CovertAction Magazine

09/08/2026

China Officially Stands for World Peace Yet Cooperates with U.S. War-Making

Trump Visits Xi Jinping: China Still Sells U.S. Minerals Used for Its Wars

One of only two major commitments made by China during President Donald Trump’s May visit to Beijing was to buy 200 Boeing jets, the first such deal in almost a decade. The number of jets China agreed to buy was far less than the 500 which Trump’s billionaires had expected, causing a drop in the company’s share price.

China must buy its oil and most has come from Iran and Venezuela. In the last of 2025 and early 2026, the U.S. has seized as least four ships, either Chinese of contracted, with oil headed for China. China did nothing about that, just more words of protest.

Boeing’s CEO Kelly Ortberg was among a dozen billionaires who traveled with Trump. Tesla’s Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and Jensen Huang, the CEO of AI chip giant Nvidia, were among his partners.

Why should China buy commercial aircraft from a major United States warmongering corporation?
Furthermore, one of China’s defense corporations, China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, is number three (2025) among the world’s top 100 weapons firms. Boeing’s listing ranges from number two to seven (2025). [...]

China invests in U.S./Israel Wars and supported Pol Pot’s Genocide and South African Apartheid Che Guevara’s revolutionary humanist perspective led him to “reject any notion that included using capitalist tools or fetishes. The pipe dream that socialism can be achieved with the help of the dul...

09/07/2026

CIA recruiters on college campuses? 👀🎓

Students are pushing back, demanding universities stop giving intelligence agencies a pipeline straight to the next generation.

Should the CIA have a place on campus at all?

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09/07/2026

“An Honest Union Leader Who the Bosses Tried to Frame”

Harry Bridges made his mark as leader of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) for more than 40 years, surviving FBI harassment and efforts to deport him.

His fusion of union leadership with the rank and file and outspoken opposition to U.S. imperial foreign policies provide a model that today’s union leaders should follow.

[This article is part of an annual CAM special for Labor Day where we honor progressive labor leaders. Last year, our focus was on Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. See article here.—Editors]

In 2001, then-California Governor Gray Davis designated July 28—the day of Harry Bridges’ birthday—as Harry Bridges Day, following a special ceremony in which the plaza in front of the San Francisco Ferry Building was named Harry Bridges Plaza.

Some 67 years earlier in 1934, San Francisco had been roiled by a longshoremen’s strike that catapulted Bridges into national fame as a leader of the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), whose West Coast affiliates became the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union (ILWU) in 1937 (and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in 1997).

Rooted in demands for higher wages ($1 an hour), a shorter work week and a union hiring hall, the longshoremen’s strike lasted for 83 days and led to a city-wide general strike after two strikers were killed by police in what was known as “Bloody Thursday.”

Bridges remained ILWU president until he retired in the late 1970s, during which time he was widely respected for his commitment to democratic standards and support for progressive policy positions.

In 1941, The Almanac Singers—then composed of founders Pete Seeger, Lee Hayes and Millard Lampell (and subsequently joined by Woody Guthrie)—wrote a song called “The Ballad of Harry Bridges” which paid tribute to Bridges as an “honest union leader” whom “the bosses tried to frame”—accusing him of being a Soviet-communist agent and trying to have him deported. [...]

Harry Bridges made his mark as leader of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) for more than 40 years, surviving FBI harassment and efforts to deport him. His fusion of union leadership with the rank and file and outspoken opposition to U.S. imperial foreign policies provide a model...

09/04/2026

Lost in Translation: Understanding the Counterrevolution in Haiti

On July 21, 2026, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on “Confronting Haiti’s Terrorist Gangs.”

Colonel Justin Gorkowski of the U.S. Department of Defense, and Ambassador Michael Kozak, the State Department’s Senior Bureau Official of Western Hemisphere Affairs, answered questions from Congress about the “progress” of the joint U.S.-UN Gang Suppression Force (GSF) and Erik Prince’s Vectus Global in Haiti.

The three-hour ruse was rehearsed political theater. State Department hacks spoke about a country they knew little about, feigning official concern for the unprecedented violence that has consumed all facets of Haitian society.

Their proposal was to turn the clock back to 1915, and again, continue invading and occupying Haiti, with mercenaries entirely unfamiliar with the political, historical and spiritual landscape.

Unsurprisingly, barely any of our “elected representatives” raised concerns about the bright idea of adding more U.S. guns and proxy soldiers into the already volatile mix. Nor did they mention where all the guns and drugs in Haiti—the roots of this protracted crisis—come from to begin with.

There was no input or participation from Haitians, proving again what all workers know instinctively: Politicians are nothing more than “a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” It would be more accurate to call the entire farce for what it is, another worthless public relations stunt by Haiti’s Colonial Oversight Committee.

“Nou Pou Kont Nou” (“We Are Alone”)

I just returned from Haiti, a de facto blockaded country, where I continued to hear the same sense of isolation and abandonment from Haiti’s fractured anti-imperialist movement: “We are on our own.” Why do Haitians feel more forgotten than ever?

Paramilitary gangs have been attacking the backbone of the Haitian popular movement—Port-au-Prince’s once sprawling ghettos and the rice-producing department of Latibonit—since they and members of the police committed the 2018 massacre in La Saline.

After the fraudulent election of the Clinton-aligned Michel Martelly in 2011, Haitian oligarchs and a broad web of U.S. interests facilitated the arming of criminal gangs to carry out displacement campaigns and massacres of the most defiant urban neighborhoods and rural districts. [...]

On July 21, 2026, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs held a hearing on “Confronting Haiti’s Terrorist Gangs.” Colonel Justin Gorkowski of the U.S. Department of Defense, and Ambassador Michael Kozak, the State Department’s Senior Bureau Official of Western Hemisphere Affairs, answered qu...

09/03/2026

Iranians Have Shot Down at Least 45 Reaper Drones, Puncturing Myth of Their Invincibility

What will the consequences be?

The Washington Post reported on August 13, 2026, that at least 45 U.S. MQ-9A Reaper drones have been shot down or crashed out of control in the U.S.-Israeli assault against Iran that began in February this year.

On August 31, 2026, Iran said it shot down an additional Reaper after its apparent attack against Iran’s Larak Island in the Strait of Hormuz, showing the U.S. using a pilotless aircraft, possibly for the first time, to initiate a new phase in its and Israel’s hot war against Iran.

As in late July, Iran responded to the latest Reaper attack with a missile barrage on the U.S. Reaper base at King Faisal Air Base in Jordan when it destroyed eight “newly produced and unassembled” Reaper replacements that were being rushed into the conflict, according to Military Watch Magazine.

There is no public information on the exact number of Reaper drones remaining in the U.S. stockpile. General Atomics has built more than 300 Reapers for the War Department, but the fleet size has diminished over time through combat losses, crashes and wear and tear.

The Washington Post report estimated that 185 were available before the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran began on February 28, 2026, and that 25% of the remaining Reapers are gone.

So what? [...]

What will the consequences be? The Washington Post reported on August 13, 2026, that at least 45 U.S. MQ-9A Reaper drones have been shot down or crashed out of control in the U.S.-Israeli assault against Iran that began in February this year. On August 31, 2026, Iran said it shot down an additional....

09/03/2026

Back-to-School Special: Students in Many Elite Universities Will Be Taught a Distorted History of the Vietnam War This Year that Recycles CIA Talking Points

The Vietnam War was a horrific war rooted in U.S. government lies that resulted in the deaths of some two million Vietnamese civilians.

As young men facing the draft in the 1960s learned about the conflict, they began protesting the war in massive numbers, and a critical literature developed that framed the war in the larger context of U.S. history. Many soldiers also turned against the war and joined the antiwar movement.

Unfortunately, this academic year, students at many colleges will not be learning the truth about the Vietnam War. Instead, they will be taught a distorted history that purports to present a Vietnamese viewpoint but actually presents the viewpoint of the defeated South Vietnam government that had been installed by the U.S. and was hated by most of its own population.

A central mythology promoted by self-fashioned “revisionist” historians is that South Vietnam was a fledgling independent country ruled by devoted nationalists and that the Vietnam War was not the result of external aggression by the U.S. but was a civil war that started because of internal divisions.

Furthermore, many claim that the U.S. went into Vietnam with an honorable goal: saving South Vietnam from North Vietnamese communist aggression backed by China and the Soviet Union.

The problem with this assessment is that a large majority of Vietnamese did not accept the division of northern and southern Vietnam as legitimate and saw Vietnam as one country. The Soviet and Chinese role in the Vietnam War also paled in comparison to the U.S.[1] [...]

[This article follows a series on the military-industrial-academic complex and distortion of history teaching on American college campuses today. For previous articles, see here, here and here—Editors] The Vietnam War was a horrific war rooted in U.S. government lies that resulted in the deaths of...

09/01/2026

CIA Sees Ukrainian Paramilitary Fighters the Way They Saw Right-Wing Cubans in 1959—as Ripe Fodder for U.S. Empire’s Dirty Work Across the Globe

Ukrainian intelligence units are conducting drone-warfare operations in Africa and the Middle East as proxies for the U.S.

A consolidation of U.S. elite interests has taken shape in the Russo-Ukrainian war, with a network of Western venture capitalists, high-tech start-ups, NATO military advisers, and CIA intelligence officials reaping material or strategic benefit from the conflict.

This has led not only to a digital transformation of the battlefield, but also to an environment in which Ukrainian military intelligence and security services trained in tactics such as drone warfare have reportedly proliferated in diverse theaters across Africa and the Middle East, including Mali, Sudan and Syria.

This clandestine proxy force may offer some indication, outside of the profit motive that drives endless war at its core, as to why Western hawks insist on continuing a proxy war with a nuclear power despite logical certainty that this could provoke an exchange that exterminates vast swaths of humanity.

CIA Influence in the Ukrainian State

In October 2023, The Washington Post reported that “Ukrainian spies with deep ties to CIA” were waging a “shadow war” against Russia. It named Kyrylo Budanov, the head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR-now HUR), as leading Ukrainian efforts abroad “to fight Russia anywhere Russians can be found.” [...]

Ukrainian intelligence units are conducting drone-warfare operations in Africa and the Middle East as proxies for the U.S. A consolidation of U.S. elite interests has taken shape in the Russo-Ukrainian war, with a network of Western venture capitalists, high-tech start-ups, NATO military advisers, a...

08/31/2026

China Officially Stands for World Peace Yet Cooperates with U.S. War-Making and Promotes Alienation

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has referred to its status since 2012 as the “New Era of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” meaning a mixture of socialism and capitalism.
Four years later, President and Communist Party of China (CPC) leader Xi Jinping was proclaimed the CPC’s fourth leadership core, following Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Jiang Zemin.

“The ruling Communist Party of China celebrated its 105th anniversary on Wednesday, 1 July [2026] with the resolve to press ahead to make [itself] into a modern socialist country by 2049,” wrote Abdul Rahman, a New Delhi University political scientist.

Xi Jinping summarized major achievements of his party, with emphasis on the eradication of absolute poverty. He stated that China would “realize modernization by 2035” and, by the 100th birthday of the People’s Republic of China (2049), the country would have built China “into a great modern socialist country in all respects.”

“Socialist China under the leadership of the CPC is widely recognized as the defender of world peace, contributor to global development, contributor to global development and upholder of international order,” maintained Guo Jiakun, spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Great. With 1.4 billion Chinese today—17% of the world’s population, and more by 2049—that should mean a socialist China could move toward full democratic-stateless communism.

So why should I be so presumptuous as to scold this great nation as I will be doing in these writings? I base my critique on certain important facts, some internal, mostly external, from the time of Mao Zedong to the present.

I have seen myself as a Marxist revolutionary since 1961 from the day the Yankees invaded Cuba.
I joined many leftist anti-war and civil rights groups; seven years a member of a Communist party in the U.S., and another in Denmark. A downside I witness is that most members of these committed organizations are not taught, or allowed to criticize the leadership’s direction, and especially not the old Soviet Union and China since 1949. We have too many divisions and divisiveness.

I want us all to have a critical mind: to ask “why” of our leaders; to suggest what might be a better course. Solidarity with Chinese organizations could, for example, tell their Chinese associates to stop selling war materials to the U.S. If we are really going to build the society we envision, then we must be open-minded and exercise a curious/critical mind and voice. We do not bow down to kings and queens, nor should we bow down to Socialist/Communist leaders either!

First, however, let us acknowledge its positive and wonderful accomplishments.

The U.S.’s main economic rival is “Communist China.” One of the reasons is that these Communists have eliminated poverty (severe and extreme) since 2021, while the “democratic” U.S. has not.

The U.S.’s internal and external capitalist-imperialist path officially allows 11% of its people (37 million) to live in poverty. [...]

[This is the first of a three-part series on China by veteran political activist and journalist Ron Ridenour.—Editors] My morality and thought processes, and much of my writings have I learned from Che Guevara’s meaning about building a socialist society in which people begin to shed themselves ...

08/30/2026

U.S. Citizens Should Be Paid $27,522 in Compensation For Illegal Wars Based on Lies

The Trump administration’s illegal bombing of Iran and murder of school-children has underscored for millions of people the perils of the U.S. warfare state.

At the end of the Cold War, with the Soviet “threat” gone, the American public had been promised a “peace dividend” by which public money would be spent on education, health care, parks and other public goods.

Unfortunately, since that time, new national security “threats” were invented and the military budget was increased substantially for 25 out of the next 34 years.

John Rachel[1] argues in his book America’s Hijacked Peace Dividend: Long Overdue and Immediately Payable that the exorbitant amount of money spent on “national defense” was effectively stolen from American taxpayers in what is among the “biggest scams in world history.”

The public as such has the right to demand repayment of the money, which enriched the military contractors and Wall Street bankers that invested in them.

Rachel estimates, based on the defense budgets since 1992, that the U.S public is owed $9.12 trillion. This amounts to a lump sum payment of $27,552 for each of the roughly 332 million U.S. citizens.[2] [...]

The Trump administration’s illegal bombing of Iran and murder of school-children has underscored for millions of people the perils of the U.S. warfare state. At the end of the Cold War, with the Soviet “threat” gone, the American public had been promised a “peace dividend” by which public ...

08/29/2026

CIA backed Zero Units were among the most feared forces of the war in Afghanistan. These are elite paramilitary squads carrying out deadly night raids, covert ops, and assassinations.
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