Wars the U.S. waged in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan following September 11, 2001 caused at least 4.5 million deaths and displaced 38 to 60 million people, with 7.6 million children starving today, according to studies by Brown University.

Economist Michael Hudson discusses the collapse of four U.S. banks in two months, giant JP Morgan Chase taking over First Republic Bank, and how government regulators are in bed with the bankers.

The United States spent $877 billion on its military in 2022, nearly 40% of the global total, 10 times more than Russia ($86.4 billion), and three times more than China ($292 billion). The U.S. military budget is larger than the next 10 biggest spenders combined.

Facebook censored a report by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines between Russia and Germany, forcing users to instead read a website funded and partially owned by NATO member Norway.

A polling firm found that Peru’s coup-plotting, right-wing-controlled congress has 6% approval and 91% disapproval. Unelected leader Dina Boluarte has 15% approval and 78% disapproval. But they have the full support of the US, Canada, and foreign mining corporations.

The new chief of the BRICS bloc’s New Development Bank, Brazil’s leftist ex-President Dilma Rousseff, revealed they are gradually moving away from the U.S. dollar, promising at least 30% of loans in local currencies of members.

France’s President Emmanuel Macron told Xi Jinping that he opposes the U.S. war drive against China and wants an independent Europe with “strategic autonomy”. But he has made comments like this before, and failed to challenge Washington’s hegemony.

Before it collapsed and its billionaire depositors were bailed out by the U.S. government, Silicon Valley Bank successfully lobbied Congress to remove regulations on it. A senator admitted, “I understand why Americans are angry, even disgusted”.

The UN Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly to condemn sanctions. The only countries that expressed support for unilateral coercive measures were the U.S., UK, EU member states, Georgia, and Ukraine.

The Joe Biden administration invited numerous authoritarian far-right leaders to the U.S. State Department’s so-called “Summit for Democracy”, including Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, Poland’s Andrzej Duda, India’s Narendra Modi, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and Pakistan’s coup regime.

The U.S. government imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court, threatened to arrest judges, and passed a “Hague Invasion Act”. Previously, the ICC only prosecuted Africans. But now that it wants to arrest Russian President Putin, Washington praises the court (while still refusing to join it).

The U.S. Federal Reserve printed $300 billion in a week to save collapsing banks and bail out Silicon Valley oligarchs. 93% of Silicon Valley Bank’s deposits were uninsured, over the FDIC limit of $250,000, but the government still paid them. 56% of SVB’s loans went to venture capitalist and private equity firms.

Responding to State Department criticism of Mexico’s popular electoral reform, President AMLO denounced U.S. “meddling”, support for coups, and the Monroe Doctrine. He said, “There is more democracy today in Mexico than in the United States… because here the people govern, and there the oligarchy govern”.

A study by the elite EU-funded European Council on Foreign Relations found the West is out of touch politically with the rest of the world. Most people in China, India, and Türkiye see Russia as an important ally, and they want multipolarity, not continued “American global supremacy”.

The foreign ministers of the US, Germany, and Ukraine told the world at the Munich Security Conference, “Neutrality is not an option” in the West’s proxy war against Russia, implicitly criticizing the vast majority of Global South countries, which are independent.

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

Ecuadorian economist and former presidential candidate Andrés Arauz explains Latin America’s attempt to create a new currency and regional financial architecture, to challenge the “hegemonic, neo-colonial” U.S. dollar-dominated system..

Guatemala’s notoriously corrupt right-wing government banned Indigenous leader Thelma Cabrera and her leftist Movement for the Liberation of the Peoples (MLP) party from running in the presidential election. International observers warn this is an “electoral coup”.

Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia have refused to send weapons to Ukraine, despite pressure by the U.S. and EU. Latin American left-wing leaders have urged peace with Russia and called for neutrality in the West’s new cold war.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published a jaw-droppingly misleading graph that portrays China as spending more on its military than the U.S. In reality, the Pentagon’s budget is roughly three times larger.