicles accompanied the procession to El Paso. The same Big Bend Sentinel report stated, that Scalia's body was to be "flown to a funeral home in El Paso per the family’s request." The Cibolo Creek Ranch airport can accommodate Gulfstream and Lear jets. If Scalia's body was to be flown anywhere, it could just have easily been flown back to Washington, DC directly from the ranch's airport.
WFAA/Associated Press reported on February 14 that "a funeral home in neighboring Alpine was called to come collect the justice’s remains, which were then transported to El Paso." It is noteworthy that Marfa, which is closer to the ranch than Alpine, also has a funeral home that could have accommodated the needs of the Scalia family, yet it was not used.
The San Antonio Express-News carried a photograph of the Alpine Funeral Home Cadillac hearse leaving the Cibolo Creek Ranch at around 5:00 pm on February 13. The photograph is clearly taken during daylight hours. However, the Sheriff's report states that the El Paso Funeral Home hearse left around midnight on the 13th. Media reports had the hearse arriving at the El Paso funeral home around 2:30 am on February 13th. Why the discrepancy? The Los Angeles Timeslater reported that George Van Etten, the ranch's property manager who works for owner John B. Poindexter, decided to use the Alpine Funeral Home hearse as a decoy to confuse the press. But why would Scalia's body be kept at the ranch for over six hours in order to confuse the press? Only the San Antonio Express-News had a crew outside the ranch's main gate. And why the cloak-and-dagger involved in transporting Scalia's body to El Paso if he died of a heart attack from natural causes?
Alpine Funeral Home hearse leaving Cibolo Creek Ranch at 5:00 pm on February 13. This hearse reportedly did not contain Scalia's body.
The Sheriff's report also identifies, for the first time, the close friend who traveled with Scalia from Washington to the ranch. His name is Allen Foster. Scalia has a friend in Washington named C. Allen Foster, a noted trial lawyer who has argued cases before the Supreme Court.
Posted by Macu at 2/24/2016 09:49:00 AM