Instruction: Write an article about: Exposed: US DEA used criminals to spy on, destabilize Venezuela, Mexico, Bolivia. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: AMLO, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Bolivia, CIA, DEA, drugs, Evo Morales, Mexico, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela

Output:
Reports reveal that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) used known criminals to spy on and destabilize the left-wing governments in Venezuela, Mexico, and Bolivia.

Numerous reports in major media outlets have documented how the US government has used the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in order to spy on and try to destabilize left-wing governments in Latin America.
DEA meddling schemes have targeted Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, Bolivia’s former President Evo Morales, and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
In these scandals, the DEA has collaborated with known criminals, including drug traffickers and money launderers, to launch sting operations against leftist politicians.

The Associated Press revealed this February that the DEA “sent undercover operatives into Venezuela to surreptitiously record and build drug-trafficking cases against the country’s leadership”.
Known as Operation Money Badger, it was launched in 2013 with the goal of ensnaring senior Venezuelan officials in corruption scandals.
The AP reported that the DEA “authorized otherwise illicit wire transfers through U.S.-based front companies and bank accounts”. It noted that “Colombian drug traffickers” were involved.
As its informants, the DEA recruited criminals. The AP wrote (emphasis added):
The DEA Miami Field Division’s Group 10 recruited a dream informant: a professional money launderer accused of fleecing $800 million from Venezuela’s foreign currency system through a fraudulent import scheme.
The informant’s illicit activity in Venezuela positioned him to help the DEA collect evidence against the chief target of the unilateral operation: Jose Vielma, an early acolyte of the late Hugo Chávez who in two decades of service to the Bolivarian revolution cycled through a number of top jobs, including trade minister and the head of Venezuela’s IRS.
Venezuela’s sovereign, democratically elected government had expelled the DEA, so this covert operation was a clear violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty. And the US government itself acknowledged that these activities violated international law, the AP reported.
The AP quoted a former DEA official who served in Venezuela who boasted, “We don’t like to say it publicly but we are, in fact, the police of the world”.
Operation Money Badger started under the Barack Obama administration, but was expanded under President Donald Trump.
The Trump administration launched a coup attempt in 2019, pressuring countries around the world to recognize US-appointed coup leader Juan Guaidó as the so-called “interim president” of Venezuela, despite the fact that he had never participated in a presidential election.
The US government imposed several rounds of crushing sanctions and an economic embargo on Venezuela, which devastated the country’s oil industry and starved Caracas of the export revenue it needed to fund social programs and the foreign currency it needed to stabilize its national currency, fueling hyper-inflation.

In 2020, the US government backed an attempted invasion of Venezuela. The attack, known as Operation Gideon, was led by two former US Army special operations commandos.
One of the top Venezuelan coup-plotters involved in the failed invasion later revealed that the putschists had been in touch with the CIA and other US government agencies.
CIA backed failed 2020 invasion of Venezuela, top coup-plotter says

The botched invasion was overseen by a US private security company called Silvercorp, which was based in Florida and run by a former U.S. Army Green Beret commando, Jordan Goudreau.
Goudreau had provided security for Donald Trump’s rallies. And he met with US government officials at Trump’s golf course in Doral, Florida to discuss the plans to invade Venezuela.
For his part, Trump boasted that he tried to “take over” Venezuela and pillage its massive oil reserves.
At a Republican Party convention in 2023, Trump stated, “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over; we would have gotten to all that oil; it would have been right next door”.
Trump boasts he wanted to take Venezuela’s oil after overthrowing its government

Trump’s neoconservative national security advisor, John Bolton, likewise bragged in a 2022 interview on CNN that he “helped plan coups d’etat” in Venezuela and “other places”.
Meanwhile, US-backed coup leader Juan Guaidó and his accomplices were widely accused of extreme corruption.
Even Guaidó’s erstwhile supporters in Venezuela’s right-wing opposition turned against him, accusing Guaidó and his allies of spending huge sums of humanitarian aid money on expensive nightclubs, hotels, cars, clothes, food, and alcohol.
Guaidó’s coup-plotting allies also used public assets that the US, UK, and EU stole from the Venezuelan government and people in order to pay their enormous legal fees.
Venezuela was by no means the only country in Latin America targeted by the DEA for destabilization.
In 2008, Bolivia’s democratically elected socialist president, Evo Morales, expelled the DEA.
Morales was the first ever Indigenous president of a country where the majority of the population is Indigenous.
He accused DEA agents of spying on his government and collaborating with violent right-wing opposition groups.
“There were DEA agents that were doing political espionage … financing criminal groups so that they could act against authorities, even the president”, Morales said, in comments reported by Reuters.
At the time, US officials rejected Morales’ accusations as a crazy conspiracy theory.
But in 2015, the Huffington Post revealed that DEA agents had in fact been spying on Morales and the Bolivian government, as part of an undercover sting called “Operation Naked King”.
To justify its meddling, the DEA misleadingly accused Morales of supporting the drug trade, because he legalized the production of coca, a plant that can be used for non-drug purposes, such as in teas and medicines.
Many poor farmers, especially in the Indigenous-majority areas that Morales was from and represented, relied on producing coca.
Vice News reported in 2016 that, after Morales legalized coca, “there is less violence, less cocaine, and even less coca in Bolivia than there was before”.
Morales blasted the DEA’s double standards, noting that it purchased 45,000 kilos of coca in 1992.
“During our government, the model of the fight against drug trafficking was applauded and recognized by the UN and EU”, Morales tweeted in 2020.
“Now, they submit themselves to the CIA and DEA to benefit the geopolitical interests of the US”, he added, condemning the then government of unelected far-right leader Jeanine Áñez of “submission” and “corruption”.
Durante nuestro gobierno, el modelo de lucha contra el narcotráfico era aplaudido y reconocido por la ONU y la UE. Ahora, se someten a la CIA y DEA para beneficiar a los intereses geopolíticos de EE.UU., y anuncian gastos millonarios sin fiscalización. Sometimiento y corrupción.
— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) May 27, 2020

In 2019, Morales was overthrown in a violent coup d’etat. With US support, an unelected far-right regime came to power, which was led by Christian extremists who systematically discriminated against Bolivia’s Indigenous majority.
Bolivia’s US-backed coup regime also sought to privatize the South American nation’s massive lithium reserves. Bolivia is one of the world’s top producers of lithium, a crucial material needed for battery production.
When a Twitter user criticized billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk in 2020 over his support for the putsch in Bolivia, the oligarch responded, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it”.

In 2021, Morales stated that, “For the CIA and DEA the so-called ‘war against drugs’ is an excuse to attack progressive and anti-imperialist governments. It is a screen to cover their geopolitical interests”.
The former Bolivian leader, who was spied on and targeted in a sting operation by the DEA, pointed to a similar scandal that had been exposed in Mexico.
Para la CIA y la DEA la denominada "guerra contra las drogas" es una excusa para atacar a gobiernos progresistas y antiimperialistas. Es una pantalla para encubrir sus intereses geopolíticos. El caso denunciado por #México así lo demuestra.
— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) January 16, 2021

Over decades, the DEA has repeatedly been implicated in illegal espionage operations in sovereign Mexican territory, targeting government officials and politicians, particularly those on the left.
This January, the US media outlet ProPublica published a thinly sourced article alleging, without concrete evidence, that allies of Mexico’s leading left-wing politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took money from drug cartels to try to help him win the 2006 presidential election.
The report acknowledged, “The investigation did not establish whether López Obrador sanctioned or even knew of the traffickers’ reported donations”.
AMLO later won the 2018 election, and has since been one of the most popular presidents on Earth, governing for five years with consistent support from around two-thirds of the Mexican population, according to the US-based firm Morning Consult.
AMLO blasted the ProPublica article as “vile defamation” and “propaganda”, and he suggested that it sought to influence Mexico’s upcoming 2024 election. The candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, from AMLO’s left-wing Morena party, is leading in all of the polls, by a huge margin.
The ProPublica article offered no tangible evidence, just insinuations trying to link AMLO to organized crime. But it did disclose that, in 2011, on the eve of Mexico’s 2012 elections, “DEA agents proposed a sting in which they would offer $5 million in supposed drug money to operatives working on López Obrador’s second presidential campaign”.
That is to say, the DEA was blatantly meddling in Mexico’s internal politics to harm the left-wing candidate, as a presidential election soon approached.
ProPublica also admitted that US “Justice Department officials closed the investigation, in part over concerns that even a successful prosecution would be viewed by Mexicans as egregious American meddling in their politics”.
Mexico-based US journalist Kurt Hackbarth noted that the “only real revelation in this week’s ProPublica piece is the DEA’s plot to frame the AMLO campaign in the runup to the 2012 election”.
“Unlike Russiagate, here’s a bonafide attempt to intervene in a foreign election, freely admitted to”, he added.
The only real revelation in this week's @Propublica piece is the DEA's plot to frame the AMLO campaign in the runup to the 2012 election. Unlike Russiagate, here's a bonafide attempt to intervene in a foreign election, freely admitted to. Think it'll make headlines in the US? Na. pic.twitter.com/nJ261T3r3a
— Kurt Hackbarth ???? (@KurtHackbarth) February 2, 2024

In a follow-up Twitter thread, Hackbarth emphasized, “Let’s take a second and appreciate the implications of this. At the precise time Felipe Calderón’s Security Minister Genero García Luna was colluding with the Sinaloa Cartel – which the DEA saw and heard no evil about – they were instead focused on this stupid sting op on AMLO”.
Calderón, a conservative former president from Mexico’s right-wing PAN party, was a close US ally, so faced no serious consequences for his documented links to drug cartels.
????ANATOMY OF A HIT: Another clumsy attempt by the US to meddle in this year's Mexican presidential election. How does it work?
1.) THE SYNCHRONIZED SWIM: Spread your story at the same time across various media. (A little obvious, though, to do it at the exact same time, guys.) pic.twitter.com/t8jZMO2kh7
— Kurt Hackbarth ???? (@KurtHackbarth) January 31, 2024

AMLO, on the other hand, is an independent left-wing leader who has routinely criticized the US for violating his country’s sovereignty.
In 2023, the Mexican president sent the Joe Biden administration a letter formally condemning US “interventionism” in his country. Specifically, AMLO noted that USAID was funding right-wing opposition groups.
In another speech that year, AMLO condemned State Department criticism as hypocritical “meddling” and stated, “There is more democracy today in Mexico than in the United States… because here the people govern, and there the oligarchy govern”.
AMLO likewise held a huge rally in which he denounced Republicans Congress members who have called for the US military to invade their southern neighbor. While honoring the Mexican state’s nationalization of the country’s large oil and lithium reserves, AMLO declared, “Mexico is an independent and free country, not a US colony or protectorate!”
‘Mexico is not a US colony!’: AMLO condemns invasion threats, celebrates nationalization of oil, lithium


Instruction: Write an article about: Biden admitted in 1997 NATO expansion would cause Russian ‘hostile reaction’. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Atlantic Council, Baltic, Estonia, James Woolsey, Joe Biden, Latvia, Lithuania, NATO

Output:
Current US President Joe Biden admitted in a 1997 talk at the Atlantic Council that eastward NATO expansion into the Baltic states would cause a “vigorous and hostile reaction” by Russia.

Current US President Joe Biden acknowledged in 1997 that eastward NATO expansion into the Baltic states would cause “the greatest consternation,” which could “tip the balance” and result in a “vigorous and hostile reaction” by Russia.
The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania did indeed become part of NATO in 2004. Estonia and Latvia directly border Russia, and frequently do military exercises with Western troops a mere 100 kilometers from the border.
Biden’s 1997 comments were a clear admission that Washington knew its policy of pushing the US-led military alliance right up onto Russia’s borders could force Russia to respond with force, as Moscow did by invading Ukraine in February 2022.
Biden made these remarks in a June 18, 1997 event at the Atlantic Council, NATO’s de facto think tank, and one of the most powerful organizations in Washington.

At the time of the event, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were actively seeking to join NATO. (They later did in 1999.)
Then a senator representing Delaware, Biden enthusiastically praised NATO and criticized fellow lawmakers who opposed its expansion. Biden called for the military alliance to continue to grow into Eastern Europe.
But he conceded that this expansion could precipitate a “hostile reaction” from Moscow.
“I think the one place where the greatest consternation would be caused in the short term, for admission – having nothing to do with the merit and preparedness of the countries coming in – would be to admit the Baltic states now, in terms of NATO-Russian, US-Russian relations,” Biden said.
“And if there was ever anything that was going to tip the balance, were it to be tipped, in terms of a vigorous and hostile reaction, I don’t mean military, in Russia, it would be that,” he added.
A video clip of Biden’s comments was published on Twitter by user @ImReadinHere.
Biden in 1997 saying that the only thing that could provoke a "vigorous and hostile" Russian response would be if NATO expanded as far as the Baltic states pic.twitter.com/i0yfEgIGZA
— . (@ImReadinHere) March 7, 2022

When Biden made these remarks, he was the ranking member, or top Democrat, on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Biden was introduced at the event by James Woolsey, a former CIA director who at the time served as head of the Atlantic Council.
Woolsey celebrated Biden as “one of the leading and most important senators… in both the areas of judiciary and foreign policy.”

These 1997 comments are by no means the only time that a top US government official admitted that NATO expansion could force Russia to respond.
When the Senate approved NATO expansion in 1998, it was condemned by none other than leading cold warrior George Kennan, the architect of US containment policy toward the Soviet Union. Kennan warned in prescient words published by the New York Times:
I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.
In a 2008 classified State Department cable published by WikiLeaks, former US Ambassador to Russia William Burns, who now serves as Biden’s CIA director, likewise cautioned that NATO expansion into Ukraine would cross Moscow’s security “redlines” and “could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.”
Ex US Ambassador to Russia William Burns (now CIA director) admitted back in 2008 that NATO expansion to Ukraine crosses Moscow's security "redlines" and could create violence & civil war, which would force Russia to intervene
That's exactly what happenedhttps://t.co/8DOuuq5Og3
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 27, 2022

Senior US, British, French, and German officials repeatedly promised the former Soviet Union in 1990 that NATO would not expand eastward after the reunification of Germany. This is an undeniable historical fact confirmed by numerous documents from Western governments.
NATO broke this promise, however, adding 14 new member states, all east of Germany.
A newly discovered document on a 1991 diplomatic meeting proves that the US, UK, France, and Germany promised the USSR that NATO would not expand east.
It’s part of a growing body of evidence that the West broke its promise to Russia.
via @Multipolaristahttps://t.co/KP6KHW2YyR
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 20, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: West votes against democracy, human rights, cultural diversity at UN; promotes mercenaries, sanctions. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: democracy, General Assembly, human rights, mercenaries, sanctions, unilateral coercive measures, United Nations

Output:
The West voted against the rest of the world on United Nations General Assembly resolutions, opposing democracy, human rights, and cultural diversity, while supporting mercenaries and unilateral coercive measures (sanctions).

Western governments frequently claim that their foreign and domestic policies are motivated by “human rights” and “democracy”. They often even lecture their adversaries for purportedly failing to respect these concerns.
But on the international stage, Western capitals have shown their commitments to be merely rhetorical, as they have consistently voted against these noble causes and refused to support measures that would tangibly protect them, in flagrant violation of the will of the vast majority of the international community.
These stark double standards were on display on November 7 in the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee, which is devoted to social, humanitarian, and cultural issues.

In this three-hour session, the West opposed draft resolutions that called for promoting democracy, human rights, and cultural diversity, while  simultaneously supporting the use of mercenaries and the application of unilateral coercive measures, commonly known as sanctions.
The extended West voted against the rest of the world on these issues. Its positions were virtually uniform as a bloc, led by the United States, including Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan.
In fact, the chair of the General Assembly’s Third Committee is Austria’s representative to the United Nations, Alexander Marschik, and even he could not help but laugh in the session at the constant protestations of the US representative, who dominated the debate, speaking out against nearly every resolution to explain why the world should join with Washington in voting against it. (Marschik could not contain his laughter despite the fact that his own country, Austria, voted along with the US on each resolution.)
Geopolitical Economy Report has created maps that illustrate the clear political divide between the West and the rest.
In the November 7 session, nations debated a draft that condemned unilateral coercive measures, or sanctions, for violating the human rights of civilians in targeted countries.
The resolution passed with 128 votes in favor and 54 against, and no abstentions.

The General Assembly’s Third Committee likewise considered a measure that called for the “promotion of a democratic and equitable international order”.
The resolution passed with 123 votes in favor and 54 against, plus 7 abstentions (from Armenia, Chile, Costa Rica, Liberia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay).

Another resolution sought to promote “human rights and cultural diversity”.
The measure passed with 130 votes in favor and 54 against, and no abstentions.

The Third Committee deliberated a draft that called for the “promotion of equitable geographical distribution in the membership of the human rights treaty bodies”.
The resolution passed with 128 votes in favor and 52 against, and no abstentions.

Another measure condemned the “use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination”.
The resolution passed with 126 votes in favor and 52 against, plus 6 abstentions (from Kiribati, Liberia, Palau, Mexico, Tonga and Switzerland).

The United Nations published a full video of the Third Committee’s session on November 7, in the 48th plenary meeting of the General Assembly’s 78th session.


Instruction: Write an article about: CIA director calls China biggest ‘threat’, says Ukraine war benefits US geopolitically and economically. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: CFR, China, CIA, Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs, Russia, Ukraine, William Burns

Output:
CIA Director William J. Burns published an article demonizing China as the “bigge[st] long-term threat”, boasting that the spy agency has doubled its budget for anti-China ops. He also said the Ukraine war helps the US economically and geopolitically, and warned Taiwan could be next.

The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William J. Burns, published an article in which he referred to “the United States’ principal rivals—China and Russia”, while emphasizing that “China is the bigger long-term threat”.
Strongly implying that we are in the early stages of a new cold war, he wrote that “China and Russia consume much of the CIA’s attention”.
Burns revealed that “the CIA has been reorganizing itself” in order to counter China. The notorious US spy agency has created a special “mission center” focusing exclusively on Beijing, and has doubled its budget for anti-China operations.
He also boasted that the war in Ukraine has helped the United States geopolitically and economically, and he argued that, by supporting Kiev, Washington is sending a threatening message to Beijing over Taiwan.

The CIA director wrote this article for Foreign Affairs, the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). One of the most powerful US think tanks, the New York City-based CFR has a virtual revolving door with the State Department, acting as a kind of umbilical cord between Wall Street and the State Department, coordinating economic and foreign policy.
In the January 30 piece, titled “Spycraft and Statecraft: Transforming the CIA for an Age of Competition”, Burns acknowledged that China’s “economic transformation over the past five decades has been extraordinary”.
China’s rapid economic and technological advances have weakened US hegemony, the CIA director lamented, writing that “China’s rise and Russia’s revanchism pose daunting geopolitical challenges in a world of intense strategic competition in which the United States no longer enjoys uncontested primacy”.

Many top officials in Washington, including President Joe Biden, have claimed that the United States only seeks “competition” with China, not a new cold war. But in his article, Burns wrote that the “post–Cold War era came to a definitive end the moment Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022”.
By stating that the “post-Cold War era” is over, and by frequently speaking of China and Russia together in the same breath, the US spy chief strongly implied that Washington is indeed waging Cold War Two.
Nevertheless, it is not Moscow, but rather Beijing that Washington considers to be its main “threat”.
“China remains the only U.S. rival with both the intent to reshape the international order and the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so”, Burns warned.
The CIA director wrote (emphasis added):
While Russia may pose the most immediate challenge, China is the bigger long-term threat, and over the past two years, the CIA has been reorganizing itself to reflect that priority. We have started by acknowledging an organizational fact I learned long ago: priorities aren’t real unless budgets reflect them. Accordingly, the CIA has committed substantially more resources toward China-related intelligence collection, operations, and analysis around the world—more than doubling the percentage of our overall budget focused on China over just the last two years. We’re hiring and training more Mandarin speakers while stepping up efforts across the world to compete with China, from Latin America to Africa to the Indo-Pacific.
The CIA has a dozen or so “mission centers,” issue-specific groups that bring together officers from across the agencies’ various directorates. In 2021, we set up a new mission center focused exclusively on China. The only single-country mission center, it provides a central mechanism for coordinating work on China, a job that extends today to every corner of the CIA.
Burns also used the Foreign Affairs article to call for Washington to continue supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia.
The CIA director referred to US military assistance to Ukraine as “a relatively modest investment with significant geopolitical returns for the United States and notable returns for American industry”.
In other words, the spy chief was acknowledging that the Ukraine war has benefited the Military-Industrial Complex, enriching US arms corporations.
The Biden administration has used similar “military Keynesian” talking points. Politico reported in October that the “White House has been quietly urging lawmakers in both parties to sell the [Ukraine] war efforts abroad as a potential economic boom at home”.
Burns likewise argued that US support for Ukraine could intimidate China.
“The United States’ willingness to inflict and absorb economic pain to counter Putin’s aggression—and its ability to rally its allies to do the same—powerfully contradicted Beijing’s belief that America was in terminal decline”, the CIA director wrote.
“Continued material backing for Ukraine doesn’t come at the expense of Taiwan; it sends an important message of U.S. resolve that helps Taiwan”, he added.
On the issue of the Ukraine war, William Burns has a disturbing track record.
Before being appointed CIA director, he served for decades as a senior US diplomat. His career reflects the revolving door between the CIA and State Department.
In the Barack Obama administration, Burns was deputy secretary of state, making him second-in-command of the State Department, reporting directly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Before that, in the George W. Bush administration, Burns served as US ambassador to Russia.
At the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania in 2008, President Bush pledged that Ukraine and Georgia were going to join the US-led military alliance. This upset several top NATO allies, including Germany and France, who worried that the promise would exacerbate tensions with Russia.
In his capacity as US ambassador to Russia, Burns responded to this controversy by penning a 2008 confidential State Department cable titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines” (“nyet” means “no” in Russian).
In the document, which was made public by the whistle-blowing journalism organization WikiLeaks, Burns wrote:
Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.
Virtually everything Burns warned about potential conflict in Ukraine eventually came true, as the United States pushed Kiev into war with its neighbor Russia.
This precedent makes the CIA director’s current threats against China over Taiwan even more striking.


Instruction: Write an article about: CIA has trained Ukrainians to kill Russian-speakers since 2014 US-backed coup. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: CIA, Donbas, Russia, Ukraine

Output:
CIA paramilitaries have been active in Ukraine training elite special operations forces to kill Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists since soon after the 2014 US-sponsored coup. The US spy agency boasted that its influence “cannot be overestimated.”

The Central Intelligence Agency has been active in Ukraine training elite special operations forces to kill Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists since 2014, when a US-sponsored coup d’etat overthrew the elected government in Kiev.
Yahoo News revealed this in a March 16 report titled “Secret CIA training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian invasion.”
The article details how “CIA paramilitaries” began traveling to Ukraine in 2014 to train and advise forces to fight against Russian-speaking Ukrainian militants in the eastern Donbas region.
These Russian-speaking independence fighters rose up against Kiev after a 2014 US-backed coup toppled democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, who had maintained a policy of political neutrality, balancing Ukraine between the West and Russia. Washington instead installed a pro-NATO puppet regime that repressed the rights of the Russian-speaking minority in the east of the country.
Yahoo News described the operation as a “covert CIA training program run from Ukraine’s eastern frontlines,” noting that it focused on developing Ukrainian special operations units, teaching them “irregular warfare” tactics.
The US spy agency additionally sent “tactical specialists, like snipers, who also worked for the CIA Special Activities Center.” It likewise developed secure communications systems for the Ukrainian forces.
An anonymous CIA officer involved in the operation said, “Our job is to have an exponential impact” on the Ukrainian forces.
Another official told Yahoo News that the effects of the CIA program in Ukraine “cannot be overestimated,” and that the spy agency developed elite units that form “a strong nucleus” for Kiev’s military.
This CIA operation was secret. But publicly, Washington was sending Ukraine large numbers of weapons, and the US military was openly training Ukrainian soldiers, Yahoo News noted, including by developing snipers and teaching fighters how to use Javelin anti-tank missiles and M141 Bunker Defeat Munitions.

A post shared by JMTG-U (@jmtgukraine)

After Russia invaded Ukraine this February 24, the United States and other NATO member states sent the country at least 17,000 anti-tank weapons, including Javelin missiles, along with 2,000 stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
Some of these weapons have ended up in the hands of Ukrainian neo-Nazis from far-right extremist groups like Azov.
Washington and its NATO military alliance have made it clear that they are fueling an insurgency inside Ukraine. After approving $350 million in weapons for Kiev in late February, the US government this March passed a staggering $13.6 billion aid package for Ukraine, which includes $6.5 billion in military support.
Yahoo News also reported in January that the CIA had since 2015 been training Ukrainian paramilitaries inside the United States.
A former CIA officer stated clearly, weeks before Russia invaded, that the “United States is training an insurgency,” adding that the spy agency was teaching Ukrainian militants “to kill Russians.”
Yahoo News falsely portrayed the conflict that raged from 2014 to 2022 in the Donbas as a fight between Ukrainians and Russians. In reality, researchers at the Pentagon-backed RAND Corporation admitted that “even by Kyiv’s own estimates, the vast majority of rebel forces consist of locals—not soldiers of the regular Russian military.”
A former CIA officer admitted the spy agency is training far-right Ukrainian nationalists to “kill Russians” and wage an “insurgency” against Moscowhttps://t.co/Awtotoylnz
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) January 25, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: CIA director admits to waging ‘information war’ against Russia. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Avril Haines, Ben Sasse, China, CIA, Marco Rubio, NSA, Russia, Ukraine, William Burns

Output:
CIA Director William Burns admitted the US is waging an “information war” against Russia. In a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, he claimed “Putin is losing” that information war over Ukraine.

The director of the US Central Intelligence Community has admitted to waging an “information war” against Russia.
CIA chief William Burns acknowledged this in a Senate Intelligence Committee open-door hearing on supposed national security threats on March 10.
Burns, who previously served as US ambassador to Russia, argued that President Vladimir “Putin is losing” this information war.
“In all the years I spent as a career diplomat, I saw too many instances in which we lost information wars with the Russians,” Burns lamented.
But “in this case, I think we have had a great deal of effect in disrupting their tactics and their calculations,” he added. “So this is one information war that I think Putin is losing.”
Neoconservative Republican Senator Marco Rubio agreed, stating in the hearing, “I think there has been such a good job done at defeating them [the Russians] in the information space.”
CIA Director William Burns admitted the US is waging an “information war” against Russia. In a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, he claimed “Putin is losing” that information war over Ukraine.
Read more here: https://t.co/OFdsxTyhxw pic.twitter.com/uzHMnBZoxY
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 17, 2022

The CIA has since 2015 been training Ukrainian special forces and paramilitaries to “kill Russians,” according to a former official.
The CIA trained many of these Ukrainian militants inside the United States, although the spy agency has also had operatives in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region advising anti-Russian fighters.
A former CIA officer admitted the spy agency is training far-right Ukrainian nationalists to “kill Russians” and wage an “insurgency” against Moscowhttps://t.co/Awtotoylnz
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) January 25, 2022

In the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Burns argued that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began this February 24, has backfired and hurt the country.
He also claimed, without citing any evidence, that Moscow may carry out “false-flag operations” in this war.
The CIA director said his spy agency is focusing “more and more attention and resources on major power adversaries like China and Russia.”
Burns warned that Beijing and Moscow have become close strategic partners, and he emphasized that the CIA has created a new mission center focused especially on China.
In order to challenge China, Burns called “to deepen partnerships with the private sector” in order to develop new technologies. To help facilitate this, he noted that the CIA has created the position of a “chief technology officer” for the first time.
This same Senate hearing also featured the US director of national intelligence, Avril Haines. She summarized the US intelligence community’s 2022 Annual Threat Assessment report.
Haines dubbed the People’s Republic of China the top “threat” to Washington, saying Beijing “remains an unparalleled priority for the intelligence community.”
In the list of so-called “threats” identified by the US intelligence community, China was followed by Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
Responding to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, Haines said US spy agencies are working to “hold Russia and Russian actors accountable for their actions.”
She warned that Russia “may escalate the conflict, essentially doubling down to achieve Ukrainian disarmament and neutrality, to prevent it from further integrating with the United States and NATO.”

The US intelligence chief boasted of the devastating impact that Western economic warfare has had on Russia.
“The reaction to the invasion from countries around the world has been extraordinarily severe,” Haines said. “Western unity in imposing far-reaching sanctions and export controls as well as foreign commercial decisions are having cascading effects on the Russian economy.”
Haines noted approvingly that the Russian currency, the ruble, is “in free fall” and has “lost about 40% of its value.”
She added, “It is extraordinary to watch the stock markets, the fact that they’ve had to close down so much of their economic industry, and also the private sector impact has been extraordinary.”
The director of the National Security Agency (NSA), Paul Nakasone, acknowledged that the agency has “worked very, very hard with Ukraine over the past several years,” especially since 2015.
“We have had hunt forward teams from US Cyber Command in Kiev,” Nakasone said. “We worked very, very closely with a series of partners at NSA and the private sector.”
Republican Senator Ben Sasse used the intelligence hearing to refer to Russian President Putin as a “jackass.”


Instruction: Write an article about: Trump advisor John Bolton admits planning US coups in Venezuela and beyond. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: CNN, coup, Donald Trump, Jake Tapper, John Bolton, Mark Esper, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela

Output:
Neoconservative former US National Security Advisor John Bolton admitted he “helped plan coups d’etat” in Venezuela and “other places,” in a CNN interview. His memoir provides further insight into the US hybrid war on Venezuela.

(Se puede leer esta nota en español aquí.)
Neoconservative former US National Security Advisor John Bolton admitted on network TV that he was involved in organizing coups d’etat.
Bolton is a hard-line right-wing hawk who was a leading architect of the Iraq War as a prominent diplomat in the George W. Bush administration. He has publicly called for the US military to bomb Iran and launch “pre-emptive” strikes on North Korea.
From 2018 to 2019, Bolton served as President Donald Trump’s top national security official. In this role, Bolton oversaw a US-backed coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically elected socialist government.
Donald Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton  admitted he “helped plan coups d’etat” in Venezuela and “other places.”
Bolton is a neoconservative hawk who was an architect of the Iraq War in the George W. Bush administration.
Read more here: https://t.co/C2wcCrNTVv pic.twitter.com/0se5N8CV0O
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) July 13, 2022

In an interview with Bolton published on July 12, CNN anchor Jake Tapper accused Trump of attempting a coup inside the United States, and asked Bolton about a Congressional investigation into violent protests held by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021.
“One doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup,” Tapper said.
Bolton replied, “I disagree with that, as somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat – not here, but, you know, other places. It takes a lot of work.”
Tapper later asked, “I do want to ask a follow up. When we were talking about what is capable, or what you need to do to be able to plan a coup, and you cited your expertise having planned coups.”
“I’m not going to get into the specifics, but uh…”, Bolton answered.
“Successful coups?” Tapper asked.
“Well, I wrote about Venezuela in the book. And it turned out not to be successful – not that we had all that much to do with it,” Bolton said.
“But I saw what it took for an opposition to try and overturn an illegally elected president, and they failed,” he added, implicitly admitting that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was elected.
“The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is laughable,” Bolton quipped.
“I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me, though,” Tapper responded.
“I’m sure there is,” Bolton said with a laugh.
In January 2019, the Donald Trump administration launched a coup attempt in Venezuela by appointing little-known right-wing opposition politician Juan Guaidó as supposed “interim president” of the country, despite the fact that he has never received a single vote in a presidential election.
In an interview on Fox Business that same week, John Bolton admitted that the US government and North American corporations aimed to exploit Venezuela’s oil reserves, which are the largest on Earth.
In January 2019 the Trump admin launched a coup attempt against Venezuela’s elected government.
US National Security Advisor John Bolton admitted, “we’re looking at the oil assets” and “we’re in conversation with major American companies”
Read more here: https://t.co/C2wcCrNTVv pic.twitter.com/rCabJNtKZM
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) July 13, 2022

“We’re looking at the oil assets,” the US national security advisor stated bluntly. “That’s the single most important income stream to the government of Venezuela. We’re looking at what to do to that.”
“We’re in conversation with major American companies now,” Bolton revealed. “I think we’re trying to get to the same end result here.”
He added, “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.”
Mere days after declaring that unelected coup leader Guaidó was supposed “interim president,” John Bolton threatened to send thousands of US troops to Colombia, hinting at an attack on Venezuela.
Bolton then publicly demanded that Venezuela’s elected President Nicolás Maduro step down.
In February 2019, Bolton called for the Venezuelan military to launch a coup against President Maduro.
“To the Venezuelan military high command, now is the time to stand on the side of the Venezuelan people,” he tweeted.
To the Venezuelan military high command, now is the time to stand on the side of the Venezuelan people. It is your right and responsibility to defend the constitution and democracy for Venezuela! https://t.co/SWpQ8lwHAe
— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) February 2, 2019

Threatening Venezuela in March, Bolton invoked the nearly 200-year colonialist Monroe Doctrine to justify US intervention in Latin America.
“In this administration, we’re not afraid to use the word Monroe Doctrine. This [Venezuela] is a country in our hemisphere,” he said in another interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Trump’s Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, a former vice president for weapons corporation Raytheon, revealed in a memoir he published in 2022 that the US government had frequently discussed military attacks on Venezuela.
Trump wanted US military attacks on Venezuela, Defense Secretary Mark Esper details in book

“Trump had been fixated on Venezuela since the early days of his administration, with an eye toward using military force to oust Maduro,” Esper wrote in the book, “A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times.”
“Again and again, Trump would ask for military options,” and his National Security Council “team was even more enthusiastic about them,” he recalled.
Esper disclosed that he, Guaidó, and fellow coup-plotters had discussed plans for the United States to train fighters in Colombia to later launch an attack on neighboring Venezuela.
This is exactly what happened in May 2020, when the US government sponsored an attempted invasion of Venezuela, known as Operation Gideon.
The former US Army special forces comando who oversaw this plot, Jordan Goudreau, said he was given the green light for the botched invasion after meeting with US government officials at a Miami golf resort owned by Trump.
A Venezuelan army defector who helped plan a botched May 2020 invasion, Clíver Alcalá, said the coup-plotters were in touch with the CIA and other US government agencies
They had Washington's approval to try to violently overthrow President Nicolás Madurohttps://t.co/GHYCrcZnm8
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) February 2, 2022

Trump fired John Bolton in September 2019, partially due to his failure in the Venezuela coup attempts.
In 2020, Bolton published a 500-page tell-all memoir, titled “The Room Where It Happened.” He was offered a $2 million advance for the book, and promised millions more in royalties.
The memoir turned Bolton into a media celebrity. He cashed in on the opportunity to criticize Trump for supposedly not being enough of a warmonger.
“The Room Where It Happened” mentions Venezuela and Venezuelans more than 300 times, and has a 35-page chapter dedicated specifically to detailing his coup attempt, titled “Venezuela Libre” (Free Venezuela).
Bolton did not hide his neocolonialist worldview in the book, once again invoking the nearly 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine.
Fearmongering about Venezuela’s alliance with China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba, he declared, “America had opposed external threats in the Western Hemisphere since the Monroe Doctrine, and it was time to resurrect it.”
Bolton wrote that Trump shared this colonialist mentality. He claimed the president said that Venezuela is “really part of the United States,” and that “it would be ‘cool’ to invade Venezuela,” according to White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly.
“Trump still wanted a military option,” Bolton emphasized. This is consistent with what former Defense Secretary Mark Esper described in his book.
The neoconservative national security advisor also boasted in the book that the Trump administration’s coup attempt against Venezuela had bipartisan backing from both Republicans and Democrats “on the Hill, where support on both sides of the aisle for our hard line in Venezuela was almost uniform.”
“And the press coverage was uniformly favorable,” he added contently.
Bolton pointed out the coincidental timing that, “Shortly after I became National Security Advisor, while Maduro was speaking at a military awards ceremony on August 4, he was attacked by two drones.”
Maduro said his government has intelligence proving that Bolton had planned the assassination attempt.
Showing his sadistic streak, Bolton wrote that the photos of Venezuela soldiers running away from the killer drones was “hilarious.”
In a meeting after the drone assassination attempt, Bolton wrote that “Trump said to me emphatically, ‘Get it done,’ meaning get rid of the Maduro regime. ‘This is the fifth time I’ve asked for it,’ he continued.”
The national security advisor noted that Trump’s secretary of state, former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, was strongly in agreement, stating “‘we should go to the wall’ to get Maduro out.”
Bolton added, “Trump insisted he wanted military options for Venezuela and then keep it because ‘it’s really part of the United States.'”
Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and National Security Advisor John Bolton in April 2019
Trump had made it clear that he was considering invading Venezuela as far back as August 2017, Bolton pointed out. In a press conference that August, Trump had stated, “We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option, if necessary.”
In the memoir, Bolton admitted that that illegal unilateral sanctions the United States imposed on Venezuela were aimed at “driving the state-owned oil monopoly’s production as low as possible,” in an attempt “to crash Maduro’s regime.”
“Trump stressed that he wanted the ‘strongest possible sanctions’ against Venezuela,” Bolton wrote.
Trump also “wanted assurances regarding post-Maduro access to Venezuela’s oil resources, trying to ensure that China and Russia would not continue to benefit from their deals,” he added.
Bolton stressed that Trump had great “interest in Venezuela’s oil fields,” and he recalled that the US president insisted “we should take the oil in Venezuela after ousting Maduro.”
Similarly, Bolton recalled numerous stories that showed how Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker and hedge fund manager, was most concerned about the interests of US corporations.
He wrote that Mnuchin frequently “talked to oil-company executives.” Mnuchin was concerned about remaining “US oil-and-gas assets in Venezuela,” and “worried that steps in the banking sector would hurt Visa and Mastercard.”
Bolton also revealed he pressured the UK government to illegally freeze more than $1 billion of gold reserves that Venezuela held in the Bank of England.
He celebrated sanctions as instruments of US financial warfare, declaring that “they’re about using America’s massive economic power to advance our national interests. They are most effective when applied massively, swiftly, and decisively, and enforced with all the power available.”
Boasting of the sadistic sanctions he imposed on Venezuela, Bolton gleefully wrote, “we had Maduro by the windpipe and needed to constrict it.”
Trump with National Security Advisor John Bolton and CIA Director Gina Haspel in January 2019
In an incredibly hypocritical moment of his book, Bolton accused the Venezuelan government, without any evidence, of supposedly trafficking drugs. But he simultaneously fondly recalled a meeting he had “in my office with Honduran President Juan Hernandez, who was similarly optimistic, in contrast to the situation in Nicaragua, on his border.”
Honduras’ right-wing authoritarian leader Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) came to power after a US-backed military coup in 2009. JOH was a key US ally, and joined Washington in recognizing Guaidó. JOH was also a notorious drug dealer.
In 2022, JOH was extradited to the United States, and the Justice Department said “Hernandez allegedly partnered with some of the largest cocaine traffickers in the world to transport tons of cocaine.”
Bolton concluded the chapter lamenting that the various US-sponsored coup attempts in Venezuela failed.
He also complained that Trump was not supportive enough. While Trump had pushed for extremely aggressive policies against Venezuela, he apparently did not much have faith in Guaidó, calling him “weak” and allegedly joking that he was the “Beto O’Rourke of Venezuela.”


Instruction: Write an article about: US woos India’s far-right PM Modi to help wage new cold war on China. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: BJP, China, India, Joe Biden, Narendra Modi, Quad, RSS

Output:
The US government is trying to divide the BRICS bloc and recruit India for its new cold war on China. Biden doesn’t care that far-right Prime Minister Modi is closely linked to fascistic Hindu-supremacist groups that violently oppress minorities.

India’s far-right Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a historic trip to the United States this June.
President Joe Biden rolled out the proverbial red carpet for Modi, touting a “new era” to “strengthen our partnership for decades to come”, as the US seeks to recruit India for its new cold war on China.
The two leaders released a joint statement implicitly criticizing China and Russia.
Reuters made it clear that “Washington wants Delhi to be a strategic counterweight to China”, and that the two leaders signed “deals on defense and commerce aimed at countering China’s global influence”.
Together, the United States and India – the world's oldest and largest democracies – are a combined force for global good.
It's my pleasure to welcome Prime Minister Modi to the White House to strengthen our partnership for decades to come. pic.twitter.com/cj8d3Xzn8K
— President Biden (@POTUS) June 22, 2023

Britain’s establishment newspaper The Guardian declared that there is a “bipartisan consensus” in the US that India’s far-right government is a “linchpin” in Washington’s efforts to weaken and destabilize Beijing.
India is already a member of the US-led, anti-China military bloc the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), along with Japan and Australia.
The Quad is often referred to as an “Indo-Pacific NATO” or “Asian NATO”, and is explicitly aimed at encircling China.
Biden and Modi had a friendly meeting at the Quad leaders’ summit in Hiroshima this May.
The Quad leaders’ summit in 2022
Inside India, Modi is notorious for his links to extremist Hindu-supremacist politics.
In the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, there was a massive pogrom in which hundreds of Muslims were killed. At the time, Modi was chief minister of the state. He oversaw the violence.
During Modi’s tenure leading Gujarat, state-sponsored school textbooks glorified fascism, teaching children about “Hitler, the Supremo” and the “Internal Achievements of Nazism”.
Modi is also a longtime member of the fascistic RSS paramilitary movement, whose early leaders praised Adolf Hitler and sought to model their religiously pure “Hindustan” off of the Third Reich, demonizing Muslims much in the same way as Nazi Germany demonized Jews.
In his 1939 book We, or Our Nationhood Defined, RSS ideologue MS Golwalkar wrote, “To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of Semitic races – the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by”.
Modi’s far-right Hindu-nationalist party BJP is the political arm of the RSS.
BJP lawmakers have given speeches openly calling for forcibly “re-converting” South Asian Muslims and Christians. They also routinely incite against Dalits and other low-caste Indians.
In India today, left-wing activists are routinely attacked. Progressive media outlets that criticize the government’s neoliberal, anti-worker economic policies are raided. Their editors’ homes are ransacked by police.
Despite his close links to violent extremist groups, Modi has enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington, among both Republicans and Democrats.
On his trip to Washington this June, Modi delivered a speech before a joint session of Congress. Politicians from both sides of the aisle lavished him with standing ovations.
While Biden welcomed fascist-linked Modi to Washington, he simultaneously smeared China’s President Xi Jinping as a “dictator”.
Back when Barack Obama was president, the New York Times noted that the fellow Democrat also had a close “friendship” with Modi.
Donald Trump’s relationship with Modi was even more intimate. The two far-right leaders symbolically held hands at a “Howdy, Modi” rally in Texas.
In 2021, Trump’s former CIA Director turned Secretary of State Mike Pompeo boasted that Washington had tried to weaken the BRICS by supporting Modi (along with Brazil’s far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro).
“Remember BRICS? Well, thanks to Jair Bolsonaro and Narendra Modi, the B and the I both get that the C and the R are threats to their people”, Pompeo tweeted triumphantly.
The US goal is very clear: recruit India to divide BRICS and isolate China and Russia.
Remember BRICS? Well, thanks to @jairbolsonaro and @narendramodi the B and the I both get that the C and the R are threats to their people. pic.twitter.com/JwL8E0uJte
— Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) January 19, 2021

Modi had nothing to do with the creation of BRICS. The bloc was founded in 2009 under his predecessor, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, from the opposition Indian National Congress party – the main rival of Modi’s far-right BJP.
The strains have become increasingly obvious. Former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar wrote this January that “India’s got the BRICS blues”.
Modi’s far-right regime in “India feels uneasy that the centre of gravity in BRICS is poised to shift further to the left”, he explained.
Bhadrakumar noted that Modi is an avid “acolyte of the US-led ‘rules-based order'” – that is to say, the US-led imperialist system.
These efforts appear to be working, at least partially.
In a bad sign for the process of Asian integration, India was supposed to host a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in July, but Modi cancelled the in-person meeting and downgraded it to a mere virtual call.
The Indian press noted that this “decision came as a surprise to many as the leaders of all SCO countries were expected to attend the summit physically in New Delhi”.
China, Russia, and Pakistan are fellow SCO members. Iran recently joined as well.
By cancelling the in-person summit, Modi indicated that the SCO is not a significant priority – while his trip to Washington was clearly at the top of his agenda.
That said, India is not totally subservient to the US.
India does still maintain close economic relations with Russia, largely because Moscow sells it oil at a big discount, along with cheap fertilizers. Russia is likewise the biggest supplier of weapons to India’s military.
Delhi’s historic friendship with Moscow goes back to the days of the Soviet Union, when the left-leaning Indian National Congress party rejected Washington’s first cold war and led the Non-Aligned Movement.
Modi’s government has not entirely rejected the foreign policy of India’s Non-Aligned past. But he has moved Delhi closer to Washington, and has increasingly antagonized China.
The US is already India’s largest trading partner. Washington is now pressuring companies to “friendshore” operations, moving from China to India.
Some firms may do so, but thus far not many have. At the moment, “friendshoring” seems to mostly be a media buzzword.
Replacing massive, multimillion-dollar factories is much easier said than done. China also has capital controls, meaning Western investors can’t simply pull all of their capital out of the country on a whim.
Furthermore, the reality is that China’s workforce is very skilled, and thus very difficult to replace.
India does offer a massive market; its population just overtook China’s, making it the most-populous country on Earth.
But while India may now have more people, its economy is a mere fraction of China’s.
China has the world’s largest economy, when measured at purchasing power parity (PPP).
China’s GDP per capita (PPP) in 2021 was $19,338, whereas India’s was just $7,242, according to World Bank data.

When he arrived in the US, Modi was immediately greeted by a Who’s Who of the ruling class. Not only political leaders, but also a motley crew of oligarchs like Apple CEO Tim Cook and US government-subsidized anti-government billionaire Elon Musk.
Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio met with the Indian leader and wrote excitedly, “I am pleased to be able to help PM Modi as he is a man whose time has come when India’s time has also come. He and India are in an analogous position to Deng Xiaoping and China in the early 1980s”.
I am pleased to be able to help PM Modi as he is a man whose time has come when India’s time has also come. He and India are in an analogous position to Deng Xiaoping and China in the early 1980s–i.e., at the brink of the fastest growth rates and biggest transformations in the… https://t.co/20Hcc6TtAJ
— Ray Dalio (@RayDalio) June 22, 2023

This comparison is absurd. Modi and Deng could hardly be more different. And the conflict between China and India is nothing at all like the Sino-Soviet Split.
Deng’s reforms came after China had a revolution and implemented comprehensive agrarian and land reform – something India desperately needs.
China’s incredible development was only possible because of that foundational step, which allowed it to move into a new phase of massive industrialization, to develop the productive forces needed to provide the material basis for advancing socialism.
India never had a revolution. Its land reform after independence was very uneven and incomplete – and many of the progressive Nehruvian gains have since been reversed over decades of neoliberalism.
China has always implemented five-year plans. This partial planning has undergirded its marvelous economic growth.
Modi has no coherent economic development plan. Thus far, he has only continued the failed neoliberal model.
Some US corporations will probably increase “friendshoring” to India, but unless the country has a concerted, state-led industrial policy that uses strategic foreign investments, technology transfers, and joint ventures to develop its own local infant industries (with protectionist policies to save them from being devoured by Western competitors), Indian workers will simply end up being increasingly exploited by foreign capital, with few long-term gains.
In fact, Modi’s signature program “Make in India” has been a total failure.
Modi launched the initiative in 2014, immediately after coming to power.
He boldly claimed that India would become a manufacturing superpower, vowing that manufacturing would rise to 25% of GDP and create 100 million new jobs.
Instead, India lost 24 million manufacturing jobs and its share of GDP fell from 17% to 14%, as of 2021.

India’s Bloomberg affiliate reported in 2021: “Make in India has failed to achieve any of its stated goals. Rather, every indicator has worsened, be it the share of manufacturing in the economy or the number of jobs generated in manufacturing”.
“For all his rhetoric of reviving Indian manufacturing to compete with China, Modi has done much worse than his predecessor Manmohan Singh”, the website added.
Moreover, Modi’s far-right BJP is the polar opposite of the Communist Party of China. It has no coherent economic development plan either.
Instead, the BJP and its fascistic RSS movement are focused on promoting Hindutva and waging (an often violent) culture war on Muslims and Dalits.
Finally, the US economy is in a weaker position today than it was then – and is facing severe decline.
In 1980, the US made up just over 20% of the global economy (with GDP measured at PPP). At the same time, India’s economy was slightly larger than China’s, with 2.77% compared to 2.26%, according to IMF data.
As of 2023, the tables have completely turned. China now represents 18.92% of the world economy, bigger than the US at 15.39%, and significantly larger than India at 7.47%.

Comparing Modi to Deng totally misunderstands the vastly different material conditions in China, India, and the US, then and now.
The reality is that, this time, Washington simply doesn’t have the power needed to repeat its Kissingerian “triangular diplomacy”. US hegemony is in terminal decline.
India may at the end of the day recognize this, hedge its bets, and return to a more non-aligned foreign policy. But Washington is doing everything it can to prevent that.


Instruction: Write an article about: Trump boasts he wanted to take Venezuela’s oil after overthrowing its government. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: coup, Donald Trump, Hugo Chávez, John Bolton, Juan Guaidó, Nicolás Maduro, oil, PDVSA, Republican Party, Syria, Venezuela

Output:
Former US President Donald Trump boasted at a Republican Party rally that he wanted to “take over” Venezuela, and “we would have gotten all that oil”. This confirms the sinister motives behind Washington’s 2019 coup attempt to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro and install Juan Guaidó.

Former US President Donald Trump gave a speech in which he boasted that he wanted to “take over” Venezuela and exploit its large oil reserves.
“When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over; we would have gotten to all that oil; it would have been right next door”, Trump said.
“But now we’re buying oil from Venezuela. So we’re making a dictator very rich. Can you believe this? Nobody can believe it”, he added.

Trump made these remarks on June 10, at a speech for a convention organized by the North Carolina Republican Party.
The US government initiated a coup attempt against Venezuela in 2019. The Trump administration appointed a little-known right-wing opposition politician, Juan Guaidó, as the supposed “interim president” of the South American nation, despite the fact that he had never participated in a presidential election.
Venezuela has the world’s largest known oil reserves – although its crude is very heavy, and in order to be used it must be mixed with lighter crude or diluents, which the country is often incapable of importing due to illegal, unilateral US sanctions.
As president, Trump made it clear that Washington seeks to control the natural resources of foreign countries.
In a January 2020 interview on Fox News, Trump boasted that he was militarily occupying Syria’s crude-rich regions in order to “take the oil”:
DONALD TRUMP: And then they say he left troops in Syria. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil.
The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. I took over the oil.
…
Maybe we should take it. But we have the oil. Right now, the United States has the oil.
So they say he left troops in Syria. No, I got rid of all of them, other than we’re protecting the oil. We have the oil.
Here's irrefutable video evidence of Trump "fighting the deep state" ?
"I left troops [in Syria] to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They're protecting the oil. I took over the oil… We have the oil. Right now, the U.S. has the oil" pic.twitter.com/IYaep53GP5
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 31, 2023

Other members of the Donald Trump administration made similar comments.
Trump’s neoconservative National Security Advisor John Bolton stated clearly at the beginning of the coup attempt in January 2019, in an interview on Fox News, that Washington and US corporations wanted to profit off of Venezuela’s oil:
JOHN BOLTON: We’re looking at the oil assets. That’s the single most important income stream to the government of Venezuela. We’re looking at what to do to that.
We want everybody to know. We’re looking at all this very seriously. We don’t want any American businesses or investors caught by surprise. They can see what President Trump did yesterday. We’re following through on it.
…
We’re in conversation with major American companies now, that are either in Venezuela or in the case of Citgo here in the United States. I think we’re trying to get to the same end result here.
You know, Venezuela is one of the three countries I called the “Troika of Tyranny”.
It’ll make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and  produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.
It would be good for the people of Venezuela. It would be good for the people of the United States.
We both have a lot at stake here making this come out the right way.
Trump's neoconservative National Security Advisor John Bolton made it clear from the beginning of the US coup attempt against Venezuela in January 2019 that US corporations wanted to exploit its massive oil reserves, which had been nationalized by President Hugo Chávez.
Bolton… pic.twitter.com/gp7pkzweHT
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) June 13, 2023

Venezuela’s massive oil reserves were nationalized by former President Hugo Chávez, who launched the country’s leftist Bolivarian Revolution.
Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA used the revenue from the oil sales in order to fund social programs, public housing, transportation, health care, and education.
Academic studies have found that countries with large oil reserves are more likely to suffer wars and foreign military interventions.
In April 2002, there was a briefly successful military coup which overthrew democratically elected President Chávez. But the leader was so popular that the people of Venezuela stormed the streets, overthrew the coup regime, and demanded that Chávez be reinstated as president.
The George Bush administration was deeply involved in supporting this 2002 coup in Venezuela.
Since then, Washington has sponsored several more coup attempts, including violent riots in 2014 and 2017, culminating in the 2019 designation of Juan Guaidó as supposed “interim president”.
The fact that this was a coup attempt was admitted by Trump’s national security advisor himself.
In a 2022 interview on CNN, Bolton boasted of how difficult it was to organize the coup attempt:
JAKE TAPPER: One doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.
JOHN BOLTON: I disagree with that, as somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat – not here, but, you know, other places. It takes a lot of work.
JAKE TAPPER: I do want to ask a follow up. When we were talking about what is capable, or what you need to do to be able to plan a coup, and you cited your expertise having planned coups.
JOHN BOLTON: I’m not going to get into the specifics, but uh…
JAKE TAPPER: Successful coups?
JOHN BOLTON: Well, I wrote about Venezuela in the book. And it turned out not to be successful – not that we had all that much to do with it. But I saw what it took for an opposition to try and overturn an illegally elected president, and they failed. The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is laughable. But I think there’s another –
JAKE TAPPER: I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me, though.
JOHN BOLTON: I think – I’m sure there is.
Bolton’s 2020 memoir, “The Room Where It Happened”, mentions Venezuela and Venezuelans more than 300 times, and has a 35-page chapter recounting the coup attempt in the country, titled “Venezuela Libre” (Free Venezuela).
Bolton wrote that President Trump had repeatedly asked for a military attack on Venezuela.
Trump advisor John Bolton admits planning US coups in Venezuela and beyond

This was further confirmed by Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who wrote in his 2022 memoir “A Sacred Oath” that “Trump had been fixated on Venezuela since the early days of his administration”.
“Again and again, Trump would ask for military options” to overthrow Venezuela’s democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro, Esper recalled.
Trump’s National Security Council meetings on Venezuela “always began with the consideration of military options, rather than on the other end of the spectrum—diplomacy”, Esper wrote.
Trump wanted US military attacks on Venezuela, Defense Secretary Mark Esper details in book

There in fact was an attempted invasion of Venezuela in May 2020, known as Operation Gideon.
The figures involved in planning this botched invasion admitted they had the support of the Trump White House and were in contact with the CIA, other US government agencies, and Colombian intelligence services.
CIA backed failed 2020 invasion of Venezuela, top coup-plotter says

In response to Trump’s admission in June 2023 that he wanted to “take over” Venezuela and its oil, the country’s foreign minister, Yvan Gil, responded: “Trump confesses that his intention was to take over Venezuela’s oil. All the damage that the United States has done to our people, with the support of its lackeys, here has had one objective: to steal our resources! They were not able to, and they will not be able to. We will always overcome!”
Venezuela’s vice minister for North America, Carlos Ron, declared, “What further evidence do we need? Here’s Trump confessing that his aim, all along, was to take over Venezuela’s oil. The Biden [administration] keeps his illegal sanctions policy still in place. Venezuela has and will continue to prevail!”
What further evidence do we need?
Here’s Trump confessing that his aim, all along, was to take over Venezuela’s oil.
The Biden Administracion keeps his illegal sanctions policy still in place.
Venezuela has and will continue to prevail! https://t.co/kLO3INnm57
— Carlos Ron (@CarlosJRonVE) June 11, 2023

Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, stated, “Trump took the mask off of 60 satellite countries, the international propaganda, and all of those politicians and intellectuals who supported a puppet [Juan Guaidó] to govern Venezuela. The only aim has been to pillage the oil of the Venezuelan people. How shameful! This is the confession of a criminal”.
The “60 satellite countries” that Moncada referenced were those that joined the United States in formally recognizing unelected coup leader Guaidó as supposed “interim president” of Venezuela.
Venezuela’s former foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, who served during the 2019 coup attempt, said Trump’s confession was legal evidence that the US was motivated to try to steal his country’s natural resources.
“The international justice system must act”, Arreaza implored.


Instruction: Write an article about: West sabotaged Ukraine peace deal with Russia, admit Zelensky official and Germany’s ex leader. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Boris Johnson, Davyd Arakhamia, Naftali Bennett, Russia, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky

Output:
Russia wanted to sign a peace deal with Ukraine in March 2022, but NATO countries sabotaged it, according to Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the parliamentary faction leader of Zelensky’s political party, Davyd Arakhamia.

The United States has played a key role in fueling the wars in both Israel-Palestine and Ukraine.
The US government has sought to prevent peace in Gaza, vetoing resolutions in the UN Security Council that call for a ceasefire, while sending weapons to Israel to help it bomb densely populated civilian areas, contributing to the killing of more than 15,000 Palestinians, approximately 70% of whom are women and children.
Since 2022, Washington has done exactly the same in Ukraine, torpedoing peace proposals that Russia had supported.
This has been confirmed by numerous sources, including the former leader of Germany and a top Ukrainian official, as well as Israel’s ex prime minister.

This October, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder explained in an interview how he had tried to negotiate peace between Ukraine and Russia in 2022.
Ukraine’s overtly anti-Russian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported on his bombshell remarks.
Moscow had a concrete peace plan laid out, according to Schröder. It was based on five points: “Ukraine’s rejection of NATO membership, two official languages in Ukraine, Donbas autonomy, security guarantees for Ukraine, and negotiations on the status of Crimea”, Ukrainska Pravda wrote.
But the former German leader said the United States sabotaged the peace talks.
“The only people who could resolve the war over Ukraine are the Americans”, Schröder emphasized.
“During the peace talks in March 2022 in Istanbul with [Ukraine’s Defense Minister] Rustem Umierov, Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They had to coordinate everything they talked about with the Americans first”, he recalled.
“However, nothing eventually happened. My impression is that nothing could happen because everything else was decided in Washington. It was fatal”, Schröder added.
The former German head of state likewise warned that Russia will never accept NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia.
“Regardless of who is in power, there is a belief in Russia that the West wants to expand further with NATO, namely into the post-Soviet area. Keywords: Georgia and Ukraine. No one at the head of Russia will allow this to happen. This danger analysis may be emotional, but it is real for Russia. The West must understand this and compromise accordingly; otherwise, peace will be tough to achieve”, Schröder stressed, in the comments quoted by Ukrainska Pravda.
A top Ukrainian official and Germany's former leader have admitted that Russia wanted to sign a peace deal with Ukraine in March 2022, but NATO countries sabotaged it, instead preferring war.
Link to full video below pic.twitter.com/WUVvBANiuN
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 3, 2023

The former German chancellor’s observations were further bolstered by the remarks of a top Ukrainian official.
In November, Davyd Arakhamia sat down for an interview with Ukraine’s TV channel 1+1. Arakhamia is the parliamentary faction leader of the political party of Ukraine’s Western-backed President Volydmyr Zelensky.
This interview was also reported on by Ukraine’s vehemently anti-Russian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda.
Arakhamia represented Ukraine in the peace talks with Russia in Türkiye in March 2022.
At those negotiations, Arakhamia admitted that Russia did indeed want peace, and neutrality “was the most important thing for them”.
“They [the Russians] were prepared to end the war if we agreed to – as Finland once did – neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO”, the top Ukrainian official said, according to a translation by Ukrainska Pravda.
“They really hoped almost to the last moment that they would force us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality”, he added.
But Ukraine’s Western sponsors were adamantly opposed to the peace proposal.
“When we returned from Istanbul, [British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight”, Arakhamia recalled.

These important testimonies from Germany’s former leader and a top Ukrainian official both echo an admission made by Israel’s former prime minister.
Israel’s ex Prime Minister Naftali Bennett explained in a February 2023 interview how he had been a mediator between Ukraine and Russia the year before.
“Anything I did was coordinated down to the last detail with the US, Germany, and France”, Bennett said. And “there was a legitimate decision by the West to keep striking Putin”.
Referring to the NATO bloc’s response to the peace proposal, the interviewer asked, “So they blocked it?”
Bennett replied, “Basically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they’re wrong”.


Instruction: Write an article about: US sends Israel 100+ weapons shipments. Most Americans oppose it – but Biden ignores them.. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Anwar Ibrahim, China, Donald Trump, Gaza, genocide, Hague, ICJ, International Court of Justice, Israel, Joe Biden, Malaysia, Michael Fakhri, Palestine, UN Security Council, United Nations, Wang Yi

Output:
The US has sent Israel more than 100 arms shipments since October 7, to bomb Gaza. Polls show 52% of North Americans oppose these weapons sales. Biden defies the Democratic Party’s base, while allying with Trump and the Republicans.

Polling shows that a slight majority of people in the United States oppose sending weapons to Israel to help it wage its brutal war on Gaza.
However, despite the fact that only a quarter of North Americans support arming Israel, the Joe Biden administration has sent the country more than 100 arms shipments since October 7, the Washington Post reported.
The newspaper quoted a former senior Biden administration, who remarked, “That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support”.

A poll published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, DC found that 52% of North Americans want to end US weapons shipments to Israel.
Nearly two-thirds (62%) of those who voted for Joe Biden oppose arms sales Israel.
Among people who did not vote for president, 60% do not want to send weapons.
The only political group that supported giving weapons to Israel was Donald Trump voters: 55%.
A mere 27% of all North Americans want to continue selling arms to Israel.
In other words, Biden and the Democratic Party leadership agree with Trump and the Republicans, and the DNC is defying its own base.

This was confirmed by another poll in January, which was commissioned by The Economist magazine. It found that 49% of young people in the United States (those between ages 18 and 29) and 49% of Democrats say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Overall, slightly over one-third (35%) of North Americans say Israel is committing genocide.
On the other hand, 57% of Republicans do not think Israel was committing genocide (just 18% do think so).
These surveys demonstrate that the only people represented by the US government’s staunchly pro-Israel policy are conservatives, Republicans, and Trump supporters.
The top United Nations expert on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, stated publicly that Israel is intentionally starving Palestinian civilians and carrying out genocide.
Meanwhile, Washington has voted against four UN Security Council resolutions that called for peace in Gaza, unilaterally using its veto power three times to kill ceasefire proposals.
US kills 4th UN call for peace in Gaza, helping Israel violate Hague’s genocide ruling

The UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague ruled in January that there is sufficient evidence to investigate Israel on charges of genocide.
A US federal court likewise found that Israel’s scorched-earth war on Gaza “plausibly” amounts to genocide.
The ICJ ordered Israel to stop killing Palestinians and to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza.
The leading Western human rights organization, Amnesty International, warned that “Israel has failed to take even the bare minimum steps to comply” with the Hague’s ruling, adding that “Israel has continued to disregard its obligation as the occupying power to ensure the basic needs of Palestinians in Gaza are met”.
Children in Gaza are starving to death under a suffocating Israeli blockade.
The UN News agency warned that “more infants [in Gaza] may die from hunger”.
The Associated Press reported in January that the “Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history”.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi reiterated Beijing’s calls for an immediate ceasefire and stated at a press conference, “It is a tragedy for humankind and a disgrace for civilization that today, in the 21st century, this humanitarian disaster cannot be stopped”.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was even more direct in his criticism of Western hypocrisy.
“Why, for example, is the West so vociferous, vehement and unequivocal in the condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while remaining utterly silent on the relentless bloodletting inflicted on the innocent men, women and children of Gaza?” Anwar asked.
“Unfortunately, the gut-wrenching tragedy that continues to unfold in the Gaza Strip has laid bare the self-serving nature of much valued, the much vaunted rules-based order”, the Malaysian leader added.


Instruction: Write an article about: Atomic bombing of Japan was not necessary to end WWII. US gov’t documents admit it. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Hiroshima, history, Japan, Nagasaki, nuclear weapons, Oppenheimer, Soviet Union, USSR, World War II

Output:
US government documents admit the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary to end WWII. Japan was on the verge of surrendering. The nuclear attack was the first strike in Washington’s Cold War on the Soviet Union.

It is very common for Western governments and media outlets to tell the rest of the world to be afraid of North Korea and its nuclear weapons, or to fear the possibility that Iran could one day have nukes.
But the reality is that there is only one country in human history that has used nuclear weapons against a civilian population – and not once, but twice: the United States.
On the 6th and 9th of August, 1945, the US military dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Around 200,000 civilians were killed.
Today, nearly 80 years later, many US government officials, journalists, and educators still claim that Washington had no choice but to nuke Japan, to force it to surrender and thus end World War Two. Some argue that this horrifying atrocity was in fact a noble act, that it saved even more lives that would have been lost in subsequent fighting.
This narrative, although widespread, is utterly false.
US government documents have admitted that Japan was already on the verge of surrendering in 1945, before the nuclear strikes. It was simply not necessary to use the atomic bomb.

The US Department of War (which was renamed the Department of Defense later in the 1940s) conducted an investigation, known as the Strategic Bombing Survey, analyzing its air strikes in World War II.
Published in 1946, the Strategic Bombing Survey stated very clearly, “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped”:
… it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion.
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.
The nuclear strikes on Japan represented a political decision taken by the United States, aimed squarely at the Soviet Union; it was the first strike in the Cold War.
In August 1945, the USSR was preparing to invade Japan to overthrow its ruling fascist regime, which had been allied with Nazi Germany – which the Soviet Red Army had also just defeated in the European theater of the war.
Washington was concerned that, if the Soviets defeated Japanese fascism and liberated Tokyo like they had in Berlin, then Japan’s post-fascist government could become an ally of the Soviet Union and could adopt a socialist government.
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, therefore, were not so much aimed at the Japanese fascists as they were aimed at the Soviet communists.

This expressly political decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan was in fact opposed by several top US military officials.
As one of the most famous generals in US military history, Dwight Eisenhower led operations in the European theater of the war and oversaw the subsequent occupation of what was formerly Nazi Germany.
Eisenhower later became president of the United States, following Harry Truman, the US leader who had nuked Japan.
Eisenhower is renowned worldwide for his leadership in the fight against fascism in Europe. But what is little known is that he opposed the US nuclear attacks on Japan.
After leaving the White House, Eisenhower published a memoir titled Mandate for Change. In this 1963 book, the former top general recalled an argument he had in July 1945 with then US Secretary of War Henry Stimson.
Stimson had notified him that Washington was planning to nuke Japan, and Eisenhower criticized the decision, stating that he had “grave misgivings” and was convinced “that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary”.
Eisenhower wrote:
The incident took place in [July] 1945 when Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. … But the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face”. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reason I gave for my quick conclusions.
These “completely unnecessary” nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed some 200,000 civilians. But they had a political goal, aimed at the Soviet Union.
The political reasons behind the atomic bombing of Japan have been publicly acknowledged by the US Department of Energy’s Office of History, which runs a website with educational information about the Manhattan Project, the scientific initiative that developed the bomb.
The US government website conceded that the Truman administration’s decision to nuke Japan was politically motivated, writing:
After President Harry S. Truman received word of the success of the Trinity test, his need for the help of the Soviet Union in the war against Japan was greatly diminished. The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, had promised to join the war against Japan by August 15th. Truman and his advisors now were not sure they wanted this help. If use of the atomic bomb made victory possible without an invasion, then accepting Soviet help would only invite them into the discussions regarding the postwar fate of Japan.
…
Other historians argue that Japan would have surrendered even without the use of the atomic bomb and that in fact Truman and his advisors used the bomb only in an effort to intimidate the Soviet Union.
…
Truman hoped to avoid having to “share” the administration of Japan with the Soviet Union.
Mainstream historians have acknowledged this fact as well.
Ward Wilson, a researcher at the establishment London-based think tank the British American Security Information Council, published an article in Washington’s elite Foreign Policy magazine in 2013 titled “The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan. Stalin Did”.
“Although the bombs did force an immediate end to the war, Japan’s leaders had wanted to surrender anyway and likely would have done so before the American invasion planned for Nov. 1. Their use was, therefore, unnecessary”, he wrote.
Wilson explained:
If the Japanese were not concerned with city bombing in general or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in particular, what were they concerned with? The answer is simple: the Soviet Union.
…
Even the most hard-line leaders in Japan’s government knew that the war could not go on. The question was not whether to continue, but how to bring the war to a close under the best terms possible.
…
One way to gauge whether it was the bombing of Hiroshima or the invasion and declaration of war by the Soviet Union that caused Japan’s surrender is to compare the way in which these two events affected the strategic situation. After Hiroshima was bombed on Aug. 6, both options were still alive. … Bombing Hiroshima did not foreclose either of Japan’s strategic options.
The impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and Sakhalin Island was quite different, however. Once the Soviet Union had declared war, Stalin could no longer act as a mediator — he was now a belligerent. So the diplomatic option was wiped out by the Soviet move. The effect on the military situation was equally dramatic.
…
When the Russians invaded Manchuria, they sliced through what had once been an elite army and many Russian units only stopped when they ran out of gas.
…
The Soviet invasion invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically decisive — it foreclosed both of Japan’s options — while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not.
…
Attributing the end of the war to the atomic bomb served Japan’s interests in multiple ways. But it also served U.S. interests. If the Bomb won the war, then the perception of U.S. military power would be enhanced, U.S. diplomatic influence in Asia and around the world would increase.
…
If, on the other hand, the Soviet entry into the war was what caused Japan to surrender, then the Soviets could claim that they were able to do in four days what the United States was unable to do in four years, and the perception of Soviet military power and Soviet diplomatic influence would be enhanced. And once the Cold War was underway, asserting that the Soviet entry had been the decisive factor would have been tantamount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
Thus, before World War II was even over, the United States launched a Cold War against its ostensible “ally”, the Soviet Union – and against the potential spread of socialism anywhere around the world.
US spy agencies began recruiting former fascists and Nazi collaborators. US officials freed Class A Japanese war criminals from prison, some of whom went on to lead the government in Tokyo.
Many of these figures were involved in founding the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has essentially run Japan as a one-party state since 1955 (excluding a mere five years of opposition rule).
A textbook example of this was Nobusuke Kishi, a notorious war criminal who ran the Japanese empire’s Manchukuo puppet regime and oversaw genocidal atrocities in collaboration with the Nazis. He was briefly imprisoned, but later pardoned by US authorities and, with Washington’s support, rose to become prime minister of Japan in the 1950s.
Kishi’s fascist-linked family still commands significant control over Japanese politics. His grandson, Shinzo Abe, was the longest-serving prime minister in the East Asian nation’s history.
US-backed fascism in Japan: How Shinzo Abe whitewashed genocidal imperial crimes

Today, it remains important to correct widespread myths about this history, because they have a profound impact on popular culture.
In July 2023, Hollywood released a blockbuster film, “Oppenheimer”, by award-winning director Christopher Nolan. The movie was a huge commercial success, but was also criticized for its politics.
The film humanized the eponymous physicist who directed the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos laboratory, J. Robert Oppenheimer, commonly known as the “father of the atomic bomb”.
Later in life, Oppenheimer came to regret the role he played in developing the weapon, and he campaigned against nuclear proliferation.
Ironically, Oppenheimer also became a victim of the US government’s McCarthyism, and was persecuted for his links to left-wing groups.
But while the movie was celebrated for depicting Oppenheimer’s complex internal struggles, it was accused of whitewashing the brutality of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Japanese civilians who lost their lives in these totally unnecessary attacks were eerily absent from the film.
By incessantly repeating the falsehood that nuking 200,000 people was the only way to get Japan to surrender, US officials have normalized this erasure of the civilian victims of its unnecessary, politically motivated war crimes.