Vatican/The Plot to Overthrow the Pope

October 8, 2019, Strategic Culture Foundation (Russia) https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/10/08/plot-overthrow-pope/

Wayne Madsen*

The moment that Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected the first Jesuit Roman Catholic pontiff in papal history, the political long knives aimed at Pope Francis I came out of the shadows of the Vatican. From the outset of his papacy, Francis found himself dealing with his right-wing predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI – a rarity in papal history – who insisted on remaining domiciled in an apartment on Vatican grounds. Benedict has not remained in quiet retirement but has conspired with Francis’s politically influential enemies in the Vatican, Italy, the United States, and other countries.

Donald Trump, who has publicly criticized Francis, has not interfered as his surrogates, who include former White House strategist Steve Bannon; Cardinal Raymond Burke, the former Archbishop of St. Louis; Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former Apostolic Nuncio to the United States; and others have conspired with the powerful fascist-oriented Opus Dei sect of the church to undermine Francis’s authority. Trump’s eyes and ears inside the Vatican – US ambassador to the Holy See Callista Bisek Gingrich – is the wife of Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the US House of Representatives, a convert to Catholicism, and a major Trump political ally.

Francis, a former bar bouncer in a tough working-class neighborhood of Buenos Aires, has not been a shrinking violet when it comes to fighting back against his right-wing enemies. Francis’s Italian parents were escaping Benito Mussolini’s fascist rule when

The End of Modern Diplomacy

September 11, 2019, Strategic Culture Foundation (Russia) https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/09/11/end-modern-diplomacy/

Wayne Madsen*

Modern diplomacy can generally be traced back to the late 19^th century and the intercession of professional diplomats in the foreign relations between major and minor powers of the era. International negotiations to resolve problems were primarily handled by diplomats prior to politicians giving their assent to peace treaties and compacts. The Congress of Berlin of 1878 and 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth (New Hampshire) helped resolve the Russo-Turkish War and Russo-Japanese War, respectively. These early diplomatic efforts would eventually lead to treaties establishing the League of Nations, the International Court of Justice, and the United Nations, in addition to a variety of regional and specialized international agencies. Each of these international agencies brought into being a corps of international diplomats who, for the most part, were committed to hammering out disputes between nations through negotiations and not armed conflict. The lessons of World Wars I and II provided an impetus for nations to commit to dialogue rather than war.

In recent years, the world has seen the rise of anti-diplomacy occasioned by the appearance on the world stage of political brutes, all operating

Urgent Action Required Against Environmental Pirates

August 26, 2019, Strategic Culture Foundation (Russia) https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/08/26/urgent-action-required-against-environmental-pirates/

There is a new type of pirate on the international scene. These are not the swashbuckling brigands of yore but national leaders who are intent on plundering and pillaging the world’s most-environmentally sensitive resources. From the Amazon rainforest, described as the “lungs of the Earth” because it provides 20 percent of our planet’s oxygen, to Greenland and the Antarctic, unscrupulous and ignorant leaders are placing the entire planet in jeopardy. These leaders include Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, who fancies himself as the “Tropical Trump.” In rejecting scientific methods of measuring and tracking the adverse effects of climate change, political leaders like Trump, Bolsonaro, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, and others are practicing a form of epistemological nihilism, which posits that environmental and climatic science proving the effects of cascading man-made climate change are untrue.

It is a close race to determine whether Trump or Bolsonaro are having the greatest negative impact on Earth’s climate. Although both reject sound scientific methodology, Bolsonaro slightly edges out Trump due to the fact that the “intellectual” guru for Bolsonaro, a far-right Brazilian “end-times” evangelical “Christian,” is a Virginia-based conspiracy monger named Olavo de Carvalho. Among his other fanciful notions, Carvalho entertains the idea that the Earth is not a sphere but flat.

As wildfires of biblical proportions plague Alaska, Siberia, and the Amazon Basin, unprecedented heat waves hit Europe, and the Greenland Ice Sheet and Western Antarctica melt as Trump figures out how to annex Greenland from

Venezuela/CIA Finances Another Group of Fraudsters: the Venezuelan ‘Opposition’

June 27, 2019, Strategic Culture Foundation https://www.strategic-culture.org (Russia) https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/06/27/cia-finances-another-group-of-fraudsters-venezuelan-opposition/

Wayne Madsen*

Once again, the Central Intelligence Agency has been caught financing a group of grifters and fraudsters at the expense of the American taxpayers. In the latest case, just another in the agency’s 72-year history, the Trump administration-appointed ad hoc board of CITGO, the US subsidiary of the state-owned Venezuelan oil company, PDVSA, stands accused of steering $70 million of escrowed funds, earmarked for PDVSA’s fiscal year 2020 bond, to the pockets of CIA-supported officials of the Venezuelan opposition “Popular Will” party headed by the so-called “interim president” of Venezuela, Juan Guaidó.

In addition to Guaidó, who is accused by the legitimate Venezuelan government of money laundering, treason, and corruption, other Popular Will leaders under investigation by both the Venezuelan Attorney General and the US Justice Department include Carlos Vecchio, Guaidó’s envoy in Washington; Rossana Barrera and Kevin Rojas, Guaidó’s emissaries in Cucuta, a Colombian-Venezuelan border town; Sergio Vargara, Barrera’s brother-in-law and a Member of the Venezuelan Congress; Guaidó’s “ambassador” to Colombia, Humberto Calderon Berti, opposition businessman Miguel Sabal; and Guaidó’s chief of staff, Roberto Marrero. Over two dozen other Popular Will leaders are also under investigation for fraud involving money earmarked by the Trump administration, particularly Iran-Contra scandal felon and current Trump special envoy for regime change in Venezuela, Elliot Abrams.

Barrera and Rojas are accused of spending money given to the Popular Will by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), a longtime CIA financial pass-through,

BRICS, Russia/It’s Back to Cold War Days Over the Baltic

June 16, 2019, Strategic Culture Foundation http://www.strategic-culture.org (Russia) https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/06/16/its-back-cold-war-days-over-baltic/

Wayne Madsen*

It was like a day from the 1970s. Except the close encounter between a Russian SU-27 fighter-interceptor and a US Air Force RC-135V intelligence-gathering plane and a Swedish Gulfstream IV spy plane occurred on June 10. The incident, which occurred within Polish maritime airspace near the airspace of the Russian Kaliningrad region, resulted in diplomatic protests being lodged with the Russian Foreign and Defense ministries by the US embassy in Moscow.

The air encounter took place on the second day of the Baltops-2019 NATO naval and air exercise in the Baltic Sea, in which the United States, Sweden (a non-NATO member), and sixteen other nations, including non-NATO member Finland, were taking part. Not taking part in the exercise were NATO members Greece, Hungary, Luxembourg, Canada, Czechia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Iceland, Croatia, and Montenegro. The exercise was scheduled for June 9-21.

The Baltops exercise was being held under the command of the newly-reconstituted US Second Fleet, which is headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia. The annual exercise concludes with the participating ships and submarines sailing to Kiel in Germany to participate