Instruction: Write an article about: The United States has many political prisoners. Here’s a list. 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: Alex Saab, Black Panthers, Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, Julian Assange, Leonard Peltier, Meng Wanzhou, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Mun Chol Myong, Mutulu Shakur, political prisoners, Simón Trinidad

Output:
The US government holds many political prisoners, including journalists; national security state whistleblowers; Black, Indigenous, and Latino revolutionaries; foreign diplomats; Muslims detained without trial; women who defended themselves from attacks; and environmental activists.

The United States constantly accuses its adversaries of holding political prisoners, while insisting it has none of its own. But for its entire history, the US government has used incarceration of its political opponents as a tool to crush dissent and advance the interests of economic elites.
Well-known cases are those entrapped or framed in US national security state sting operations, or imprisoned with extreme sentences for a minor offense because of their political activism, such as Black revolutionary George Jackson.
Each period of struggle by the working class and oppressed peoples against ruling-class control results in some activists locked up for their revolutionary work. “Political prisoner” has often meant those revolutionaries jailed for fighting their national oppression, as is the case with a great number of Black Panthers.
In contrast, a century ago, most political prisoners in the United States were Marxists, labor organizers, and anti-war activists, such as Joe Hill, Eugene Debs, and Big Bill Haywood.
Today, the US national security state considers its most dangerous enemies those who expose its crimes at home and abroad.
There are also many thousands of incarcerated people who never received a fair trial, or were innocent of the crimes they have been jailed for. A high percentage of them are non-white, peoples subject to second-class citizenship in the US. A number are executed, such as Troy Davis, or spend their whole lives in prison.
While the United States represents just over 4% of the world’s population, it holds approximately 20% of its prisoners. Black North Americans are imprisoned five times the rate of whites.
The following list of political prisoners currently detained by the US government categorizes them into seven groups:
A number of whistleblowers in the United States have previously been imprisoned or are wanted. These have included:
Among those imprisoned today are the following:
Julian Assange is a renowned journalist and editor of WikiLeaks who was arrested in 2019 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had political asylum since 2012. In April 2022, a British judge ordered Assange extradited to the US to face up to 175 years in prison for publishing truthful information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US has indicted Assange under the Espionage Act, even though he published the same information as did the New York Times and Washington Post.
Researcher Mark Weisbrot explained in 2017, “Julian Assange is a political prisoner. … His crime, and that of WikiLeaks, has been the practice of journalism, and particularly in defense of human rights and civil liberties. … Assange and WikiLeaks’ real offense was to expose the crimes of the most powerful people in the world.”
Extraditing Assange, a journalist and Australian citizen, to the United States would have even more negative repercussions for our present remnants of free press and democratic rights. No case better embodies the old IWW banner for “class war prisoners”: “Remember! We’re in here for you, you’re out there for us.” Roger Waters and Noam Chomsky have also spoken about the importance of the Assange case.
Daniel Hale has been imprisoned since 2019. He was sentenced to 45 months for releasing documents showing US military drone strikes in Afghanistan largely killed innocent people. Hale participated in the drone program while in the Air Force and NSA from 2009 to 2013, and later became an outspoken critic and a defender of whistle blowers.
Hale is believed to have been the source material for The Drone Papers. The documentary National Bird documents whistleblowers in the US drone assassination program. For his truth-telling, Hale received the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence and the Blueprint for Free Speech International Whistleblowing Prize. Chris Hedges has written about his case.
Joshua Schulte, a former hacker employed by the CIA, was blamed for releasing two billion pages of secret CIA data, known as Vault 7, to WikiLeaks. Vault 7 programs were CIA techniques used to compromise Wifi networks, hack into Skype, defeat anti-virus software, hack Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices, and commandeer the guidance systems in cars.
Schulte has been imprisoned since 2018 and faces up to 80 years, in brutal conditions similar to those endured by Assange today.
Ana Belén Montes was a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst who alerted Cuba of US plans of aggression. She was arrested in 2001, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage, and was held in solitary confinement in Fort Worth, Texas for most of her 21 years behind bars.
Montes told the judge, “I consider that the policy of our government towards Cuba is cruel and unjust, deeply unfriendly; I considered myself morally obligated to help the Island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it. We have displayed intolerance and contempt for Cuba for four decades. We have never respected Cuba’s right to define its own destiny, its own ideals of equality and justice. I do not understand how we continue to try to dictate. … how Cuba should select its leaders, who its leaders should not be and what laws are the most appropriate for that nation. Why don’t we let them decide how they want to conduct their internal affairs.”
Mun Chol Myong is a North Korean was extradited and imprisoned in the United States on March 20, 2021. Mun was arrested in Malaysia in May 2019 after a Washington, DC judge issued a warrant for his arrest. His supposed “crime” of conspiracy and money laundering in fact consisted of supplying needed goods to the DPRK by circumventing US sanctions on the country.
A top Justice Department official claimed foreigners who have never been in the US can be extradited to it for violating domestic laws. The US has enforced a blockade against North Korea since 1950, the start of the US war on Korea, designed to cripple its economic and social development.
Alex Saab, a Venezuelan diplomat, was jailed on June 12, 2020 in Cabo Verde on orders of the United States. He was then seized by US agents and brought to a Miami prison on October 16, 2021.
Saab was arrested while on a diplomatic mission to procure food and energy supplies to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, which was largely caused by the illegal US blockade of the nation.
As a diplomat, Saab has immunity from detention based on the UN Vienna Convention of 1961. The UN Human Rights Commission and other international human rights defenders have denounced his extradition. The National Lawyers Guild calls for Saab’s immediate release.
Simón Trinidad (Ricardo Palmera) was a long-time leader in mass movements for social change in Colombia, and is a top negotiator for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In 2003, he was sent to Ecuador to make contact with UN official James Lemoyne, as part of efforts to revive peace talks with the Colombian government, and begin communication on the exchange of prisoners of war.
He was captured in Ecuador in 2004 and then extradited to the US on charges of narco-trafficking and kidnapping, and subjected to four separate trials, due to repeated mistrials. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 60 years at the Florence “Supermax” prison in Colorado.
Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer and deputy chair of the board of Chinese tech giant Huawei, was imprisoned in Canada in 2018 on a US extradition request, after Washington accused her company of misleading British bank HSBC over its business dealings in Iran, thereby violating its illegal unilateral sanctions. Meng was released in September 2021.
Many Black political prisoners in the United States were targets of the police state’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in the 1960s and ’70s, when the FBI sought to destroy the movement for Black freedom.
As journalist Glen Ford explained, “If you attempt to lead Black people on an independent political path, the US state will seek to neutralize you, imprison you, or kill you. If you exercise your right to defend yourself, and your people, from the oppressive arm of the state, they make you into an outlaw, and hunt you down.”
The FBI said it goals in COINTELPRO were to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize,” adding that “no opportunity must be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques … for maximum effectiveness … and a final goal should be to prevent the long range growth of militant black organizations, especially among youth.”
This police state operation against Black liberation resulted in at least 38 Black Panther Party members being killed, including Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, with hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges for their armed self-defense actions, several for more than 45 years.
The website Members of the Black Panther Party Still Imprisoned registered the number incarcerated in 2014, although several have died since then. The films “The FBI’s War on Black America” and “Cointelpro 101” document the police state’s dirty work.
Those currently imprisoned include:
Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most prominent former Black Panther political prisoner. In 1981, COINTELPRO style, he was sentenced to death for the murder of a Philadelphia cop. Judge Albert Sabo, who ruled in his case and in his appeals, was heard by a court reporter to state “I’m going to help them fry the ni**er.” Black jurors were excluded. Witnesses were bribed and threatened to lie on the stand. Documents were hidden in the state prosecutor’s office.
Mumia was an organizer and campaigner against police abuses in the Black community, and was the president of the Association of Black Journalists. During his imprisonment, now commuted to life, he has published several books. More information can be found in the films “Mumia Abu Jamal: A Case For Reasonable Doubt?” and “Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary” or the websites freemumia.com and bringmumiahome.com.
Leonard Peltier was an activist in the American Indian Movement (AIM) whose goal was to organize indigenous communities to stand up for their rights. Sentenced to life as a result of a COINTELPRO operation, he has been imprisoned for 46 years for killing two FBI agents. Peltier participated in the AIM encampments on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where a 1975 shootout instigated by the FBI occurred.
Some 64 Native Americans, most with ties to AIM, were murdered. Their deaths went uninvestigated by the FBI. Evidence exonerating Peltier in the FBI case was withheld by the FBI. In his appeals, the government admitted it had no evidence he killed the two FBI agents, suppressed evidence proving this, and fabricated other “evidence.”
The other AIM members tried for the killings were exonerated in trial by reason of self-defense. One prosecutor admitted, “Your honor, we do not know who killed those agents. Further, we don’t know what participation, if any, Mr. Peltier had in it.”
Amnesty International, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, the American Association of Jurists, and 54 Congresspeople, among many others, have called for his freedom. The film  “Incident at Ogala,” produced by Robert Redford, and the best-selling book “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI’s War on the American Indian Movement” made the case widely known. More information can be found at the websites whoisleonardpeltier.info and Peltier’s Prison Writings.
Mutulu Shakur, of the Republic of New Afrika movement, participated in presentations to the UN on discrimination experienced by Black communities, and by 1970 a target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO infiltration. He helped free Assata Shakur from prison in 1979, and she now has a bounty on her head.
In 1988 he was convicted of conspiracy related to a 1981 robbery where a guard and two police officers were killed, and sentenced to 60 years. At no time did the evidence show that Mutulu Shakur killed anyone.
He was also convicted for aiding in the prison escape of Assata Shakur, who has asylum in Cuba.
At two trials the evidence indicated others were responsible for the deaths (one became a government witness in return for a sentencing deal). The remaining defendants were acquitted for the murder allegations. More information can be found at mutulushakur.com and the Jericho Movement.
Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) was chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a Black Panther leader. FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover himself named H. Rap Brown – along with Stokely Carmichael, Elijah Muhammad, and Maxwell Stanford – as targets of COINTELPRO.
In a October 1971 standoff with police, he was shot and seized, and spent five years in Attica prison. From 1992 to 1997, the FBI closely surveilled Al-Amin, generating pages of 44,000 documents. In 2000, two sheriffs came to Al-Amin’s store with a warrant for failure to appear in court for a case later thrown out. Both were shot and one killed. Al-Amin was sentenced to life without parole, even though Otis Jackson confessed to the shootings. More information is available at whathappened2rap.com.
Veronza Bowers was an organizer in the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. He has been imprisoned for 49 years for the murder of a US park ranger, on the word of two government informers. There were no eye witnesses and no other independent evidence. See more at veronza.org and prisonersolidarity.com.
Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (who died in prison in 2016) were leaders of the Black Panthers in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1960s, and targets of COINTELPRO. Both men were given life sentences on charges of killing a policeman. They were convicted on the testimony of a teenager who was beaten by the police and threatened with the electric chair if he did not incriminate Poindexter and Mondo.
Amnesty International has identified them as “prisoners of conscience.” Poindexter has been imprisoned for 52 years. The book “FRAMED: J. Edgar Hoover, Cointelpro and the Omaha Two story” and the documentary “Ed Poindexter & Mondo We Langa” offer more information.
Kamau Sadiki (Freddie Hilton), was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, and close to Assata Shakur. He has been imprisoned since 2002, for a 1971 murder of a police officer. Back in 1971, two witnesses failed to identify Kamau from a line-up, and there was no physical evidence that implicated Sadiki, so the case was closed.
In 2002 Kamau was re-arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for the killing – only after he refused to work with the government to induce Assata Shakur to leave Cuba for another country, where they could seize her. See more at freekamau.com.
Joy Powell organized protests against police brutality and corruption, demanding accountability for its victims, which led her to be targeted by the Rochester Police Department. In 2006, Powell was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to 16 years for burglary and assault. No evidence or eyewitnesses linked her to the crime.
Then in 2007, while imprisoned, Powell was falsely charged with murder, a cold case from 1992, and given another 25-year sentence, to begin upon the completion of her 16-year sentence. See freejoypowell.org, and the article “America is Still Locking People Up for Their Activism, Including Black Women.”
Alvaro Luna Hernandez (Xinachtli) is a Texas activist for Chicano rights and against police brutality. He was continually targeted by the police, who in 1996 attempted to arrest him on a spurious robbery charge that was later dismissed. The police used violence to arrest him, and Hernandez was sentenced to 50 years in prison on trumped up charges of threatening a sheriff while resisting arrest. More information can be found at freealvaro.net and prisonersolidarity.com.
Other political prisoners include Ruchell Cinque Magee, Fred “Muhammad” Burton, Ronald Reed, Kenny Zulu Whitmore.
More information is available at the Prison Activist Resource Center, Jericho Movement, freedomarchives.org, spiritofmandela.org, and prisonersolidarity.com.
The Coalition for Civil Freedoms published a report in 2021 titled The Terror Trap: The Impact of the War on Terror on Muslim Communities. It explains:
more than half of all alleged terrorism cases involved the use of paid informants who were usually responsible for concocting the plots in collusion with the FBI. Sensationalistic media coverage of the most high-profile cases almost never made mention of the fact that these terrorist conspiracies were the work of FBI informants.
…
the FBI has built a network of more than 15,000 registered informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the bureau can then claim it is winning the War on Terror … the FBI engaged in a witch hunt, convicting hundreds of Muslims on pretext terrorism charges, even though the government knew that the defendants were not in communication with international terrorists, had not injured a single person or piece of property, and had no means to carry out a terrorist attack even if they wanted to.
For the government to tell the truth about the convictions would have undercut their own prosecutions, and exposed hundreds of Muslim convictions for the sham they were. No matter how innocent the government knew the defendants to be, it apparently decided that they had to publicly treat the defendants as the worst of the worst, or lose the fear factor which they had used so effectively to enact harsher laws.
The Newburgh Four, Libertyville Seven, and Romeo Langhorne are examples of this FBI entrapment.
Here are more current political prisoners:
Holy Land 5: Shukri Abu-Baker and Ghassan Elashi of the Holy Land Foundation were each sentenced in 2008 to 65 years in prison. Three others were sentenced to 13-20 years: Mufid Abdulqader, Mohammad El-Mezain (released and deported to Turkey in 2022) and Abdulrahman Odeh (released in 2020). All were imprisoned for giving more than $12 million to charitable groups in Palestine which funded hospitals and schools and fed the poor and orphans.
The US government said these groups were controlled by Hamas, which it lists as a terrorist organization, even though it is the elected government of Gaza. Some of these charitable groups still received US funds through USAID as late as 2006.
Testimony was given in the case by an Israeli government agent whose identity and evidence was kept secret from the defense. This marked the first time in US legal history that testimony has been allowed from an expert witness with no identity, therefore making them immune from perjury. The book “Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five” details the case.
Aafia Siddiqui is a US-educated Pakistani neuroscientist who came to the US in 1990, then returned to Pakistan with her family in 2002. In 2003 she was kidnapped by US and Pakistani agents and held in Bagram Air Base through 2008. She was convicted of attempted murder of her US interrogators in Afghanistan in 2008 – though she was the person shot – and sentenced to 86 years in prison in Fort Worth, Texas. The weapon she allegedly fired in the interrogation room did not have her fingerprints, nor was there evidence the gun was fired.
Four British Parliamentarians wrote to President Barack Obama that “there was an utter lack of concrete evidence tying Dr Siddiqui to the weapon she allegedly fired at a US officer,” and that she should be freed immediately. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark described Aafia’s plight as the “worst case of individual injustice I have ever witnessed.” More information is available at aafia.org and aafiamovement.com.
Since 2002, a total of 779 Muslim men and boys as young as 10 have been seized and held at Guantánamo, a military base in Cuban territory that is illegally occupied by the United States.
Washington claimed the prisoners are outside US and international law, and thus do not have the rights of POWs. Nearly all of the prisoners were held without charge or trial. Many were tortured to produce a compliant “learned helplessness” – the goal of former US slave-breaking.
Some detainees were even tortured to death. In 2003, 23 prisoners attempted suicide in a mass protest against their abuse.
The torture was directed by two psychologists, James E Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.
By any definition of political prisoner, most political prisoners in Cuba are at the US military-torture center at Guantanamo.
Today there are still 36 prisoners, only 11 of whom have been charged with war crimes, while just two have been convicted – and by “military commissions,” which Amnesty International declared do not meet fair trial standards.
Another 20 have been approved for release but remain locked up. Five detainees are “forever prisoners,” held without charge or trial, but not to be released. The websites closeguantanamo.org and witnessagainsttorture.com and films The Report and The Mauritanian provide more information.
Nearly three in 10 women in the United States have endured male physical violence or stalking by a partner. Nearly one in five women are raped in their lifetime. Almost four women are killed a day by a male partner.
Half of all women murdered are killed by men they know intimately, yet hundreds of women are in prison for killing their abuser in self-defense.
The US legal system treats these as individual cases, not for what it is: the systematic patriarchal violence against women as an oppressed group.
The website Survived and Punished and Defend Survivors provide more information about this problem.
Marissa Alexander, a Black women from Florida, was sentenced to 20 years in 2013 for firing a warning shot inside her home to ward off her brutal husband, against whom she had an order of protection. Her affirmation that Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law applied to her because she was defending herself was rejected. The same year, George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin based on that same law. National protests finally freed her in 2017.
Fran Thompson was an environmental activist in Nebraska. She has been in jail for 30 years for murder, sentenced to life without parole. She had defended herself, killing a man who was threatening to sexually assault her after he broke into her home. She was also targeted because of her environmental work, and was not allowed to plea self-defense.
Thompson had taken on the prosecutor and local government during her activism, having organized against two big projects, an egg factory and a nuclear waste facility, which would have brought the county big profits.
Maddesyn George has been imprisoned since July 2020. She was given a 6.5-year sentence for defending herself from sexual assault by a white man. She is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes.
Indigenous women experience murder rates 10 times higher than the national average. The majority of these murders are committed by non-Native people on Native-owned land. See: MMIW USA and Coalition to Stop Violence against Native Women.
A number of environmental activists, animal rights supporters, and water protectors have challenged corporate abuses and have been jailed.
During the original so-called Green Scare, in the 1990s to early 2000s, the US government sought to squash animal rights and environmental activism, acting in the interest of corporations that profit from damaging the earth.
A more recent series of jailings have specifically targeted people protesting against pipeline construction.
The following are political prisoners:
Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, a member of Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front was arrested in 2018 for his participation in setting fire to a slaughterhouse. Between 1995 and 2001, a group of Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front supporters caused more than $45 million in damages in a series of arsons. Dibee is imprisoned awaiting sentencing.
Marius Mason (formerly Marie Mason), a member of the Earth Liberation Front, was arrested in 2008 for an attack on a lab building at Michigan State University that was creating genetically modified organisms, with funding from mega-corporation Monsanto, the producer of Agent Orange.
Mason was also sentenced for damage to commercial logging equipment. No one was harmed by these actions. Mason’s 22 year-sentence is the longest yet for any of the Green Scare cases of those committing crimes against property of corporations.
Jessica Reznicek, of the Catholic Workers Movement, took action in 2016 to stop the environmentally destructive Dakota Access Pipeline by dismantling construction equipment and pipeline valves and setting fire to construction machinery. She would have been handed three years, but was sentenced to eight, with the added sentence for terrorism, even though no person was physically harmed.
Reznicek’s actions against private property were “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government,” meaning a person who takes direct action against an energy company can be treated as an enemy of the state. Reznicek explained, “What we did do was fight a private corporation that has run rampant across our country seizing land and polluting our nation’s water supply.”
This list belies the myth that the United States has no political prisoners.
Political prisoners have no shared ideology. Standing for justice does not necessarily mean that one defends their political views; it means that one demands their freedom because they have been unjustly incarcerated.
Many hundreds of thousands of people have been unjustly incarcerated in the United States, but in these cases, it is clear that they were detained because of their political beliefs and activism, and that by definition makes them political prisoners.


Instruction: Write an article about: Weapons corporation sees ‘benefits’ from US wars on Russia, China, Yemen. 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: China, military-industrial complex, Raytheon, Russia, Yemen

Output:
The CEO of top arms manufacturer Raytheon admitted in a phone call, “I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit” and “opportunities” from the US war drive with Russia over Ukraine, bombing of Yemen, and conflict in the South China Sea.

The CEO of top weapons manufacturer Raytheon has told investors that potential US wars with Russia and China offer the corporation economic “benefits” and “opportunities.”
These remarks come at a time when tensions are high between NATO and Russia over Ukraine, and while the United States is waging a new cold war to encircle and contain China.
The comments also show how Raytheon and other Pentagon contractors have knowingly profited from the ongoing war on Yemen, which marks its seventh anniversary in March 2022. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been attacking civilian areas in the poorest country in West Asia, using weapons provided by the US and Britain.
The investment website The Motley Fool published a transcript of Raytheon’s fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call, held on January 25, featuring Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Greg Hayes.
In the conversation, an analyst named Peter Arment asked Hayes the following:
Hey, Greg, maybe just switching over to defense, could you maybe just give us a little bit of some of the things you’re expecting for maybe on the international side?
Historically Raytheon has had a lot of international awards, what your expectations might be for a book-to-bill and if you’re seeing any kind of increased input from international countries just given the rising tension? Thanks.
The Raytheon CEO responded saying, “I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit” and “opportunities” from the US war drive with Russia over Ukraine, bombing of Yemen, and conflict with Beijing in the South China Sea:
Yeah, Peter. It’s a good question, and I think the answer is obviously, we are seeing, I would say, opportunities for international sales.
We just have to look to last week where we saw the drone attack in the UAE, which have attacked some of their other facilities.
And of course, the tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there.
So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.
On January 21, Saudi Arabia used a Raytheon laser-guided bomb to attack a detention center in Yemen. At least 91 people were killed, and 236 more were injured.
Saudi Arabia attacked a detention center in Yemen with a US-made laser-guided bomb from Raytheon, killing 91 people and injuring 236.
President Joe Biden claimed he'd end US support for Saudi bombing of Yemen, but has not. Instead he sold it more weaponshttps://t.co/vMZyz5Ahsv
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) January 30, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: As millions died in Covid pandemic, bankers made a killing. 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: banks, Covid-19, economics, Fed, Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Michael Hudson, Morgan Stanley, pandemic, Wall Street

Output:
As the Covid-19 pandemic ripped through society, the US government abandoned its people—but made sure Wall Street banks enjoyed “their best period since the 2007-09 financial crisis.” Capitalists made $5 trillion

More than 5.55 million people around the world have died from Covid-19. In the United States alone, at least 854,000 people have lost their lives. And the pandemic has destroyed the livelihoods of many more, bankrupting families, devastating communities.
Meanwhile, billionaire oligarchs have made a killing. The 10 richest capitalists on Earth doubled their wealth during the pandemic, while the incomes of 99% of humanity decreased.
And the Western financial press is practically rubbing it in our faces.
Reuters published a shockingly blunt story boasting of how US banks have, well, made bank during the global health crisis.
Titled “Wall Street banks eye ‘new normal’ for trading revenue,” the Reuters news wire was republished at the official website of the Nasdaq stock exchange.
The article gloats, “A massive injection of cash into capital markets by the Federal Reserve led to unprecedented liquidity and trading activity through the pandemic as investors sought opportunities to cash in.”
The report then chirps happily, “Banks with large trading desks such as Goldman Sachs GS.N, JPMorgan JPM.N and Morgan Stanley MS.N have been the biggest beneficiaries of market volatility, enabling traders to enjoy their best period since the 2007-09 financial crisis.”
As millions around the world died in a global pandemic, big banks like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley were "the biggest beneficiaries of market volatility, enabling traders to **enjoy their best period since the 2007-09 financial crisis**"
Capitalism is a death cult pic.twitter.com/6aJrq0xO6D
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 19, 2022

I discussed this “massive injection of cash into capital markets by the Federal Reserve” in an interview with economist Michael Hudson.
The Fed quietly bailed out big banks in September 2019 with $4.5 trillion of emergency repo loans, which according to Hudson appear to have blatantly violated US law. This is in addition to the trillions more the US Treasury poured into the financial sector.

The Reuters article continues, quoting Goldman Sachs’ chief executive officer, David M. Solomon, who told analysts, “None of us could have anticipated the environment that we’ve lived through over the last two years and particularly the environment this year, which was obviously a significant tailwind for our business.”
Note how Goldman Sachs’ CEO wasn’t saying the bank couldn’t have anticipated the millions of deaths; rather, he was saying Wall Street couldn’t have anticipated enjoying its highest profits since the financial crash 14 years ago.
Solomon wasn’t alone. JPMorgan Chase CFO Jeremy Barnum noted that 2020 and 2021, the peak of the pandemic, were “record years.”
The Reuters report quoted an analyst at the investment banking and asset management firm JMP Securities, Devin Ryan, who said, “The bar from 2020 and 2021 is quite high.”
The attitudes of the bankers cited in the piece make it clear: capitalism is a death cult.
While millions of people died in a historic global pandemic, capitalist oligarchs orchestrated a massive upward transfer of wealth.
“The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day— during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty,” Oxfam reported.
Capitalist oligarchs made have made $5 trillion during the pandemic, “the biggest surge in billionaire wealth since records began,” Oxfam said.
The humanitarian organization calculated that inequality contributes to the death of at least 21,000 people every day — one person every four seconds.
While the right wing has hysterically warned of “Covid authoritarianism” and an impending “biomedical state” supposedly on the horizon, the reality is that the United States is already largely the libertarian dystopia that the Koch Brothers and their fellow capitalist oligarch brethren have dreamt of (and invested a whole lot of money in creating).
The ruling ideology of the United States is every man for himself, dog eat dog. This is reflected so clearly in the US government’s response to the largest global health crisis in a century.
This laissez-faire strategy has been bipartisan. Under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the US federal government has essentially done nothing substantive, leaving each state to decide its own fate.
The Biden White House made that clear, telling people they’re on their own. And the US Department of Health and Human Services has told hospitals that, as of February 2, they no longer even have to report daily Covid-19 deaths to the federal government.
850,000 people in the US have died from Covid-19, and in a few months it's likely to surpass 1 million.
So what is the US government's strategy to stop those deaths? Simple: tell hospitals they can stop reporting Covid deaths.
Don't want to reach 1M? Just stop counting! Murica! https://t.co/qRltNp9Eih
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 15, 2022

Biden claimed he would reverse Trump’s inaction, but his administration has just sat by as 2,000 to 3,000 North Americans perish per day due to Covid-19. On January 18, 2022 alone, 2,990 people in the US died of the virus.
The disastrous consequences of this libertarian approach are clear for the world to see: at least 854,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States, according to official statistics.
This is a breathtaking level of human loss — surpassed only by the barbarism of Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right regime in Brazil, which has overseen 622,000 Covid-19 deaths in a population of 213 million. (If Brazil had implemented the same policies, or lack thereof, with the population of the United States, 335 million, it would have 978,000 Covid-19 deaths.)
Meanwhile, in the mainland People’s Republic of China, with a population of 1.4 billion, there have been fewer than 5,000 deaths. In 2021, there were just two Covid-19 deaths in mainland China. Two.
If the United States had the same population of China, we would be talking about 3.6 million dead from Covid-19.
But then again, China’s biggest banks are state owned — and it is the Chinese government that controls the financial sector, not the banks that control the state, like they do in the United States. So it’s difficult for elites in China to make a killing like bankers do in the US “democracy.”
To someone who lives under U.S. capitalism, a medical system that can successfully curb a pandemic like COVID-19 may seem like fantasy. What did the people, government, and Communist Party of China do to accomplish this incredible result?https://t.co/ohtnJyCygu
— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslweb) January 7, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: Mexico’s AMLO sent Biden letter blasting US ‘interventionism’ and funding of opposition groups. 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, CIA, Claudio X González, Ford Foundation, Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad, Mexico, NED, Nicaragua, USAID, Venezuela

Output:
Mexico’s President AMLO sent Joe Biden a letter condemning US “interventionism”, such as USAID funding of right-wing opposition groups that are trying to destabilize his elected government.

Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent US leader Joe Biden a letter criticizing Washington for meddling in his country’s internal affairs.
The document condemned funding that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has given to right-wing opposition groups that have organized protests against Mexico’s elected government, seeking to destabilize it.
USAID is a notorious CIA cutout that has been used to finance opposition groups and regime-change attempts in countries that challenge Washington’s foreign-policy interests.

López Obrador, who is popularly referred to by his initials AMLO, is Mexico’s first left-wing president in decades.
AMLO came into office in December 2018 vowing to end the “long and dark neoliberal night”.
He has nationalized the country’s lithium reserves and electrical grid, reversed the partial privatization of the oil industry, boosted social spending, and significantly increased the minimum wage.
This incredible graph shows how much the real minimum wage (measured in purchasing power parity) has increased in Mexico under the left-wing government of President AMLO
Note how the minimum wage was totally stagnant in two decades of neoliberal governments
Credit: @mario_campa pic.twitter.com/ZlGxGvb5QF
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 25, 2022

On May 2, AMLO sent a letter to Biden. The Mexican president’s office made the document public on its official website.
“For a while, the government of the United States, in particular the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has funded groups openly opposed to the legal and legitimate government that I represent, which is without a doubt an act of interventionism, violating international law and the respect that there should be between free and sovereign states”, AMLO wrote.
“Moreover, a few days ago it was announced that said agency will increase the budget given to organizations opposed to our government, as appears published on the official website of the State Department”, he added.
The Mexican president read out the letter in his morning press conference on May 3. His office’s official YouTube channel even made a special video with the clip.
“I feel that it is very arrogant, very offensive, and I can’t remain quiet”, AMLO commented, in reference to the US meddling.
Mexico’s President AMLO sent Joe Biden a letter condemning US “interventionism”, specifically citing USAID funding of right-wing opposition groups that are trying to destabilize AMLO's elected government.
Full video here: https://t.co/LFwp7ZojCy pic.twitter.com/2JrCdI7zyx
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) May 9, 2023

USAID and other US government organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), have funded numerous right-wing opposition groups in Mexico, particularly media outlets and so-called “civil society” organizations.
A prominent example is Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, or MCCI), a group founded by right-wing multimillionaire oligarch Claudio X. González, one of AMLO’s most fervent opponents.
MCCI disclosed on its website that it is financed by USAID and NED, as well as the notorious CIA-linked Ford Foundation.
This right-wing opposition leader in Mexico, rich businessman Claudio X. González, who leads a Pinochet-style neoliberal anti-AMLO alliance called Sí por México, is funded by the US government.
His "NGO" "Mexicanos contra la corrupción" is funded by USAID & NED, both CIA cutouts https://t.co/iIJpNQoj4o pic.twitter.com/Job07hxtKf
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) April 3, 2021

The CIA used USAID “humanitarian aid” flights to send weapons to the far-right Contra death squads in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
When the Sandinistas returned to power in 2007, through democratic elections, USAID spent billions of dollars funding right-wing opposition groups, which then played a key role in a violent coup attempt in 2018, which caused hundreds of deaths.
USAID collaborates closely with the US military, and frequently uses “humanitarian” cover to advance the interests of the Pentagon.
In a regime-change operation targeting Venezuela in 2019, USAID was used as a political weapon, working with the US Department of Defense to try to overthrow the leftist government of President Nicolás Maduro.
The United Nations and International Red Cross condemned USAID’s role in the attempted putsch in Venezuela, clearly stating that the US government organization was not providing humanitarian aid. An internal USAID audit even admitted in 2021 that the operation had violated humanitarian principles.

The NED has played an even more nefarious role in funding US meddling schemes and regime-change operations.
In a 1991 report boasting of the “spyless coups” that Washington had sponsored in the former Soviet Union, the Washington Post described the US government’s NED as “the sugar daddy of overt operations”, crediting it for “dispensing money to anti-communist forces behind the Iron Curtain”.
A co-founder of the NED, Allen Weinstein, told the Post, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”.
US foundations like Ford and Rockefeller have historically played a similar role, working closely with the CIA to fund anti-communist groups, including violent ones.
In her book The Cultural Cold War, journalist Frances Stonor Saunders showed how the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations “were conscious instruments of covert US foreign policy, with directors and officers who were closely connected to, or even members of American intelligence”.
This extremely important book The Cultural Cold War documents how the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation have long been "conscious instruments of covert US foreign policy, with directors and officers who were closely connected to, or even members of American intelligence" pic.twitter.com/SxbBPSHhlM
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 13, 2020

In his May 3 press conference condemning Washington’s meddling, President López Obrador proposed that US-Mexico relations should be based on “cooperation and friendship”.
“Together we should confront problems, like the migration issue, like drug trafficking, especially fentanyl”, he stressed.
In Washington, however, far-right US politicians have called for the opposite.
Prominent Republican Congress members have urged the US military to invade Mexico to attack drug cartels, even proposing legislation to justify an intervention.
Hawkish US politicians have blamed Mexico and China for the opioid epidemic in the United States, while ignoring how large pharmaceutical corporations profited from creating the problem in the first place.
AMLO has repeatedly condemned the US threats against his country.
On March 18, he organized a massive rally in the heart of Mexico City, celebrating the anniversary of the expropriation of the country’s oil reserves and shouting, “We remind those hypocritical and irresponsible politicians that Mexico is an independent and free country, not a colony or a protectorate of the United States!”
In a tweet on April 1, AMLO fumed:
They threaten to invade; they sell high-powered weapons in their markets; they do nothing for their youth; they suffer – unfortunately – from the terrible and deadly fentanyl pandemic, but don’t address its causes.
They don’t care about welfare, only money.
Amenazan con invadir, venden armas de alto poder en sus tianguis, no hacen nada por sus jóvenes, padecen —lamentablemente— de la terrible y mortal pandemia del fentanilo, pero no atienden las causas. No les preocupa el bienestar, sólo el dinero, ni fortalecen valores morales,…
— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) April 1, 2023

While hawks in Washington have scapegoated foreign nations like Mexico and China for the opioid crisis at home, they have largely ignored billionaire oligarchs like those of the Sackler family, who made enormous profits on selling highly addictive drugs such as OxyContin.
In a blockbuster article in 2018, titled “Origins of an Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused“, the New York Times noted, “A confidential Justice Department report found the company was aware early on that OxyContin was being crushed and snorted for its powerful narcotic, but continued to promote it as less addictive”.
The Times wrote:
Purdue Pharma, the company that planted the seeds of the opioid epidemic through its aggressive marketing of OxyContin, has long claimed it was unaware of the powerful opioid painkiller’s growing abuse until years after it went on the market.
But a copy of a confidential Justice Department report shows that federal prosecutors investigating the company found that Purdue Pharma knew about “significant” abuse of OxyContin in the first years after the drug’s introduction in 1996 and concealed that information.
Company officials had received reports that the pills were being crushed and snorted; stolen from pharmacies; and that some doctors were being charged with selling prescriptions, according to dozens of previously undisclosed documents that offer a detailed look inside Purdue Pharma. But the drug maker continued “in the face of this knowledge” to market OxyContin as less prone to abuse and addiction than other prescription opioids, prosecutors wrote in 2006.
Based on their findings after a four-year investigation, the prosecutors recommended that three top Purdue Pharma executives be indicted on felony charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, that could have sent the men to prison if convicted.
But top Justice Department officials in the George W. Bush administration did not support the move, said four lawyers who took part in those discussions or were briefed about them. Instead, the government settled the case in 2007.


Instruction: Write an article about: West opposes rest of world in UN votes for fairer economic system, equality, sustainable development. 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: economics, Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Türkiye, United Nations

Output:
The West opposed the rest of the planet in United Nations General Assembly votes that called for a new international economic order based on sovereign equality, sustainable development, and biological diversity.

Most countries on Earth voted at the United Nations General Assembly to support a call for a new international economic order that is based on sovereign equality and cooperation, that rejects unilateral sanctions and advocates for debt relief for the Global South.
The only countries that opposed this widely popular proposal were the West and its allies.
The United States and its proxies were also the lone votes against common-sensical resolutions promoting sustainable development, biological diversity, and basic civil rights for Palestinians. Almost the entire world supported these proposals.

Washington showed itself to be a rogue state on the international stage, voting against practically every resolution, even on uncontroversial issues where the rest of the planet is in agreement.
Most of these resolutions were commonplace, are introduced every year, and have been voted on many times before, with similar results: the West vs. the rest.
In 1974, formerly colonized nations in the Global South proposed a plan to dismantle the remaining economic structures of colonialism.
They called it the New International Economic Order (NIEO), and said that it should be “based on the principles of equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest, cooperation and solidarity among all States.”
The NIEO has been consistently voted on at the United Nations in the five decades since. And the West has persistently opposed it.

On December 14, 2022, 123 countries voted in favor of the NIEO – 64% of the UN’s 193 member states. (The number would have been even higher, but several nations that have been illegally sanctioned by the US, such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe, had their UN voting rights temporarily suspended because they have been unable to pay their membership fees in dollars.)
Just 50 nations voted against it, with one abstention, from NATO member Türkiye.

The 50 countries opposed to the call for a fairer, more equitable economic system consisted of the United States, members of the European Union, Britain, Israel, Canada, Australia, South Korea, and Japan.
This grouping has been referred to as the “Collective West.”
The West is not a geographic construct; it is a political one. This is why Australia, which was created as a British settler colony, is located in the eastern hemisphere but is politically and culturally part of the West.
The same is true for apartheid Israel, which like Australia was created as a British settler-colonial project and has since become a US proxy with a key geostrategic location in West Asia.
Similarly, the two East Asian nations that are part of this Western bloc are military occupied by the United States, which has stationed tens of thousands of troops in Japan since the mid-1940s and in South Korea since the early 1950s.
Reflecting on the December 14 vote, Chinese journalist Chen Weihua observed, “It’s US and EU against the rest of the world. Basically 900 million against the more than 7 billion from Asia, Africa to Latin America.”
It’s US and EU against the rest of the world.  Basically 900 million against the more than 7 billion from Asia, Africa to Latin America.
— Chen Weihua （陈卫华） (@chenweihua) December 15, 2022

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution “reaffirms the need to continue working towards a new international economic order based on the principles of equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest, cooperation and solidarity among all States.”
It also “reiterates that States are strongly urged to refrain from promulgating and applying any unilateral economic, financial or trade measures not in accordance with international law and the Charter of the United Nations that impede the full achievement of economic and social development, particularly in developing countries.”
The resolution calls for “mutually supporting world trade, monetary and financial systems” and “coordination of macroeconomic policies among countries to avoid negative spillover effects, especially in developing countries”
It similarly urges debt relief for the Global South, stating that it “expresses concern over the increasing debt vulnerabilities of developing countries, the net negative capital flows from developing countries, the fluctuation of exchange rates and the tightening of global financial conditions, and in this regard stresses the need to explore the means and instruments needed to achieve debt sustainability and the measures necessary to reduce the indebtedness of developing countries.”
The December 14 vote took place in the 53rd plenary meeting of the 77th session of the UNGA, featuring reports from the body’s Second Committee, which focuses on economic and financial affairs.
The votes were very similar on related UNGA resolutions. They illustrated how the United States and its proxies act as rogue regimes, violating the will of the international community.
A proposal on “international trade and development” had almost the exact same vote, with 122 in favor, 48 against, and one abstention (once again, Türkiye).
In this resolution, “the Assembly urged the international community to adopt urgent and effective measures to eliminate the use of unilateral economic, financial or trade measures that are not authorized by relevant organs of the United Nations, and that are inconsistent with the principles of international law or the Charter of the United Nations or that contravene the basic principles of the multilateral trading system and that affect, in particular, but not exclusively, developing countries.”

A related resolution emphasized the “role of the United Nations in promoting development in the context of globalization and interdependence.”
In this vote, European countries abstained. The only votes against the resolution came from the United States and Israel.
In the measure, “the Assembly noted with concern that the mobilization of sufficient financing remains a major challenge in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and that progress has not been shared evenly within and among countries, leading to further deepening of existing inequalities.”

Even on other resolutions that were completely straightforward and common-sensical, the US voted against the entire world.
The UNGA adopted a resolution calling to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity and reaffirming its contribution to sustainable development.
166 countries supported the resolution, while just three nations opposed it (the US, Israel, and Japan), with one abstention (South Korea).
All 193 UN member states except for one, the USA, have ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity. Washington stands alone as the only capital on Earth that refuses to join the planet-saving agreement.

The United States also opposed most of the world in a UN vote to recognized the “permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources.”
This resolution passed with 159 countries in favor and 10 abstentions (Australia, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Guatemala, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Togo, and Tuvalu).
A mere eight member states voted against recognizing these basic political and civil rights for Palestinians, including the US, Israel, Canada, Chad, and small island nations that typically vote as US proxies at the UN, including the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau (all former US colonies that have “free association” agreements with Washington and use the dollar as their currency), and Nauru (which uses the Australian dollar).

This pattern was yet again visible in a resolution titled “Oil Slick on Lebanese Shores,” in which the UN lightly criticized Israel for illegally bombing Lebanon’s Jiyeh Power Station in 2006, unleashing a massive oil spill that still causes problems today.
In addition to severely damaging the environment, the UN noted that this Israeli attack cost Lebanon at least $856.4 million.
The language of the resolution was very mild, expressing “its deep concern about the adverse implications of the destruction by the Israeli Air Force of the oil storage tanks in the direct vicinity of the Lebanese Jiyeh electric power plant for the achievement of sustainable development in Lebanon.”
160 member states voted in favor of the resolution, including European countries.
It was opposed only by the US, Israel, Canada, Australia, and Washington’s proxies in the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau.

These votes on December 14 were by no means the only time the United States has exposed to the world its status as an unaccountable rogue regime.
For the 30th year in a row, almost every country on Earth voted at the UN to condemn the illegal, 60-year US blockade of Cuba
185 to 2
USA and apartheid Israel voted against
2 abstained: Bolsonaro's far-right Brazil and NATO's client regime in Ukrainehttps://t.co/g7KFeiYeGP
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 3, 2022

In recent UN votes condemning the six-decade US blockade on Cuba and calling on Israel to get rid of its nuclear weapons, Washington and Tel Aviv spat in the face of the rest of the world.
The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly, 152 to 5, to tell the Israeli apartheid regime to get rid of its nuclear weapons, which are illegal under international law https://t.co/YCQsbXWFZp
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 1, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: US launched 251 military interventions since 1991, and 469 since 1798. 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: Congress, imperialism, military-industrial complex

Output:
The US military launched 469 foreign interventions since 1798, including 251 since the end of the first cold war in 1991, according to official Congressional Research Service data.

The United States launched at least 251 military interventions between 1991 and 2022.
This is according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, a US government institution that compiles information on behalf of Congress.
The report documented another 218 US military interventions from 1798 to 1990.
That makes for a total of 469 US military interventions since 1798 that have been acknowledged by the Congress.

This data was published on March 8, 2022 by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), in a document titled “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2022.”
The list of countries targeted by the US military includes the vast majority of the nations on Earth, including almost every single country in Latin America and the Caribbean and most of the African continent.
From the beginning of 1991 to the beginning of 2004, the US military launched 100 interventions, according to CRS.
That number grew to 200 military interventions between 1991 and 2018.

The report shows that, since the end of the first cold war in 1991, at the moment of US unipolar hegemony, the number of Washington’s military interventions abroad substantially increased.
Of the total 469 documented foreign military interventions, the Congressional Research Service noted that the US government only formally declared war 11 times, in just five separate wars.
The data exclude the independence war between US settlers and the British empire, any military deployments from 1776 to 1798, and the US Civil War.
It is important to stress that all of these numbers are conservative estimates, because they do not include US special operations, covert actions, or domestic deployments.
The CRS report clarified:
The list does not include covert actions or numerous occurrences in which U.S. forces have been stationed abroad since World War II in occupation forces or for participation in mutual security organizations, base agreements, or routine military assistance or training operations.
The report likewise excludes the deployment of the US military forces against Indigenous peoples, when they were systematically ethnically cleansed in the violent process of westward settler-colonial expansion.
CRS acknowledged that it left out the “continual use of U.S. military units in the exploration, settlement, and pacification of the western part of the United States.”
Credit: Military Intervention Project at Tufts University
The Military Intervention Project at Tufts University’s Center for Strategic Studies has documented even more foreign meddling.
“The US has undertaken over 500 international military interventions since 1776, with nearly 60% undertaken between 1950 and 2017,” the project wrote. “What’s more, over one-third of these missions occurred after 1999.”
The Military Intervention Project added: “With the end of the Cold War era, we would expect the US to decrease its military interventions abroad, assuming lower threats and interests at stake. But these patterns reveal the opposite – the US has increased its military involvements abroad.”
Credit: Military Intervention Project at Tufts University


Instruction: Write an article about: CIA intimidated Britain to force ‘ally’ to cut ties with China’s Huawei. 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: Britain, China, CIA, GCHQ, Huawei, podcast, UK, United Kingdom

Output:
The Donald Trump White House and CIA ran “black ops” to intimate Britain to cut ties with China’s tech giant Huawei, hurting the UK’s economic interests to advance Washington’s trade war on Beijing.

The Donald Trump administration led an intimidation campaign to force the United Kingdom to cut all ties with China’s tech giant Huawei.
British intelligence officials referred to the initiative as a CIA “black ops” mission aimed at undermining London’s independence.
This operation succeeding in forcing Britain to ban Huawei, hurting the UK’s own economic interests and delaying its development of 5G technological infrastructure in order to advance Washington’s trade war on Beijing.

These details were revealed in a report in major British newspaper The Times, titled “5G wars: the US plot to make Britain ditch Huawei.”
In May 2019, the Trump White House sent a delegation to London on what The Times referred to as a “policy-disruption mission,” seeking to pressure the UK to completely remove Huawei from its 5G infrastructure.
The British officials “were effectively shouted at by one of their guests for five hours,” the newspaper reported.

The US representative who yelled at them was Matthew Pottinger, a former Marines intelligence officer parachuted who served as the director on Asia for Trump’s National Security Council.
Pottinger, a diehard neoconservative and anti-China hawk, was “one of the most significant people in the entire US government,” according to Trump’s far-right chief strategist Steve Bannon. Pottinger oversaw the US trade war with China.
The UK government assured its US counterparts that it had only decided to use Huawei’s equipment because it was “significantly cheaper” than the technology of European firms.
Britain’s top intelligence agency GCHQ reviewed Huawei’s minimal role in 5G infrastructure development and concluded that it was not a threat, as it would have no access to sensitive networks and information.
But Washington completely ignored London’s objections.
GCHQ was confident it could work safely with the Chinese tech firm. An American official thought otherwise — and, in a Cabinet Office meeting, shouted about it for five hours https://t.co/UnwgF84yyk
— The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) August 21, 2022

A British intelligence officer quoted by The Times explained, “Pottinger just shouted and was entirely uninterested in the UK’s analysis. The message was, ‘We don’t want you to do this, you have no idea how evil China is.’ It was five hours of shouting.”
UK National Security Advisor Kim Darroch told the newspaper that the US delegation “didn’t really have any compelling technical arguments that undermined the GCHQ case,” adding that “the US case was really political, not technical.”
The CIA proceeded to run a “black ops” campaign to undermine Britain’s standing among its European neighbors.
The Times reported:
The CIA tried to discredit the UK’s position on Huawei in the eyes of its European allies. Officers from the agency’s Belgium station met their counterparts in the French, German, Italian and Norwegian intelligence services, among others, to express their concerns about the UK’s “misjudgment”. British intelligence officials were outraged by what they described as a “black ops” mission facilitated by the CIA — some even calling it a betrayal of friendship. Yet again, the special relationship between London and Washington had been strained and risked being permanently disrupted.
The US pressure campaign was ultimately successful in forcing all members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network to ban Huawei.
The newspaper wrote:
US intelligence agencies and White House officials had repeatedly lobbied all members of the Five Eyes to ban Huawei on national security grounds. While New Zealand had followed Australia and banned the Chinese telecoms company in November 2018, Canada was still considering its options, and would not announce its intention to ban Huawei until May this year. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo — a director of the CIA during the early days of the Trump administration — had declared in a thinly veiled warning to Britain in February 2019 that countries using Huawei equipment were a risk to the US. Staff from his office were also reminding their counterparts in Britain that they were risking their place in the Five Eyes should the UK decide to approve Huawei.


Instruction: Write an article about: US turns on Honduran narco-dictator Juan Orlando Hernández after long supporting him. 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: Barack Obama, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Iraq, Joe Biden, JOH, Juan Orlando Hernández, Manuel Noriega, Panama, Rafael Trujillo, Saddam Hussein

Output:
Washington ordered the extradition of Honduran ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) for drug trafficking, but the Obama-Biden and Trump administrations spent years supporting him as he stole elections, and he rose to power thanks to a 2009 US-backed coup.

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
The US government has turned on the right-wing former dictator of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, after it spent years supporting him.
Hernández is the latest in a series of brutal authoritarians who were key US allies until they outlived their usefulness, from Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo to Panama’s Manuel Noriega.

This February, the United States requested the extradition of Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández on charges of trafficking cocaine and guns. Local authorities arrested him on February 15.
Hernández, who is popularly known by his initials JOH, served two terms in office, from 2014 to 2022. It was widely known that JOH used drug money to fund his presidential campaigns, and blatantly stole the 2013 and 2017 elections in broad daylight.
But while he was committing these crimes, Hernández enjoyed staunch support from the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations.
In fact, JOH only came to power in the first place because a 2009 US-sponsored military coup removed Honduras’ democratically elected left-wing president, Manuel Zelaya.
Washington overthrew Zelaya because he had been friendly to Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chávez, and he had integrated Honduras into anti-imperialist regional bloc the Bolivarian Alliance (ALBA).
Following the 2009 coup, JOH’s right-wing National Party ruled the country with an iron fist. From 2010 to 2014, Hernández served as president of Congress. He was then catapulted to head of state through flagrant electoral fraud.
The 2013 Honduran elections were plagued by massive, systemic irregularities. And it was clear to the world that JOH stole the election in 2017, but the US State Department still congratulated him on his “victory.”
And the United States did more than just endorse JOH’s clearly fraudulent elections. Washington also approved billions of dollars of loans to his corrupt regime, which Hernández and his wealthy oligarchic backers promptly stole, trapping the country in unpayable odious debt.
Why? Because under JOH, Honduras was Washington’s closest ally in Central America. The country is home to the largest US military installation in Latin America, the Soto Cano base.
And, until his final few years, Hernández obediently served US foreign-policy interests, recognizing unelected coup leader Juan Guaidó as supposed “president” of Venezuela.
US President Barack Obama discusses the refugee crisis with Honduran narco-dictator Juan Orlando Hernández in 2014
After the US-backed 2009 coup, violence and organized crime skyrocketed. Honduras turned into one of the most dangerous countries on the planet.
As of 2021, Honduras still has the second-highest murder rate on Earth, surpassed only by its neighbor El Salvador.
Under JOH, Honduras also became the poorest country in Latin America. Poverty rose to a staggering 74% of the population.
This deadly combination of violence, organized crime, and poverty took a heavy toll on the Honduran people. It fueled large waves of migration north toward Mexico and the United States, unleashing a refugee crisis.
This Washington-created refugees crisis in turn provoked domestic problems in the United States. Politicians from both major parties recognized that something had to change.
US Vice President Joe Biden with Honduran narco-dictator Juan Orlando Hernández in 2016
By 2019, Juan Orlando Hernández became a further liability for Washington. His brother Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández was convicted in a New York federal court for trafficking nearly 200,000 kilograms of cocaine and machine guns into the United States.
Tony Hernández had been a congressman in JOH’s National Party, and used drug money to fund the right-wing party and rig elections for his brother.
The imprisonment of Tony Hernández, along with the increased US pressure on Honduras to halt northern migration, created a conflict between JOH and his sponsors in Washington. The once loyal US ally began to implement independent policies.
Honduras started to vote against US interests in the Organization of American States (OAS). Looking for new allies, the JOH government even improved relations with its neighbor Nicaragua, whose leftist Sandinista government is Washington’s top target in Central America.
By 2021, top US politicians and corporate media outlets tried to distance JOH from the US government by depicting him simply as a “Trump ally.”
JOH certainly was a Trump ally, but he had long benefited from bipartisan support from Democrats as well.
Participé como invitado especial en la reunión organizada por el Presidente de #EEUU Donald J. Trump para abordar el tema “Un llamado global para proteger la libertad religiosa”#HondurasEnLaONU pic.twitter.com/nAOftBG0wb
— Juan Orlando H. (@JuanOrlandoH) September 23, 2019

The Obama administration enthusiastically supported the Honduran narco-dictator. In fact, as vice president under Obama, Joe Biden worked closely with JOH.
Biden oversaw the Obama administration’s Central America policy, and Honduras was crucial in its plans.
JOH praised Obama publicly for his neoliberal strategy to bring more corporate investment to the region, called the “Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle.”
Felicito al Pte. Obama y V. Biden su decisión recibir la propuesta de nuestros países (Alianza p Prosperidad) y compartir esfuerzo conjunto.
— Juan Orlando H. (@JuanOrlandoH) January 30, 2015

Biden repeatedly met with JOH, and the narco-dictator tweeted, “Thank you Vice President Joe Biden for supporting Honduras.”
Gracias Vice Pte. @JoeBiden por respaldar a Honduras. pic.twitter.com/xY6Yo9HNOk
— Juan Orlando H. (@JuanOrlandoH) June 17, 2015

When JOH’s right-wing National Party was overwhelmingly defeated by the left-wing Libre Party and its candidate Xiomara Castro in a November 2021 election – the first truly free and fair vote since the 2009 US-sponsored coup – Washington threw its former asset under the bus.
After JOH left office on January 27, 2022, the Biden administration saw an opportunity to make an example out of a former ally, to try to cynically show the world it is supposedly dedicated to fighting corruption.
This February, Washington officially turned on JOH, first revoking his visa and then ordering his extradition to the United States.
Juan Orlando Hernández is the latest in a long line of repressive dictators that the United States supported and cultivated, only to later throw under the bus.
His story echoes those of numerous right-wing Latin American autocrats, from the Dominican Republic to Panama.
Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo oversaw one of the bloodiest regimes in the history of the region, killing, imprisoning, torturing, and disappearing tens of thousands of people, principally leftists and Haitians.
Trujillo enjoyed staunch US support for decades. But by 1961 he had outlived his usefulness, and the CIA was involved in assassinating him.
Closer to Honduras is the case of Panama’s former president Manuel Noriega, a former longtime CIA asset who was later overthrown in a murderous US invasion.
Noriega once collaborated with the CIA to help Washington fund its war on leftist revolutionaries in Nicaragua and El Salvador.
But he later became too independent from the United States. Noriega began to challenge Washington’s foreign-policy interests in the region, working with Libya and Cuba, and challenging US control over the geostrategic Panama Canal.
So Washington turned on its former ally. The United States invaded Panama in 1989, killing at least hundreds of civilians, with some estimates saying thousands lost their lives.
Over in West Asia, the history is very similar. Before he became public enemy number one in the 2003 invasion, or in the 1990 Gulf War, Iraq’s authoritarian leader Saddam Hussein was an erstwhile US ally.
The CIA helped orchestrate the Iraqi Baathist coup that Saddam later rode to power. After the putsch, the CIA even gave the aspiring dictator’s allies a list of Iraqi communists to kill. They were promptly murdered.
In the 1980s, the United States supported Saddam’s Iraq in its war on the new revolutionary government in neighboring Iran. The CIA even helped Saddam use chemical weapons on civilians.
Some of the world’s most notorious drug dealers have also benefited from the backing of US spy agencies.
Mexico’s infamous drug kingpin El Chapo Gúzman, the head of the feared Sinaloa Cartel, was reportedly protected by the CIA for years.
Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar collaborated with the CIA, too. His son Juan Pablo Escobar said the US spy agency used the cocaine smuggled by the leader of the Medellin Cartel in order to fund its war on socialists in Central America.


Instruction: Write an article about: US sanctions on Russia over Ukraine also target Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba. 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: Cuba, Joe Biden, Juan Gonzalez, Nicaragua, Russia, sanctions, Ukraine, Venezuela

Output:
President Joe Biden’s top Latin America advisor, Juan S. Gonzalez, admitted that US sanctions against Russia aim to hurt Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba as well. The three socialist governments condemned NATO aggression for creating the crisis in Ukraine.

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
President Joe Biden’s top Latin America advisor has admitted that US sanctions against Russia over Ukraine intentionally seek to hurt Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba as well.
The United States imposed a series of harsh sanctions on Russia following Moscow’s recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on February 21, and its subsequent military intervention in Ukraine on February 24.
Juan S. González, Biden’s special assistant for Latin America and the US National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, made it clear that these coercive measures against Russia are also aimed at damaging the economies of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba.
Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba have socialist governments that Washington has long tried to overthrow. All three currently suffer under unilateral US sanctions, which are illegal according to international law.
Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton, an architect of the Iraq War, referred to these three Latin American nations as the so-called “Troika of Tyranny.”
Biden’s advisor González did an exclusive interview with Voz de América, the Spanish-language arm of the US government’s propaganda outlet Voice of America, on February 25.
Voz de América published his comments in a report titled “US sanctions on Russia will impact Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, White House estimates.”
“The sanctions against Russia are so robust that they will have an impact on those governments that have economic affiliations with Russia, and that is by design,” González explained.
“So Venezuela is going to start feeling that pressure. Nicaragua is going to feel that pressure, along with Cuba,” he added.
Biden’s Latin America advisor noted that Washington has imposed sanctions on 13 top financial institutions in Russia, including some of the largest in the country. He proudly said that these coercive measures will, “by design,” harm other countries that do a lot of trade with the Eurasian power.
González also used his interview with the US-funded Voz de América to reiterate Washington’s call for regime change against these three socialist governments in Latin America.
His comments were reported by the independent Bolivia-based news website Kawsachun News.
Biden advisor: U.S. sanctions against Russia are 'designed' to impact Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. pic.twitter.com/Zbqg3mgB2N
— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) February 26, 2022

Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba have stood with Russia against NATO expansion and Western military encirclement.
President Nicolás Maduro said that Venezuela “laments the mockery and breaking of the Minsk agreements by NATO, promoted by the United States of America.”
Maduro stressed that Washington and NATO bear responsibility for the conflict, and “have generated strong threats against the Russian Federation.”
Venezuela rechaza el agravamiento de la crisis en Ucrania producto del quebrantamiento de los acuerdos de Minsk por parte de la OTAN. Llamamos a la búsqueda de soluciones pacíficas para dirimir las diferencias entre las partes. El diálogo y la no injerencia, son garantías de Paz. pic.twitter.com/Y7N1lwZfpi
— Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) February 24, 2022

Cuba blamed Washington for the crisis as well. Its Foreign Ministry stated, “The U.S. determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided.”
Denouncing Western governments for sending weapons to Ukraine, Cuba declared, “History will hold the United States accountable for the consequences of an increasingly offensive military doctrine outside NATO’s borders, which threatens international peace, security and stability.”
The U.S. determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided.1/5
Statement by the Revolutionary Government:?https://t.co/3iBcPD9j8x pic.twitter.com/MRgwRCWSMV
— Bruno Rodríguez P (@BrunoRguezP) February 27, 2022

Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega condemned Washington for sponsoring a 2014  coup in Ukraine, and joined Russia in recognizing the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.
The chairman of Russia’s State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, traveled to Nicaragua to meet with top officials from the Sandinista government, and thanked them for their support against NATO expansion and US threats.
???? #Nicaragua recibió a una delegación de alto nivel de #Rusia, encabezada por el Presidente de la Duma Estatal de la Cámara Baja, Vyacheslav Volodín. La visita tiene por objetivo fortalecer la cooperación y la solidaridad bilateral. pic.twitter.com/BMY1AjnviF
— JP+ (@jpmasespanol) February 24, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: Iraq War architect Condoleezza Rice condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as war crime. 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: Condoleezza Rice, Fox News, Iraq, Iraq War, media, Russia, Ukraine

Output:
Without a hint of irony, Iraq War architect Condoleezza Rice condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a war crime in an interview on Fox News. She was not asked about the million Iraqis killed in the illegal US war.

Top current and former US government officials who helped orchestrate the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, which have killed more than 2 million people combined, have come out and vociferously condemned Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine.
Condoleezza Rice, one of the key architects of the Iraq War, was invited on Fox News to denounce the Russian incursion as a war crime.
Fox News did not once mention Rice’s role in overseeing the illegal 2003 US invasion and subsequent military occupation of Iraq, which led to more than 1 million deaths.
Rice was a top foreign-policy official in the George W. Bush administration, serving as national security advisor in the first term, then secretary of state in the second.
In the lead-up to the Iraq War, Rice falsely claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction.” She infamously declared on CNN in January 2003, just weeks before the US invasion, that “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
The level of propaganda on Ukraine is jaw-dropping. Fox News invited on Iraq War architect Condoleezza Rice to condemn Russia's invasion as a war crime
Fox didn't mention Rice's role in overseeing a criminal US war that killed 1 million Iraqis
More here: https://t.co/81Tg4F7BzO pic.twitter.com/A34uLzVrTM
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 2, 2022

In an interview on Fox News this February 27, Rice blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine. She praised Western governments for imposing brutal sanctions on Russia, which have already caused severe economic problems and made lives difficult for tens of millions of Russian civilians.
Without a hint of irony, Rice nodded along as Fox News host Harris Faulkner said, “I have argued that when you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime.”
“I think we are at just a real basic point there,” Faulkner added, as Rice nodded in agreement.
The Iraq War architect responded, “It is certainly against every principle of international law and international order.”
“And that is why throwing the book at them now, in terms of economic sanctions and punishments, is also a part of it,” Rice added. “And I think the world is there. Certainly NATO is there.”
Fox News did not ask Rice if she thinks that her comments apply to the wars that she herself helped the US government wage.


Instruction: Write an article about: Biden is continuing Trump’s brutal anti-immigrant policies. 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: CBP, Donald Trump, ICE, immigration, Joe Biden, podcast, racism

Output:
How President Joe Biden is continuing many of Trump’s brutal anti-immigrant policies, giving more funding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and expanding detention centers while fueling war abroad

Multipolarista editor Benjamin Norton is joined by journalist Abraham Marquez to discuss how the Joe Biden administration has continued many of Donald Trump’s brutal anti-immigrant policies, giving $284.7 million more to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and expanding detention centers, while turning away refugees of US wars and weaponizing displaced Ukrainians.

You can also watch this video at Rokfin or Rumble.

You can download the podcast version for free at Substack.
Read Abraham Marquez’s article “Biden is expanding the US govt’s brutal anti-immigrant machine”:
Since the creation of US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2003, each admin has given it more of our tax dollars & has further militarized the US-Mexico border.
My report @Multipolarista https://t.co/eEvkzh3tiS
— Abraham Marquez (@AbeMarquez3) April 21, 2022

Read Abraham’s other article “Weaponization of immigration policy: Ukrainians welcomed, refugees of US wars abused”:
The Ukraine/Russia conflict highlights the hypocrisy of US immigration policy & media coverage.
All workers escaping violence & war should be treated w/ dignity & respect, & not be used to push an imperialist agenda further.
My latest @Multipolarista https://t.co/FJbsFaX00R
— Abraham Marquez (@AbeMarquez3) April 8, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: US admits weather pushed Chinese balloon off course, US shot down hobbyists’ $12 balloon in $2M missile attack. 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: balloons, China, media

Output:
US officials acknowledged the Chinese balloon they shot down on February 4 had likely been blown off course by unexpected weather. The US Air Force later spent $2 million using missiles to blow up what appeared to be a $12 hobbyist balloon.

A Chinese balloon that the US military shot down had likely been pushed off course by unexpected weather conditions, according to multiple officials in Washington.
This is according to numerous reports in major US media outlets, including the Washington Post and CNN.
In response to hysteria surrounding the Chinese rubber object, the US Air Force subsequently spent roughly $2 million to destroy what appears to have been a hobby group’s $12 balloon.

On February 1, a large Chinese balloon was first seen over the US state Montana.
On February 4, US military fighter jets shot down the rubber object, off the coast of South Carolina.
Washington accused Beijing of using the balloon to spy on US territory.
China adamantly denied that the rubber object was a surveillance device, instead maintaining that it was used for weather research.
There are legitimate reasons to take Beijing at its word. The Washington Post had acknowledged on February 3, “Experts in national security and aerospace said the craft appears to share characteristics with high-altitude balloons used by developed countries around the world for weather forecasting, telecommunications and scientific research”.
The Pentagon itself said that “the payload wouldn’t offer much in the way of surveillance that China couldn’t collect through spy satellites” and that “the balloon posed no serious physical or intelligence threat”.
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) February 4, 2023

The newspaper quoted an anonymous US “senior defense official” who “said the payload wouldn’t offer much in the way of surveillance that China couldn’t collect through spy satellites”, stating, “I wouldn’t characterize it as revolutionary”.
Even the bellicose right-wing think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) – which is funded by the US government and weapons industry and is notorious for its anti-China bias – called for caution early on, conceding in a February 3 article: “China has not used balloons for spying before, and using a balloon would be a step back. The most likely explanation is that this is an errant weather balloon that went astray—lost weather balloons are the basis of many ‘UFO sightings'”.
The neoconservative, US government-funded think tank CSIS is very anti-China, but even it admits:
"China has not used balloons for spying before… The most likely explanation is that this is an errant weather balloon that went astray"https://t.co/WN2Wzil3Zs pic.twitter.com/dG99WtDM9y
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 6, 2023

It was clear from the beginning that the Chinese balloon was part of a manufactured crisis, and its significance, like the rubber object itself, was being blown out of control.
But the media’s hot air had the effect of ratcheting up tensions with China, creating fear among the US public, and leading Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a diplomatic trip to Beijing.
Hawkish US politicians from both the Republican and Democratic Parties, along with neoconservative think tanks, capitalized on the bubble to portray China as a dangerous threat.
Slate reported that Republican Congressman James Comer, who chairs the US House Oversight Committee, warned that the balloon could have “bio-weapons” made in Wuhan, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich insisted it “could be trial runs for low-visibility deliver[y] of devastating EMP weapons”.
CNBC declared that the balloon “threatens NATO members”, citing the Western military alliance’s bellicose Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who denounced the rubber object as a sign of a dangerous “pattern of Chinese behavior”, insisting, “We need to be aware of the constant risk of Chinese intelligence and step up what we do to protect ourselves”.
Spy balloon confirms 'pattern of Chinese behavior' that threatens NATO members, Stoltenberg says https://t.co/zaih1xmjGp
— CNBC (@CNBC) February 8, 2023

From February 10 to 12, Air Force fighter jets shot down three objects. At first, US government officials and Western media outlets implied that Washington had targeted more Chinese surveillance devices, but they actually appeared to have been civilian balloons.
The website Aviation Week reported that an amateur balloon belonging to a hobbyist group called the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade went missing in the same place at the same time as one of these Air Force bombings.
Aviation Week noted: “The descriptions of all three unidentified objects shot down Feb. 10-12 match the shapes, altitudes and payloads of the small pico balloons, which can usually be purchased for $12-180 each, depending on the type”.
The founder of a company that makes pico balloons for hobbyists told Aviation Week, “I tried contacting our military and the FBI—and just got the runaround—to try to enlighten them on what a lot of these things probably are. And they’re going to look not too intelligent to be shooting them down”.
British newspaper The Guardian followed up on this report, in its own article amusingly titled “Object downed by US missile may have been amateur hobbyists’ $12 balloon“.

Researcher Stephen Semler estimated that the Pentagon spent around $2 million in this operation to shoot down the hobbyists’ balloon over Lake Huron.
The Air Force used two AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles in the attack, which cost more than $440,000 each and are manufactured by the arms corporation Raytheon.
How much did it cost to shoot down what was most likely a balloon over Lake Huron? About $2 million, based on my analysis of procurement and operational data: https://t.co/a4f4jrl0eg pic.twitter.com/zguxExdnuz
— Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) February 17, 2023

Immediately after the attacks, the Democratic majority leader of the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, had insisted without evidence that the three objects were spy balloons, declaring, “The Chinese were humiliated – I think the Chinese were caught lying… It’s a real setback for them”.
But the US National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby, revealed on February 14 that the three objects destroyed by the US military were likely balloons “tied to some commercial or benign purpose”.
“We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of [China’s] spying program, or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts”, Kirby added.
President Joe Biden himself admitted on February 16 that the three objects the military blew up were “most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research”.
President Biden said Thursday that three unidentified flying objects shot down over North American airspace were “most likely” balloons tied to private companies or research institutions, not part of China’s surveillance spy balloon operation. https://t.co/mGO8mBTHuu
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) February 17, 2023

Ten days after the Air Force shot down the Chinese balloon, US officials conceded that the rubber object had probably been blown off course by weather.
The Washington Post acknowledged in a February 14 report that the Chinese balloon “may have been diverted on an errant path caused by atypical weather conditions”.
The newspaper reported that the balloon “took an unexpected northern turn, according to several U.S. officials, who said that analysts are now examining the possibility that China didn’t intend to penetrate the American heartland with their airborne surveillance device”.
US “intelligence analysts are unsure whether the apparent deviation was intentional or accidental”, the Post wrote.
“This new account suggests that the ensuing international crisis that has ratcheted up tensions between Washington and Beijing may have been at least partly the result of a mistake”, the newspaper said.
Exclusive: The U.S. tracked the Chinese spy balloon a week before shooting it down off the coast of South Carolina. The Chinese surveillance device may have been diverted on an errant path caused by unusual weather conditions. https://t.co/ESXLKthHhg
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) February 14, 2023

CNN also cited numerous anonymous sources and reported, “US intelligence officials are assessing the possibility that the suspected Chinese spy balloon was not deliberately maneuvered into the continental US by the Chinese government and are examining whether it was diverted off course by strong winds“.
The major US media outlet stated that the balloon took “a path that US officials are not sure was purposeful, and may have been determined more by strong winds than deliberate, external maneuvering by Beijing”.
“Weather modeling done by CNN suggests it is plausible that the wind currents at the time diverted the balloon northward toward Alaska”, the network wrote.
CNN added, “US officials have acknowledged that the balloon’s maneuverability was limited”.
US officials are looking at the possibility that the spy balloon's path was accidental, determined more by strong winds than a course set by China. https://t.co/Z6iPlTl8dK
— CNN International (@cnni) February 16, 2023

In a speech at the Munich Security Conference on February 18, top Chinese diplomat Wang Yi said Washington’s response to the balloon was “absurd and hysterical“.
He added, “It does not show the US is strong; on the contrary it shows it is weak”.