| {"instruction": "Write an article about: Why does the US support Israel? A geopolitical analysis with economist Michael Hudson. 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": "Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran, Israel, Michael Hudson, Middle East, oil, Saudi Arabia, West Asia", "output": "A geopolitical analysis of why the United States so strongly supports Israel: Economist Michael Hudson discusses with journalist Ben Norton.\n\nWhy does the United States so strongly support Israel? Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton interviewed economist Michael Hudson to explore the reasons why Israel is such an important part of U.S. foreign policy and Washington\u2019s attempt to dominate not only the region of the Middle East, but the entire world.\n\nIsrael is an extension of U.S. geopolitical power in one of the most critically important regions of the world.\nIn fact, it was current U.S. President Joe Biden, back in 1986, when he was a senator, who famously said that, if Israel didn\u2019t exist, the United States would have to invent it:\nIf we look at the Middle East, I think it\u2019s about time we stop, those of us who support, as most of us do, Israel in this body, for apologizing for our support for Israel.\nThere is no apology to be made. None. It is the best $3 billion investment we make.\nWere there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region; the United States would have to go out and invent an Israel.\nI am with my colleagues who are on the floor of the Foreign Relations Committee, and we worry at length about NATO; and we worry about the eastern flank of NATO, Greece and Turkey, and how important it is. They pale by comparison\u2026\nThey pale by comparison in terms of the benefit that accrues to the United States of America.\nIt goes without saying that the so-called Middle East, or a better term is West Asia, has some of the world\u2019s largest reserves of oil and gas, and the entire world\u2019s economic infrastructure relies heavily on fossil fuels.\nThe planet is gradually moving toward new energy sources, which is needed to fight climate change, but fossil fuels are still absolutely critical to the global economy. And Washington\u2019s goal has been to make sure that it can maintain steady prices in global oil and gas markets.\nBut this is about something much bigger than just oil and gas. The U.S. military\u2019s stated policy since the 1990s, since the end of the Cold War and the overthrow of the Soviet Union, is to try to maintain control over every region of the world.\nThis was stated clearly in 1992 in the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine. The U.S. National Security Council wrote:\n[The United States\u2019] goal is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies. These regions include Europe, East Asia, the Middle East/Persian Gulf, and Latin America. Consolidated, nondemocratic control of the resources of such a critical region could generate a significant threat to our security.\nThen, in 2004, the U.S. government published its National Military Strategy, in which Washington stressed that its goal was \u201cFull Spectrum Dominance \u2013 the ability to control any situation or defeat any adversary across the range of military operations\u201d.\nHistorically, when it came to West Asia, the U.S. relied on a so-called \u201ctwin pillar\u201d strategy. The west pillar was Saudi Arabia, and the east pillar was Iran.\nUntil the 1979 revolution, Iran was governed by a shah, a dictatorial monarch who was backed by the United States and served U.S. interests in the region.\nHowever, following the 1979 revolution, the U.S. lost one of the pillars of its twin pillar strategy, and Israel became increasingly important for the United States to maintain control over this crucially strategic region.\nMany of the world\u2019s top oil and gas producers are located in West Asia.\n\nFurthermore, some of the most important trading routes on Earth go through this region.\nIt would be difficult to overstate how important Egypt\u2019s Suez Canal is. It connects trade transiting from West Asia going into Europe, from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean.\nAround 30% of all of the world\u2019s shipping containers pass through the Suez Canal. That represents around 12% of the total global trade of all goods.\nThen, directly south of the Suez Canal, where the Red Sea enters the Arabian Sea, there is a crucial geostrategic choke point known as the Bab al-Mandab Strait, off the coast of Yemen. There, more than 6 million barrels of oil pass through every single day.\n\nHistorically, the United States has tried to dominate this region in order to maintain control of energy supplies and ensure these global trade routes that the globalized capitalist system is built on.\nAs U.S. influence in the region has weakened in an increasingly multipolar world, Israel has become even more important for the United States to try to exercise hegemony in the region.\nOne can see this clearly in the discussions over oil prices in OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has essentially been expanded to OPEC+ to include Russia.\nToday, Saudi Arabia and Washington\u2019s archenemy, Russia, play a key role in determining global oil prices.\nHistorically, Saudi Arabia was a loyal U.S. proxy, but Riyadh has increasingly pursued a more non-aligned foreign policy. And a very big reason for that is that China is now the biggest trading partner of many of the countries in the region.\nFor a decade, China has been the largest importer of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, whereas U.S. oil imports peaked in 2005.\nDue to massive expansion of production and the shale boom in the 2010s, the United States established itself as one of the top three oil producers on Earth, reducing its need for crude from Persian Gulf.\nMeanwhile, through its global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China is moving the center of world trade back to Asia. And the \u201croad\u201d in BRI is a reference to the New Silk Road.\n\nCan you guess which region is crucial in the New Silk Road and the BRI? Of course, it\u2019s the Middle East \u2013 or, again, a better name is West Asia, and that term actually much better explains the geostrategic importance of this region, because it connects Asia to Europe.\nThis explains why the United States has been so desperate to try to challenge the Belt and Road with its own attempts to build new trade routes. In particular, the U.S. seeks to make a trade route going from India into the Persian Gulf, and then up through Israel.\nSo in all of these projects, Israel plays an important role, as an extension of U.S. imperial power in one of the most important regions of the world. That is why Biden said back in 1986 that if Israel didn\u2019t exist, the U.S. would have to invent it.\nThat is also why Biden repeated this in a White House meeting with Israel\u2019s President Isaac Herzog on October 27, 2022:\nWe\u2019re also going to discuss the ironclad commitment \u2013 and this is, I\u2019ll say this 5000 times in my career \u2013 the ironclad commitment the United States has to Israel, based on our principles, our ideas, our values; they\u2019re the same values.\nAnd I have often said, Mr.\u00a0President [Herzog], if there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one.\nAnd even as recently as October 18, 2023, Biden again repeated the same thing in a speech he made in Israel: \u201cI have long said, if Israel didn\u2019t exist, we\u2019d have to invent it\u201d.\nIn that speech in 2023, Biden traveled to Israel in order to support the country as it was carrying out a brutal bombing campaign in Gaza, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians as part of what legal experts around the world have referred to as a \u201ctextbook case of genocide\u201d.\nTop United Nations experts have warned that the Palestinian people are in danger of genocide by Israel.\nAnd the United States has steadfastly been supporting Israel, because, as Joe Biden said, Israel is an extension of U.S. imperial power in West Asia, and if it didn\u2019t exist, Washington would have to invent it.\n\nBelow follows a transcript of the interview that Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton conducted with economist Michael Hudson, author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.\nBEN NORTON: Michael, thanks for joining me today. We are speaking on November 9, and the latest death toll in the war in Gaza is that Israel has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians.\nThe United Nations has referred to Gaza as a \u201cgraveyard for children\u201d. More than 4,000 children have been killed. About 40% of the casualties are children.\nAnd the United States has continued to support Israel, not only diplomatically and politically, not only by, for instance, vetoing resolutions in the U.N. Security Council that call for a ceasefire, but furthermore, the U.S. has been sending billions of dollars to Israel.\nNot only the $3.8 billion that the U.S. always gives to Israel every year in military aid, but additionally, tens of billions of dollars more.\nSo I am wondering if you could provide your analysis of why you think the U.S. is investing so many resources in supporting Israel while it is clearly committing war crimes.\nMICHAEL HUDSON: Well, certainly it is supporting Israel, but it\u2019s not supporting Israel because this is an altruistic act.\nTo the United States, Israel is its landed aircraft carrier in the Near East. Israel is the takeoff point for America to control the Near East.\nAnd from the very time there was talk of creating an Israel, it was always that Israel was going to be an outpost, first of England, then of Russia, then of the United States in the Near East.\nAnd I can give you an anecdote. Netanyahu\u2019s main national security advisor for the last few years has been Uzi Arad. I worked at the Hudson Institute for about five years, 1972 to \u201876. And I worked very closely with Uzi there.\nUzi and I made two trips to Korea and Japan to talk about international finance. So we had a good chance to get to know each other. And on one trip, we stopped over from New York to San Francisco. And in San Francisco, there was a party or a gathering for people to meet us.\nAnd one of the U.S. generals came over and slapped Uzi on the back and said, you\u2019re our landed aircraft carrier over there. We love you.\nWell, I could see Uzi feeling, tightening up and getting very embarrassed and didn\u2019t really have anything to say. But the United States has always viewed Israel as just our foreign military base, not Israel.\nSo of course, it wants to secure this military base.\nBut when England first passed the act saying there should be in Israel the Balfour Declaration, it was because Britain wanted to control the Near East and its oil supplies.\nWhen Israel was formed in the United Nations, the first country to recognize it was Stalin and Russia, who thought that Russians were going to have a major influence over Israel.\nAnd then after that, of course, when Truman came in, the military immediately saw that America was replacing England as the chief of the Near East. And that was even after the fight, the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953.\nSo from the United States, it\u2019s not Israel\u2019s wagging the American tail, just the opposite. You mentioned that America is supporting Israel. I don\u2019t think America is supporting Israel at all, nor do most Israelis, nor do most Democrats.\nAmerica is supporting Netanyahu. It\u2019s supporting Likud, not Israel. The majority of Israelis, certainly the non-religious Israelis, the core population of Israel since its founding, is opposing Likud and its policies.\nAnd so what really is happening is that to the United States, Netanyahu is the Israeli version of Zelensky in the Ukraine.\nAnd the advantage of having such an unpleasant, opportunist, and corrupt person as Netanyahu, who is under indictment for his bribery and corruption, is precisely that all of the attention now of the whole world that is so appalled by the attacks going on in Gaza, they\u2019re not blaming the United States.\nThey\u2019re blaming Israel. They\u2019re blaming Netanyahu and Israel for it, when it\u2019s the United States that has been sending plane load after plane load of bombs, of guns. There are 22,000 machine guns, automatic guns, that are banned for sale in the United States that America is sending for the settlers to use on the West Bank.\nSo there\u2019s a pretense of good cop, bad cop. You have Mr.\u00a0Blinken telling Netanyahu, when you bomb hospitals, make sure you do it according to the rules of war. And when you kill 100,000 Gaza children, make sure it\u2019s all legal and in the war. And when you talk about ethnic cleansing and driving a population out, make sure that it\u2019s all done legal.\nWell, of course, it\u2019s not the rules of war, and there are war crimes being committed, but the United States is pretending to tell Netanyahu and the Israeli government, use smaller bombs. Be more gentle when you bomb the children in the hospital, when actually this is all for show.\nThe United States is trying to say, well, we\u2019re only there to give help to an ally. The whole world has noticed that the U.S. now has two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, right off the Near Eastern shore, and it has an atomic submarine near the Persian Gulf.\nWhy are they there? President Biden and Congress say we are not going to have American troops fighting Hamas in Gaza. We\u2019re not going to get involved. Well, if the troops are not going to get involved, why are they there?\nWell, we know what the American planes are doing. Yesterday, they bombed yet another airport and a fuel depot in Syria. They\u2019re bombing Syria. And it\u2019s very clear that they\u2019re there not to protect Israel, but to fight Iran.\nAgain and again, every American newspaper, when it talks about Hamas, it says Hamas is acting on behalf of Iran. When it talks about Hezbollah, and is there going to be an intervention from Lebanon against northern Israel, they say Hezbollah are the Iranian puppets.\nAny time they talk about any Near Eastern leader, it\u2019s really that all these leaders are puppets of Iran, just like in Ukraine and Central Europe, they talk about Hungary and other countries as all being puppets of Putin in Russia.\nTheir focus, really \u2013 America isn\u2019t trying to fight to protect Ukraine. It\u2019s fighting for the last Ukrainian to be exhausted in what they\u2019d hoped would be depleting Russia\u2019s military. Well, it hasn\u2019t worked.\nWell, the same thing in Israel. If the United States is pushing Israel and Netanyahu to escalate, escalate, escalate, to do something that at a point is going to lead Nasrallah to finally say, okay, we can\u2019t take it anymore. We\u2019re coming in and helping rescue the Gazians and especially rescue the West Bank, where just as much fighting is taking place. We\u2019re going to come in.\nAnd that\u2019s when the United States will then feel free to move not only against Lebanon, but all the way via Syria, Iraq, to Iran.\nWhat we\u2019re seeing in Gaza and the West Bank today is only the catalyst, the trigger for the fact that the neocons say we are never going to have a better chance than we have right now to conquer Iran.\nSo this is the point for the showdown, that if America is to control Near Eastern oil, and by controlling Near Eastern oil, by bringing it under the US control, it can control the energy imports of much of the world.\nAnd therefore, this gives American diplomats the power to cut off oil and gas and to sanction any country that tries to go multipolar, any country that tries to resist US unipolar control.\nBEN NORTON: Yeah, Michael, I think you\u2019re really hitting such an important point, which is how this is one of the most geostrategic regions of the world, especially when it comes to hydrocarbons.\nThe entire global economy is still very heavily reliant on oil and gas, and especially considering the US is not part of OPEC, and especially now considering that OPEC has really expanded essentially to OPEC+ and now includes Russia.\nThat means that Saudi Arabia and Russia essentially can help control global oil prices. And we\u2019ve seen this really, in fact, in the United States in the past few years with the rise of consumer price inflation.\nWe saw that the Biden administration was concerned about gas prices, in particular in the lead up to the midterm elections. And the Biden administration has been releasing a lot of oil from the strategic oil reserves of the United States.\nAnd we can also see these kinds of statements in particular when we go back and look at the Bush administration. There are numerous people involved in the Bush administration and the so-called \u201cWar on Terror\u201d who openly talked about how important it was for Washington to dominate this region.\nAnd I\u2019m really thinking of, in 2007, when the top US general and NATO commander Wesley Clark famously disclosed that the Bush administration had made plans to overthrow seven countries in five years. And those were countries in North Africa and West Asia.\nSpecifically, he revealed in an interview with journalist Amy Goodman on Democracy Now that Washington\u2019s plans were to overthrow the governments of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran:\nWESLEY CLARK: About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me.\nAnd one of the generals called me and he said, \u201cSir, you\u2019ve got to come in and talk to me a second\u201d.\nI said, \u201cWell, you\u2019re too busy\u201d. He said, \u201cNo, no\u201d. He says, \u201cWe\u2019ve made the decision; we\u2019re going to war with Iraq\u201d.\nThis was on or about the 20th of September. I said, \u201cWe\u2019re going to war with Iraq, why?\u201d He said, \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d. He said, \u201cI guess they don\u2019t know what else to do\u201d.\nSo I said, \u201cWell, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?\u201d He said, \u201cNo, no\u201d. He says, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing new that way. They\u2019ve just made the decision to go to war with Iraq\u201d.\nHe said, \u201cI guess it\u2019s like we don\u2019t know what to do about terrorists, but we\u2019ve got a good military and we can take down governments\u201d.\nAnd he said, \u201cI guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail\u201d.\nSo I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan.\nI said, \u201cAre we still going to war with Iraq?\u201d And he said, \u201cOh, it\u2019s worse than that\u201d.\nHe said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper, and he said, \u201cI just got this down from upstairs\u201d, meaning the Secretary of Defense\u2019s office today, and he said, \u201cThis is a memo that describes how we\u2019re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran\u201d.\nI said, \u201cIs it classified?\u201d He said, \u201cYes, sir\u201d. I said, \u201cWell, don\u2019t show it to me\u201d.\nAnd I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, \u201cYou remember that?\u201d And he said, \u201cSorry, I didn\u2019t show you that memo! I didn\u2019t show it to you!\u201d\nAMY GOODMAN: I\u2019m sorry, what did you say his name was? (laughs)\nWESLEY CLARK: I\u2019m not going to give you his name. (laughs)\nAMY GOODMAN: So go through the countries again.\nWESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and then back to Iran.\nBEN NORTON: And since then, we of course saw the U.S. war on Iraq. We of course saw the proxy war in Syria that still goes on in many ways. The U.S. is occupying one-third of Syrian territory, including the oil rich areas.\nAnd Trump himself, President Donald Trump, boasted in a 2020 interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that he was leaving U.S. troops in Syria to take the oil:\nDONALD TRUMP: And then they say, \u201cHe left troops in Syria\u201d. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They\u2019re protecting the oil.\nLAURA INGRAHAM: We\u2019re not taking the oil. We\u2019re not taking it.\nDONALD TRUMP: Well, maybe we will, maybe we won\u2019t.\nLAURA INGRAHAM: They\u2019re protecting the facilities.\nDONALD TRUMP: I don\u2019t know, maybe we should take it. But we have the oil. Right now, the United States has the oil.\nSo they say, \u201cHe left troops in Syria\u201d. No, I got rid of all of them, other than we\u2019re protecting the oil; we have the oil.\nBEN NORTON: We also saw the U.S. impose sanctions on Lebanon, which contributed to hyperinflation and the destruction of the Lebanese economy. And that was largely because Hezbollah is part of the government, and the U.S. has been pressuring the Lebanese government to create a new government without Hezbollah.\nWe also saw, of course, that NATO destroyed the Libyan state in 2011. Somalia also has a failed state. And Sudan was divided in no small part thanks to the U.S. and Israel supporting South Sudan\u2019s separatist movement on ethno-religious lines, using religious sectarianism.\nSo if you look at the list of countries that Wesley Clark named in 2006, the seven countries in five years, again, that was Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran; the only country that really has been able to maintain state stability, that has not been completely devastated by the United States, is Iran.\nOf course, it took longer than five years, but the U.S. was pretty successful. And of course Israel has played an important role in this U.S. goal to destabilize those governments in the region.\nMICHAEL HUDSON: Well, let\u2019s look and see how this was done. Remember after America was attacked on 9/11, there was a meeting at the White House, and everybody knew that the pilots were Saudi Arabians, and they knew that some of the pilots had been staying at the Saudi embassy in Los Angeles, I think, in the United States.\nBut after 9/11, there was a cabinet meeting, and Rumsfeld said to the people there, look and find any link you can get to Iraq, forget Saudi Arabia, no problem, Iraq is the key. And he directed them to find it, and 9/11 became the excuse for attacking not Saudi Arabia, but Iraq, and going right on with it.\nWell, you needed a similar crisis in Libya. They said in Libya, there was some, I think, fundamentalists in the suburbs of one of the [cities], not the capital city, that were causing problems. And so you have to \u201cprotect\u201d the innocent people from [Muammar Gadhafi], and you go in and grab all of their gold reserves, all of their money, and you take over the oil on behalf of France\u2019s oil monopoly.\nWell, this is the role of the fighting in Gaza today. Netanyahu\u2019s fight against Gaza is being used as the excuse for America moving its warships there, its submarines, and bombing, along with Israel, the Syrian airport so that the Syrians are not able to move weapons or any kind of military support either to Lebanon, to the west, or Iran, to the east.\nSo it\u2019s obvious that all of what we\u2019re seeing is somehow to soften up public opinion for the fact that, well, just like we had to invade Iraq because of 9/11, we have to now finally fight and take out the oil refineries of Iran and their scientific institutes and any laboratories where they may be doing atomic research.\nAnd Iran realizes this. Last week, the Iranian press TV said that their defense minister says that if there\u2019s any attack on Iran, whether by Israel or by anyone else, the U.S. and its foreign bases are going to be hit hard.\nIran, Russia, China have all looked at the Gaza situation not as if it\u2019s an Israeli action, but as if it\u2019s the U.S. action. They all see exactly that it\u2019s all about Iran, and the American press only says when it talks about Gaza or Hamas or Hezbollah or any other group, it\u2019s always the Iranian tool so-and-so.\nThey\u2019re demonizing Iran in the same way that the neocons have demonized Russia to prepare for America declaring an undeclared war against Iran. And they may even declare war.\nLast night, on [November] 8, the Republicans had their presidential debate without Trump, and Nikki Haley said, you know, we\u2019ve got to fight Iran, we\u2019ve got to conquer it. And DeSantis of Florida said, yes, kill them all. He didn\u2019t say who the them was. Was it Hamas? Was it everybody who lives in Gaza? Was it all of the Arabs in the Middle East?\nAnd we\u2019re really seeing something very much like the Crusades here. It\u2019s a real fight for who is going to control energy, because, again, the key, if you can control the world\u2019s flow of energy, you can do to the whole world what the United States did to Germany last year by blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines.\nYou can grind its industry to a halt, its chemical industry, its steelmaking industry, any of its energy-intensive industries, if countries do not agree to U.S. unipolar control. That\u2019s why it wants to control these areas.\nWell, the wildcard here is Saudi Arabia. Well, in two days, I think you\u2019re going to have the Iranian president visit Saudi Arabia, and we\u2019re going to see what\u2019s going to happen.\nBut Saudi Arabia finds that while its role is key, Saudi Arabia could simply say we\u2019re not going to export more oil until America pulls out of the Near East. But then all of Saudi Arabia\u2019s monetary savings are invested in the U.S.\nThe United States is holding the world hostage, not only by controlling its oil and gas and energy, but by controlling its finance. It\u2019s like you have your money in a mafia bank or in Bankman-Fried\u2019s cryptocurrency mutual fund. They can do whatever they want with it.\nSo I think what would happen is it\u2019s very unlikely that Saudi Arabia is ostensibly going to visibly break with the United States because the U.S. would hold it hostage.\nBut I think what it would do would be what has been talked about ever since the 1960s, when similar problems came with Iran. And Iran\u2019s ace in the hole has always been the ability to sink a ship in the Hormuz Strait, where the oil goes through a very narrow little strait, where if you sink a tanker there or a warship, it\u2019s going to block all of the sea trade with Saudi Arabia.\nAnd that would certainly, number one, take Saudi Arabia off the hook for saying, we can\u2019t help it. Of course, we\u2019d love to export oil, but we can\u2019t because the shipping lanes are all blocked because you, America, attacked Iran and they defended themselves by sinking the ship. So you can\u2019t send your aircraft carriers and submarines to attack Iran. That\u2019s very understandable.\nBut the United States is causing a world crisis.\nWell, obviously, the United States knows that that\u2019s going to happen because it\u2019s been discussed literally for 50 years. Since I was at the Hudson Institute working on national security, it was being discussed what to do when Iran sinks the ship in the Strait of Hormuz.\nWell, the United States figures, okay, oil prices are going to go up. And if Iran fights back in this way, we then will have the power to do to the world what we did to Germany in 2022 when we cut off its oil. But in this case, we don\u2019t take the blame.\nWe\u2019ll say, oh, we didn\u2019t block the Saudi and Arab oil trade. It was that Iran that blocked it, and that\u2019s why we\u2019re going to bomb Iran, assuming that they can.\nSo that, I think, is the contingency plan. And just as America had a contingency plan just like that, waiting for an opportunity, like 9-11, they needed a trigger, and Netanyahu has provided the trigger. And that\u2019s why the United States has been backing Netanyahu.\nAnd of course, Iran says, well, we have the ability to really wipe out Israel. And in Congress, General Miley and the others have all said, well, we know that Iran could wipe out Israel. That\u2019s why we have to attack Iran.\nBut in attacking Iran, you send its missiles off to Israel, and again, Israel will end up being the Near Eastern equivalent of Ukraine. And that sort of is the plan, and I think a lot of Israelis see this, and they\u2019re the ones who are worried and are opposing Netanyahu and trying to prevent him from triggering a whole set of military exchanges that Israel won\u2019t be able to resist.\nAnd even though Iran, I\u2019m sure they can bomb some places in Iran, but now that you have Russia, China, all supporting Iran through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, you\u2019re having the lines being drawn very, very clearly.\nSo it seems that this scenario is inevitable because Mearsheimer pointed out that it\u2019s impossible to have a negotiated solution or settlement between Israel and Palestine. He said you can\u2019t have a two-state solution because the Palestinian state is going to be like an Indian reservation in America, all sort of cut apart and isolated, not really a state.\nAnd you can\u2019t have a single state because a single state is a theocratic state. It\u2019s like, again, it\u2019s like the United States in the Wild West in the 19th century.\nAnd I think the way to put it in perspective is to realize that what we\u2019re seeing today in the attempt to split the world is very much like, excuse me, very much like what happened in the 12th and 13th century with the Crusades.\nBEN NORTON: Yeah, Michael, you raise a lot of very important points there. And I know you want to talk further about the Crusades and the historical analogy. And I think you made a really good point about the US empire standing in as the new Crusaders.\nBut before you move away from the more contemporary political discussion, I wanted to highlight two very important points that you stressed.\nOne is not only the hydrocarbon reserves in the Middle East, which are so important for the world economy and in the US attempt to maintain control over oil and gas supplies and in particular energy costs.\nThere\u2019s also an election coming up in 2024, and the US is concerned about gas prices and inflation. And of course, energy inputs are a key factor in inflation.\nBut furthermore, this region is strategic because of trade routes. Of course, the Suez Canal, according to looking at data here from the World Economic Forum, 30% of the world\u2019s shipping container volume transits through the Suez Canal and 12% of all global trade consists of goods that pass through the Suez Canal.\nAnd we saw this in 2021 when there was this big media scandal when a US ship got stuck in the Suez Canal. And this, of course, also came at the time when the world was coming out of the pandemic and there were all these supply chain shocks.\nSo we can see how sensitive the global economy is to even small issues in the global supply chain. And when you talk about shipping routes, we\u2019re not only talking about the Suez Canal, we\u2019re also talking about in the Red Sea toward the south.\nYou also have the Bab al-Mandab. This is a very important strait off of the coast of Yemen. And in the war in Yemen, starting in 2014 and 2015, a lot of the fighting back by the U.S. in this war was in the south, off of the Bab al-Mandab, because this is such an important strait where every single day millions of barrels of oil flow through this strait.\nAnd this also reminded me, Michael, you were talking about the historical context. And if you go back to 1956, Israel invaded Egypt. And why was that? Israel invaded Egypt because Egypt\u2019s leftist president, Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal.\nAnd at that moment, what was very interesting is that the U.K. and France were strongly supporting Israel in this war against Egypt because they were concerned also about Nasser\u2019s nationalization of the Suez. At that moment, the U.S. wasn\u2019t as deeply pro-Israel as it later became.\nOf course, in 1967, in the Six-Day War, Israel attacked the neighboring Arab states and occupied part of Egypt, the Sinai, and then also what became Gaza. Israel occupied the Golan Heights of Syria, which remain illegally occupied Syrian territory today. And Israel occupied the West Bank, what we call the West Bank today.\nBut another important detail about that is, after the 1967 war, Israel increasingly became much more of a U.S. ally.\nWhereas the first generation of Israeli leaders were much more, many of them were European, whereas the later generations of Israelis have been really American.\nI mean, someone like Netanyahu, he is an American. Netanyahu was raised in the United States. He went to high school in Philadelphia. He went to high school with Reggie Jackson, by the way. He spent his most formative years in the U.S. He went to college at MIT.\nHe then worked in Boston, and he worked with many Republicans that he became friends with, like Mitt Romney, like Donald Trump. And then when he went back to Israel, he was sent to the U.S. to be a diplomat in the United States.\nSo the new generation of Israeli leaders is much more American, essentially.\nAnd another detail you mentioned about Iran is so important, because, up until the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Iran of the Shah, the U.S.-backed monarchy, was such an important ally in the region.\nAnd in fact, Saudi Arabia and Iran were famously referred to as the twin pillars. Saudi Arabia was the west pillar and Iran was the east pillar. The U.S. used to try to dominate this region, of course, with the support of Israel as well.\nWell, with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the U.S. lost that crucial east pillar, which meant that Israel became even more important from the perspective of the U.S. imperialism to maintain control over this region.\nSo I just wanted to mention those details of the strategic importance of the trade routes, like the Bab al-Mandab Strait, like the Suez Canal, and also the fact that the Iranian Revolution fundamentally shifted U.S. policy in the region and made Israel even more important from the perspective of U.S. imperialism.\nAnd now we\u2019re in a moment where, as you mentioned, the U.S. is even losing control over Saudi Arabia. So it\u2019s losing both of its pillars, which is, again, why Washington is so desperate in propping up Israel, despite the fact that the entire region is completely against these settler-colonialist policies and these ethnic cleansing policies that Israel is carrying out right now, as the entire world is watching.\nMICHAEL HUDSON: Well, to U.S. diplomats, what you call the support of Israel is really the support of the U.S.\u2019 ability to militarily control the rest of the Near East.\nIt\u2019s all about oil. America is not giving all this money to Israel because it loves Israel, but because Israel is the military base from which the United States can attack Syria, Iraq, and Iran and Lebanon. So it\u2019s a military base.\nAnd of course, it can frame this in terms of pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish policy, but this is only for the public relations view of the State Department.\nIf American strategy is based on energy in the Near East, then Israel is only a means to this end. It\u2019s not the end itself. And that\u2019s why the United States needed to have an aggressive Israeli government.\nYou can look at Netanyahu as being, in a way, a U.S. puppet, very much like Zelensky. Their positions are identical in their reliance on the United States against the majority of their own people.\nSo you keep talking about America\u2019s support of Israel. It\u2019s not supporting Israel at all. It rejects the majority of Israelis. It supports the Israeli military, not the Israeli society or the culture, have nothing to do with Judaism at all. This is pure military politics, and that\u2019s how I\u2019ve always heard it discussed among the military and national security people.\nSo you want to be careful not to be taken in by the cover story.\nThere\u2019s one other means of control, I think, that we should mention, and that is, you\u2019ve had in the last month or so all sorts of statements by the United States that as soon as Russia conquers the Ukraine and solidifies its control, it\u2019s going to bring up claims against war crimes, crimes against humanity, against Russia.\nAmerica is trying to use the crooked court system. The International Criminal Court is a branch of the Pentagon in the State Department, and it\u2019s the kangaroo court. The idea is that somehow the kangaroo court can give America judgments against Putin as they\u2019ve declared him to be arrested anywhere he goes of people who respect the kangaroo court, and they can have all sorts of sanctions against Russian property elsewhere.\nWell, look at how on earth are they going to justify these claims of war crimes against Russia if in the view of what\u2019s happening between Israel and Gaza right now, and in fact, the arms and the bombs that are being used against Gaza are U.S. bombs, U.S. arms. The U.S. is fueling it all.\nHow on earth can the United States not accuse itself of war crimes on the basis of what it\u2019s trying to accuse Russia of? Part of the splitting of the world that you\u2019re going to see, whether or not the United States can actually bomb Iran, is going to be a whole setup of parallel courts and an isolation, not only of the United States, but as Europe is coming in.\nBasically, there\u2019s a fight for who is going to control the world right now, and that\u2019s why I mentioned the Crusades.\nI want to say I\u2019ve been writing a history of the evolution of financial policy. I\u2019ve done two volumes already, one on the Bronze Age Near East, \u2026and forgive them their debts, and the other on classical antiquity, The Collapse of Antiquity. I\u2019m now working on the third volume, which covers the Crusades to World War I.\nIt\u2019s really all about an attempt by Rome, that had hardly any economic power at all, to take over all of the five Christian bishoprics that were made. Constantinople was really the new Rome. That was the head of Orthodox Christianity.\nThe emperor of Constantinople was really the emperor over the whole Christian world. It was followed by Antioch, Alexandria, and finally Jerusalem.\nThe Crusades really began, before they attacked the Near East it began in the 11th century. And Rome was finally being attacked by the Norman armies that were coming in and grabbing parts of France and had moved into Italy.\nSo the papacy made a deal with the Norman warlords, and it said, \u201cWe will give you the divine right to rule, we will recognize you as the Christian king, and we will excommunicate all of your enemies, but you have to pledge feudal fealty, loyalty to us, and you have to let us appoint your bishops and control the churches, which control most of your land, and you have to pay us tribute\u201d.\nThe papacy all during the 10th century was controlled by a small group of aristocratic families around Rome that treated the papacy just as they treat the local political mayor of a city or the local administrators.\nThe church was just sort of run by a family. It had nothing to do with Christian religion at all. It was just, this is the church property, and one of our relatives, we\u2019re always going to have as the pope.\nWell, the popes didn\u2019t have any troops in the late 11th century, and so they got the troops by making a deal with the Normans, and they decided, okay, we\u2019re going to have an ideal, we\u2019re going to mount the Crusades, and we\u2019re going to rescue Jerusalem from the \u201cinfidels\u201d, the Muslims.\nWell, the problem is that Jerusalem didn\u2019t need a rescue, because all throughout the medieval world, throughout Islam, no matter what the religion of the governing classes was, there was a religious tolerance, and that continued for hundreds of years under the Ottoman Empire.\nThere was only one group that was intolerant, and that was the Romans, that said, \u201cWe have to control all of Christianity, in order to prevent these aristocratic Italian families from taking over again\u201d.\nAnd so they mounted the Crusades, nominally against Jerusalem, but they ended up sacking Constantinople, and two centuries later, by 1291, the Christians lost in Acre.\nThe whole Crusade against the Near East failed.\nI think you can see the parallel that I\u2019m going to be drawing.\nSo most of the Crusades were not fought against Islam, because Islam was too strong.\nThe Crusades were fought against other Christians. And the fight of Roman Christianity was against the original Christianity for itself, as it existed over the last 10 centuries.\nWell, you\u2019re having something like that today. Just as Rome appointed the Normans as feudal rulers, William the Conqueror in Sicily, the U.S. appoints Zelensky, supports Netanyahu, supports client oligarchs in Russia, supports Latin American dictators.\nSo you have a U.S. view of the world that is not only unipolar, but in order to have unipolar U.S. control of the world, the U.S. has to be in charge of treating any foreign state, any foreign president as a feudal serf, basically, that they owe feudal loyalty to the United States\u2019 sponsors.\nAnd just as you had the Inquisition formed in the 12th century, really, to enforce this obedience to Rome as opposed to independent southern France, and independent Italy, and Arab science in Spain, you have today the U.S. using the National Endowment for Democracy, and all of the organizations controlled by Victoria Nuland with her cookies, to support things.\nWell, you\u2019re having the whole strategy of the Roman takeover, how it was going to take over other countries, how it was going to prevent other countries from becoming independent of Rome, is almost sentence for sentence what you get in American national security reports, how to control other countries. And that\u2019s really the fight that we\u2019re seeing there.\nAnd against that, you\u2019re finding the fight of other countries, the global majority. But in this case, whereas Constantinople was looted in 1204 and sort of destroyed by the Fourth Crusade, Russia, and China, and Iran and the other countries have not been looted.\nThe only thing that the United States can do right now is it\u2019s setting up this military plan to attack Iran. What is the role going to be of, for instance, India? The attack on Iran and on oil is at the same time an attack on the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative, the whole attempt to control transportation, not only oil, but transportation by the global majority for each other\u2019s mutual growth, mutual gain, mutual trade.\nAnd the United States is trying to have an alternative plan for all of this that would run from India, essentially largely through Israel, and making a cut right across Gaza, which is one of the big problems that are being discussed now, to the Israeli control of Gaza, which would control its offshore oil and gas.\nSo you\u2019re having the wild cards in the U.S. plan, India, Saudi Arabia, what will it do, and Turkey, because Turkey also has an interest in this oil and gas. And if the Islamic countries decide that they\u2019re really under attack, and this attack by the Christian West against Islam is really a fight to the death, then Turkey will join with Saudi Arabia and with all of the other countries, the Shiites, and the Sunnis, and the Alawites will join together and say, what we have in common is the Islamic religion.\nThat is really going to be essentially the extension of America\u2019s fight against China and Russia.\nSo what we\u2019re seeing, I\u2019m going to try to summarize now, what we\u2019re really seeing is having fought Russia to the last Ukrainian, and threatening to fight Iran to the last Israeli. The United States is trying to send arms to Taiwan to say, wouldn\u2019t you like to fight to the last Taiwanese against China? And that\u2019s really the U.S. strategy all over the world.\nIt\u2019s trying to fuel other countries to fight wars for its own control. That\u2019s how Rome used the Norman armies to conquer southern Italy, England, and Yugoslavia.\nIsrael, and what is in the news over the whole attacks in Gaza, is only the opening stage, the trigger for this war, just as the shooting in Sarajevo started World War I in Serbia started everything.\nBEN NORTON: Well, you raised so many interesting points, Michael, and I think your analysis is very fresh and unique and very insightful. I wish we had more time to go into some of these topics, but we\u2019ve already been speaking for about an hour.\nSo I think we\u2019re going to wrap up here. But I do want to thank you, Michael, for joining us. And of course, we\u2019ll be back very soon for more analysis.\nFor people who are interested, I actually have interviewed Michael. I did an interview recently on classical antiquity, and Rome and Greece. And he has also written about the history of debt up through the creation of Christianity in his book And Forgive Them Their Debts. And now he is working on this political, economic, materialist history of the Crusades.\nMICHAEL HUDSON: I didn\u2019t realize when I began the book in the 1980s, drafting it, I didn\u2019t realize how critical the Roman papacy was, and how similar it was to the State Department, and CIA, and the blob today in its plans for world conquest.\nBEN NORTON: Well, I\u2019m sure in the future we will have many opportunities to discuss that research. Of course, for people who want to get more of Michael\u2019s very important analysis, you should check out the show that he co-hosts here with friend of the show, Radhika Desai, and that is Geopolitical Economy Hour.\nIf you go to our website, geopoliticaleconomy.com, or if you go to our YouTube channel, you can find a playlist with all of the different episodes of Geopolitical Economy Hour. So thanks again, Michael, and we\u2019ll definitely have you back very soon.\nMICHAEL HUDSON: It\u2019s good to be here. Thank you.\n"} | |
| {"instruction": "Write an article about: Only 4 of 55 African leaders attend Zelensky call, showing neutrality on Ukraine and Russia. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.", "input": "African Union, food, Russia, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, wheat", "output": "France and Germany pressured African Union leaders for months to join a brief Zoom call with Ukraine\u2019s Volodymyr Zelensky. 51 of 55 African heads of state (93%) boycotted the meeting, showing clear neutrality over the Western proxy war with Russia.\n\n(Se puede leer esta nota en espa\u00f1ol aqu\u00ed.)\nWestern governments have tried to rally the nations of Africa to join their war on Russia. But the vast majority of the continent has ignored their pressure campaign.\nFor months, Ukraine attempted to organize a video conference between the African Union and Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky.\nFrance and Germany put heavy pressure on African governments to attend the Zoom call, which was held on June 20.\nThe conference ended up being a total failure, however. The heads of state of just four of the 55 members of the African Union joined the meeting.\nIn other words, 93% of the leaders of the African continent did not attend the video conference with Zelensky.\nThis was a clear sign of Africa\u2019s overwhelming neutrality in the proxy war between the West and Russia.\nFrance\u2019s major newspaper Le Monde described Zelensky\u2019s video call\u00a0as \u201can address that the African Union (AU) has delayed for as long as possible and has been keen to keep discreet, almost secret.\u201d\nUkraine had tried to organize the conference since April, but the AU had repeatedly pushed it back.\nLe Monde noted that \u201cthe organization of the simple video message illustrates the tense relationships between Mr. Zelensky and the leaders of the continent,\u201d who are \u201csticking to a neutral position.\u201d\nCiting an internal source, The Africa Report identified the very few African heads of state who attended the call as Senegal\u2019s President Macky Sall, C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire\u2019s President Alassane Ouattara, and the Republic of the Congo\u2019s President Denis Sassou Nguesso.\nAlso at the video conference was Mohamed al-Menfi, the leader of the Libyan Presidential Council, which is recognized by some countries as a legitimate government, although this is disputed by many nations, and Libya has remained territorially divided since a 2011 NATO war destroyed the central state.\nAt the meeting with Zelensky, these three or four heads of state were\u00a0joined by Moussa Faki, a politician from Chad who serves as chair of the African Union, and some lower level diplomats of other countries.\nThe African Union apparently tried to keep the conference as quiet as possible. It did not post anything about the call on its official website. It did not tweet about the meeting either.\nThe only official recognition of the call came from Faki, in a lone tweet, in which he cautiously \u201creiterated the AU position of the urgent need for dialogue to end the conflict to allow peace to return to the Region and to restore global stability.\u201d\nUkrainian president @ZelenskyyUa addressed the @_AfricanUnion Assembly today. We reiterated the AU position of the urgent need for dialogue to end the conflict to allow peace to return to the Region and to restore global stability. pic.twitter.com/1RaIIp2UbC\n\u2014 Moussa Faki Mahamat (@AUC_MoussaFaki) June 20, 2022\n\nThe United States and European Union frequently claim that they are acting on behalf of the \u201cinternational community,\u201d but events like this demonstrate that when Washington and Brussels say international community, they actually just mean the roughly 15% of the global population in the West and their loyal allies in Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan.\nMultipolarista detailed in a report in March how the vast majority of the world\u2019s population, which resides in the Global South, has remained neutral over the Western proxy war in Ukraine.\nCountries with some of the largest populations on Earth, such as China, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Mexico, and Vietnam, have remained neutral.\nMany more nations in the Global South, such as South Africa, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Eritrea, have openly blamed NATO and the United States for causing the war in Ukraine.\nGlobal South nations representing the majority of the world's population have either blamed US/NATO for the Ukraine war or are neutral, including:-China-India-Pakistan-Brazil-Ethiopia-Bangladesh-Congo-Iran-South Africa-Mexico-Tanzania-Vietnamhttps://t.co/rZZtsExxio\n\u2014 Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 31, 2022\n\nEstablishment British newspaper The Guardian, which is closely linked to UK intelligence agencies, published an article in March reluctantly acknowledging that many African countries \u201cremember Moscow\u2019s support for liberation from colonial rule, and a strong anti-imperialist feeling remains.\u201d\nThe report noted that a significant number of African leaders are \u201ccalling for peace but blaming Nato\u2019s eastward expansion for the war, complaining of western \u2018double standards\u2019 and resisting all calls to criticise Russia.\u201d\nIt conceded that nations like South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, and Mozambique, \u201care still ruled by parties that were supported by Moscow during their struggles for liberation from colonial or white supremacist rule.\u201d\nRussia today also has important trade relations with Africa. As one of the world\u2019s top producers of wheat, Russia is a significant source of food for the continent.\nWhile food insecurity is an endemic problem in formerly colonized nations in Africa that were ravaged by centuries of Western imperialism, the United States has threatened to make this crisis even worse.\nThe New York Times reported that the US government is pressuring food-insecure countries in Africa not to buy Russian wheat.\n"} | |
| {"instruction": "Write an article about: China forgives 23 loans for 17 African countries, expands \u2018win-win\u2019 trade and infrastructure projects. 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": "\u00c1frica, African Union, China, debt, Wang Yi", "output": "China is forgiving 23 interest-free loans for 17 African countries, after already cancelling $3.4 billion and restructuring $15 billion of debt from 2000-2019. Beijing pledged more infrastructure projects and offered favorable trade deals in a \u201cwin-win\u201d model of \u201cmutually beneficial cooperation.\u201d\n\nThe Chinese government has announced that it is forgiving 23 interest-free loans for 17 African nations, while pledging to deepen its collaboration with the continent.\nThis is in addition to China\u2019s cancellation of more than $3.4 billion in debt and restructuring of around $15 billion of debt in Africa between 2000 and 2019.\n\nWhile Beijing has a repeated history of forgiving loans like this, Western governments have made baseless, politically motivated accusations that China uses \u201cdebt-trap diplomacy\u201d in the Global South.\nThe United States has turned Africa into a battleground in its new cold war on China and Russia. And Washington has weaponized dubious claims of Chinese \u201cdebt traps\u201d to try to demonize Beijing for its substantial infrastructure projects on the continent.\n\nFor its part, China has pushed back against the US new cold war.\nChinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a meeting with leaders from various African countries and the African Union on August 18.\nIn the conference, Wang condemned the West\u2019s \u201czero-sum Cold War mentality.\u201d He instead proposed a model based on \u201cmulti-party cooperation\u201d with Africa that brings \u201cwin-win results\u201d for all sides.\n\u201cWhat Africa would welcome is mutually beneficial cooperation for the greater well-being of the people, not major-country rivalry for geopolitical gains,\u201d he said.\nWang revealed that Beijing will support the African Union in its efforts to join the G20.\nThe foreign minister also announced that \u201cChina will waive the 23 interest-free loans for 17 African countries that had matured by the end of 2021.\u201d\n\u2611\ufe0f China will waive 23 interest-free loans for 17 African countries that matured by the end of 2021.\n\u2611\ufe0f China is prepared to rechannel its $10bn SDR in IMF to Africa.\n\u2611\ufe0f China has decided to provide new food assistance to 17 African countries in need this year.\n\u2014 Chinese Mission to UN (@Chinamission2un) August 18, 2022\n\nBeijing pledged to strengthen trade with Africa, and has made agreements with 12 countries on the continent to remove tariffs for 98% of the products they export to China, increasing the competitiveness of African goods.\nWang said Beijing will continue to provide food, economic, and military aid to Africa, while offering assistance in the fight against covid-19.\nEmphasizing the importance of\u00a0\u201cdevelopment cooperation,\u201d China offered billions of dollars of investment in infrastructure projects as \u201ca strong boost to Africa\u2019s industrialization process.\u201d\nAfrica plays an important role in Beijing\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure project aimed at interconnecting the Global South and moving the center of the world economy back east.\n\u201cIn the face of the various forms of hegemonic and bullying practices, China and Africa have stood with each other shoulder to shoulder,\u201d Wang stressed, calling to \u201csafeguard international fairness and justice.\u201d\nState Councilor & FM Wang Yi chaired the Coordinators\u2019 Meeting on the Implementation of the Follow-up Actions of the 8th #FOCAC Ministerial Conference.\u00a0As Wang Yi stated, China is making every effort to deliver its commitments to Africa despite external difficulties. pic.twitter.com/1C0rr0xq7Z\n\u2014 Chinese Mission to UN (@Chinamission2un) August 18, 2022\n\nChina\u2019s comments and promises to deepen \u201cmutually beneficial cooperation\u201d with Africa could hardly have been any more different from those made by top US diplomats.\nThe US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, visited Uganda and Ghana in the first week of August. There, she threatened the continent, telling African nations they cannot do trade with Russia, or they will be violating Western sanctions.\nThomas-Greenfield warned in Uganda, \u201cAs for sanctions that we have on Russia \u2013 for example, oil sanctions \u2013 if a country decides to engage with Russia where there are sanctions, then they are breaking those sanctions; they\u2019re breaking our sanctions and in some cases they\u2019re breaking UN sanctions with other countries, and we caution countries not to break those sanctions because then, if they do, they stand the chance of having actions taken against them for breaking those sanctions.\u201d\nUS Secretary of State\u00a0Antony Blinken subsequently visited South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda from August 7 to 11, as part of a trip aimed at weakening Africa\u2019s relations with China and Russia.\nThe latter statement was made in Uganda and, lo and behold, it dictated Uganda\u2019s choices. They are not buying cheap Russian fuel, despite a cost-of-living crisis, to avoid being sanctioned by the US. https://t.co/zUxb67JEHc\n\u2014 Eugene Puryear (@EugenePuryear) August 9, 2022\n\nOne of Washington\u2019s most powerful weapons in its information war on China is its evidence-free accusations that Beijing is supposedly trapping African nations in debt.\nYet as Multipolarista previously reported in an analysis of Sri Lanka\u2019s economic crisis, Western governments, financial institutions, banks, and vulture funds are responsible for the vast majority of debt that Global South countries are trapped in.\nThe UK government\u2019s own state media outlet BBC investigated allegations of \u201cdebt trap diplomacy\u201d in Sri Lanka and reluctantly concluded that they are false.\n\u201cThe truth is that many independent experts say that we should be wary of the Chinese debt trap narrative, and we\u2019ve found quite a lot of evidence here in Sri Lanka which contradicts it,\u201d\u00a0BBC reporter Ben Chu said in a dispatch.\nSri Lanka owes 81% of its external debt to US and European financial institutions and Western allies Japan and India.\nChina owns just 10%.\nBut Washington blames imaginary \"Chinese debt traps\" for the nation's crisis, as it negotiates a 17th IMF bailout.https://t.co/Tk49cuLvNS\n\u2014 Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 11, 2022\n\nSimilarly, mainstream academics at Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School acknowledged in Washington\u2019s establishment magazine The Atlantic that \u201cthe Chinese \u2018debt trap\u2019 is a myth.\u201d\nScholar Deborah Brautigam wrote that the US government-sponsored narrative is \u201ca lie, and a powerful one.\u201d\n\u201cOur research shows that Chinese banks are willing to restructure the terms of existing loans and have never actually seized an asset from any country,\u201d she added.\nBrautigam found that, between 2000 and 2019, China cancelled more than $3.4 billion and restructured or refinanced around $15 billion of debt in Africa, renegotiating at least 26 individual loans.\nThis past debt forgiveness is in addition to the 23 interest-free loans for 17 African countries that Beijing has announced it will pardon.\n"} | |
| {"instruction": "Write an article about: US/France threaten intervention in resource-rich Niger: Fears of war in West Africa. 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": "Apollinaire Joachim Ky\u00e9lem de Tamb\u00e8la, Burkina Faso, Caracazo, Carlos Andr\u00e9s P\u00e9rez, ECOWAS, France, Gamal Abdel Nasser, gold, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, Ibrahim Traor\u00e9, Libya, Mali, Muammar Gadhafi, NATO, Niger, nuclear energy, oil, Peru, Thomas Sankara, uranium, Venezuela, West Africa", "output": "The US and France have threatened intervention to re-install a pro-Western regime in Niger, which produces uranium needed for nuclear energy, has untapped oil reserves, and hosts strategic US drone bases and French troops. This follows coups led by nationalist, anti-colonial military officers in West Africa.\n\nThe US and France have threatened foreign intervention to re-install a pro-Western regime in Niger.\nNiger is a major producer of gold and uranium, the latter of which is needed for European nuclear energy. The country has significant oil reserves to which foreign corporations have wanted access. It also hosts large US drone bases.\nThese Western threats follow coups led by nationalist, anti-colonial military officers in neighboring Burkina Faso and Mali, whose governments have warned that intervention would be considered an act of war, and could thus set off a regional conflict.\n\nWest Africa is rich in natural resources. It is also very strategic for the United States and France.\nAlmost all of West Africa was colonized by France, which committed brutal atrocities in the region.\nStill today, France maintains neocolonial policies, effectively controlling West African economies by forcing them to use the CFA franc as their national currency.\nSenegalese development economist\u00a0Ndongo Samba Sylla described the CFA franc as \u201ca colonial currency, born of France\u2019s need to foster economic integration among the colonies under its administration, and thus control their resources, economic structures and political systems\u201d.\nParis dictates the monetary policies and even holds much of the foreign exchange reserves of numerous West African nations, including Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali.\nThe CFA franc is a \u201ca barrier to industrialisation and structural transformation\u201d in these countries, explained Sylla, who characterized it as a \u201cneocolonial device that continues to destroy any prospect of economic development in user nations\u201d.\n\nThe United States has one of its largest and most important drone bases in Niger: the Air Base 201, which cost $110 million to build, and an additional $20-30 million per year to maintain \u2013 in one of the poorest countries on Earth.\nNiger is geostrategically important for the Pentagon\u2019s Africa strategy. It is located in the middle of the Sahel, a region with a lot of US and French military activity, where thousands of troops are stationed on a regular basis.\nWashington uses its drone bases in Niger, in the heart of the Sahel, to project military dominance in North and West Africa, in coordination with the forces that US Africa Command, or AFRICOM, has deployed across the continent.\nIf Washington loses its ally in Niger, the new nationalist military government may try to close the foreign military bases and kick out the roughly 1000 US soldiers in the country.\nNiger\u2019s historically subordinate relationship with the Western powers has not brought the Nigerien people any prosperity.\nThe country is a major producer of gold, but more than 40% of Nigeriens live in extreme poverty.\nNiger is also one of the world\u2019s largest producers of uranium. This radioactive material is crucial for nuclear energy in Europe, especially in France, where roughly one-third of electricity comes from nuclear power.\nLess known is that Niger also has sizeable oil reserves.\nThe market intelligence firm S&P Global Commodity Insights warned that the July coup in Niger \u201ccould jeopardize the African country\u2019s plans to become a significant oil producer and exporter\u201d.\nIt described Niger as a \u201ckey Western ally and security partner and one of the world\u2019s biggest uranium producers\u201d, adding that the \u201ccountry is believed to be sitting on a billion barrels of crude reserves, according to the African Petroleum Producers\u2019 Organization\u201d.\nS&P Global Commodity Insights noted that Niger has been building an oil pipeline with southern neighbor Benin, to transport crude exports out into the Gulf of Guinea and Atlantic Ocean. The country \u201cis on the verge of a long-awaited production surge\u201d, and an oil industry executive described the pipeline as a \u201cgame changer\u201d.\nA former State Department official complained to the market intelligence firm that, following coups led by nationalist military officers in Mali and Burkina Faso, \u201cthe governments abruptly nationalized the gold mines, pushing industrial giants out\u201d.\nSoon after the coup in Niger, there were similar reports that the nationalist military government decided to block exports of uranium and gold to the West.\n\nThe prospect of a foreign military intervention in Niger and potentially other West African nations is truly on the table. It is by no means an empty threat.\nThis is a region where there were very recent examples of Western interventions.\nIn 2013 and 2014, France launched a military intervention in Mali, a neighbor of Niger.\nIn a 2011 regime-change war, NATO \u2013 led by the United States, with the support of France, other European nations, and Canada \u2013 destroyed the state of Libya, killing the North African nation\u2019s longtime revolutionary leader, Muammar Gadhafi.\nStill today, a decade later, Libya has no unified central government. The country has been in a state of destructive civil war.\nNow there is a real possibility that the Western powers that destabilized and devastated Libya could expand this violent chaos to the west and to the south, to the Sahel region.\n\nSome of the nationalist military leaders who have taken power in West Africa are invoking the historical legacy of anti-colonial movements.\nIn Niger\u2019s neighbor Burkina Faso, the new president, Ibrahim Traor\u00e9, has vowed to fight imperialism, quoting Che Guevara and allying with the leftist governments in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba.\nTraor\u00e9 is inspired by Burkina Faso\u2019s former Marxist leader Thomas Sankara, a pan-Africanist military officer who launched a popular revolution in the 1980s.\nTraor\u00e9 even appointed as his prime minister a former close ally of Sankara, Apollinaire Joachim Ky\u00e9lem de Tamb\u00e8la, who he says will oversee a \u201crefoundation of the nation\u201d.\nBurkina Faso\u2019s new president condemns imperialism, quotes Che Guevara, allies with Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba\n\nAt the same time, however, these governments are highly unstable, and have risen to power following not just one but a series of coups in recent years.\nSome of these putsches were led by officers trained by the US or French militaries. Some of the coups have installed pro-Western military governments. But others have been launched by nationalist military officers who oppose French neocolonialism and US imperialism and have asserted more sovereign, independent policies.\nThe leaders of the new government in Niger publicly warned that France is plotting military intervention.\nParis is looking \u201cfor ways and means to intervene militarily in Niger\u201d, the authorities said, stating that French officials met with the chief of staff of Niger\u2019s national guard \u201cto obtain the necessary political and military authorisation\u201d, The Guardian reported.\nThe British newspaper described Niger\u2019s toppled president, Bazoum, as \u201can ally of western powers\u201d.\nAlong with Paris, the US State Department is actively coordinating with Bazoum and plotting to put its ally back in power.\nI spoke to Nigerien President Bazoum today to reiterate that the United States remains committed to the restoration of Niger\u2019s democratically-elected government, and that his and his family\u2019s safety are paramount.\n\u2014 Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) August 3, 2023\n\nTo give supposed \u201cmultilateral\u201d cover to their plans for intervention, the US and France have been working closely with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).\nReuters reported that ECOWAS and \u201cWest African defence chiefs have drawn up a plan for military action if Niger\u2019s coup is not overturned\u201d.\nThe UK-based news outlet emphasized, \u201cGiven its uranium and oil riches and pivotal role in the war with Islamist rebels in the Sahel region, Niger has strategic significance for the United States, China, Europe and Russia\u201d.\nECOWAS imposed sanctions on Niger, and the country\u2019s southern neighbor Nigeria has begun establishing a de facto blockade.\nNiger previously received roughly 70% of its electricity from Nigeria. But the Nigerian government, which is closely allied with the West, has now cut off that power.\nForeign intervention may be easier said than done, however, because Niger\u2019s neighbors have come to its defense.\nThe governments in Burkina Faso and Mali released a joint statement stating that \u201cany military intervention against Niger would be tantamount to a declaration of war against Burkina Faso and Mali\u201d.\nThe West African nations warned that the \u201cdisastrous consequences of a military intervention in Niger \u2026 could destabilise the entire region\u201d, France 24 reported.\nBurkina Faso and Mali also condemned the \u201cillegal, illegitimate and inhumane sanctions\u201d that Western governments have imposed \u201cagainst the people and authorities of Niger\u201d.\nNiger\u2019s pro-Western leader Mohamed Bazoum with French President Emmanuel Macron in February 2023\nIn late July 2023, when Niger\u2019s President Mohamed Bazoum was overthrown, the United States and France immediately sprung into action, condemning his ouster and demanding that the pro-Western leader be reinstated.\nMany African activists highlighted the overwhelming hypocrisy of this response and of Western rhetoric about promoting \u201cdemocracy\u201d.\nIn the past century, the US and European powers have legitimized, supported, and even organized dozens of coups across the Global South, in order to advance their economic and geopolitical interests.\nThere are myriad examples of democratically elected governments led by anti-colonial leaders who were overthrown and in some cases killed by the Western powers.\nOne of the most well-known historical episodes was that of Patrice Lumumba, the founder of the Democratic Republic of Congo.\nCongo had been a Belgian colony. Under brutal King Leopold II, Belgium committed genocide there, killing off half of the Congolese population.\nLumumba helped lead an independence movement against European colonialism, and was democratically elected the DRC\u2019s first prime minister in 1960.\nUS President Dwight Eisenhower ordered the CIA to assassinate Lumumba. With help from the spy agency, Belgium sponsored a coup to remove him.\nThe democratically elected Congolese leader was kidnapped and murdered. His body was subsequently dissolved in acid. Just a few teeth were left behind.\nThis is how Western governments treated anti-colonial leaders during the first cold war. They sponsored coups to remove them and subsequently installed and propped up right-wing, pro-imperialist dictatorships that ruled for decades with an iron fist.\nPatrice Lumumba\nThe Western response to the July 2023 coup in Niger was completely different.\nImmediately, the French government denounced the new nationalist government led by the military. Emmanuel Macron\u2019s office vowed a strong and swift response, writing, \u201cThe President will not tolerate any attack against France and its interests\u201d, specifically emphasizing its business interests in Niger.\nWhile sponsoring unelected coup regimes in Pakistan and Peru, the US State Department also quickly released a statement condemning the new military government in Niger.\n\u201cThe United States welcomes and commends the strong leadership of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Heads of State and Government to defend constitutional order in Niger\u201d, it wrote.\nReferring to Niger\u2019s toppled pro-Western leader, Washington called \u201cfor the immediate release of President Mohamed Bazoum and his family and the restoration of all state functions\u201d.\nThe US added that it \u201cwelcomes the dispatch of the special representative of the ECOWAS Chair to Niger\u201d and \u201cwill remain actively engaged with ECOWAS and West African leaders on next steps to preserve Niger\u2019s hard-earned democracy\u201d.\nBy instrumentalizing ECOWAS to give \u201cmultilateral\u201d cover to an intervention in Niger, the US and France are returning to the strategy they employed when they used NATO to wage war on Libya in 2011.\nAt the moment, the Western powers are also doing the same to justify another military intervention in Haiti, re-creating an international alliance ostensibly led by Kenya to occupy the Caribbean nation.\nOne of the principal economic interests that Western powers have in Niger is its uranium.\nThe anti-poverty organization Oxfam published a report in 2013 detailing how France was making a killing profiting off of the uranium in Niger, which is one of the poorest countries in the world.\nThe people of Niger, who are known as Nigeriens (not to be confused with Nigerians from Nigeria), have seen almost no benefits from this uranium extraction.\nOxfam cited a Nigerien activist who noted, \u201cIn France, one out of every three light bulbs is lit thanks to Nigerien uranium. In Niger, nearly 90% of the population has no access to electricity. This situation cannot continue\u201d.\n\u201cIt is incomprehensible that Niger, the world\u2019s fourth-largest uranium producer and a strategic supplier for Areva and France, is not taking advantage of the revenue from this extraction and remains one of the poorest countries on the planet\u201d, an Oxfam researcher added.\nThe statistics have slightly changed in the decade since that report was published.\nAs of 2023, Niger is the world\u2019s seventh-biggest producer of uranium.\nBut many Western media outlets have noted with fear how important Niger is for European energy stability.\n\u201cNiger coup sparks concerns about French, EU uranium dependency\u201d, Politico warned.\n\u201cNiger supplies 15 percent of France\u2019s uranium needs and accounts for a fifth of the EU\u2019s total uranium imports\u201d, the media outlet reported. \u201cIn 2021, Niger was the EU\u2019s top uranium supplier, followed by Kazakhstan and Russia\u201d.\nPolitico added that \u201cthe coup in Niger could be a challenge for Europe\u2019s uranium needs in the longer term, just as the continent is trying to phase out dependency on Russia, another top supplier of uranium used in European nuclear plants\u201d.\nNuclear energy is relatively important in Europe. In 2022, it made up around 10% of EU energy consumption, slightly down from a peak of nearly 14% in 2002.\nIn France, nuclear energy is even more significant. Since the 1980s, nuclear has become one of its top energy sources.\nBy the 2000s, France\u2019s nuclear power exceeded its use of oil, peaking at nearly 40% in 2005. Nuclear still remained strong in 2021, at 36.5% of total energy consumption (compared to 31% for oil).\n\nSince the coup in Niger, both France and EU leadership have insisted they will not be affected, stating that they have enough uranium in their reserves to last a few years.\nBut if the nationalist government remains in power in Niger and abides by its alleged pledge to cut off uranium exports, Europe could face economic consequences.\nThis also comes at a complicated moment for Europe, which has pledged to boycott Russian oil exports and reduce imports of Russian gas.\nRussia is one of the world\u2019s top producers of both oil and gas. Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the imposition of harsh Western sanctions, Russia was the EU\u2019s biggest energy partner, and the number one provider of oil and gas to many member states.\n\nSome EU officials had proposed increasing nuclear energy production to end the region\u2019s reliance on Russia.\nBut now one of the top providers of the uranium the EU needs for that nuclear energy has seen a coup led by nationalists who oppose Europe\u2019s neocolonial policies.\nThis also comes at a moment in which several countries in Europe are going into recession.\nGermany, the manufacturing superpower at the heart of the EU, is deindustrializing at breakneck speed, largely because it has lost major sources of the cheap energy that its heavy industry needs.\nIn addition to foreign economic designs on West Africa, the US military has a massive footprint on the region \u2013 particularly in Niger, where it operates multiple bases.\nA 2019 report in PBS noted an increasing US military presence in Africa, revealing that the Pentagon had nearly 800 personnel stationed in Niger. (That figure later rose to roughly 1000.)\nGeneral Thomas Waldhauser, the commander of US military forces in Africa, described Niger\u2019s pro-Western government as \u201ca good partner in a very, very bad neighborhood\u201d.\nPBS indicated that the US military was creating a base in Agadez, Niger, which \u201cwill be the largest installation Air Force personnel have ever built\u201d.\n\u201cThe U.S. has been operating drone missions out of another base in Niger\u2019s capital since 2013\u201d, the media outlet wrote, adding, \u201cThe CIA is also believed to be using another drone base in Northeastern Niger\u201d.\nInvestigative journalist Nick Turse, reporting in 2023, described this US facility in Niger, Air Base 201, as \u201cthe linchpin of the U.S. military\u2019s archipelago of bases in North and West Africa and a key part of America\u2019s wide-ranging intelligence, surveillance, and security efforts in the region\u201d.\nTurse wrote in The Intercept:\nBuilt at a price tag of $110 million and maintained to the tune of $20 to $30 million each year, AB 201 serves as a Sahelian surveillance hub that\u2019s home to Space Force personnel involved in high-tech satellite communications, Joint Special Operations Air Detachment facilities, and a fleet of drones \u2014 including armed MQ-9 Reapers \u2014 that scour the surrounding region day and night for terrorist activity. A high-security haven, Air Base 201 sits within a 25-kilometer \u201cbase security zone\u201d and is protected by fences, barriers, upgraded air-conditioned guard towers with custom-made firing ports, and military working dogs.\nWhat is striking is the neocolonial symbolism of the United States maintaining these high-tech military facilities worth hundreds of millions of dollars in Niger, one of the poorest countries on Earth, where the majority of the population doesn\u2019t even have access to electricity.\nUS soldiers at Air Base 201 in Agadez, Niger in 2019\nBefore the July 2023 coup, Washington saw the Nigerien government as a key ally in its attempt to isolate China and Russia.\nAntony Blinken took a historic trip to Niger in March, in the first-ever visit by a US secretary of state.\nDemocracy Now noted that this trip was \u201cpart of the Biden administration\u2019s growing competition with China and Russia\u201d.\n\u201cNiger is one of the last strongholds of U.S. security partnerships in the region\u201d, Brown University researcher Stephanie Savell told the media outlet.\nBlinken\u2019s visit came just a few months after the State Department\u2019s December 2022 US-Africa Leaders Summit, which brought African heads of state to Washington, DC to meet with Biden.\nThe State Department wrote that the summit was \u201crooted in this recognition that Africa is a key geopolitical player\u201d \u2013 in other words, Washington sees the continent as highly strategic in its new cold war against China and Russia.\nOne of the key weaknesses of the new nationalist governments in West Africa is that they came to power through coups, not popular revolutions. This means they are less stable, and if history is any indicator, could be toppled in subsequent coups.\nAlthough most coups in modern history have led to the installation of repressive right-wing regimes, almost always allied with Western imperial interests, there is a historical precedent of some leftist leaders coming to power through coups.\nOne of the most famous revolutionary leaders in the history of Africa, Egypt\u2019s Gamal Abdel Nasser, helped lead a coup in 1952, as part of the progressive Free Officers Movement, which opposed both monarchism and European colonialism.\nNasser was a left-wing nationalist who nationalized many of the economic interests owned by foreign colonial powers, implementing some socialist policies.\nNasser also maintained an independent foreign policy, and was a co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement.\nMajor co-founders of the Non-Aligned Movement (from left to right): India\u2019s Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghana\u2019s Kwame Nkrumah, Egypt\u2019s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indonesia\u2019s Sukarno, and Yugoslavia\u2019s Josip Broz Tito\nThe Egyptian leader helped inspire revolutionary anti-colonial and Arab nationalist movements not only in West Asia, but also in North Africa.\nIn 1969, there was another coup led by a left-wing military leader, Muammar Gadhafi, who named his own anti-colonial, anti-monarchist Free Officers Movement after that of Egypt.\nLike Nasser, Gadhafi implemented socialist policies, using the oil riches in Libya to benefit the people of the country.\nGadhafi created robust social programs, drastically expending public investment in healthcare, education, and housing.\nUnder Gadhafi, Libya had the highest living standards out of all of the African continent.\nLibya\u2019s President Muammar al-Gaddafi (left) with Egypt\u2019s President Gamal Abdal Nasser (right) in 1969\nGadhafi\u2019s Libya likewise supported revolutionary struggles around the world, from the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, to Irish Republicans resisting the British empire, to indigenous Palestinians fighting against Israeli colonialism.\nBut in 2011, Gadhafi was killed in a NATO war.\u00a0When extremist Salafi-jihadist rebels sponsored by the West brutally murdered the Libyan leader with a bayonet, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gloated, live on TV, \u201cWe came, we saw, he died!\u201d\nNATO\u2019s 2011 war collapsed the Libyan state.\u00a0Today, more than a decade later, there is still no unified central government in Libya. The North African nation has been trapped in a brutal civil war.\nNATO\u2019s destruction of the Libyan government even brought open-air slave markets back to the country.\nSo there is a historical precedent on the African continent of leftist leaders ascending to power through military coups. But if they don\u2019t solidify the government\u2019s authority and legitimacy through a popular revolution, the possibility of them being overthrown in another coup or by a foreign military intervention is very real.\nIn Latin America, there have also been examples of this.\nIn Peru in 1968, for instance, there was a coup led by a revolutionary military leader, Juan Velasco Alvarado. Like Nasser and Gadhafi, he implemented socialist policies, nationalizing key sectors of the economy, including banking, mining, and energy.\nWhile promoting workers\u2019 rights and unions,\u00a0Velasco also made Quechua a national language, providing equality for Indigenous communities that had been marginalized by previous (and future) governments.\nBut Velasco was, too, overthrown in another coup, in 1975, led by General Francisco Morales Berm\u00fadez, who reversed many of Velasco\u2019s progressive gains.\nAnother well-known example was Venezuela\u2019s Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, who in 1992 also tried to launch a military coup against the country\u2019s neoliberal president, Carlos Andr\u00e9s P\u00e9rez (known commonly as CAP).\nDuring his second presidential term, which began in 1989, P\u00e9rez implemented aggressive neoliberal economic reforms, including mass privatizations, cuts to subsidies, and increasing public transportation fares. This led to massive protests.\nCAP responded to the popular uprising with extreme violence, ordering the military to gun down protesters. Thousands were killed.\nThis neoliberal massacre, known as the Caracazo, radicalized progressive military leaders like Hugo Ch\u00e1vez.\nIn 1992, Ch\u00e1vez and several other left-wing military officers tried to overthrow the CAP regime. They failed, and were imprisoned.\nVenezuela\u2019s Hugo Ch\u00e1vez after being arrested for the failed 1992 coup\nThe attempted coup turned Ch\u00e1vez into a national hero. He was pardoned and released in 1994, then ran for office and won the 1998 presidential elections.\nHowever, a briefly successful coup against President Ch\u00e1vez that soon followed in 2002, which was sponsored by the George W. Bush administration, shows how putches are much more often tools of undemocratic right-wing elites.\nThe massive popular support Ch\u00e1vez saw among working-class Venezuelans, who reversed the US-backed 2002 coup, was a turning point for the president. He realized he had to deepen the Bolivarian Revolution, and moved further to the left, toward socialism.\nThe lesson in many of these historical episodes is that, if there is not a popular revolution, like what happened in China in 1949, in Cuba in 1959, or in Nicaragua in 1979; if there is simply a military coup led by a progressive or even socialist revolutionary leader, then the government tends to be much less stable, and it is significantly easier for them to be overthrown.\nIf fact, in the case of Burkina Faso, this is precisely the history.\nThomas Sankara came to power in 1983 through a military coup. One of his closest allies in the revolutionary process, Blaise Compaor\u00e9, then led another coup against Sankara in 1987.\nCompaor\u00e9 killed his longtime friend Sankara, and ruled essentially as a dictator from 1987 until 2014.\nCompaor\u00e9 abandoned Sankara\u2019s anti-imperialist and socialist policies, adopting right-wing politics and neoliberal economics, ruling through a series of rigged elections, in close alliance with the US and former colonizer France.\nBurkina Faso\u2019s Blaise Compaor\u00e9 with US President George W. Bush in the White House in 2008\nThis is one of the dangers of the situation now in West Africa. There are nationalist governments that seek true independence and sovereignty, but because they came to power through coups, it established a precedent that a right-wing military officer can use to overthrow the left-wing military officer and impose a conservative pro-Western regime.\nMoreover, these right-wing military leaders are often able to rule for decades, because they have support from Western governments and corporations.\nThis is precisely what happened during the first cold war. There were a series of right-wing, pro-Western dictatorships across the African continent, which overthrew anti-colonial governments and imposed their own reactionary regimes.\nMany leftist anti-colonial leaders were toppled in US-sponsored right-wing coups, from the Democratic Republic of Congo\u2019s Patrice Lumumba in 1961, to Ghana\u2019s Kwame Nkrumah in 1966, to Burkina Faso\u2019s Thomas Sankara in 1987.\nThe nationalist governments in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mali are very unstable, and the threat of Western-sponsored military intervention could destabilize the countries, fueling more coups, and potentially setting off a regional war.\nThe transparent goal of the United States and France is to re-impose political control over the region, to exploit its plentiful natural resources and geostrategic location.\nWhat is happening in West Africa is part of a larger international movement, in which formerly colonized countries across the Global South \u2013 in regions of Latin America and Asia as well \u2013 are seeking complete decolonization, asserting national control over their resources, labor, and economic and security policies, in pursuit of real development, independence, and sovereignty.\nBut the imperial powers will by no means give up without a fight.\n"} | |
| {"instruction": "Write an article about: West votes against democracy, human rights, cultural diversity at UN; promotes mercenaries, sanctions. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.", "input": "democracy, General Assembly, human rights, mercenaries, sanctions, unilateral coercive measures, United Nations", "output": "The West voted against the rest of the world on United Nations General Assembly resolutions, opposing democracy, human rights, and cultural diversity, while supporting mercenaries and unilateral coercive measures (sanctions).\n\nWestern governments frequently claim that their foreign and domestic policies are motivated by \u201chuman rights\u201d and \u201cdemocracy\u201d. They often even lecture their adversaries for purportedly failing to respect these concerns.\nBut on the international stage, Western capitals have shown their commitments to be merely rhetorical, as they have consistently voted against these noble causes and refused to support measures that would tangibly protect them, in flagrant violation of the will of the vast majority of the international community.\nThese stark double standards were on display on November 7 in the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly\u2019s Third Committee, which is devoted to social, humanitarian, and cultural issues.\n\nIn this three-hour session, the West opposed draft resolutions that called for promoting democracy, human rights, and cultural diversity, while\u00a0 simultaneously supporting the use of mercenaries and the application of unilateral coercive measures, commonly known as sanctions.\nThe extended West voted against the rest of the world on these issues. Its positions were virtually uniform as a bloc, led by the United States, including Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan.\nIn fact, the chair of the General Assembly\u2019s Third Committee is Austria\u2019s representative to the United Nations, Alexander Marschik, and even he could not help but laugh in the session at the constant protestations of the US representative, who dominated the debate, speaking out against nearly every resolution to explain why the world should join with Washington in voting against it. (Marschik could not contain his laughter despite the fact that his own country, Austria, voted along with the US on each resolution.)\nGeopolitical Economy Report has created maps that illustrate the clear political divide between the West and the rest.\nIn the November 7 session, nations debated a draft that condemned unilateral coercive measures, or sanctions, for violating the human rights of civilians in targeted countries.\nThe resolution passed with 128 votes in favor and 54 against, and no abstentions.\n\n\nThe General Assembly\u2019s Third Committee likewise considered a measure that called for the \u201cpromotion of a democratic and equitable international order\u201d.\nThe resolution passed with 123 votes in favor and 54 against, plus 7 abstentions (from Armenia, Chile, Costa Rica, Liberia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay).\n\n\nAnother resolution sought to promote \u201chuman rights and cultural diversity\u201d.\nThe measure passed with 130 votes in favor and 54 against, and no abstentions.\n\n\nThe Third Committee deliberated a draft that called for the \u201cpromotion of equitable geographical distribution in the membership of the human rights treaty bodies\u201d.\nThe resolution passed with 128 votes in favor and 52 against, and no abstentions.\n\n\nAnother measure condemned the \u201cuse of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination\u201d.\nThe resolution passed with 126 votes in favor and 52 against, plus 6 abstentions (from Kiribati, Liberia, Palau, Mexico, Tonga and Switzerland).\n\n\nThe United Nations published a full video of the Third Committee\u2019s session on November 7, in the 48th plenary meeting of the General Assembly\u2019s 78th session.\n"} | |
| {"instruction": "Write an article about: After Ukraine, US readies \u2018transnational kill chain\u2019 for Taiwan proxy war. 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, Link 16, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine", "output": "Washington approved the dangerous sale of the Link 16 communications system to Taiwan. This is the final link of what the US military calls a \u201ctransnational coalition kill chain\u201d against China, and signals a commitment to kinetic war.\n\nIn many traditions, when you paint or sculpt a Buddha, the eyes are the very last to be painted. It\u2019s only after the eyes have been completed that the sculpture is fully alive and empowered.\nThe United States has approved a $75 million weapons package to Taiwan province, involving the sale of the Link 16 communications system.\nThe\u00a0acquisition of Link 16 is analogous to \u201cpainting the eyes on the Buddha\u201d: a last touch, it makes Taiwan\u2019s military systems and weapons platforms live and far-seeing.\nIt confers deadly powers, or more prosaically, in the words of the US military, it completes Taiwan as the final, lethal link of what the US Naval Institute calls a \u201ctransnational coalition kill chain\u201d, for war against China.\nWhat exactly is Link 16? It is a key system in the US military communications arsenal. Specifically, it\u2019s the jam-resistant tactical data network for coordinating NATO weapons systems for joint operations in war.\nIf this sale is completed, it signals serious, granular, and single-minded commitment to kinetic war. It would signal that the Biden administration is as serious and unwavering in its desire to provoke and wage large-scale war with China over Taiwan as it was with Russia over Ukraine, which also saw the implementation of this system.\nMore important than any single weapons platform, this system allows the Taiwan/ROC military to integrate and coordinate all its warfighting platforms with US, NATO, Japanese, Korean, Australian militaries in combined arms warfare.\nLink 16 would be the deadliest piece of technology yet to be transferred, because it allows sea, air, and land forces to be coordinated with others for lethal effect.\nIt permits, for example, strategic nuclear/stealth bombers\u00a0 (US B-1B Lancers, B-2 Spirits) to coordinate with electronic warfare and surveillance platforms\u00a0 (EA Growlers, Prowlers, EP-3s), fighters and bombers (F-16,F-22, F-35s) as well as conduct joint arms warfare with US, French, British carrier battle groups, Japanese SDF destroyers, and South Korean Hyun Moo missile destroyers, as well as THAAD and Patriot radars and missile batteries.\nIt also allows coordination with low-earth orbit satellites and other Space Force assets.\nIn other words, Link 16 supplies a brain and nervous system to the various deadly limbs and arms that the Taiwan authorities have been acquiring and preparing on the prompting of the US. It ensures interoperability and US control.\nIt effectively prepares Taiwan to be used as the spear tip and trigger of a multinational war offensive against China.\nTo give a shoe-on-the-other-foot analogy, this would be like China giving separatists in a US territory or state (e.g. Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, Texas) not just arms and training \u2013 already a belligerent act of war, which the US is currently doing \u2013 but connecting insurgent militaries directly to the PLA\u2019s surveillance, reconnaissance, and command/control systems.\nThis coordinates and completes, to borrow the words of the US Naval Institute (USNI), the final link in a \u201ctransnational coalition kill chain\u201d\u00a0for war.\nThe current US doctrine of war against China is based on distributed,\u00a0dispersed,\u00a0diffused, network-centric warfare to be conducted along the myriad islands of the archipelagic states encircling China in the Pacific.\nThese are the \u201cisland chains\u201d upon which the US has encircled and sown dragon\u2019s teeth: tens of thousands of troops armed with mobile attack platforms and missiles.\nThis is to be coordinated with subsurface warfare, automated/autonomous warfare, and longer-range stand-off weapons and attacks.\nPowerful think tanks like CSBA, CNAS, CSIS, RAND and the Pentagon have been working out the doctrine, details, logistics, and appropriations for this concept intensively for over a decade while advocating intensely for it.\nThe sale of link 16 to Taiwan realizes and completes a key portion of this, binding the Chinese island as the keystone of this \u201cmultinational kill chain\u201d.\nThis doctrine of dispersion is based on a \u201crock-paper-scissors\u201d concept that networked diffusion \u201coffsets\u201d (Chinese) precision.\nChina\u2019s capacity to defend itself and its littoral perimeter with precision missiles can be undermined with diffuse, distributed attacks from all across the island chains.\nNote that this diffusion and dispersion of attack platforms across the entire Pacific gives the lie to the claim that this is some inherently deterrent strategy to defend Taiwan island. Diffusion is clearly offensive, designed to overrun and overwhelm defenses: like Ukraine, this is not to deter war, but to enable it.\nThis thus signals that aggressive total war against China is being prepared, in granular, lethal fashion on tactical and operational levels.\nOn the strategic level, currently, at the CFR, CNAS, and other influential think tanks in Washington, the talk is all about \u201cprotracted warfare\u201d with China, about pre-positioning systems and munitions for war, about ramping up to an\u00a0industrial war footing\u00a0for\u00a0the inescapable\u00a0necessity of war\u00a0with China.\nThis discussion includes preparations for a nuclear\u00a0first strike\u00a0on China.\nThe US senses that the clock is running rapidly down on its power. If war is inevitable, then it is anxious to start war sooner rather than later.\nRAND warned in 2016 that 2025 was the outside window for the US to prevail in war with China. The \u201cMinihan window\u201d also hints at 2025. The \u201cDavidson window\u201d is 2027.\nThe question in Washington regarding war with China is not if, but when\u2013and how.\nLink 16 makes \u201chow\u201d easier, and brings \u201cwhen\u201d closer.\nThe current administration has hardline Russophobes who want to continue to bleed Russia out in Ukraine. It wants protracted war with Russia. It firmly believes it can wage ambidextrous, multi-front war.\nMany US officials also believe that war with Ukraine and war with China are connected. They see Russia and China as a single axis of \u201crevisionist powers\u201d (i.e., official enemies) conspiring against the US to undermine its so-called \u201crules-based order\u201d (i.e., US hegemony).\nFurthermore, if the US abandons Ukraine, this could weaken the Taiwan authorities\u2019 resolve and willingness to wage war on behalf of Washington.\nEarlier in the war, when Russian gains in Ukraine were uncertain, Bi-khim Louise Hsiao (Taiwan\u2019s current vice-president elect) gloated publicly and prominently that Ukraine\u2019s victories were a message to China, as well as proof-of-concept of an effective doctrine for waging and winning war against China. As such, the Taiwan authorities were and are a major supporter of the Ukraine proxy war.\nBut the converse also holds true. Based on the same premise, if the US abandons and loses Ukraine, it sends a clear message to the people on Taiwan island that they will be the next to be used and abandoned; that their US-imposed war and war doctrine (light, distributed, asymmetrical combined arms warfare) for fighting China is a recipe for catastrophic loss.\nThe US plans on using proxies for war against China: Taiwan, Korea, Japan (JAKUS), Philippines, and Australia (AUKUS). Thus it cannot signal too overtly its perfidious, unreliable, and instrumental mindset.\nWashington has to keep up the pretense. It cannot be seen to overtly lose in or abandon Ukraine. It needs a \u201cdecent interval\u201d, or a plausible pretext to cut and run.\nStill, the US is stretched thin. For example, it is relying on Korean munitions to Ukraine, and South Korea has provided\u00a0more munitions than all of\u00a0the\u00a0EU combined.\nMoreover, the US is currently at war with itself. The fracturing of its body politic can only be unified with a common war against a common enemy. Russia is not that enemy for the US. China is. The Republicans want war with China now.\nEli Ratner and Elbridge Colby have been fretting for years about the need to husband weaponry, arms, and munitions in order to wage war against China.\nSince the outbreak of Ukraine, Ratner has been working hard to pull India into the US defense industry\u2019s supply chain, and claims to have been successful.\nSouth Korea\u2019s considerable military-industrial complex is being pulled into sub-contracting for US war with China.\nSince many of its major Chaebol corporations got their start as subcontractors for the war in Vietnam (for example, Hyundai was a subcontractor for Halliburton/Brown & Root), the Korean economy is simply reverting back to its corporate-martial roots.\nSouth Korea\u2019s economy is currently tanking due to US-forced sanctions on China. Major Korean electronic firms have lost 60 to 80%\u00a0of their profits due to US-imposed\u00a0chip sanctions.\nUnder those conditions, military manufacturing and/or subcontracting looks to be the only way forward.\nIn this way, the US is forcing a war economy onto its vassals.\nFurthermore, US aid to Ukraine benefits its own arms industry.\nThe business of the US is war. Not only do existing US arms companies gain, but also the entire tech industry and supply chain benefits, and is currently re-orienting around this.\nMuch of the US tech industry is seeking to suckle from the government teat, now flowing copiously in preparation for war.\nOn the other hand, the general US economy is not doing well, with massive layoffs, especially in the consumer and business tech sector.\nThe backstop of military Keynesianism, with the integration of think-tank lobbying groups funded by the arms industry with close ties to the administration (such as CNAS, West Exec Advisors, and CSIS) ensure that war is always the closest ready-to-hand resort for tough economic times.\nThe US is simultaneously trying to decouple supply chains, which creates opportunities for US firms (both domestically and subcontracting with US vassals).\nAutomated, AI-enabled warfare will be a key part of this development, as will be dispersed, distributed warfare platforms using proxies such as South Korea and Japan.\nThis fits the existing historical pattern: the history of Western technology shows that technology and machinery have always been developed first for war.\nAfterwards, they become tools of entertainment and distraction, and later productive tools for general industrial use.\nThis pattern goes back to the earliest machines and inventions of the West: the crane, the pulley, the lever, were all military technologies \u2013 machines of war (used in sieges).\nLater they became machines of illusion and distraction (used as stage machinery in Greek theater).\nOnly much later were they applied for general use \u2013 and exploitation \u2013 in manufacture and production.\nThis holds true for many other technologies, including:\nNuclear power obviously derives from nuclear weapons.\nAI, too, from its inception, was conceived for automated battle management, especially to enable second strike after human life had been destroyed.\nAn AI war is already in the works, with US sanctions on AI-related chips and computing, along with an algorithmic race to suppress dissent and critique in the information domain.\nWar and business are intricately related in the west, and war is the first lever pulled when the economy stagnates critically or needs a boost.\nThe US needs to abandon its neoconservative fantasies of hegemonic global empire and retreat gently into that good night, for there to be peace.\nWashington needs to negotiate in good faith with Russia, and begin the process of de-escalating its proxies in Ukraine, as well as in Palestine, and the Pacific.\nIt needs to seek win-win cooperation in a multilateral order based on international law and mutual co-existence, not its own top-down \u201crules-based order\u201d.\nIt needs to respect the One China principle, end its interference in China\u2019s affairs, and stop preparing and provoking war with China.\nHowever, the US ruling class is unwilling to do so. And it has only a few levers left to pull. The military one is the closest and most ready to hand.\nAs Martin Luther King Jr. said, \u201cThe US is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world\u201d.\nLike a drunk at the bar after the final call \u2013 drunk with power \u2013 Washington is determined to go out with a fight.\nThat fight could involve a\u00a0nuclear first strike. Palestine has shown what it will try to get away with: brazen genocide with the whole world watching.\nThe issue is no longer war or peace in Ukraine. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell sees Ukraine as a \u201cunified field\u201d of war with China. He revels in the possibility of a \u201cmagnificent symphony of death\u201d in Asia.\nThe coda, of course, will be a deafening fermata of silence across the entire planet. Unless we stop this insane march to war.\n"} | |
| {"instruction": "Write an article about: BRICS expanding into economic powerhouse: Petrodollar under threat. 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": "Argentina, Bandung Conference, Brazil, BRICS, China, Cuba, Cyril Ramaphosa, Javier Milei, Lula da Silva, Patricia Bullrich, South Africa, Xi Jinping", "output": "In its South Africa summit, BRICS invited six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The bloc now represents 37% of global GDP (PPP), 40% of global oil production, and roughly 1/3rd of global gas production, challenging the US petrodollar system.\n\nIn its summit in Johannesburg, South Africa this August, BRICS invited six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.\nThe bloc now represents 37% of global GDP (measured at purchasing power parity, or PPP), as well as 40% of global oil production and roughly 1/3rd of global gas production.\nThe inclusion of top oil producers like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have long priced their crude in dollars, is a direct challenge to the US petrodollar system.\n\nAll of the invited nations have indicated that they will officially join the extended BRICS+ bloc on 1 January 2024.\nFour of Earth\u2019s top 10 gas producers are now de facto BRICS+ members, making up 32% of global production.\nSeven of the world\u2019s 10 largest oil producers are now de facto BRICS+ members. According to 2022 data from the US Energy Information Administration, these include the:\n\nIn this video I discuss the importance of the expansion of BRICS\nThe BRICS+ bloc now represents:-37% of global GDP (PPP)-40% of global oil production-1/3rd of global gas production\nIt can challenge the petrodollar system that undergirds US economic hegemony\nFull video below pic.twitter.com/SDQm1ymacV\n\u2014 Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) August 25, 2023\n\nA key topic at the Johannesburg BRICS summit from 22 to 24 August was de-dollarization \u2013 the international movement of countries seeking alternatives to the hegemonic US currency.\nThe Russian government has confirmed that some BRICS members are slowly making plans for a new global currency for international trade, to settle balance of payments, and to hold in central bank foreign-exchange reserves.\nBrazil\u2019s President Lula da Silva, an original co-founder of the BRICS, used the meeting in South Africa as a platform to call for creating a new international reserve currency, to challenge the dollar.\nBRICS has a working group dedicated to developing concrete proposals for this new reserve currency.\nLula emphasized that it would be \u201ca unit of account for trade, which will not replace our national currencies\u201d.\nThese comments made it clear that BRICS model is not the euro; it is rather something like the bancor, the international unit of account proposed by economist John Maynard Keynes at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference (which ended up adopting the dollar as the global reserve currency, under US pressure).\nDiscussions of a new international unit of account are still in the early stages, however, and the currency is only on the horizon in the medium-to-long term.\nIn the short term, BRICS members voted to increase their use of national currencies in bilateral trade.\nThe BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), now under the leadership of Brazil\u2019s former President Dilma Rousseff, has promised to gradually de-dollarize the bank\u2019s lending, instead providing financing for projects in the national currencies of members.\nIn an August article published before the BRICS bloc announced its expansion, economic geographer Mick Dunford explained:\nIn 2022, the combined economic output of the five BRICS members, measured in purchasing power parity, exceeded for the first time that of the US-led G7.\nAt market exchange rates in 2021, the BRICS accounted for 26.1 percent of global GDP and 53.1 percent of world population, compared with 43.5 percent and 9.8 percent for the G7.\u00a0However, GDP is misleading.\nIf one examines the production of manufactures, energy and raw materials and food, the BRICS countries account for 36.6 percent, 28.3 percent and 53.1 percent of world output, respectively (compared with 35.5 percent, 28.1 percent and 14.1 percent in the case of the G7).\nThis\u00a0contribution to the production of real goods vital for human survival significantly exceeds the BRICS\u2019 share of GDP (without correcting for purchasing power differences which significantly raise its shares) while those of the G7 are much smaller than its GDP share.\nThe bloc has become a massive economic powerhouse \u2013 and is only growing in influence.\nPresident Xi Jinping stressed in his speech at the BRICS summit that China does not want a \u201cnew cold war\u201d.\nXi called for \u201cwin-win cooperation\u201d, guided by the goal of \u201ccommon prosperity\u201d for all.\nAt the same time, the Chinese leader warned of the \u201chegemonic and bullying acts\u201d of \u201csome country\u201d \u2013 obviously a reference to the United States.\nXi stated:\nWe need to promote development and prosperity for all. Many emerging markets and developing countries (EMDCs) have come to what they are today after shaking off the yoke of colonialism. With perseverance, hard work and huge sacrifices, we succeeded in gaining independence and have been exploring development paths suited to our national conditions.\nEverything we do is to deliver better lives to our people. But some country, obsessed with maintaining its hegemony, has gone out of its way to cripple the EMDCs. Whoever is developing fast becomes its target of containment; whoever is catching up becomes its target of obstruction.\nBut this is futile, as I have said more than once that blowing out others\u2019 lamp will not bring light to oneself.\nChina's President Xi at the BRICS summit:\n\"some country [hint: the USA], obsessed with maintaining its hegemony, has gone out of its way to cripple the EMDCs (emerging markets and developing countries). Whoever is developing fast becomes its target of containment; whoever is\u2026 https://t.co/mjXvydA5yz pic.twitter.com/XNHc0aYsPT\n\u2014 Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) August 23, 2023\n\nOn the sidelines of the summit, Xi also met with Cuba\u2019s President D\u00edaz-Canel. State media reported that Xi pledged that \u201cChina will continue to firmly support Cuba in defending national sovereignty and opposing external interference and blockade\u201d.\nIn a similar vein, Brazil\u2019s President Lula condemned the unjust, Western-dominated international financial system and insisted that countries need \u201ca fairer, more predictable, and equitable global trade\u201d.\n\u201cWe cannot accept a green neocolonialism that imposes trade barriers and discriminatory measures under the pretext of protecting the environment\u201d, he added.\nIn his speech at the BRICS summit, South Africa\u2019s President Cyril Ramaphosa compared the bloc to the 1955 Bandung Conference, which was organized to oppose colonialism.\n\u201cWhen reflecting on the purpose and role of BRICS in the world today, we recall the Bandung Conference of 1955, where Asian and African nations demanded a greater voice for developing countries in world affairs\u201d, he said.\n\u201cWe still share that common vision\u201d, Ramaphosa added. \u201cThrough the 15th BRICS Summit and this Dialogue we should strive to advance the Bandung spirit of unity, friendship and cooperation\u201d.\nAmong the six countries invited to join BRICS+, a question mark is hanging over the head of one.\nArgentina\u2019s current, centrist government, led by President Alberto Fern\u00e1ndez, has vowed to join BRICS+. However, whether or not the South American country actually does depends on the results of the elections approaching in October.\nTwo of the three main presidential candidates have publicly stated that they will not join BRICS+: the right-wing candidate Patricia Bullrich and the far-right extremist candidate Javier Milei.\nMilei wants to abolish Argentina\u2019s central bank, abandon monetary sovereignty, and adopt the US dollar as the official national currency (while also implementing mass privatizations of state institutions, building private for-profit prisons, and heavily militarizing the country).\nWhen asked if he would consider joining BRICS+ if he won the election, the far-right extremist Milei declared: \u201cOur geopolitical alignment is with the U.S. and Israel. We are not going to align with communists\u201d.\n"} | |
| {"instruction": "Write an article about: Burkina Faso\u2019s new president condemns imperialism, quotes Che Guevara, allies with Nicaragua, Venezuela, 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": "Burkina Faso, Cuba, Daniel Ortega, Fidel Castro, France, Ibrahim Traor\u00e9, Iran, Nicaragua, Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, Roch Kabor\u00e9, Thomas Sankara, Venezuela", "output": "Burkina Faso\u2019s new President Ibrahim Traor\u00e9 has vowed to fight imperialism and neocolonialism. Pledging a \u201crefoundation of the nation\u201d, invoking revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara, and quoting Che Guevara, his government has allied with Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba.\n\nThe new president of Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traor\u00e9, has vowed to fight imperialism and neocolonialism, invoking his country\u2019s past revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara and quoting Che Guevara.\nThe West African nation has also formed close diplomatic ties with the revolutionary governments in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran, as well as with NATO\u2019s arch-rival Russia.\nIn January 2022, a group of nationalist military officers in Burkina Faso toppled the president, Roch Kabor\u00e9, a wealthy banker who had fostered close ties with the country\u2019s former colonizer, France, where he was educated.\nThe military officers declared a government run by what they call the Patriotic Movement for Safeguard and Restoration (MPSR), led by a new president, Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba.\nThey pledged to seek true independence from French hegemony, condemning the neocolonial policies and economic, political, and military control that Paris still exercises over Francophone West Africa.\nBurkina Faso ended its decades-long military agreement with France, expelling the hundreds of French troops that had been in the country for years.\nThe new president, Damiba, was initially popular. But support waned as he was unable to defeat the deadly Salafi-jihadist insurgents that have destabilized the country.\nIn September 2022, discontent led to a subsequent coup in Burkina Faso, which brought to power another nationalist military leader named Ibrahim Traor\u00e9. He was just 34 at the time, making him one of the world\u2019s youngest leaders.\nBurkina Faso\u2019s President Ibrahim Traor\u00e9\nTraor\u00e9 has pledged to carry out a \u201crefoundation of the nation\u201d and comprehensive \u201cmodernization\u201d, to quell violent extremism, fight corruption, and \u201ctotally reform our system of government\u201d.\nThe charismatic Burkinab\u00e8 leader frequently ends his speeches with the chant \u201cLa patrie ou la mort, nous vaincrons!\u201d, the French translation of the official motto of revolutionary Cuba: \u201cPatria o muerte, venceremos!\u201d \u2013 \u201cHomeland or death, we will prevail!\u201d\nAs president, Traor\u00e9 has brought back some of the revolutionary ideas of Thomas Sankara.\nSankara was a Marxist Burkinab\u00e8 military officer and committed pan-Africanist who ascended to power in a 1983 coup.\nSankara launched a socialist revolution, transforming the impoverished country through land reform, infrastructure development, and expansive public health and literacy programs.\nUnder Sankara\u2019s leadership, Burkina Faso also challenged French neocolonialism and pursued an anti-imperialist foreign policy, forming alliances with revolutionary struggles across the Global South.\nBurkina Faso\u2019s revolutionary former President Thomas Sankara\nThese leftist policies were reversed in 1987, when Sankara was\u00a0overthrown and killed in another coup, led by his former ally Blaise Compaor\u00e9 \u2013 who subsequently moved hard to the right and allied with the United States and France, ruling through rigged elections until 2014.\nToday, Ibrahim Traor\u00e9 is drawing heavily on the legacy of Sankara. He has made it clear that he wants West Africa, and the continent as a whole, to be free of Western neocolonialism.\nThis July, the Russian government held a Russia-Africa Summit in Saint Petersburg. Traor\u00e9 was the first African leader to arrive to the conference. There, he delivered a fiery anti-imperialist speech.\n\u201cWe are the forgotten peoples of the world. And we are here now to talk about the future of our countries, about how things will be tomorrow in the world that we are seeking to build, and in which there will be no interference in our internal affairs\u201d, Traor\u00e9 said, according to a partial transcript published by Russian state media outlet TASS.\nTASS reported:\nIn his speech, the Burkinabe head of state also focused on sovereignty and the struggle against imperialism. \u201cWhy does resource-rich Africa remain the poorest region of the world? We ask these questions and get no answers. However, we have the opportunity to build new relationships that will help us build a better future for Burkina Faso,\u201d the president said. African countries have suffered for decades from a barbaric and brutal form of colonialism and imperialism, which could be called a modern form of slavery, he stressed.\n\u201cHowever, a slave who does not fight [for his freedom] is not worthy of any indulgence. The heads of African states should not behave like puppets in the hands of the imperialists. We must ensure that our countries are self-sufficient, including as regards food supplies, and can meet all of the needs of our peoples. Glory and respect to our peoples; victory to our peoples! Homeland or death!\u201d Traore summed up, quoting the words of legendary Cuban revolutionary leader Ernesto \u201cChe\u201d Guevara. The 35-year-old president of Burkina Faso was attired in a camouflage uniform and red beret during the summit.\nOn July 29, Traor\u00e9 had a private meeting in Saint Petersburgh with Russian President Vladimir Putin.\nIn their talks, the Burkinab\u00e8 leader praised the Soviet Union for defeating Nazism in World War II.\nBurkina Faso\u2019s President Ibrahim Traor\u00e9 meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburgh on July 29, 2023\nThe new nationalist government in Burkina Faso has also sought to deepen its ties with revolutionary movements in Latin America.\nIn May, the West African nation\u2019s prime minister, Apollinaire Joachim Ky\u00e9lem de Tamb\u00e8la, traveled to Venezuela.\nTamb\u00e8la met with Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, who pledged to \u201cadvance in cooperation, solidarity, and growth\u2026 building a solid fraternal relation\u201d.\nCon el objetivo de avanzar en la cooperaci\u00f3n, solidaridad y crecimiento de ambas naciones, me reun\u00ed con el Primer Ministro de Burkina Faso, Apollinaire Ky\u00e9lem de Tamb\u00e9la. Tengo confianza que con esfuerzo y voluntad, seguiremos construyendo una s\u00f3lida relaci\u00f3n fraterna. pic.twitter.com/5mEXzzXIec\n\u2014 Nicol\u00e1s Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) May 12, 2023\n\nIn July, the Burkinab\u00e8 prime minister traveled to Nicaragua to celebrate the 44th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution.\nTamb\u00e8la attended the July 19 celebration of the revolution in Managua, at the invitation of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega.\nBurkina Faso\u2019s Prime Minister Apollinaire Joachim Ky\u00e9lem de Tamb\u00e8la speaks at the 44th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution in Managua, Nicaragua on July 19, 2023\nFollowing the September 2022 coup in Burkina Faso, the new president, Traor\u00e9, surprised many observers by choosing as his prime minister a longtime follower of Thomas Sankara, Apollinaire Joachim Ky\u00e9lem de Tamb\u00e8la.\nTamb\u00e8la was an ally of Sankara during the Burkinab\u00e8 revolution. When Sankara came to power in the 1980s, Tamb\u00e8la organized a solidarity movement and sought international support for the new leftist government.\nTamb\u00e8la is a pan-Africanist and has been affiliated with communist and left-wing organizations.\nTraor\u00e9 said in a speech in December that Tamb\u00e8la will help to oversee the process of the \u201crefoundation of the nation\u201c.\nBy appointing Tamb\u00e8la as prime minister, Traor\u00e9 tangibly showed his commitment to reviving the revolutionary legacy of Sankara.\nIn his remarks at the anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, Tamb\u00e8la discussed the historical legacy of solidarity between the revolution in Burkina Faso and that of Nicaragua.\nTamb\u00e8la recalled that Sankara visited Nicaragua in 1986, and the Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega visited Burkina Faso that same year.\nWhen he spoke at the\u00a0United Nations General Assembly in 1984, Sankara declared, \u201cI wish also to feel close to my comrades of Nicaragua, whose ports are being mined, whose towns are being bombed and who, despite all, face up with courage and lucidity to their fate. I suffer with all those in Latin America who are suffering from imperialist domination\u201d.\nIn 1984 and 1986, Sankara also visited Cuba, where he met with revolutionary President Fidel Castro.\nBurkina Faso\u2019s President Thomas Sankara with Nicaragua\u2019s President Daniel Ortega\n\u201cFor people of my generation, there are things that unite us with Nicaragua, Augusto C\u00e9sar Sandino, the Sandinista National Liberation Front and Commander Daniel Ortega\u201d, Burkinab\u00e8 Prime Minister Tamb\u00e8la said in his speech in Managua on July 19, 2023.\n\u201cWe have learned to know Nicaragua. When the liberation struggle began, I was small, but we followed, day by day, the context of Nicaragua\u2019s liberation. I went in July of \u201979, and when they entered Managua we were happy, people of my age celebrated that\u201d, he recalled.\n\u201cAnd then, when Thomas Sankara came to power, Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista Revolution was something happy for us; we as students studied a lot the history of Nicaragua, we followed its evolution\u201d.\nTamb\u00e8la added that Burkina Faso supported Nicaragua in its International Court of Justice case against the United States. Washington was found guilty of illegally sponsoring far-right \u201cContra\u201d death squads, which waged a terror war against the leftist government, as well as putting mines in Nicaragua\u2019s ports. (Yet, although Nicaragua won the case in 1986, the US government has still to this day refused to pay the Central American nation a single cent of the reparations that it legally owes it.)\n\u201cNicaragua\u2019s struggle is also that of our people\u201d, Tamb\u00e8la stressed.\nIn his July 19 speech, the Burkinab\u00e8 prime minister also sent special greetings to the diplomatic delegations from Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.\n\u201cWe have very close relations with Cuba\u201d, Tamb\u00e8la added. \u201cPresident Fidel Castro has been and was a very important person for the revolution in Africa; we have excellent memories, both of Cuba and of President Fidel Castro\u201d.\nThe 44th anniversary of Nicaragua's Sandinista Revolution this July 19 was dedicated to Burkina Faso's former revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara\nBurkina Faso's current PM spoke at the ceremony, reaffirming solidarity\nSankara visited Nicaragua during the US terror war in 1984 pic.twitter.com/Kkng2cENR3\n\u2014 Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 20, 2023\n\n"} | |
| {"instruction": "Write an article about: \u2018Western dominance has ended\u2019, EU foreign-policy chief admits, warning of \u2018West against the Rest\u2019 geopolitics. 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": "EU, European Union, Gaza, General Assembly, Global South, Josep Borrell, Sahel, Ukraine, United Nations", "output": "The European Union\u2019s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, admitted that the \u201cera of Western dominance has indeed definitively ended\u201d. He warned that the EU must not divide the world into \u201cthe West against the Rest\u201d, as \u201cmany in the \u2018Global South\u2019 accuse us of \u2018double standards\u2019\u201d.\n\nEurope\u2019s top diplomat has acknowledged that the \u201cera of Western dominance has indeed definitively ended\u201d.\nJosep Borrell, the European Union\u2019s high representative for foreign affairs, wrote this in a blog post on the official website of the EU\u2019s diplomatic service on February 25.\n\u201cIf the current global geopolitical tensions continue to evolve in the direction of \u2018the West against the Rest\u2019, Europe\u2019s future risks to be bleak\u201d, he warned.\n\nThe wars in Ukraine and Gaza, along with the anti-colonial uprisings in Africa\u2019s Sahel region, have \u201csignificantly increased this risk\u201d of Europe becoming geopolitically irrelevant, Borrell said, lamenting that \u201cRussia has managed to take advantage of the situation\u201d.\nThe European foreign-policy chief revealed that \u201cimproving our relations with the \u2018Global South'\u201d is one of \u201d the four main tasks on EU\u2019s geopolitical agenda\u201d.\n\u201cMany in the \u2018Global South\u2019 accuse us of \u2018double standards'\u201d, he confessed.\n\nBorrell is known for sporadically making frank comments, admitting inconvenient truths that most European diplomats leave unsaid.\nIn 2022, the EU foreign-policy chief confessed, \u201cOur prosperity was based on China and Russia \u2013 energy and market\u201d, with \u201ccheap energy coming from Russia\u201d and \u201caccess to the big China market\u201d as the cornerstone of the European economy.\nHowever, Borrell\u2019s insistence that Europe must not divide the world into the \u201cWest against the Rest\u201d was contradicted by his insistence in the same February 2024 article that the EU must expand its \u201ccooperation with key partners, and in particular the US\u201d.\nThe top European diplomat wrote that \u201crecent months have reminded us how important NATO remains to our collective defence\u201d, calling to strengthen the US-led military bloc.\nIn 2023, the influential think tank the European Council on Foreign Relations published a white paper titled \u201cThe art of vassalisation\u201d. It warned of \u201cEurope becoming an American vassal\u201d, noting how the war in Ukraine had \u201crevealed Europeans\u2019 profound dependence on the US\u201d.\nThe EU\u2019s foreign-policy chief does recognize that it would be an error to pit \u201cthe West against the Rest\u201d, yet he is simultaneously calling for deepening the trans-Atlantic alliance between the US and Europe, which only exacerbates that geopolitical division.\nOn the global stage, Europe frequently joins the United States in violating the will of the international community.\nAt the United Nations, the US and Europe often vote together, while the vast majority of member states, which are located in the Global South, vote against them.\nSource: Alastair Iain Johnston, \u201cChina in a World of Orders: Rethinking Compliance and Challenge in Beijing\u2019s International Relations\u201d, International Security (2019)\nThe US only voted with the majority of the world at the UN General Assembly 32.7% of the time from 1983 to 2012.\nIn 1988, just 15.4% of overall UNGA votes coincided with the US vote.\nEurope is the only region of the world that consistently votes with the US.\n\nIn November 2023, the West voted against the vast majority of the world in UN General Assembly resolutions concerning democracy, human rights, cultural diversity, mercenaries, and unilateral coercive measures (sanctions).\nIn April 2023, the West once again voted as a bloc against the other countries on the UN Human Rights Council, defending unilateral sanctions, which violate international law.\nIn December 2022, the West voted against the rest of the planet in UN General Assembly votes calling for a new international economic order.\nWest votes against democracy, human rights, cultural diversity at UN; promotes mercenaries, sanctions\n\n"} | |
| {"instruction": "Write an article about: Despite Biden\u2019s claims, Gaza health ministry death toll is accurate, scientific studies show. 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": "Gaza, Israel, Palestine, The Lancet", "output": "US President Biden criticized Gaza\u2019s health ministry, but its statistics on Israel\u2019s killings of Palestinians are accurate, according to peer-reviewed articles in top medical journal The Lancet.\n\nThe death toll of Israel\u2019s war on Gaza reported by the Palestinian health ministry is accurate, according to two peer-reviewed studies by scientific experts published in top medical journal The Lancet.\nAs of December 18, Israel had killed 19,453 Palestinians in Gaza, the ministry reported. Two-thirds of the deaths were children (7,729) and women (5,153).\nUnited Nations bodies, human rights organizations, and major media outlets have often used these statistics, because they have a history of being accurate.\n\n\u201cInternational organizations including the United Nations usually rely on these same figures as they are seen as the best available\u201d, the Washington Post acknowledged.\n\u201cMany experts consider figures provided by the ministry reliable, given its access, sources and accuracy in past statements\u201d, the prominent US newspaper wrote.\nIsrael has claimed, without any evidence, that Gaza\u2019s health ministry is untrustworthy, because it is supposedly run by the political party Hamas. (In reality, the Gaza health ministry is partially funded by and linked to Hamas\u2019 political rival, the Palestinian Authority, based in the Occupied West Bank.)\nThe US government has echoed Israel\u2019s disinformation. President Joe Biden said in an October 25 press conference, \u201cI have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed\u2026 I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using\u201d.\nDespite Biden\u2019s criticism, HuffPost revealed that the US State Department uses the Palestinian health ministry figures in its own reports on Gaza.\nIn one of such memos, a US official acknowledged that, if anything, \u201cThe numbers are likely much higher, according to the UN and NGOs reporting on the situation\u201d.\nThis was exactly the conclusion reached by scientific experts at Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Bloomberg School of Public Health.\nThe peer-reviewed article \u201cNo evidence of inflated mortality reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health\u201d, published in leading medical journal The Lancet on December 6, noted that the Palestinian institution \u201chas historically reported accurate mortality data\u201d.\nIn past conflicts, discrepancies between Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) data and independent United Nations figures were only between 1.5% and 3.8%.\nGaza MoH data were also quite similar to figures from Israel\u2019s own Foreign Ministry, with a difference of just around 8%.\nScholars Benjamin Q Huynh, Elizabeth T Chin, and Paul B Spiegel wrote that they \u201cfound no evidence of inflated rates\u201d.\nScientific experts from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine came to a similar conclusion in their own peer-reviewed article in The Lancet, published on November 26.\nFor this previous study, scholars Zeina Jamaluddine, Francesco Checchi, and Oona M R Campbell reviewed death statistics from October 7 to 26, analyzing the list of 7028 deaths compiled by the Gaza Ministry of Health.\nOut of the 7028 names, only one had a duplicated ID number, one had an implausible age, and just 281 lacked an ID number.\nThe experts concluded that the data were reasonable, writing, \u201cWe consider it implausible that these patterns would arise from data fabrication\u201d.\nThey also reviewed MoH figures from previous wars in Gaza, and found them to be reliable.\n\u201cAssessments of Palestinian MoH data validity in the 2014 conflict had shown them to be accurate, and we saw no obvious reason to doubt the validity of the data between Oct 7 and Oct 26, 2023\u201d, the scholars stated.\nIf anything, they concluded that the Gaza MoH figures may be rather conservative.\n\u201cThe death reporting system currently being used by the Palestinian MoH was assessed in 2021, 2 years before the current war, and was found to under-report mortality by 13%\u201d, they wrote, adding that \u201cit is plausible that the current Palestinian MoH source also under-reports mortality because of the direct effect of the war on data capture and reporting, for example by omitting people whose bodies could not be recovered or brought to morgues\u201d.\n"} | |
| {"instruction": "Write an article about: Inside Ethiopia and Eritrea, facing war and sanctions, with journalist Rania Khalek. 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, Cold War Two, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Horn of Africa, new cold war, Tigray, TPLC", "output": "Journalist Rania Khalek discusses her reporting in Ethiopia and Eritrea, as both suffer from foreign-backed war and sanctions, and the geopolitical importance of the Horn of Africa, a key point of conflict in the US new cold war on China.\n\nJournalist Rania Khalek joined the\u00a0Geopolitical Economy Report podcast to talk about her reporting trip to Ethiopia and Eritrea.\nIn Ethiopia, armed insurgent group the Tigrayan People\u2019s Liberation Front (TPLF) is waging war on the central government, apparently with Western support.\nIts East African neighbor Eritrea is one of the world\u2019s most sanctioned countries. Faced with this forced isolation, it has created a unique developmental model based on self-sufficiency.\nWe discuss the geopolitical importance of the Horn of Africa, and how the area has been affected by the US new cold war on China.\n\u201cImperialism is all about dividing and conquering, and making sure everybody\u2019s stuck in their own little places, because you can control them easier that way,\u201d Khalek explained.\n\u201cThat\u2019s why the US is so supportive of the sort of ethnic-based system that the TPLF set up in Ethiopia, because it keeps people divided. That\u2019s why the US is so supportive of sectarianism in the Middle East, because it keeps people divided. That\u2019s why the US is so supportive of these right-wing movements that divide across Latin America, because it keeps people divided. And on and on.\u201d\n\u201cSo people really need to start thinking about things in that context,\u201d she said. \u201cEspecially understanding the Horn of Africa in that context, because the Horn of Africa has often been neglected in our analysis, because Africa is just kind of neglected, but this region, especially as this cold war with China kicks off and becomes even more intense, is going to become a bigger\u201d site of conflict.\n\n\n"} | |