Hillary and Bill Clinton: The «Bonnie and Clyde» of American Politics

Wayne MADSEN 

Whether the information originated from hacked e-mails and computer files or Freedom of Information Act requests, the revelations about the political and business activities of Hillary and Bill Clinton and their cronies hearken back to another era, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the crime spree of another unscrupulous couple: bank robbery desperados Bonnie and Clyde.

Aside from Hillary Clinton running her own lucrative «off-the-books» foreign policy via her private email servers and e-mail chain of associates and flunkies, it was her and her husband’s joint Clinton Foundation and Teneo Capital operations that scream out the word «corruption.» The servers were merely a mechanism by which the Clintons ran their own «pay-to-play» racketeering operation, something that would have been the envy of a contemporary of Bonnie and Clyde, Chicago crime boss Al Capone.

Teneo, which runs a hedge fund operation and a «private intelligence» service jam-packed with former Central Intelligence Agency operatives, is where Mrs. Clinton’s «gal pal» and aide Huma Abedin worked simultaneously to her government employment with the State Department. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe of 650,000 emails found on the laptop computer of disgraced former New York Democratic Representative Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Abedin, is but the proverbial tip of the iceberg. While FBI agents pore through Abedin’s emails that were discovered on the laptop and looking Mrs. Clinton’s emails that were either not destroyed by her aides or which were never accounted for, the real story is the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton Foundation and Teneo.

Five FBI field offices are investigating the racketeering of the foundation and the foreign connections of Teneo. The offices include New York; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Miami. Little Rock is the home of the Clinton Foundation, while New York is the home base of Teneo. The addition of the Miami field office to the Clinton probe is significant. One of Teneo Intelligence’s many global offices is located in Bogota, Colombia. A secretive Colombian private equity fund, «Fondo Acceso», financed by Mexican mega-billionaire Carlos Slim and Canadian mining magnate Frank Giustra, is run out of the Clinton Foundation’s Bogota office. Tracking the money being fed into the Clinton Foundation may include proceeds from the illegal narcotics traffic in Colombia and other nearby countries. The Bogota activities of the Clinton Foundation, «Fondo Acceso», which ironically means «Access Fund», and Teneo appear to be concentrated in the Chico Business Park in the Colombian capital. Therefore, the involvement of the Miami office, in investigating Clinton Foundation funding, including the major donations from Slim and Giustra, makes a world of sense.

Teneo was co-founded by longtime Bill Clinton associate Doug Band, who served in Clinton’s White House Counsel’s Office and later as Clinton’s chief aide in the Clinton Foundation and its associated Clinton Global Initiative. Band’s brother is Bill Clinton’s medical doctor who accompanies the ex-president on foreign trips. Doug Band was the point person who lobbied the incoming Barack Obama administration in 2008 to appoint Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.

Mrs. Clinton’s tenure at State ensured that there was little separation between her department, the Clinton Foundation and Global Initiative, and Teneo. Abedin served as Mrs. Clinton’s «transition team» leader as the Secretary of State left the department to launch her presidential candidacy after the November 2012 election. From that time on, Mrs. Clinton, Abedin, Doug Band, Clinton’s campaign chief John Podesta, and others engaged in an email flurry to 1) ensure that the files in the private servers were either scrubbed or sanitized; 2) to officially sever all links between them and the Clinton Foundation and Teneo; and 3) to paint a picture for the public that all was well and legal with Mrs. Clinton’s term as America’s chief foreign policy executive. Unfortunately, the entire Clinton team has been exposed with the publication of emails from Mrs. Clinton’s swearing in as Secretary of State in 2009 to after she launched her campaign for the White House in 2013.

The picture painted by the emails is one of modern-day gangsters milking everything they possibly could out of supposed public service.

The FBI’s New York field office is also likely looking at Teneo’s dealings with other Clinton allies. It was Teneo that advised former New Jersey Democratic Governor Jon Corzine's MF Global investment firm as it was collapsing amid charges of major fraud by Corzine, a Clinton loyalist. It is also known as Mrs. Clinton communicated with President Obama over her private server and that Obama used a pseudonym. Obama lied to the American people when he stated that he first learned of the existence of Mrs. Clinton’s server from news media reports. There is little wonder why Obama has refused to condemn FBI director James Comey for re-launching his probe of the Clinton emails, based on the discovery of the additional traffic on Weiner’s laptop. Presidents who dug themselves deep into scandals by lying about «what they knew and when they knew it» helped sink the administration of Richard Nixon and almost cost Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton their presidencies. Obama was wise not to interfere in the FBI’s many criminal cases now building up like a tidal wave against Mrs. Clinton.

The many Clinton scandals also involve the illegal shipment of U.S.- and foreign-manufactured weapons to jihadist rebels in Libya and Syria against U.S. law. When Clinton and Abedin oversaw the jihadist rebellions in both countries, the U.S. was subject to imposing a United Nations arms embargo directed against both civil war theaters. The sudden decision on October 5, 2016, by the Justice Department to drop all charges against the State Department-licensed Turi Defense Group of Arizona and its owner, Marc Turi, for violating U.S. law by shipping unregistered weapons to Libyan rebels, some of which were transferred to Syrian rebels by the CIA station in Benghazi, indicates that Attorney General Loretta Lynch wanted the Turi case to disappear before the November 8th election.

The federal trial of Turi and his company was due to begin on November 8th. The indictment of Turi was brought in the U.S. Court for the District of Arizona in Phoenix. Phoenix's Sky Harbor International Airport was the scene of an impromptu and highly-questionable tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and Attorney General Lynch on June 27, 2016. Turi claims that approval for the secret weapons shipments to Libya and onward to Syria were personally approved by Mrs. Clinton and had a green light from the CIA. Any new email or other evidence that Mrs. Clinton authorized illegal weapons shipments to jihadist terrorists would have required the FBI to broaden its investigation of both Hillary and Bill Clinton, as well as Lynch. Mrs. Clinton may have violated federal law by permitting the shipment of weapons to belligerent parties in Libya and Syria; Mr. Clinton may have obstructed justice in talking to the Attorney General; and Lynch may have violated her oath of office in misusing her position as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice.

The Clinton scandal, in many ways, resembles the Iran-Contra episode more than it does Watergate. In Watergate, the cover-up by Nixon and his cronies, in many respects, was worse than the original crimes. In Iran-Contra, the arms and drugs smuggling crimes were equal to the cover-up, including the criminal role of then-Vice President George H. W. Bush in the entire affair. With the Clintons’ «E-mailgate», shipping U.S. weapons to terrorists and accepting foreign campaign donations from dodgy regimes in Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Qatar are every bit as bad as the obvious ensuing cover-up by Hillary Clinton and her and her husband's cronies.

If these many cases are what the FBI and its offices in Washington, New York, Little Rock, Los Angeles, Miami, and possibly Phoenix, are now looking at, the FBI director had every right and a constitutional responsibility to inform Congress and the voting public. And FBI director Comey has every right not to tip off to the Clinton gang what he and the bureau may have on them, evidence demanded now by Mrs. Clinton and her supporters. This evidence may become material to the impeachment of Mrs. Clinton from the office of president of the United States should she be elected on November 8th

  

Wayne MADSEN Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club

It’s Past Time to Move the United Nations to Switzerland

Wayne MADSEN

With a dangerous right-wing and quasi-fascist administration in power in Washington, one that rejects internationalism and consensus-building, it is past time for the United Nations to move its headquarters and member states’ permanent missions to a more neutral location. One can understand why the UN was originally located in New York. The Rockefeller family donated the land on Turtle Bay on the East River for the construction of UN Headquarters. After World War II, the United States was in a prime position to nurture the UN, something it failed to do after World War I when Washington rejected membership in the League of Nations.

The League’s headquarters in Geneva was a painful reminder to some UN members who saw the world’s first international organization devoted to peacemaking fail miserably to contain Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan. In some respects, although the UN was the successor organization to the League, no one wanted to be reminded that it was at the League’s headquarters in Switzerland where Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie pleaded with delegates to stop the brutal Italian invasion and occupation of his country.

The charter members of the UN wanted no reminders of the UN’s toothless predecessor. The UN was an organization with a Security Council of five permanent members that was authorized to meet aggression with force. Unfortunately, the UN’s host nation, particularly under Donald Trump, but also to a lesser extend under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush, has shown its willingness to disregard decisions of the UN and violate the US-UN Treaty governing the rights of delegates to freely enter and depart New York while conducting business at the UN.

The US-UN treaty, which may not be violated by Trump without the approval of Congress, was signed at Lake Success, New York in 1947. The signatories were UN Secretary General Trygve Lie and US Secretary of State George Marshall. The treaty guaranteed the extraterritorial nature of the UN headquarters in Manhattan. Furthermore, it guaranteed that the US would not interfere with the expeditious granting of US visas to foreign diplomats and UN personnel transiting through US territory in furtherance of their responsibilities to their own governments and the UN, respectively.

Trump’s xenophobic and far-right policies directed against Muslims, Palestinians, and countries, including Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, and Venezuela, have resulted in repeated violations of the US-UN Treaty by zealous US immigration authorities. The recent Trump administration threat to deny visas to Iran’s delegation to attend the 2019 General Assembly Plenary Session in New York is a case in point, but not the only one. Similar restrictions by the Trump administration have been levied against delegates from UN members Libya, Cuba, Russia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Official observers from Palestine have also been harassed and delegates from the Houthi-led government of Yemen and Abkhazia, non-UN members, have been denied US visas to plead their cases before the UN.

The US-UN Treaty stipulates that the US government will facilitate entrance into the United States, and the use of available means of transportation, of “persons coming from abroad who wish to visit the headquarters.” This would include members of non-member nations wishing to petition or otherwise interact with the UN and affiliate agencies on an official basis. In fact, the US violated this provision in 1975 when US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger saw to it that US visas were denied to representatives of the Kingdom of Sikkim, Western Sahara, and East Timor, who desired to plead their nations’ cases with regard to invasions and occupations by India, Morocco, and Indonesia, respectively. East Timor was eventually admitted to the UN as a member state, but it was after a bloody war with Indonesian occupation forces and US collusion with Indonesia’s military dictatorship.

US policy toward a liberalized visa policy for UN members, employees, observers, and guests has been erratic since the UN’s founding. In 1968, the Lyndon Johnson administration did grant a visa to Commissioner for Foreign Affairs of the secessionist Republic of Biafra Matthew Mbu to visit the UN to plead his nation’s case to UN officials. In 1948, the Harry Truman administration denied visas for two representatives of Indian princely state leaders – the Muslim Nizam of Hyderabad and the Sikh Maharajah of Nabha – to appeal to the UN against aggression by the Hindu-dominated newly-independent nation of India. That same year, the Truman administration failed to permit representatives of the Kalat Confederacy in Baluchistan to appeal to the UN against Pakistani annexation.

The original founders of the UN even envisaged a UN-controlled airport near the UN Headquarters that would deny US immigration authorities the right to deny visas to UN delegates and other guests visiting the UN. Such an airport would have enjoyed extraterritorial status with unhindered travel corridors to and from the UN.

While he was Venezuela’s Foreign Minister, Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro, was subjected to an invasive strip search in 2006 when he was detained for 90 minutes at New York’s JFK Airport while returning home from a UN General Assembly meeting. The detention of Maduro was a CIA-initiated fishing expedition. Maduro was questioned about his alleged role in the failed 1992 Venezuelan coup attempt led by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Although the League of Nations lacked any real enforcement authority to back up its resolutions, the host nation of Switzerland did yeoman’s work in facilitating the entry to the Geneva headquarters by official parties and guests. The US record on affording equal access to the UN in New York has been woefully inadequate. The UN could very easily move its headquarters to Geneva, where several UN constituent bodies and specialized agencies, including the UN Human Rights Council, World Health Organization, the International Labor Organization, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), World Meteorological Organization (which is immune to Donald Trump’s redrawing of weather maps with black Sharpie pens), and the International Telecommunications Union are located.

Since Switzerland’s traditional foreign policy is one of neutrality, it is a much better choice to host the UN than New York. Trump’s recently fired National Security Adviser, John Bolton, who was also a past US ambassador to the UN, once fantasized about the top ten floors of the UN Secretariat building being demolished. Trump’s personal attorney, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, routinely used the New York Police Department to harass UN delegates from countries he did not like. Delegates and staff from Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Laos, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Indonesia, Mexico, Egypt, Kazakhstan, China, Cuba, Cyprus, Zaire, and other countries were routinely issued parking tickets and had their vehicles towed. Russian diplomat Alexandre Zmeevski stated that “his delegation had been given tickets even in some parking spaces reserved for diplomatic vehicles.” Costa Rica delegate Emilia Castro de Barish complained that she “had received two unfair and discriminatory parking citations, including a citation while she had been parked in a parking space reserved for diplomats.” In 1995, Giuliani ordered Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, in the city to help celebrate the UN’s 50th anniversary, ejected from a New York Philharmonic special concert for the gathered world leaders. Giuliani stated that if the UN did not like his harassment of its employees and diplomats, they could “leave town.”

It was not the first time that a right-wing Republican and extremist Israel supporter told the UN to leave New York. Alternate US delegate Charles Lichtenstein addressed a diplomatic standoff with the Soviet Union in 1983, when the states of New York and New Jersey barred Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko’s plane from landing at either JFK Airport in New York or Newark International Airport in New Jersey. The alternative of McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey was offered. However, the Soviet government rejected the offer as a violation of US treaty rights afforded to the UN. Lichtenstein responded by saying that if member states believed that “they are not being treated with the hostly consideration that is their due, they should consider removing themselves and this organization from the soil of the United States,” adding, “we will put no impediment in your way. The members of the US mission to the United Nations will be down at the dockside waving you a fond farewell as you sail off into the sunset.”

It’s time to honor the requests of Giuliani and Lichtenstein and move the UN from New York to Geneva or another location not subject to the whims of right-wing fanatic blowhards like Trump, Giuliani, Bolton, or the late Mr. Lichtenstein.

Wayne MADSEN

Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club

Trump threatening the world's most eco-sensitive habitats

Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist, Wayne Madsen, has written, "The ecologically-sensitive Galapagos Islands, home to many species not found anywhere else in the world will soon be the location of yet another US military base. Under Donald Trump, the Pentagon is expanding its network of overseas bases to include some of the world’s most pristine regions.

Based on prior actions, a US military presence leaves a permanent footprint of hazardous materials, plain garbage, and petroleum and its by-products in and around air and naval bases". Stay tuned to hear the rest of his article which sheds light on a dimension of the US expansionist policies that continues devouring human resources and devastating planet earth and its creatures. His article is titled, "Trump threatening the world's most eco-sensitive habitats".

The Galapagos, located 563 miles west of South America, is governed as a territory of Ecuador. The decision by Ecuadorian Defense Minister Oswaldo Jarrín to allow the US military to use the island of San Cristobal as an airbase was met with protests across Ecuador and around the world. Jarrín also had the temerity to describe the environmentally-sensitive islands as a “natural aircraft carrier.”

The Trump administration insists that the Galapagos base was to inly be used for combatting drug trafficking. This excuse was echoed by Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno and Foreign Minister José Valencia. Ever since coming to power, Moreno has steered Ecuador away from its one-time role as a member of the socialist Latin American bloc, along with Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, and Argentina, standing firm against US imperialism in the region. However, Moreno has shown that merely because his father named him in honor of Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union, he can be as much a lackey for US military expansion as Latin America’s other far-right leaders, including Presidents Ivan Duque of Colombia and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.

The Moreno government’s insistence that the American base on the Galapagos is merely for counter-narcotics trafficking operation is laughable on its face. Former President Rafael Correa, now in exile in Europe and facing an extradition request from the Moreno regime, knows a thing or two about US bases in Ecuador. In 2008, Correa, for whom Moreno served as vice president, ordered the US Air Force to vacate its base at Manta, on Ecuador’s Pacific coast. Far from being engaged solely in counter-narcotics activity, Correa discovered that Manta was being used by the American military to assist Colombia in cross-border raids into Ecuador that targeted the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Correa also amended Ecuador’s constitution and banned all foreign military bases from Ecuadorian soil. Currently, Article 5 of the constitution states the “establishment of foreign military bases or foreign facilities for military purposes shall not be allowed.”

Moreno wasted no time in changing Ecuador’s foreign policy to act in lockstep with Washington. A June 2018 visit to Ecuador by US Vice President Mike Pence resulted in the Trump administration agreeing to supply Ecuador with weapons, radar systems, combat helicopters military training, and intelligence. At the same time, Moreno apparently agreed that in return for handing over to British authorities WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from asylum protection in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and refusing to cooperate with US Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation of a link between Moreno and Trump 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort, he would receive US military hardware. The granting of the US of the Galapagos as a base was icing on the cake for Washington.

From exile in Belgium, Correa tweeted his reaction to the Galapagos being used as an American base: “Galápagos is NOT an ‘aircraft carrier’ for gringo use. It is an Ecuadorian province, world heritage site, homeland.”

As much as the Ecuadorian government denied that the Galapagos base would harm the environmental condition of the islands, the Galapagos governor admitted that the new US base involved the extension of the runway of San Cristobal airport in order to handle at least two US military aircraft, a Boeing 777 and a Lockheed P-3 Orion. Jarrín was also forced to admit to the Ecuadorian Congress that, in addition to being used as a counter-narcotics base, the Galapagos would be used by the US for “emergency situations.” The new US base will come under the command of the United States Southern Command in Miami.

The US also has its eyes set on another military outpost in a world heritage site, the strategic island of Socotra in the Gulf of Aden. Some 40% of the plant species on Socotra are not found anywhere else in the world. Socotra is currently a territory of Yemen. However, Yemen’s Saudi-backed president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, has offered the United Arab Emirates regime in Abu Dhabi a 99-year lease on Socotra in return for the UAE’s support in the war waged by the Saudi regime, its allies and accomplices to fight popular Ansarullah fighters and force them and the Yemeni nation to submit to the dictates of the Saudis and their masters in Washington, Tel Aviv and London.

The proposed lease of Socotra to the UAE, a US ally, sounds suspiciously similar to the 99-year lease the US arranged with Cuba for the use of Guantanamo Bay as a naval base. Although the Guantanamo lease expired in 1999, the US not only continued to occupy the base but turned it into a concentration camp for detainees in the wake of the inside-job of 9/11.

The US Navy, which presumably would play a major role in operating a Socotra base sub-leased by the UAE to the United States, has left a trail environmentally-destructive waste dumps in every remote location it has occupied, from Keflavik, Iceland and Adak, Alaska to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Midway Island in the Pacific.

Another tropical group of atolls where the US Air Force is reportedly building a drone base is the Australian territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean. The US currently uses Cocos as a halfway stopover for military flights between Diego Garcia and Guam. There are plans afoot to expand the small military installation and the runaway to accommodate US P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft, in addition to drones. The Pentagon has also been looking at another Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, Christmas Island, as a naval installation.

The environmental damage record for islands where the United States has established bases is a long one. Just some of the US military’s contaminants left on islands like Vieques, off Puerto Rico; Terceira in the Azores; Ascension Island in the South Atlantic; and Greenland include lethal cocktails of polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs); toxic metals, and chlorinated chemicals.

The US military’s piggish record of poisoning groundwater, soil and sediments, plants, and terrestrial or aquatic animals around the world should serve as a stark warning to environmentalists responsible for protecting the rare tortoises, shore and sea birds, iguanas, bats, sea lions, and other species, as well as the flora of the Galapagos. The Pentagon does not place any priority on protection of wildlife. In fact, the only applicable directives of the US Department of War concerning animal protection deal with the humane treatment of animals used for military research, wildlife on military installations, and the use of certain species, like marine mammals, for combat missions. Protests about the US Navy’s use of sonar that harms whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals have been met with haughty dismissals by the Pentagon. That serves enough proof that the Pentagon cannot be trusted anywhere near the eco-systems of the Galapagos, Socotra, the Cocos Islands, or any other environmentally-sensitive locations.

The Dis-United Arab Emirates

WAYNE MADSEN 

A recent Beverly Hills, California political campaign fundraiser for Donald Trump, co-sponsored by Republican National Committee deputy national finance chairman Elliott Broidy – whose Los Angeles office was raided in March of this year by the Federal Bureau of Investigation – is raising eyebrows in Middle Eastern capitals. Broidy, a major figure in the Republican Jewish Coalition, is under law enforcement investigation for selling access to Trump and other administration officials. FBI agents seized documents in Broidy’s office related to potentially illegal “pay-to-play” operations involving Broidy’s firms and the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, in addition to a Broidy extortion attempt against Qatar.

FBI agents also raided the Colfax Law Office, the Beverly Hills law practice founded by Robin Rosenzweig, Broidy’s wife. Broidy and his wife represent the apex of Israel’s influence-peddling moguls in the Los Angeles area and they are major players in both Trump campaign fundraising among the Hollywood elite. The FBI is particularly interested in Broidy’s reported attempt to raise $1 billion in contracts for his private security company from the Saudis and Emiratis, in return for pressing Trump to steer US foreign policy toward Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and away from Qatar.

Broidy’s association with the Saudis and Emiratis remains very suspect in the eyes of US law enforcement, as well as Arab interests skeptical of the close relationships between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi and Broidy and other agents of influence for Israel, such as Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. After attending the Beverly Hills fundraiser, an event that was not attended by a single Hollywood A-List celebrity, Trump flew off to Las Vegas to speak to the annual meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition. In the audience was Adelson, a deep-pocketed donor to Trump and other Republicans, who was wearing a red yarmulke bearing the name “Trump.”

Pro-Israeli billionaires like Adelson have gotten their money’s worth from Trump. Trump has done everything asked of him by the Binyamin Netanyahu government of Israel, including withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program, recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and moving the American embassy there from Tel Aviv, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights, and declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a “foreign terrorist organization.” There is a strong belief that Netanyahu has such a hold on Trump, via the influence of individuals like Adelson, Kushner, Broidy, and others, that Trump will soon commute the prison sentence of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollards and be among the first to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank.

Therefore, the close relationship between Broidy and the UAE, particularly its Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) al Nahayan, has many Emiratis questioning the loyalty of MbZ and the Nahayan clan to the Palestinian cause. The aggressiveness of the Nahayan family toward Iran, with which the northern emirates have close commercial relations, and Qatar, which almost became a member of a wider federation of emirates after Britain’s announcement that it was pulling out of the region in 1968. The federation between Bahrain, Qatar, and the seven Trucial States never materialized because of in-fighting between the prospective members. In December 1971, six of the seven Trucial States formed the UAE at a meeting in Dubai. The seventh, Ras al-Khaimah, was reluctant to join. However, in January 1972, Ras al-Khaimah acceded to the new union.

Iran, then ruled by the Shah, invaded three islands, Greater Tunb and Lesser Tunb, which were claimed by Ras al-Khaimah, and Abu Musa, claimed by Sharjah. The emir of Sharjah, Sheikh Khalid bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, negotiated a deal with Iran, whereby the Iranians leased Abu Musa for $3 million a year. Around the time of the agreement with Iran, Sheikh Khalid was killed while trying to put down a Nasserite coup by his cousin, Sheikh Saqr bin Sultan Al Qasimi, who was the emir of Sharjah, but was deposed by his family and exiled to Cairo in 1965. The mercenary force that Sheikh Saqr led to Sharjah was loyal to anti-UAE members of the Qasimi royal family, which ruled both Sharjah and Ras al-Khaimah. The plans by Sheikh Saqr to lead Sharjah out of the UAE and Ras al-Khaimah’s initial reluctance to join the federation continue to influence inter-emirate relations in the UAE.

From the outset, the ruling families of the seven UAE states bickered over everything from territory to sharing financial resources. The Nahayan family used its influence to have Abu Dhabi declared the UAE capital and the Emir of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan and his successors named as presidents of the UAE.

Although Dubai soon became the commercial and architectural gem of the Arabian Peninsula, Abu Dhabi and the Nahayan family continued to exercise strong political control over the UAE. Two deaths of two of the founders of the UAE, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahayan of Abu Dhabi in 2004 and Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai in 2006, brought to power in Abu Dhabi Sheikh Zayed’s son, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahayan, and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum in Dubai. Although Khalifa bin Zayed became the president of the UAE, Mohammed bin Rashid held the positions of vice president and prime minister of the federation. Suspicions remain about the sudden death of Sheikh Maktoum. He reportedly died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 62 while staying at the Palazzo Versace Hotel in Queensland, Australia. His brother, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, succeeded him. But, in 2015, the second oldest son of the Dubai emir and nephew of the late Sheikh Maktoum, Sheikh Rashid bin Mohammed bin Rashid, died of a heart attack in Dubai at the age of 33.

In 2008, Rashid bin Mohammed, the Crown Prince of Dubai since his older brother, Marwan, had a Greek mother and was ineligible, was fired as Crown Prince because he reportedly killed a servant in a drug-induced pique of anger. Rashid bin Mohammed’s younger brother, Hamdan, was named Crown Prince.

Emir Rashid turned Dubai into a global city and major financial and transportation and shipping hub. However, he overextended himself financially by building the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building. When Dubai’s finances faltered, it was Abu Dhabi that bailed out Rashid and his building. In return, the building was named the Burj Khalifa, in honor of the UAE president and Emir of Abu Dhabi.

Rashid’s relationship with Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince and UAE Minister of Defense Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ). However, MbZ’s close ties to Saudi Arabia’s impetuous Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MbS), and pro-Israelis close to the Trump administration like Broidy and Kushner has irritated Dubai’s business community and the northern UAE states that have profited from commerce with Iran. MbS and MbZ have supported the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) sanctions on Qatar, primarily because that nation refused to join the GCC and the United States in increasing diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran.

A split began to emerge among the seven emirs. The smaller and poorer emirates of the north – Sharjah, Ajman, Ras-al Khaimah, and Umm al Qaiwain – were envious of the power wielded by the rulers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

Another royal rivalry has broken out in Ras al-Khaimah. In 1974 Sheikh Saqr bin Moḥammed Al Qasimi appointed his oldest son, Sheikh Khalid bin Saqr Al Qasimi, as Crown Prince. In 2003, Saqr replaced Khalid as Crown Prince with another son, Sheikh Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi. Khalid was exiled to Muscat, Oman amid UAE tanks and troops being stationed at all of Ras al-Khaimah’s sensitive facilities. Khalid, like his cousin, Sheikh Saqr bin Sultan Al Qasimi – who launched the unsuccessful coup in Sharjah – is a reformer and possibly not so keen on the autocrats in Abu Dhabi and Dubai calling all the shots in the UAE. It is known that Khalid opposed the US invasion of Iraq and even burnt an American flag in protest. In October 2010, when Ras al-Khaimah emir Saqr died and Crown Prince Saud acceded to the throne, Sheikh Khalid sent out a video on the Internet proclaiming himself as the rightful emir of Ras al-Khaimah.

In 2009, Sheikh Khalid hired the Washington, DC lobbying firm, SNS Global, to advance his cause. SNS Global’s chief is Glenn Simpson, the former Wall Street Journal reporter who is also the co-founder of Fusion GPS, the private intelligence firm at the center of the controversies surrounding the 2016 US presidential election. It is known that Sheik Khalid attended Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009.

As can be seen with the palace rivalries among the emirates of the UAE and the monarchies in the GCC, the region is prone to outside provocateurs and influence-peddlers. The fact that Broidy, Kushner, and Blackwater founder Erik Prince – whose sister is Donald Trump’s Education Secretary – have all shown up in the area marketing their “wares,” comes as no surprise.

WAYNE MADSEN

Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club

Ilhan Omar Is Just Another Victim of Zion’s Politically Lethal Sting

WAYNE MADSEN

Freshman US Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota and a Somali-American Muslim, is not the first nor will she be the last victim of Zion’s sting. Omar is merely the latest in a long line of US politicians who have faced the onslaught of Israel’s powerful lobbying vise grip in Washington. In fact, long before there was a state of Israel, American presidents and statesmen fell victim to the power of political Zionism to retaliate against those who failed to back the concept of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.

On March 5, 1891, President Benjamin Harrison received a visitor to the White House bearing a petition signed by 421 influential American citizens urging the president to recognize Palestine as the “restored” homeland of the Jewish people. The bearer of the petition, evangelical Christian clergyman William E. Blackstone was one of the earliest “Christian Zionists” in proclaiming solidarity with certain Jewish Zionists in support of a Jewish state in the Holy Land. Blackstone was no different than many of today’s Zionists who ensure total fealty of US administrations to Israeli policy, no matter how reprehensible it may be, especially toward the Palestinian people. Blackstone’s petition had been signed by John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, US Supreme Court Chief Justice Melville Fuller, Speaker of the US House of Representatives Thomas Reed, inventor Cyrus McCormick, co-owner and managing editor of The Chicago Tribune Joseph Medill, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Robert Hitt, and US Representative and future president William McKinley.

Blackstone, then the chairman of the Conference of Christians and Jews, wrote in his petition that the Ottoman Empire, which had control over Palestine, could be enticed into handing the territory over to Jewish control through the “funding of a portion of the [Ottoman] National debt by rich Jewish bankers.” Such a clause, today, would result in the same howls of “anti-Semitism” that are being directed at Omar because of her statement that pro-Israel lobbying groups, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), ensure congressional support for Israel by showering members of Congress and candidates with “benjamins,” a reference to US$100 bills.

Harrison, who was president from 1889 to 1893, was polite to Blackstone and promised to give his petition “careful attention.” Harrison, who had his hands full with civil service reform, the tariff debate, the gold versus silver standard for US currency, voting rights for African-Americans in the South, a US-backed coup in Hawaii, and the death of his wife from tuberculosis, slid the Blackstone petition into a “dead file.” Harrison did name a special commission to Russia to investigate anti-Jewish pogroms taking place in the country, urging Congress to condemn the actions of the czar.

Harrison’s inaction on Palestine contributed to his defeat in the 1892 election by his predecessor, Democrat Grover Cleveland. Cleveland was viewed as a safer bet for Zionism because of his denouncement of Austria-Hungary during his first term. The Habsburg emperor refused to accept the credentials of the US Minister-designate to Vienna, John Kieley, because Kieley’s wife was Jewish.

Omar’s stance was defended by her colleagues, newly-elected Palestinian-American Muslim Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Democratic presidential candidates Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and Bernie Sanders of Vermont also issued statements in defense of Omar.

In 2009, AIPAC went to battle stations over a House letter, signed by 54 members, urging President Obama to pressure Israel to lift the inhumane blockade of Gaza. The signatories immediately were called the "anti-Semitic Hamas 54" by AIPAC and their propaganda ciphers at Fox "News" and hate talk radio. In fact, the signatories included two Jewish Democratic members, Bob Filner and John Yarmuth.

Over the years, AIPAC has sought to bring down several politicians who, to varying degrees, criticized Israel. AIPAC, a right-wing organization, put out the word that while the signatures of "pro-Hamas" members like Keith Ellison of Minnesota, America's first Muslim congressman; Jim McDermott of Washington state (retired); incumbent Barbara Lee of California, and Jim Moran of Virginia(retired after being stripped of House seniority committee assignments) were no surprise, others had to be punished for their criticism of Israel over Gaza. AIPAC smeared "pro-Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)" members like Representatives Carolyn Kilpatrick of Michigan (defeated); Nick Rahall of West Virginia (defeated); Eric Massa of New York (resigned amid a targeted and manufactured scandal concocted with the connivance of AIPAC loyalist Representative Barney Frank; Pete Stark of California (defeated); and Diane Watson of California (retired) and "pro-Islamic sharia" members like William Delahunt of Massachusetts (retired) and John Dingell of Michigan (retired).

America's political road is littered with those who dared challenge political Zionism's influence over the American political scene: Democrats and Republicans like Secretary of State and US ambassador to the United Nations Edward Stettinius Jr. (resigned as ambassador over President Harry Truman's pro-Zionist policies); Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan (failed to secure Republican presidential nomination in 1940 and 1948); New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey (defeated in the 1948 presidential election), Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas (defeated), Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton (lost the 1964 GOP presidential nomination), Illinois Senator Charles Percy (defeated), Iowa Senator Roger Jepsen (defeated), Illinois Senator Adlai Stevenson III (retired), Stevenson’s father, Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson II and twice Democratic presidential candidate, who, in 1955, said of Israeli designs on its neighbors’ lands, “I quietly asserted that it should be the policy of this government not to permit any change in the status quo by force – and the more noisy Zionists have been denouncing me as a traitor ever since, and, frankly, I’m getting damned well fed up with it... Moreover, I’m about the only leading Democrat left with whom Arabs will still talk in confidence.” (defeated twice for the US presidency by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who the Zionists also criticized for failing to back Israel in its 1956 invasion of Sinai and the Suez Canal); President John F. Kennedy, who criticized Israel’s pursuit of nuclear weapons in heated exchanges with Prime Ministers David Ben-Gurion and Levi Eshkol (assassinated in 1963); Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who, in 1986, in answer to a question that asked, “Is the Israel Lobby too powerful?” replied, “God, yes, way too powerful!” (defeated for president in 1964, retired from the Senate); Alaska Senator Mike Gravel (defeated in Senate primary); Illinois Representative Paul Findlay, who wrote an excellent book on AIPAC's influence over American politics, "They Dare to Speak Out,” (defeated), South Dakota Senator James Abdnor (defeated), South Dakota Senator James Abourezk (retired), President Jimmy Carter (defeated), California Representative Pete McCloskey (defeated in Senate primary), Ohio Representative James Traficant (indicted and expelled from the House), Alabama Representative Earl Hilliard (defeated), Texas Representative Ron Paul (retired); Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska (retired from the Senate but faced a contentious Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of Defense based on his comments about the power of the Israel Lobby, and Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney (defeated).

Those who opposed the Israel Lobby and placed America’s interests ahead of Israel’s were punished politically. However, all of those who stood up to Israel’s arrogance of power in Washington represented a cross section of the American people: Democrats and Republicans, libertarians and democratic socialists, whites and African-Americans, Gentiles and Jews, and those from the Northeast, South, Midwest, and West. Saying no to bullies is an American trait that should be revered and not condemned by those who now find it sporting to take cheap political pot shots at Congresswomen Omar, Tlaib, and Ocasio-Cortez.

WAYNE MADSEN

Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club

Trump's CIA now unbound and back to its traditional hijinks

CIA has always been involved in US's criminal acts across the world. A recent example is the power cut in Venezuela. Wayne Madsen, investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist, has dwelt upon the issue in an article titled, "Trump's CIA Now Unbound and Back to Its Traditional Hijinks". 

Under the directorship of torture and black site maven Gina Haspel, Donald Trump’s Central Intelligence Agency has returned to its traditional roots of conducting “black bag” operations and disrupting electrical grids through cyber-attacks.

The Venezuelan government has accused the Trump administration of giving the green light for a series of crippling power failures in Venezuela, which affected 22 of Venezuela’s 23 states, including the capital of Caracas. The long-duration power failures were cited by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as a reason for the US withdrawing its diplomats from Caracas. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced that an international commission assisted by specialists from Russia, China, Iran, and the United Nations would help his country analyze the sources of the Venezuelan electrical grid cyber-attack. Initial cyber-forensics by Venezuela traced some of the cyber warfare being waged against Venezuela to nodes in Houston and Chicago.

In addition to electricity, water service was disrupted in Venezuela. From Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Maduro tweeted on March 12: “From the Presidential Command Post, we monitored minute-by-minute the progress of the recovery of the National Electric System.”

Cyber-attacks on a country that puts its civilian population in jeopardy might, at first glance, appear to be a violation of the Geneva Conventions on warfare. However, without a Digital Geneva Convention, civilian populations are not covered by the current Geneva Conventions. However, in 2015, the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security (UN GGE), which included experts from the United States, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and other nations, agreed that current international law does apply to cyberspace. Most international legal experts agree that the Geneva Conventions require a digital annex to cover the type of cyber-disruption of the Venezuelan electrical grid carried out by the US intelligence services.

Hybrid warfare against Venezuela, which includes economic, diplomatic, and cyber, has the backing of the neo-conservatives who now call the shots for the Trump White House. They include, in addition to Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton; Iran-Contra felon Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special envoy to the US-backed opposition-led rump Venezuelan government of Juan Guaido; Cuban-American Mauricio Claver-Carone, the senior director for Western Hemisphere affairs at the National Security Council; and Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American, who represents the interests of South Florida’s right-wing oligarch exiles from Venezuela and other Latin American countries.

While Trump was preparing for his Hanoi summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump’s second summit with Kim, Haspel’s CIA dug into its old bag of black operations, while also engaging in the more modern form of cyber-attack in targeting North Korea.

On February 22, 2019, ten males, all wearing masks, broke into the North Korean embassy, which is located in the residential suburb of Aravaca, north of Madrid, Spain, and subjected eight embassy staff members to brutal interrogation tactics, including tying up the diplomats, throwing black bags over their heads (a specialty of Ms. Haspel), and subjecting them to beatings. One female diplomat managed to escape through a second-floor window and her screams alerted a neighbor, who promptly called the police. Two embassy employees required medical attention from their injuries.

The Spanish police and National Intelligence Center (CNI) linked two of the embassy invaders to the CIA. “El Pais,” a Spanish national newspaper, reported that the CIA issued one of its standard “denials,” however, the paper stated that Spanish authorities found the denial from Langley, Virginia to be “unconvincing.” “El Pais” reported that the invasion of the North Korean embassy by the CIA had severely harmed relations between Madrid and Washington.

The National Police Corps’ General Commissariat of Information (CGI) and CNI concluded that the attack and occupation of the North Korean embassy was not carried out by common criminals but was the work of a “military cell” that stole mobile phones and computers. Two of the embassy invaders were identified as Koreans and, based on CGI’s and CNI’s analysis of security camera video footage, they were further recognized as Koreans linked to the CIA. Spanish authorities did not rule out the possibility that South Korea’s National Intelligence Service assisted the CIA in the embassy invasion. The embassy invaders escaped from the embassy using two North Korean luxury sedans bearing diplomatic plates. The cars were later found abandoned.

The criminal inquiry into the incident is now before the Spanish High Court, the Audiencia Nacional, which could order the arrests of the embassy attackers and, if they are in the United States or South Korea, have Spain’s INTERPOL national bureau put out a Red Notice for their arrest and extradition to Spain to stand trial.

Spanish authorities believe the CIA’s embassy attackers were looking for information on Kim Hyok Chol, the former North Korean ambassador to Spain, who was declared “persona non grata” by the Spanish government in 2017. Kim Hyok Chol, a career diplomat from one of North Korea’s elite families who studied French at the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies and speaks fluent English, is now one of Kim Jong Un’s trusted diplomatic advisers on nuclear talks with the Trump administration and he traveled with Chairman Kim to the failed Hanoi summit with Trump.

With certainty, Kim Hyok Chol thoroughly briefed Kim Jong Un on the CIA’s storming of his old diplomatic post in Spain. When Trump and Chairman Kim met in Hanoi on February 27 and if the issue of the CIA’s siege of the North Korean embassy was brought up, that could have been enough to derail the summit. Considering the fact that war hawks like Bolton, Abrams, and Pompeo are now calling the foreign policy shots for the Trump administration, the attack on the North Korean embassy in Madrid, just five days prior to the Hanoi summit, may have been ordered by Washington’s neo-con cell with the intention of scuttling the second meeting between Trump and Kim and put on ice any future meetings.

There is further evidence that suggests the neo-cons, in cahoots with Haspel at the CIA, set out to disrupt the Hanoi summit. While Trump was meeting with Kim in Vietnam, the CIA is believed to have launched a cyber-attack on the Korean American National Coordinating Council (KANCC) in New York, an organization with ties to the Pyongyang government. KANCC is a non-governmental organization with offices in the Interchurch Center building, near Columbia University in Manhattan. It champions the dropping of US sanctions against North Korea, a sore point in Hanoi between Trump and Kim.

The Trump-Kim Hanoi summit was reported to have hit a roadblock over North Korea’s request for a partial lifting of US sanctions on North Korea, in return for the continued North Korean moratorium on nuclear testing and a partial freeze on production of fissile material. With the CIA’s attack on the North Korean embassy in Spain still fresh in the minds of the North Korean side and the neo-cons’ insistence, pushed by Bolton and Pompeo, for complete North Korean nuclear disarmament, the Hanoi summit was destined for failure. And, with Bolton, Abrams, Pompeo, and other dangerous neo-cons in charge at the White House and the State Department -- and Haspel dancing to their tune at the CIA - North Korea and Venezuela are not the only countries currently in the gunsights of the Trump administration.

How the US Creates “Sh*thole” Countries

by Jim Miles 

Whether you consider yourself already well educated on the U.S. empire or are looking for a starting place, “How the US Creates “Sh*thole” Countries” is a strong read. Cynthia McKinney has gathered together a series of essays examining features of the empire as well as a list of some the more seriously affected victims. The histories have been covered elsewhere, but the essays here provide new perspectives as well as refreshers as to what has occurred in many different parts of the world.

The book is divided into four parts. The first helps define some of the parameters around the overall concept of empire. The second and longest section provides the grist, histories of U.S. interventions and influences in all regions of the world, including its own colony of Puerto Rico. The manipulation by way of propaganda is the third section explored in three essays. Finally the U.S. is examined itself as an example of a “sh*thole” country.

Some highlights

I have no intention of repeating what the various authors have written but there are several quotes and essays I took note of as I read through that present the overall gist of the writings.

From the first section Wayne Madsen notes, a “high level Israeli intelligence penetration of the 2016 Donald Trump presidential campaign” in association with the UAE and “a murky Canadian company”. And you were worried about Russia? Following this The Saker is the only writer to comment on the U.S.’ direct financial interest in all recent actions as he wonders about the “new reality immediately raises the issue of what will back the US Dollar in the future since in this, US military power has played a significant role.” Finally there is blowback in the form of immigration as James Petras outlines how the immigrant ‘problems’ of both Europe and the U.S. stem from neocolonial wars in Africa/Greater Middle East and Latin America.

The second section takes the reader through what is for many a familiar landscape: Haiti, Afghanistan, Philippines, Vietnam, Palestine, Africa in general and Somalia, Rwanda and Congo in particular before sliding over to Latin America and events in El Salvador, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico.

I found the essays on Africa to be very strong with new material alongside old familiar information. Africa in general is a mess for many reasons, but all add up to some form of neocolonialism. Much has to do with multinational corporations, especially mining and oil companies, harvesting African wealth under the protection of private militaries and state militaries trained and guided by the U.S. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund play a significant role by making loans countries are unable to finance and which are then held in financial captivity through various actions involved with their “structural adjustment programs.” Oil of course plays a large role, along with Chinese influences as seen with U.S. actions in Somalia and Sudan.

There are three essays relating to the Congo and its interactions vis a vis Rwanda. I have never fully understood that relationship, but the combination of these essays allowed my mind to sort out the pieces I knew about into a comprehensive and integrated whole. Essentially, it is the story of NGOs, private corporations, CIA/Mossad, covert militaries all part of western white control extracting Central African wealth with the help of their crony war lords in governance. The focus on Rwanda is revealing indicating through a recounting of the history, and an analysis of the propaganda machine that the west has produced a story pretty much backwards to the reality. For Central Africa “this is genocide [italics in original] against African people of diverse ethnicities, and it is genocide perpetrated by white power interests.” The footnote to this phrase reiterates, “There is a very clear political economy of genocide…at work here.”

In the section on propaganda, Christopher Black, an international Canadian criminal lawyer, argues that propaganda “is a war crime because the propaganda is used to provoke war, to sustain war, to turn other people, declared to be the enemy, into beings that need to be killed.” This is the history of U.S. imperialism in its shortest form, expressing the need to create an ‘other’, a person or group of people who are the enemy and can be killed without moral concern. Without the other – be it indigenous Indians, Spanish freedom fighters, Bolshevists, communists, terrorists, Muslims, and now focused on Russians in general and Putin, the penultimate U.S. bad guy in particular – without these ‘other’ to be condemned the U.S. war machine, the military-political-corporate-financial matrix would not be able to survive.

The last section looks at the U.S. itself as a “shthole” country and while it is not an incorrect perception, it is not nearly as hard hitting as it could be. On the other hand, after reading about how the U.S. interacts with all the other countries as presented earlier, perhaps there is not a need to do so – it is self evident simply from how they treat others and how the economy is structured to create “shtholes” at home or abroad. The final essay by Philip Alston outlines the U.S.’ domestic “sh*thole” qualities, all easily recognizable within the manner that corporations and politicians act at home for their own aggrandizement.

From Trump’s scatalogical mouth and mind the epithet “shtholes” is a reflection of how the U.S. operates overseas as well as domestically. Cynthia McKinney has gathered together a series of essays examining Trump’s scatology, himself the true representative of what underlies U.S. foreign policy without finesse or filter. “How the US Creates “Shthole” Countries” needs a place in everyone’s library in their anti-empire section.

Jim Miles is a Canadian educator and a regular contributor/columnist of opinion pieces and book reviews for The Palestine Chronicle. Miles’ work is also presented globally through other alternative websites and news publications.

Trashing Treaties: Trump’s Shameful Legacy

BY WAYNE MADSEN

Donald Trump has demonstrated his disdain for international agreements and treaties by either pulling the United States out of them or violating their basic requirements by his malign actions. Trump’s first renunciation of an international agreement was his June 2017 pullout from the Paris Climate Accord. The United States achieved the distinction of being the only nation in the world to denounce the agreement, which had been agreed to by all the world’s nations, including such non-members of the United Nations as the Holy See, the Faroe Islands, Aruba, Curacao, and Somaliland.

On December 6, 2017, Trump announced official US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In 1980, a UN Security Council abstention permitted the adoption of Resolution 478. The measure supplemented the earlier Resolutions 252, 267, 271, 298, and 465, which required that all UN member states, including the United States, are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem. The passage of Resolution 478 resulted in nations that had moved their embassies to Jerusalem, including Costa Rica and El Salvador, moving them back to Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, or Herzliya. Trump’s action reversed that action, with Guatemala, Paraguay, and Honduras moving their embassies back to Jerusalem.

On May 8, 2018, Trump renounced the US signature on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran, the nuclear agreement with Iran. Even though the pact was signed by the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, Germany, the European Union and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, Trump, taking his cues from the Israeli war hawk, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, decided, once again, to make the United States an outlier. Trump effectively gave the back of his hand to the international community to placate Netanyahu. Moreover, Trump threatened “secondary sanctions” against foreign nations and firms that continued to engage in commerce with Iran after a November 4, 2018 deadline.

Trump’s authorization for the establishment of a “US Space Force” as an additional military branch was one of the more egregious trashing of a longstanding international treaty. The 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, known simply as the “Outer Space Treaty,” established the basis for international space law. The original signatories were the United States, Soviet Union, and United Kingdom. Since 1967, 107 nations have fully ratified the treaty, which bans the placement of weapons of mass destruction in Earth orbit and the establishment of military bases, installations, and fortifications on the Moon and other celestial bodies.

Trump’s creation of a military Space Force to supplant the civilian National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in US space operations and his call for space to be a “new warfighting domain” effectively violate US treaty obligations.

The US Air Force’s X-37B robotic space planes, smaller versions of NASA’s discontinued space shuttle orbiter, are believed to have carried out top secret military-oriented missions since 2010. Trump’s creation of a Space Force represents a public admission of America’s desire to militarize space, even as the Air Force remains mum on the actual purpose of the X-37B program.

The basis in international law for the Outer Space Treaty was the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. The Antarctic Treaty bans military activity of the continent. Only scientific research in Antarctica is permitted under the Antarctic Treaty System. However, Trump’s disregard for the entire international treaty system has placed the Antarctic Treaty in as much jeopardy as the Outer Space Treaty. The suspected presence of rare earth minerals and gas hydrates under melting Antarctic ice shelves has Trump’s cronies in the mining and fossil fuel industries anxious to undermine the Antarctica Treaty and open the continent to commercial exploitation.

Considering the schoolmarmish haughtiness of Trump’s ambassador to the UN, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, someone who had no foreign policy experience before taking over at the US Mission to the UN, the 1947 US-UN treaty, titled the “Agreement Between the United Nations and the United States of America Regarding the Headquarters of the United Nations,” may also be violated. The imposition of draconian visa bans and other sanctions and travel restrictions on government officials of Iran, Turkey, Russia, Venezuela, North Korea, Nicaragua, Cuba, China, Chad, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Yemen, Myanmar, Laos, Syria, Somalia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Eritrea places in jeopardy US law that requires the facilitation of travel for delegations of UN member states and official observers to and from the UN headquarters in New York.

Trump’s total disregard for international laws and treaties may eventually see leaders and diplomats of foreign nations detained or arrested when they arrive in New York to attend UN sessions. Such harassment began in earnest just a few weeks after Trump was inaugurated as president. In February 2017, former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was caught up in Trump’s visa ban against visitors from Muslim nations. Bondevik was detained at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington and subjected to questioning about an Iranian visa in his diplomatic passport.

In June 2018, America’s Israeli-style harassment was also meted out to former Spanish Foreign Minister and NATO Secretary General Javier Solana. He was denied a US visa waiver because he had visited Iran in 2013 to attend President Hassan Rouhani’s inauguration. Solana told Spanish television, “It’s a bit of a mean decision... I don’t think it’s good because some people have to visit these complicated countries to keep negotiations alive.” Trump’s renunciation of the US signature on the Iran nuclear deal showed the world what Trump and his neo-conservative advisers think about peace “negotiations.” Although the general purpose visa waiver ban was instituted by Barack Obama, the Trump administration has been violating the spirit and intent of the US-UN Treaty by applying it to those, like Bondevik and Solana, possessing diplomatic passports.

Trump has made no secret of his disdain for foreign government officials and the countries they represent. During a briefing on the Indian sub-continent, Trump reportedly delighted in referring to Nepal as “nipple” and Bhutan as “button.” According to the “tell-all” book by former White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman, Trump, after viewing a video of his pushing aside Montenegro Prime Minister Duško Marković at the 2017 NATO summit, called him a “whiny punk bitch.” Trump referred to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “meek and mild” over a rift on US-Canadian trade policy.

One of Trump’s first phone calls as president with a foreign leader resulted in Trump complaining that his discussions with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull were “most unpleasant.” Before warming to North Korean leader Kim Jong UN, Trump referred to him as “little rocket man.” During remarks at the UN in September 2017, Trump referred to Namibia as “Nambia.” Later, he called African countries and Haiti “shithole” countries.

Cities that have served as hosts for international summits and meetings have also earned Trump’s scorn. He called Brussels a “hell hole,” London a magnet for Muslim terrorist immigrants, and Paris not being Paris any longer because of Muslim immigrants.

Trump, ever the America Firster – a phrase invented by pro-Hitler politicians in the 1930s – has decimated international law on issues ranging from the environment and outer space to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy and international guarantees for the right of the Palestinians. Trump’s tearing up of international treaties signed by his predecessors with the chiefs of various Native American tribes warrants it own article. Mr. Trump’s damage to international relations represents a historical watershed event and it will take decades to recover from the current “dark ages” of American diplomacy.