Instruction: Write an article about: West opposes rest of world in UN votes for fairer economic system, equality, sustainable development. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: economics, Israel, Palestine, Turkey, Türkiye, United Nations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Instruction: Write an article about: CBS censors its own report on Ukraine weapons corruption. 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: Amnesty International, CBS, Russia, Ukraine

Output:
Under Ukrainian government pressure, CBS News censored its own documentary “Arming Ukraine,” which showed that just around 30% of the weapons Western governments have sent actually go to the frontlines, with widespread corruption and black markets.

Under Ukrainian government pressure, major US media outlet CBS News censored a documentary that it produced that exposed corruption in Ukraine.
The report estimated that, of the tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons that Western governments have sent to help Ukraine wage a proxy war against Russia, just around 30% have actually made it to the frontlines.

People involved in the Ukraine arms ratline told CBS in the documentary that there was significant corruption, due to “powerlords” and “oligarchs,” and that much of the military equipment was being siphoned off or sold on the “black market,” in what was a kind of “black hole.”
CBS News published these revelations on August 4 in a joint article and video titled “Why military aid to Ukraine doesn’t always get to the front lines: ‘Like 30% of it reaches its final destination.’”
The accompanying 23-minute documentary, called “Arming Ukraine,” featured CBS reporter Adam Yamaguchi on the ground in April, embedded with Ukrainian fighters, following weapons shipments in Poland, interviewing foreign mercenaries, and joining NATO exercises in Lithuania.
The video was clearly thoroughly biased against Russia and in favor of Ukraine. It made no effort to portray itself as neutral or balanced.
But even this was not propagandistic enough for Ukraine and its Western backers.
Under intense pressure, CBS News was forced to retract its own documentary on August 7. It then changed the title of the accompanying article to “Why military aid in Ukraine may not always get to the front lines” and added a lengthy editor’s note explaining the changes.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba condemned CBS on Twitter. “Welcome first step, but it is not enough,” he wrote. In a transparent assault on the freedom of the press, the top Ukrainian official called for “an internal investigation into who enabled this and why.”
Welcome first step, but it is not enough. You have misled a huge audience by sharing unsubstantiated claims and damaging trust in supplies of vital military aid to a nation resisting aggression and genocide. There should be an internal investigation into who enabled this and why. https://t.co/kkA0boaLXX
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) August 8, 2022

Despite these attacks from Ukraine’s government, CBS News was not the first mainstream US media outlet that acknowledged this problem.
In April, CNN reported that the “US has few ways to track the substantial supply of anti-tank, anti-aircraft and other weaponry it has sent across the border into Ukraine,” calling it “a conscious risk the Biden administration is willing to take.”
But CBS still gave in to the pressure and censored its own report.
Before the video was retracted, it was copied and republished online.
CBS reporter Adam Yamaguchi traveled to Ukraine to film in April, but the documentary was delayed and not published until August.
Yamaguchi, who embedded with Ukrainian and NATO forces, was careful to blame everything on Russia. He made his pro-Ukraine perspective as clear as day, calling Moscow the “aggressor” and referring to Ukraine’s capital as Kyiv, not Kiev (the outcome of a Ukrainian government propaganda campaign).
CBS reporter Adam Yamaguchi embedded with Ukrainian fighters in Donbas
Noting the war in Ukraine began in 2014, the video conveniently failed to mention the violent US-sponsored coup d’etat that set off that conflict. Instead, CBS blamed Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea. (It also left out the democratic referendum held in which 97% of people in Crimea voted to become part of Russia, with 83% participation.)
The CBS documentary was largely built around Jonas Ohman, a Swedish anti-Russian activist who has lived for years in Lithuania.
Ohman is the founder and CEO of an organization called Blue/Yellow, which has provided tens of millions of dollars worth of Western military assistance to Ukraine.
Jonas Ohman
Although Blue/Yellow claims to be a “non-governmental organization” (NGO), Ohman made it clear in the video that he considers himself part of the Ukrainian fight against Russia, holding a rifle in one scene and declaring in another, “we have to win the war” and “we’ve got to win!”
Ohman admitted to sending Western military equipment into Ukraine “since summer of 2014,” adding that he “lost count” of how many drones he delivered.
He acknowledged that there is rampant corruption in Ukraine, that it is plagued by “powerlords” and “oligarchs” and has a large “black market” for weapons.

For the CBS documentary, Yamaguchi interviewed another US mercenary who is helping oversee arms shipments and training soldiers in Ukraine, named Andy Milburn.
Milburn is a US Marine veteran and founder and CEO of the Mozart Group (a play off of Russia’s Wagner Group).
“I can tell you, unarguably, that, on the front-line units, these things are not getting there,” Milburn complained.
Yamaguchi asked the US mercenary if it’s fair to call Ukraine a “black hole,” and Milburn said “it would appear that it’s a black hole, yeah.”
“My biggest concern right now is that the guys that need to kill Russians with those weapons get those weapons,” he added.

Ohman and Milburn were not the only ones who said Western arms shipments to Ukraine are getting diverted.
CBS also interviewed a senior crisis adviser at Amnesty International, named Donatella Rovera.
When asked where the weapons were going, Rovera answered “we don’t know,” adding that “there is really no information as to where they’re going at all.”
Rovera pointed out that blind Western arms shipments like these have in the past ended up in the hands of extremists, such as genocidal ISIS insurgents who had US weapons in Iraq.
Amnesty International is notorious for its bias in the interests of Western governments and its revolving door with Washington. But on Ukraine it has at least tried to be slightly more balanced.
Amnesty published a report this August revealing that Ukraine’s military has been using civilian areas like schools as hospitals as human shields.
Western governments and mainstream corporate media outlets furiously attacked Amnesty in response to the publication, forcing the leader of its Ukraine arm, Oksana Pokalchuk, to resign.

The CBS News documentary also prominently featured a former US State Department official, Charles Kupchan, who served on the National Security Councils of Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
Kupchan, whom CBS identified simply as a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, acknowledged that the conflict in Ukraine is a proxy war between NATO and Russia.
“Ukraine is a proxy for the West,” he admitted. He also admitted that Russia is carefully trying not to escalate the war further.


Instruction: Write an article about: Millions in Afghanistan are starving due to US 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: Afghanistan, famine, sanctions, UN, United Nations

Output:
The Biden administration claims it wants to help the Afghan people, but US sanctions are starving millions of civilians and threatening a famine, the United Nations has warned.

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken claims to be “committed to supporting the people of Afghanistan,” but the reality is Washington is starving millions of Afghan civilians with suffocating sanctions.
The American people are committed to supporting the people of Afghanistan. I met virtually today with @UNReliefChief Griffiths and International Committee of the Red Cross President @PMaurerICRC about strengthening the coordination of existing U.S. efforts with the @UN and @ICRC.
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) January 15, 2022

The International Business Times reported, “Millions of Afghans are on the ‘verge of death’ as U.S. sanctions threaten half of Afghanistan’s population with food insecurity, cripple its banking system, and cause food prices to skyrocket.”
According to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), nearly 23 million Afghans, or 55% of the population, are facing “extreme levels of hunger.” Of those, almost 9 million are at risk of famine.
UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch called it “a crisis of hunger and starvation.”
Yet there is little discussion inside Washington of the disastrous impact of US sanctions.
When the US ended its 20-year military occupation of Afghanistan in an August 2021 pullout, corporate media coverage skyrocketed – and it was almost universally against the withdrawal.
Yet just a few months later, as Afghan civilians are being starved by US sanctions, the press is now utterly disinterested in the country, as Julie Hollar has documented for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR).
When the corporate media could exploit the name of Afghan civilians to defend an open-ended US-NATO war, it was more than eager. But now that those same Afghan civilians are suffering under US sanctions, the press corps is out to lunch.


Instruction: Write an article about: EEUU convoca su alianza anti-China el ‘Quad’, y Beijing la llama ‘herramienta para la contención y el asedio’. 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: Antony Blinken, Australia, China, India, Japón, Rusia, Scott Morrison

Output:
Estados Unidos, Japón y la India realizaron una reunión de la alianza Quad en Australia. Beijing la condenó como “una herramienta para contener y asediar a China para mantener la hegemonía estadounidense”, con una “mentalidad anticuada de la guerra fría”.

(You can read this article in English here.)
Estados Unidos ha unido a Japón, la India y Australia en una alianza anti-China llamada el Diálogo de Seguridad Cuadrilateral, o el Quad.
Altos representantes de estos cuatro países se reunieron en la ciudad australiana de Melbourne el 11 de febrero para hablar de formas de contrarrestar a Beijing, entre otros temas.
El gobierno chino respondió a la reunión condenando al Quad como “una herramienta para contener y asediar a China para mantener la hegemonía estadounidense”. Beijing acusó a la alianza de buscar “avivar la confrontación”, con una “mentalidad anticuada de la guerra fría”.
El momento de esta reunión no fue una coincidencia; llegó justo en medio de los Juegos Olímpicos de Invierno en Beijing, que EEUU, Australia y la India habían condenado con boicots diplomáticos. (El influyente periódico británico Financial Times describió los Juegos Olímpicos en Beijing como “el nuevo frente en la guerra fría entre EEUU y China”).
La reunión en Melbourne contó con la presencia de los ministros de relaciones exteriores de EEUU, Japón, la India y Australia, y fue su cuarta reunión desde que la administración de Donald Trump restableció el Quad en 2017 para centrarse en contener a Beijing.
The Quad is a vital part of our vision for the Indo-Pacific and shows the priority we place on working with partners and allies in the region. We had a productive discussion on issues that shape our collective prosperity and security. pic.twitter.com/VvEhZOEVAK
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) February 11, 2022

El gobierno australiano respaldó con entusiasmo la reunión del Quad al enviar no solo a su ministra de relaciones exteriores, sino también a su primer ministro, Scott Morrison.
Morrison, un acérrimo derechista y líder del Partido Liberal, ha propagado el miedo sobre la supuesta “amenaza” de China, convirtiéndolo en una parte central de su programa político.
Bajo Morrison, Australia se ha vuelto un frente en la segunda guerra fría. El país se unió a una alianza militar anti-China con Washington y Londres llamada AUKUS, y anunció que comprará submarinos nucleares con tecnología estadounidense y británica – una decisión muy provocadora, dado que todos los países que tienen submarinos nucleares también tienen armas nucleares.
En una conferencia de prensa antes de la reunión del Quad, Morrison afirmó que Australia ha enfrentado “coerción y presión”, implicando que China es culpable. Enmarcó el conflicto con Beijing como una cuestión de “libertad”, insistiendo en que la alianza existe para proteger “un orden mundial que favorece la libertad, y particularmente aquí en un Indo-Pacífico libre y abierto”.
Appreciate that PM @ScottMorrisonMP met the Quad FMs collectively before we began talks. His insights and thoughts were valuable.
We are focused on the early and effective realization of our Leaders' vision. pic.twitter.com/VfKMSRcbdw
— Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) February 11, 2022

El secretario de estado de EEUU, Antony Blinken, dijo que los miembros del Quad “comparten preocupaciones de que en los últimos años China ha estado actuando de manera más represiva en casa y más agresiva en la región y, de hecho, potencialmente más allá”.
Blinken se unió al primer ministro australiano al describir la reunión como “cuatro democracias reunidas”. Al yuxtaponerlos implícitamente contra Beijing, Morrison afirmó que el Quad consiste en “grandes democracias, grandes democracias liberales”.
Ni Blinken ni Morrison mencionaron que Japón es esencialmente un estado de partido único que ha sido controlado por el Partido Liberal Democrático de derecha, con pocas excepciones, desde 1955, o que India está gobernada por el Partido Bharatiya Janata, una organización nacionalista hindú de extrema derecha, que está desmantelando el estado laico y atacando los derechos de las minorías religiosas.
Hechos como estos, junto con la historia continua de genocidio contra los pueblos indígenas y violaciones brutales de los derechos civiles por parte de los gobiernos de EEUU y Australia, contradecían abiertamente su intento de retratar al Quad como un símbolo de libertad y democracia contra el supuesto autoritarismo chino.
Los cancilleres de Estados Unidos, Australia, la India y Japón en la reunión del Quad en Melbourne el 11 de febrero
Tras la reunión, los cuatro estados miembros del Quad emitieron una declaración conjunta. Por el uso del lenguaje, parece que el documento fue escrito en gran parte por Estados Unidos.
Blinken afirmó en la conferencia de prensa que el Quad existe para defender el “Indo-Pacífico libre y abierto, la región más dinámica del mundo con las economías de más rápido crecimiento, la mitad de la población mundial”. La declaración se hizo eco de esta retórica, llamando a “promover un Indo-Pacífico libre y abierto – una región que sea inclusiva y resistente, y en la que los estados se esfuercen por proteger los intereses de su pueblo, libres de coerción”.
Blinken dijo que el Quad busca “defender el sistema basado en reglas en lo que hemos invertido mucho tiempo y esfuerzo para construir durante todos estos años”. La declaración usó esta misma frase “basado en reglas” tres veces, lo que refleja los intentos de Washington de crear un nuevo marco legal internacional que controle, para aislar a China y Rusia.
Aunque la declaración conjunta condenó enérgicamente a Corea del Norte y Myanmar, tuvo cuidado de no mencionar a China por su nombre. A pesar de esto, tenía como objetivo abrumador atacar a Beijing, refiriéndose implícitamente a ello como una amenaza para la región del Indo-Pacífico.
El gobierno chino condenó enérgicamente la reunión del Quad del 11 de febrero en Australia.
El portavoz del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Zhao Lijian, afirmó en una conferencia de prensa el mismo día: “China cree que el llamado grupo Quad improvisado por EEUU, Japón, la India y Australia es esencialmente una herramienta para contener y asediar a China para mantener la hegemonía de EEUU”.
El Quad “tiene como objetivo avivar la confrontación y socavar la solidaridad y la cooperación internacionales”, dijo Zhao.
El portavoz del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de China agregó: “Quiero enfatizar que la guerra fría terminó hace mucho tiempo. El intento de forjar una supuesta alianza para contener a China no obtiene apoyo y no conduce a ninguna parte”.
“Los países relevantes deben abandonar la mentalidad anticuada de la guerra fría, corregir el enfoque erróneo de confrontación de bloques y juegos geopolíticos, y contribuir a la paz y la estabilidad en Asia-Pacífico”, dijo Zhao.
Un reportero en la conferencia de prensa le pidió al portavoz del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores que respondiera al comentario del secretario de estado de EEUU, Blinken, de que “China ha estado actuando de manera más represiva en casa y más agresiva en la región”. Zhao respondió: “Hablando de ser agresivo en esta región y más allá, Estados Unidos es insuperable”.
Speaking of being aggressive in this region and beyond, the United States is second to none. pic.twitter.com/hOL0DSUF5L
— Spokesperson发言人办公室 (@MFA_China) February 12, 2022

Global Times, un periódico que es propiedad del People’s Daily, órgano oficial del Partido Comunista de China, respondió a la reunión de Australia con un artículo titulado “EEUU se une a los aliados del Quad para luchar en ‘guerras de dos frentes’ con China y Rusia a pesar de su fuerza débil”.
El periódico semioficial chino escribió: “La señal es más clara que nunca de que EEUU está convirtiendo al Quad en una herramienta para cumplir su propio objetivo estratégico de contrarrestar a China y Rusia simultáneamente”.
Señaló que Blinken mencionó el conflicto en Ucrania en la reunión del Quad, aunque la alianza afirma estar enfocada en las preocupaciones del Indo-Pacífico.
Sin embargo, el intento de Washington de hacer que sus aliados Quad participen en una guerra fría contra Rusia también es menos probable. Australia ha tomado una línea dura contra Moscú, pero Japón e India tienen relaciones más complejas.
Ciertamente, Japón y Rusia no son aliados, pero hasta hace poco tenían vínculos diplomáticos cordiales. Un conflicto en 2021 por unas islas en disputa provocó relaciones agrias, y Moscú criticó a Tokio por unirse a EEUU para amenazar a Rusia por Ucrania.
El gobierno de la India, encabezado por el Partido Bharatiya Janata de extrema derecha y el primer ministro nacionalista hindú Narendra Modi, ha adoptado una línea extremadamente agresiva contra China.
De hecho, el ministro de relaciones exteriores de la India, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, utilizó la reunión del Quad como una oportunidad para atacar a China, culpándola de una disputa fronteriza que ha llevado a la violencia.
Sin embargo, mientras que los políticos ultraconservadores en Nueva Delhi, al igual que sus contrapartes de derecha en Occidente, han convertido a Beijing en un chivo expiatorio conveniente para sus problemas internos, la India no se ha unido a Estados Unidos en su campaña de guerra contra Rusia.
En una conferencia de prensa previa a la reunión del Quad, un periodista preguntó al ministro de relaciones exteriores, Jaishankar, cuál es la posición de Nueva Delhi sobre el conflicto en Ucrania. Eludió la pregunta, repitiendo que “esta reunión está enfocada en el Indo-Pacífico”.
La reunión de Australia dejó en claro que, si bien los miembros del Quad están unidos en su objetivo común de contener a China, todavía tienen diferencias políticas en otros temas.


Instruction: Write an article about: German military preparing for potential war with Russia, leaked internal report reveals. 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: Bundeswehr, Germany, Lithuania, NATO, Russia, Ukraine

Output:
A leaked confidential strategy paper shows Germany is preparing for a potential war with Russia, as it boosts its budget and plans to become the world’s third-biggest military spender.

Germany’s top newspaper Der Spiegel obtained a leaked confidential strategy paper that reveals the country’s military is preparing for a potential war with Russia.
The German military, the Bundeswehr, released the secret 68-page document internally in September.
The Bundeswehr chief, Inspector General Eberhard Zorn, warned that Germany could be attacked, and he proposed plans for a future armed conflict with Russia.

The report claims that Germany faces “existential” threats.
The document opens stating, “War in Europe is a reality again.” It predicts that the most likely scenario would be a conflict with Russia on NATO’s eastern flank.
Der Spiegel noted that the strategy paper stresses the need for “deterrence.”
In the past few decades, the German military has focused on small, specialized units, but this report says the armed forces will now prioritize training large units that are always ready for war.
The document reaffirms the Bundeswehr’s commitment to the US-led NATO cartel, but also makes it clear that Berlin is beginning to consider its own strategic autonomy independent of Washington.
Der Spiegel summarized the document as an outline for a “mega-reform” of the armed forces.
The Germany newspaper has not translated the article into English, and the striking report got almost no coverage in the English-language press.

As a member of NATO and the de facto leader of the European Union, Germany has played a significant role in the Western proxy war on Russia that began in 2014, when a US-sponsored coup d’etat violently overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected neutral government and installed a staunchly anti-Russian, pro-Western regime.
This US-backed putsch set off a civil war in Ukraine. In an attempt to end the violence, Germany and France helped Ukraine negotiate the Minsk II accord with Russia in 2015. Berlin was supposed to guarantee that Kiev implemented the agreement, but Ukraine refused to do so – and Washington discouraged it from meeting its political obligations.
Germany and France were generally seen as less hawkish against Russia than the United States. But when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the situation changed completely.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described the escalation of the proxy war as a “turning point” for Europe. His government promptly embarked on the first substantial re-militarization of the country since the end of the first cold war.
Scholz announced his administration would create a €100 billion “special defense fund,” in addition to the ballooning German military budget of €50 billion per year.
In June, Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, approved this special fund.
Reuters reported that Germany plans to devote at least 2% of its GDP to military expenditure, “making it the world’s third-biggest military spender behind the United States and China.”
Germany’s military budget is expected to grow to nearly €60 billion by 2023, more than €70 billion by 2024, and eventually €80 billion by 2030.
With the proxy war in Ukraine heating up, Germany is also playing a more active role in NATO.
The New York Times reported in June that the US military is using bases in Germany to train Ukrainian troops, and Germany became home to a coalition cell of Western militaries planning the proxy war on Russia:
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, the [US] Army’s 10th Special Forces Group, which before the war had been training Ukrainian commandos at a base in the country’s west, quietly established a coalition planning cell in Germany to coordinate military assistance to Ukrainian commandos and other Ukrainian troops. The cell has now grown to 20 nations.
In September, Germany sent more troops to a permanent NATO deployment in Lithuania, a former member of the Soviet Union that is close to the border with Russia.
In October, Berlin initiated a NATO military exercise in Lithuania which will involve roughly 5,000 German troops.
With over 200 troops and 50 vehicles deployed in #Lithuania ??, the new German enhanced Vigilance Brigade?? will play a significant part in defending every inch of #NATO territory
More info: https://t.co/Xtk9dRrMEz pic.twitter.com/TxWuPTmQvi
— NATO (@NATO) October 6, 2022

The re-militarization of Germany is bipartisan, and has the support of both the current centrist, social-democratic government as well as the right-wing opposition.
German state media outlet DW explained in June:
the government has joined forces with the main opposition parties to change the constitution and allow €100 billion ($107 billion) in additional debt to upgrade the military — an unprecedented occurrence in the history of the Federal Republic.
It comes on top of this year’s record defense budget of €50.4 billion and will be spent over the next five years.
DW noted that this military spending is in addition to the billions of euros worth of support that Germany has provided to Ukraine in the proxy war with Russia.
The only major political party that opposes the re-militarization of Germany is the socialist Die Linke (Left Party). DW reported:
The Left Party in Germany is the country’s only major political camp to fundamentally reject the Bundeswehr’s additional funding. It calls the special fund a “cornerstone for permanent militarization” in Germany.
“The purchase of nuclear bombers like the F-35, new tank systems, and armed drones is sending the stock prices and profits of the major arms makers soaring,” says Sevim Dagdalen, spokeswoman for international politics of the Left Party’s parliamentary group.
Meanwhile, she says, poverty is on the rise in Germany.
According to DW, €41 billion of this special fund will go to the Bundeswehr’s air force, which plans to buy CH-47F Chinook helicopters from the US corporation Boeing and F-35 fighter jets from Lockheed Martin, as well as the Eurofighter Typhoon combat aircraft from pan-European company Airbus.
Germany has already ordered Heron TP armed drones from Israel.
The Bundeswehr’s navy will receive €19 billion to modernize its forces with U12 submarines and other combat boats.
The Bundeswehr’s ground forces were designated €17 billion to buy armored personnel carriers and more combat vehicles, including potentially tanks.
Germany currently has troops in Mali, as part of a United Nations mission in western Africa, although Berlin has claimed it will withdraw them by 2024.


Instruction: Write an article about: Ex US official admits Ukraine conflict is NATO ‘proxy war with 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: CSIS, Eliot Cohen, NATO, Russia, Ukraine

Output:
Former US State Department official Eliot Cohen stated openly that the conflict in Ukraine is a NATO “proxy war with Russia,” and called for using the country to kill as many Russian soldiers as possible, “the more and faster the better.”

A former US State Department official has stated openly that the conflict in Ukraine is a NATO “proxy war with Russia,” and called for killing as many Russian soldiers as possible, “the more and faster the better.”
These comments were made by Eliot A. Cohen, who served as a counselor for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2007 to 2009, in the George W. Bush administration’s State Department.
A staunch advocate for hardline neoconservative foreign policy, Cohen published an article in The Atlantic magazine on March 14, titled “America’s Hesitation Is Heartbreaking,” in which he praised the Joe Biden administration for waging an indirect war on Russia on multiple fronts, including through information war, economic war, and proxy war in Ukraine.
Cohen complained, however, that Biden should do even more to up the ante, escalating the conflict even further.
The Biden administration has already sent Ukraine more than 17,000 anti-tank weapons, including Javelin missiles, as well as 2,000 stinger anti-aircraft missiles. Some of these went directly to the notorious neo-Nazi Azov regiment.
After sending $350 million in arms to Ukraine in late February, the Biden administration approved an additional $13.6 billion aid package in March, including $6.5 billion in military support.
NATO is sending weapons and trainers to help neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s white-supremacist Azov movement fight Russia, as the US floods the country with weapons.
This follows numerous reports of Western government support for Ukrainian far-right extremists.https://t.co/5gYgmU8PFo
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 10, 2022

Eliot Cohen insisted this is not nearly enough. “The stream of arms going into Ukraine needs to be a flood,” he proclaimed in his article in The Atlantic.
“The United States and its NATO allies are engaged in a proxy war with Russia,” he wrote clearly. “They are supplying thousands of munitions and hopefully doing much else—sharing intelligence, for example—with the intent of killing Russian soldiers.”
Cohen added on an equally explicit note: “we must face a fact: To break the will of Russia and free Ukraine from conquest and subjugation, many Russian soldiers have to flee, surrender, or die, and the more and faster the better.”
“Thus far the Biden administration has done an admirable job of winning the information war, mobilizing the NATO alliance, and imposing crippling (if not yet complete) sanctions on the Russian economy,” he continued. “It has, it appears, sped the delivery of some weapon systems (notably Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger man-portable surface-to-air missiles) to Ukrainian forces.”
The neoconservative hawk called for the Biden administration to give Ukraine fighter planes. He claimed sending MiG-29 jets would not escalate the proxy war into World War III with Russia – although many experts strongly disagree with him, including leaders of the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies.
“If only we have the stomach for doing what needs to be done,” he wrote.
Cohen was a leading supporter of the 2003 Iraq War, and has likewise called for Washington to wage a conventional war on Iran.
Although he is no longer directly in government, Cohen works at the highly influential neoconservative think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which is funded by the US government and its allies, the weapons industry, and fossil fuel corporations.
He is also a professor at the elite Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, which has a revolving door with the US government.
Cohen’s ultra-bellicose views are quite representative of his fellow hawks in Washington; he is by no means alone. His article in The Atlantic provides an honest glimpse into how prominent US imperial planners see the crisis in Ukraine: as an opportunity to use the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder in a proxy war to bleed Russia.


Instruction: Write an article about: It’s a jailable crime to support Russia’s Ukraine war in EU members Slovakia and Czech Republic. 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: Czech Republic, EU, European Union, Latvia, Russia, Ukraine

Output:
The European Union claims to represent freedom and democracy, but EU/NATO members Czech Republic and Slovakia made it a crime for citizens to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, punishable with years in prison. Latvia has a police hotline and encourages people to report neighbors suspected of sympathizing with Moscow.

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
Western governments have portrayed the war between Russia and Ukraine as a supposed conflict between authoritarianism and democracy. At the same time, however, some of these Western governments are imposing authoritarian policies and harshly cracking down on freedom of expression and freedom of the press, banning Russian media outlets and even making it illegal to support the Russian military intervention.
The United States and European Union have imposed a series of brutal sanctions on Russia, waging an economic war aimed at devaluing its currency, the ruble, which will make life difficult for tens of millions of Russian civilians.
The EU has banned Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik, and US Silicon Valley corporations like Google and Twitter have censored their accounts.
Numerous members of the EU and NATO, including the Czech Republic and Slovakia, have also made it a crime to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, threatening their citizens with years in prison. And fellow member Latvia has a police hotline where people can report neighbors they suspect of being pro-Russian.
On February 27, Ukraine’s pro-Western, anti-Russian newspaper the Kyiv Independent reported, “Czech Republic makes it illegal to openly support Russia’s war against Ukraine.”
The Ukrainian embassy in the Czech Republic made this new policy clear beyond a doubt, tweeting happily on February 27 that, if Czech citizens express support for the Russian intervention, they can be charged with support for “genocide,” and potentially imprisoned.
Чеські правоохоронні органи попереджають, що публічне схвалення російського вторгнення в Україну може класифікуватися як "злочин заперечення, ставлення під сумнів, схвалення і виправдовування ГЕНОЦИДУ". Уже є два перші випадки затриманих, яким інкримунують цей параграф КК.
— UKR Embassy in CZE (@UKRinCZE) February 27, 2022

The Czech Republic’s chief prosecutor, Igor Stříž, released a statement warning citizens that it is a crime to publicly express support for the Russian war or to praise Russian leaders for intervening in Ukraine. Stříž said those who do could be found guilty of denying, questioning, approving of, or justifying “genocide.”
A local media outlet reported that Czech citizens who violate these laws could face three years in prison.
The top Czech prosecutor claimed that the government supports freedom of speech, but emphasized that there are political limits on that speech.
These authoritarian policies are now encouraging average people to become state informants and report their neighbors for daring to think differently.
Czech newspapers reported on February 27, just three days after the beginning of the Russian invasion, that police were already investigating dozens of complaints against Czech citizens accused of sympathizing with Moscow.
Another EU and NATO member state, Slovakia, has threatened even harsher penalties.
Slovakia’s state media outlet RTVS reported that citizens who express support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine could be criminally punished, and face 10 to 25 years in prison
The public broadcaster said that endorsing Moscow’s actions could violate section 417 of Slovakia’s Criminal Code, on “threats to peace.”
The Baltic state Latvia, an EU and NATO member that was previously part of the Soviet Union, has adopted a similar policy.
Latvia now has a police hotline to report citizens who support Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine.
Local media outlet Par drošību reported that there are least four Latvian laws that prohibit supporting and justifying the war. These statutes are similar to those of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The website encouraged Latvian citizens to report neighbors suspected of sympathizing with Moscow, providing them with a phone number and email address for the police.
Meanwhile, in fellow EU and NATO member Italy, a university cited the invasion of Ukraine to justify suspending a course on the classic Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.
Dostoevsky died in 1881, and was in fact imprisoned by Russia’s czar because of his political views.
The Italian writer, Paolo Nori, whose class at the University of Milano-Bicocca was cancelled published a video condemning the move as “ridiculous.”
“Even dead Russians” are being censored, Nori lamented.
Under public pressure, the university later backtracked and agreed to allow the course.


Instruction: Write an article about: China launches Global South economic alliance to challenge US ‘unilateralism’ and ‘cold-war mentality’. 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: 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Belt and Road Initiative, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Global Development Initiative, Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter of the United Nations, Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative, Nicaragua, UN, United Nations, Venezuela

Output:
China is creating international political and economic alliances to challenge US unipolar hegemony. The Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative promotes “win-win cooperation” as a model.

China is leading an international effort to develop alliances to counter US hegemony.
In March 2021, 17 nations — many led by anti-imperialist and progressive governments, including Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia among others — formed a diplomatic alliance called the Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter of the United Nations, which seeks to defend sovereignty and multilateralism against the unilateral domination of the United States and Western Europe.
This January 20, China’s mission to the UN launched a new, economic version of this diplomatic alliance, called the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative.
This new Group of Friends seeks to promote China’s “Global Development Initiative” (GDI), and complements China’s massive international infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative.
Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the creation of the GDI at the United Nations General Assembly in September 2021. He said the campaign aims at promoting “people-centered,” environmentally friendly development, with the primary goals of reducing poverty, helping formerly colonized countries in the Global South, and eventually achieving carbon neutrality.
To this end, Beijing has sought to merge the GDI with the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The Group of Friends of Global Development Initiative officially launched today!
I thank member states and UN agencies for their support. Look forward to working together to meet challenges and advance post-COVID recovery and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. pic.twitter.com/LAcIICEfP6
— Zhang Jun (@ChinaAmbUN) January 20, 2022

The new Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative launched this January 20 consists of countries who have joined China in its GDI.
In the founding meeting, Beijing’s ambassador cautioned against “unilateralism” and the “resurgent Cold-War mentality and the clamoring for ‘decoupling’” — a clear reference to the aggressive campaigns waged by Washington and Brussels.
The Chinese ambassador explained that the GDI “is a platform for mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation.”
While the United States and European Union have tried to recruit countries in a global Cold War Two alliance against China and Russia, Beijing made it clear that the GDI “is open and inclusive, and will not create any kind of small circles.”
Representatives of the following nations participated in this founding meeting of the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative, alongside China:
Unlike the Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter of the United Nations, the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative is not clearly anti-imperialist. It includes, for example, the reactionary Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE, which collaborate with Western imperialism. And some other members are certainly not progressive friends of national-liberation struggles.
But this new economic alliance shows the foundations for the structure of the new multipolar world being built, which is no longer dominated by US unipolar hegemony.
In this increasingly multipolar world, we can expect to see more contradictory moves by countries like the Gulf monarchies, which are trying to balance the rise of China against the United States to their mutual benefit.
This process is full of contradictions, but it part of a general weakening of US imperialism, and creates more political, economic, and diplomatic space for progressive and revolutionary forces in countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and beyond to not only survive but to thrive and advance.
At the founding meeting, China’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Zhang Jun, explained Beijing’s thinking behind the new Group of Friends:
As we speak, the world today is faced with many grave challenges. We are witnessing profound changes and a pandemic both unseen in a century. The wealth gap, recovery gap, development gap and immunity gap keep widening. Global development is under severe impact. The pandemic has left many countries, especially developing countries, high and dry. People of all countries are eager to get back onto the right track of sustainable development.
Against this backdrop, the GDI proposed by President Xi aims at addressing the pressing challenges facing all countries, especially developing ones. And it is committed to practicing true multilateralism, putting people front and center, fully implementing the 2030 Agenda, and realizing the aspiration of all people for a better life.
…
Recent years have witnessed setbacks in global development, and widening wealth gap and increasing inequality among and within countries. The pandemic has further eroded the global poverty reduction gains in the past decade, one hundred and forty million people falling back into poverty, the number of people living in hunger reaching eight hundred million. We are also facing food security, energy security, climate change and other prominent issues. The implementation of the 2030 Agenda is confronted with serious challenges. Against such backdrop, the GDI adheres to the people-centered philosophy, prioritizes development, and promotes the international community to place development at the core of the global macro policy framework. I’m sure it will provide stronger and more targeted support to developing countries, making sure no one is left behind.
It is important to note that the Initiative, with development as its priority and commitment to people-centered development, aims to protect and promote human rights through development, especially the right to subsistence and development of all people, including women, children and other vulnerable groups.
The creation of the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative is just one of a series of very interesting diplomatic moves happening behind the scenes. These developments don’t get coverage in mainstream corporate media because they’re not very sexy, but they are important.
The launch got zero coverage in the mainstream English-language corporate media. Chinese state-backed media outlets did cover the event though.
The Group of Friends in Defense of the Charter of the United Nations, the diplomatic complement to the Group of Friends of the Global Development Initiative, was formed in March 2021 by the following 16 UN member states and Palestine (a UN observer state):
Both the diplomatic and the economic alliance are still very young, but expect to hear more about these Groups of Friends in the future. These are the seeds that have been planted for a new multipolar international order.
The anti-imperialist Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter launched yesterday, featuring:AlgeriaAngolaBelarusBoliviaCambodiaChinaCubaDPRKEqui. GuineaEritreaIranLaosNicaraguaPalestineRussiaSaint Vincent and GrenadinesSyriaVenezuelahttps://t.co/4vc9sbpOlR pic.twitter.com/ErFDIed7cW
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 7, 2021


Instruction: Write an article about: US and UK undermining Bosnian democracy with sectarian electoral law changes. 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: Bosnia, Yugoslavia

Output:
Bosnia and Herzegovina is already governed by a neocolonial system, but the US, UK, and Israel are further undermining democracy by pushing for sectarian election law amendments that could weaken the civil rights of minorities like Jews and Roma.

Croatian President Zoran Milanović briefly made headlines this April when he threatened to veto the NATO candidacy of Finland and Sweden.
Milanović claimed the Western military alliance would only receive Croatia’s support if neighbouring Bosnia and Herzegovina was forced to amend its election law according to terms deemed advantageous for Bosnian Croats.
The amendments, proposed earlier this year by a Bosnian Croat body called the Croatian National Parliament (HNS), would limit voting rights and eligibility for some elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina to citizens identified as “Croats”.
The changes would affect eligibility for positions explicitly reserved for Serbs, Croats or Muslims, which includes the tripartite presidency and some parliamentary seats.
The changes are widely believed to favour the Bosnian section of the right-wing Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), Croatia’s main post-war ruling party, of which Prime Minister Andrej Plenković is a member (but not President Milanović).
The strategy behind Milanović’s threats, leveraging a possible NATO veto for policy changes in third party states under implicit US pressure, echoes an earlier gambit by Türkiye, which suggested it would veto unless Finland and Sweden collaborated with Turkish efforts to repress Kurdish activism abroad. In a stunning humiliation for pro-NATO, pro-Kurdish liberals, concessions to Ankara were rapidly agreed by both NATO candidates.
In Croatia’s case, the threats received only brief attention in English-language news coverage. Many anti-NATO commentators outside the region, unfamiliar with Milanović’s reputation for bizarre non sequiturs and gaffes, celebrated an apparent breach in NATO unity. Others noted the limited power over foreign policy exercised by Croatia’s presidency, and suggested nothing would come of his bluster.
Croatia’s Prime Minister Plenković distanced his government from President Milanović’s remarks, and stated unambiguously that Croatia would support Sweden and Finland’s NATO applications, as Croatia did at NATO’s Madrid summit in June. However, Plenković has separately supported the amendments.
The election law – which was subject to a separate set of amendments in July, likely a compromise with public opposition – has remained a key issue in local media, but has received little or no subsequent attention in North American media.
The proposed amendments have been vociferously denounced by politicians in Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially by Muslims; by EU human rights groups; and near-unanimously by EU member states, including France and Germany.
EU-based critics have invoked a series of decisions by the European Court of Human Rights, beginning in 2009, which sought to invalidate part of the country’s current election law – a product of the Dayton Agreement – because it already prevents citizens of the country not identified as Serbs, Croats, or Muslim “Bosniaks” – such as Jews or Roma – from standing for certain elections.
However, the amendments, which would further rescind civil rights for Jews and Roma living in Bosnia and Herzegovina, have been supported by the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and, controversially, by Israel.
Under the Dayton Agreement, which ended Bosnia’s civil war in 1995 and established a now-permanent EU/NATO military occupation, local authority is divided along the armistice line between two sectarian “entities”, respectively the Croat/Muslim “Federation” and the “Serb Republic”.
The state presidency is shared by a council composed of one Muslim, one Croat, and one Serb. The entities operate basic public services, but are not states. The state of Bosnia and Herzegovina itself (as opposed to the entities) has limited powers on paper and almost none in practice.
Real power in Bosnia, under Dayton, is exercised by a group of foreign states – members of the Peace Implementation Council (PIC). The PIC nominally includes countries such as Germany, Canada, Türkiye, and even Russia. However, increasingly, the US has near-total control over the implementation of Dayton; Russia is excluded in practice; and the EU’s role is limited to ineffectual complaints.
The PIC appoints a neocolonial proconsul to the Office of the High Representative (OHR), with vast powers to amend or veto laws, dismiss elected officials, and rule Bosnia and Herzegovina by decree.
Thus far, all high representatives have come from European Union member states.
While previous appointments to the OHR reflected a compromise between NATO and Russia, and were historically ratified by the UN Security Council, Russia has refused to recognize NATO’s most recent preferred candidate, German politician Christian Schmidt, who took office in 2021.
Relations between Bosnian institutions and politicians, and the OHR, have been extremely tense since Schmidt’s nomination, and tensions have only continued to escalate.
Croatian President Milanović’s call to change his neighbor’s election legislation was effectively a request that the US pressure Bosnia and Herzegovina’s colonial governor to modify its laws to privilege Croats.
Since Croatia’s president and prime minister belong to opposing parties, and Milanović’s own Social Democratic Party (SDP) has nothing to gain directly from Bosnia’s elections, his actual motives were never entirely clear, other than as an attempt to win nationalist political capital within Croatia itself.
Beyond the possible quid pro quo related to NATO membership, evidence of which remains circumstantial, it’s also unclear why Washington has supported the amendments.
The US and UK have insisted the OHR force through the amendments, in opposition to a virtual consensus of Bosnian Muslim politicians, European states, and European legal institutions that the amendments are discriminatory and anti-democratic.
The amendments to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s election law were proposed by Croats, are expected to benefit Croats, and may only affect elections in the “Federation” entity, where Serb politicians have little to gain directly.
However, Muslim condemnation has focused on possible benefits the amendments might provide Serbs. In some cases, such as in an article for Al Jazeera, it has been implied without evidence that Russia might be the dark, secret force behind the amendments.
The argument is that, since Serbs and Croats are both minorities in the country, and since compromise wording of the amendments would likely benefit Serb nationalist politicians too, Serbs (or Russians) must be the real proponents of the changes.
It is true that comments by Serb politicians have been ambiguous, suggesting support for the principle behind the amendments – that is, deepening the sectarian character of Bosnian elections to protect Serbs and Croats at the expense of other minorities – but opposing amendment efforts on procedural grounds.
However, the nuance and context is completely lost in most English-language coverage, which is almost always anti-Serb. Crucially, Serb politicians do not recognize Schmidt’s authority to make the amendments, and have repeatedly opposed his efforts to do so.
The fact remains that, irrespective of what pro-American Muslim liberals may want to believe, the US government has led the effort to impose the amendments.
While the United States subsequently tried to backtrack and joined calls to suspend any amendments until after Bosnian elections on October 2, the US and UK have always been the main force in supporting the amendments.
In practice, Washington unilaterally directs the OHR’s policies, whatever objections European or Bosnian politicians might raise.
Conversely, Russia plays no direct role whatsoever in Bosnia’s political process, beyond its public, vocal support for Serb politicians.
Russia continues to refuse to recognize Schmidt’s appointment to the OHR, and has echoed calls by Serbs suggesting he has no authority to impose the amendments.
This is not to say that Russia has played a principled, unifying, anti-sectarian role in Bosnian politics; but the narrative that it is somehow commandeering US Balkan policy strains credulity.
It is possible that the United States contrived an intervention on the Bosnian election law to stir conflict.
Anglo-American Balkan policy has historically been predicated on exploiting conflicts between Serbs and Muslims. With Serbs seen as loyal to Russia, and Croatia seen as an unreliable German client state, the Bill Clinton administration in the 1990s saw Yugoslavia’s Muslim minority populations as conveniently desperate victims.
In effect, Muslim vulnerability provided a pretext for permanent US occupation of the region.
Immediately before Bosnia’s civil war, in 1992, all three parties – Serbs, Muslims, and Croats – had agreed to the Lisbon Agreement, a European initiative which would have prevented the violence.
US ambassador Warren Zimmermann actively discouraged Bosnia’s president, Alija Izetbegović, from following through with the Lisbon Agreement.
Izetbegović withdrew and the deal fell apart – an event echoed recently when British pressure (on behalf of the US) nixed a tentative peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine.
Preventing the war would have saved tens of thousands of lives, and prevented the immeasurable harms done to a society and its people by four years of civil war.
This damage included the destruction of the social fabric of Sarajevo, which, prior to the war, had been the cosmopolitan cultural centre of socialist Yugoslavia and, more than any other city in the country, a post-sectarian model of peaceful cooperation between different communities.
Local sectarianism and nationalist opportunism played a decisive role in the conflict. So too did US intervention, which supported Yugoslavia’ s breakup at least as early as 1992.
Support for sectarianism and secessionist movements greatly accelerated under the Clinton administration, as post-Cold War policy shifted toward limiting the geopolitical ambitions of a reunited Germany.
The US, along with its anglosphere client states, sought to secure a geopolitical foothold in the Balkans.
US intervention in Bosnia involved covert support for far-right Islamist extremists, essentially drawn from Osama Bin Laden’s network.
Similar forces were later employed by the US to support a secessionist project in the Serbian province of Kosovo, now also under permanent NATO occupation.
The Bosnian election law issue has not been the only locus of heightened regional tensions in recent months.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, EU and NATO forces increased the visibility of their military presence in Bosnia, flying French fighter jets over the country and sending uniformed troops down commercial streets.
The proxy war in Ukraine threatens to drag the Balkans into a larger regional conflict, as the US, EU, and NATO militarize Bosnia and increase pressure on Serbia, and Ukrainian drones crash in Croatiahttps://t.co/OME68zHvzE
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) May 4, 2022

Most recently, Kosovo’s secessionist government attempted to force Serbs living in Kosovo to use its licence plates instead of Serbian ones.
However, Kosovo’s prime minister, Albin Kurti, was forced to suspend the measure, likely under US pressure, and a status quo agreement was negotiated with Belgrade. Similar incidents in the past have fizzled out similarly.
Given its history, it is not unreasonable to guess that the United States is instrumentalizing the Bosnian election law issue to stoke sectarian conflict and needlessly draw out the country’s political stalemate.
Or perhaps Washington is simply trying to manage a tangle of conflicting alliances and regional objectives.
Bosnian Croats have threatened to boycott the elections this October if their amendments are not adopted, and have sometimes made veiled threats to secede entirely. Bosnian Serbs have made similar threats in the past.
The US and UK claim that their support for the election law amendments is intended to prevent the breakup of the country.
However, notably absent from US officials’ calls for unity and cooperation is any suggestion that the US would ever support a final, post-Dayton settlement to Bosnia’s civil war.
Dayton effectively keeps the country dysfunctional and pliant; incubates cliques of nationalist politicians; and precludes any possibility of the country meeting the needs of its citizens, or of ever joining the EU; all while providing a reliable pretext for a permanent US military presence in the country.
While any final settlement would need to provide real responses to the concerns of the Serb and Croat minorities, civil society groups in Bosnia are correct to insist that Dayton’s sectarian political system is incompatible with secular liberal democracy.
It would be wise, then, to continue asking why the United States government is so committed to keeping Dayton permanently in place.


Instruction: Write an article about: China reaffirms ‘rock solid’ friendship with Russia, deepens economic integration amid Western 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: China, EU, European Union, Mir, Russia, sanctions, SWIFT, Ukraine, UnionPay, Wang Yi, Zhao Lijian

Output:
While the US and EU isolate Moscow over Ukraine, China is strengthening its alliance with Russia, calling it its “most important strategic partner.” In response to Western sanctions, Russian banks are moving to a Chinese payment system, and the Eurasian economies are integrating closer together.

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
The United States and European Union have used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that began on February 24 to try to isolate Moscow politically and strangle the country economically.
At the same time, Russia has strengthened its alliance with China, deepening the integration of their economies.
Washington and Brussels have created what is essentially a new iron curtain, imposing crushing sanctions aimed at devastating Russia’s economy and devaluing its currency, the ruble.
The US and European countries have pledged to ban Russian oil. Several Russian banks have been removed from the SWIFT system for financial transactions. And Western sanctions have even hit Russia’s central bank, freezing its foreign assets.
What this economic war has done is accelerated a process of decoupling of Russia from the West, one that began several years ago as Moscow has aimed to de-dollarize.
At the same time, the Joe Biden administration has sought China’s help in trying to enforce these new sanctions and pressure Russia to de-escalate – despite the fact that Washington has spent years waging a new cold war on Beijing, making unsubstantiated and politicized accusations of genocide while imposing sanctions on the East Asian giant.
The US strategy to use Ukraine as a wedge between Russia and China has not worked. Instead, the barrage of new sanctions on Moscow has had the impact of bolstering Eurasian integration of the Russian and Chinese economies.
Meanwhile, China has firmly stood with Russia. Its foreign minister, Wang Yi, referred to Moscow as Beijing’s “most important strategic partner.”
Wang denounced the United States for “acting irresponsibly on the international arena.”
China stressed that its “rock-solid” friendship with Russia is “free from interference or discord sown by third parties” – a clear rebuke of Washington’s attempt to divide them.
The U.S. met with China over three months to present intelligence showing Russia’s troop buildup near Ukraine and to urge Beijing to help avert war, U.S. officials said.
Chinese officials rebuffed the U.S. and shared the information with Moscow.https://t.co/Ngbuu9P3n1
— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 25, 2022

By making the decision to militarily intervene in Ukraine in February 2022, Russia made it clear that it is no longer concerned with trying to integrate with the West. Moscow recognizes that its future lies in Eurasian integration with China, Iran, and other Eastern powers.
Beijing has also helped Moscow weather the financial storm of Western sanctions and trade restrictions, and the two countries have strengthened their economic ties.
China lifted all restrictions on imports of Russian wheat on February 24. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of wheat, and China has gradually increased imports from its northern neighbor.
The South China Morning Post (SCMP) noted, “China could provide a lifeline to Russia’s economy after the United States and its allies imposed swift economic sanctions on Moscow.”
The newspaper added that China’s ambassador to Russia, Zhang Hanhui, said Beijing “was ‘pleased’ to see that its currency has been widely used in Russian trade, financial investments and foreign reserves, and was also looking forward to discussions about yuan settlements in bilateral energy deals.”
Russia’s state-owned bank VTB, the second-largest financial institution in the country, announced on March 9 that customers can open savings accounts in the Chinese currency, the yuan, with an interest rate of up to 8%.
VTB Bank is offering a Chinese yuan savings account with a maximum interest rate of 8%, as the Russian lender faces strict sanctions from the U.S. and U.K. https://t.co/33vqAu7Zpm
— Bloomberg Asia (@BloombergAsia) March 9, 2022

In a separate article, the SCMP reported that bilateral trade between China and Russia has increased during the Ukraine crisis, rising to US$26.4 billion in January and February, a 38.5% increase from the previous year, and the highest growth rate for these months since 2010. It did add, however, that export growth is slowing.
In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Visa and Mastercard announced they would be limiting operations in the country. So Russia is turning toward its own domestic payment system, while expanding use of a Chinese counterpart.
Moscow’s state news agency Tass published a report on March 6 revealing that various banks in Russia are already using China’s UnionPay system for financial transactions, including the state-owned Russian Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank) and Promsvyazbank and the private Gazprombank and Sovcombank.
Reuters noted that more Russian banks plan to work with UnionPay, including the state-owned Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank, as well as the private Alfa Bank and Tinkoff.
Russian banks rush to switch to Chinese card system https://t.co/Lit9GM4DdD pic.twitter.com/hmfz0ytq0K
— Reuters (@Reuters) March 6, 2022

Russia has its own payment system, called Mir, which was created by the central bank in 2017, largely due to the effects of Western sanctions imposed on the country in 2014.
Tass said some national banks are considering combining these Russian and Chinese payment services, and “will possibly issue co-badged cards linking Russia’s Mir and China’s UnionPay systems that will provide the option of payment for purchases and cash withdrawals abroad.”
The Joe Biden administration has sought to turn Ukraine into a wedge between China and Russia, and prominent Western media pundits like the New York Times’ Paul Krugman have argued that “China can’t bail out Putin’s economy.”
CNN declared that “China can’t do much to help Russia’s sanction-hit economy,” while Bloomberg prognosticated that Beijing made a “fateful choice on ties with Russia” that will supposedly come back to hurt it.
At the same time, the US government has publicly threatened to hit Chinese firms with financial punishments if they refuse to comply with Western sanctions on Russia and help Moscow get around these unilateral coercive measures.
Faced with this antagonistic strategy, China has doubled down on its support for Russia.
In a press conference on March 7, Beijing’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, declared that the Chinese-Russian partnership is “free from interference or discord sown by third parties.” This was a clear rejection of attempts by the United States and European Union to create divisions between them.
Wang said China and Russia are “each other’s most important close neighbors and strategic partners,” calling their relationship “one of the most crucial bilateral relations in the world.”
“China and Russia jointly oppose attempts to revive the Cold War mindset,” Wang stressed, warning about Washington’s drive toward a new cold war.
The Chinese foreign minister said Beijing and Moscow have a “shared commitment to ever-lasting friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation,” one that “is based on non-alliance, non-confrontation and non-targeting of any third party.”
“The China-Russia relationship is grounded in a clear logic of history and driven by strong internal dynamics, and the friendship between the Chinese and Russian peoples is rock-solid,” Wang added.
China and Russia have good energy cooperation and will continue to conduct normal trade cooperation including on oil & gas in the spirit of mutual respect, equality & mutual benefit.
— Spokesperson发言人办公室 (@MFA_China) March 9, 2022

Bejing has also forcefully condemned Western sanctions on Russia.
Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian stated, “China is definitely against unilateral sanctions that are not based on international law. Brandishing a sanctions baton will not bring peace and security. It will only lead to serious issues for the economy and the quality of life in the corresponding countries.”
Zhao warned, “In this situation, everyone loses. Sanctions will only intensify division and confrontation.”


Instruction: Write an article about: Xi blasts US ‘containment, encirclement’ of China, Foreign Ministry slams ‘hysterical neo-McCarthyism’. 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, Hua Chunying, new cold war, Qin Gang, Xi Jinping

Output:
President Xi Jinping denounced the US-led Western attempt to “contain, encircle, and suppress China”. Foreign Minister Qin Gang condemned Washington’s “hysterical neo-McCarthyism” and “malicious confrontation”, opposing the “cold war mentality”.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has denounced the US-led Western attempt to “contain, encircle, and suppress China”.
Foreign Minister Qin Gang likewise warned that the US government is pursuing a “hysterical neo-McCarthyism”, and that its “so-called ‘competition’ means to contain and suppress China in all respects and get the two countries locked in a zero-sum game”.
Chinese political leaders are often very cautious and diplomatic with their language, and they frequently caution against the United States’ “cold war mentality”.
These assertive comments show that Beijing is standing up for itself and pushing back as Washington wages an increasingly aggressive new cold war.

“Western countries headed by the United States have contained, encircled and suppressed China in an all-round way, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to China’s development”, Xi said in a speech on March 7, reported by state media outlet Xinhua.
Acknowledging the growing geopolitical tensions, Xi said China is “faced with high winds and choppy waters in the international environment”. He added that “the external environment for China’s development has changed drastically, with uncertainties and unexpected factors increasing remarkably”.
The Wall Street Journal noted that “Xi’s comments marked an unusual departure for a leader who has generally refrained from directly criticizing the U.S. in public remarks—even as his decadelong leadership has demonstrated a pessimistic view of the bilateral relationship”.
“Xi has typically been more measured and vague regarding the U.S. and other Western countries, referring to them as “certain” countries rather than naming them explicitly”, the newspaper added.
This is him telling the Chinese people that China is under attack by the West as a whole, led by the US.
Which is factually undeniable of course but him saying it out loud marks a real turning point. It probably means he's lost hope that a new cold war can be avoided.
— Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 7, 2023

John Pang, a former Malaysian government official who frequently writes for Chinese media outlets, noted that, “Unlike western politicians, Chinese leaders err on the side of understatement and indirectness when discussing external threats, nor are they fond of using it to justify policy. I can’t recall his ever having put this so directly”.
Despite these challenges, President Xi noted that his country has continued progressing: “China’s GDP registered an annual growth rate of 5.2 percent over the past five years. We won the critical battle against poverty as scheduled and finished building a moderately prosperous society in all respects”.
Xi also reiterated his commitment to “common prosperity for all Chinese people“.
In separate remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said, “The US claim to ‘shape the strategic environment in which China operates’ actually reveals the real purpose of its Indo-Pacific Strategy, that is to encircle China”.
She was referencing remarks made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who announced this containment policy in a May 2022 speech.
Hua affirmed, “Asia should be a stage for win-win cooperation rather than a chessboard for geopolitical contest. No Cold War should be reignited, and no Ukraine-style crisis should be repeated in Asia”.
The US claim to “shape the strategic environment in which China operates” actually reveals the real purpose of its Indo-Pacific Strategy, that is to encircle China.
— Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) March 7, 2023

China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang gave a press conference on March 7 in which he made similar remarks.
He referenced the manufactured crisis in February, in which the US military shot down a Chinese balloon that its own experts admitted had likely been blown off course due to the weather.
Qin said this balloon entering US airspace was “entirely an accident caused by force majeure”. He noted, “Even the United States did not believe it posed a physical threat”.
“However, in violation of the spirit of international law and international customary practices, the United States acted with a presumption of guilt”, Qin added. “It overreacted, abused force, and dramatized the accident, creating a diplomatic crisis that could have been avoided”.
US officials admitted the Chinese balloon they shot down on February 4 had likely been blown off course by unexpected weather.
The US Air Force later spent $2 million using missiles to blow up a $12 hobbyist balloon.https://t.co/kY1r4Cb7Xx
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 21, 2023

Noting that Washington “regards China as its primary rival and biggest geopolitical challenge”, the foreign minister argued that “the US perception and views of China are seriously distorted”.
He stated (emphasis added):
The United States claims that it seeks to “out-compete” China but does not seek conflict. Yet in reality, its so-called “competition” means to contain and suppress China in all respects and get the two countries locked in a zero-sum game.
The United States talks a lot about following rules. But imagine two athletes competing in an Olympic race. If one athlete, instead of focusing on giving one’s best, always tries to trip or even injure the other, that is not fair competition, but malicious confrontation and a foul!
Its so-called “establishing guardrails” for China-US relations and “not seeking conflict” actually means that China should not respond in words or action when slandered or attacked. That is just impossible!
If the United States does not hit the brake but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing, and there will surely be conflict and confrontation. Who will bear the catastrophic consequences?
Such competition is a reckless gamble with the stakes being the fundamental interests of the two peoples and even the future of humanity. Naturally China is firmly opposed to all this.
If the United States has the ambition to make itself great again, it should also have a broad mind for the development of other countries. Containment and suppression will not make America great, and it will not stop the rejuvenation of China.
The Chinese foreign minister was careful to distinguish the people of the United States from the government.
“More and more people with vision and insight in the United States are deeply worried about the current state of China-US relations, and have been calling for a rational and pragmatic policy toward China”, he said.
Qin previously served as China’s ambassador to the United States from 2021 to 2023.
He affectionately recalled the time he spent working in the US and the friends he made.
“The American people, just like the Chinese people, are friendly, kind and sincere, and want a better life and a better world”, he stressed.
Qin concluded (emphasis added):
I’m convinced that the China-US relationship should be determined by the common interests and shared responsibilities of the two countries and by the friendship between the Chinese and American peoples, rather than by US domestic politics or the hysterical neo-McCarthyism.
China will continue to follow the principles put forth by President Xi Jinping, namely, mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, to pursue a sound and stable relationship with the United States.
We hope the US government will listen to the calls of the two peoples, rid of its strategic anxiety of “threat inflation”, abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality.


Instruction: Write an article about: US-Russia proxy war risks nuclear apocalypse, 60 years after Cuban Missile Crisis. 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: Aaron Good, Cuba, Cuban Missile Crisis, history, nuclear weapons, Russia, Ukraine

Output:
On the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world is closer than ever to nuclear apocalypse, with the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine and the US military deploying nukes to Europe and Australia.

On the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world is closer than ever to nuclear apocalypse, with the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine.
Historian and political scientist Aaron Good joined Multipolarista host Ben Norton to discuss the important lessons to learn from this dangerous historical episode:

“US Nuclear Forces Chief Says ‘the Big One Is Coming’,” Antiwar.com, Dave DeCamp, November 6, 2022
The US Department of Defense reported on November 3, 2022:
The current conflict in Ukraine is not the worst that the U.S. should be prepared for. Around the corner, said the commander of U.S. Strategic Command, the U.S. must be prepared for much more.
“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” Navy Adm. Charles A. Richard, commander of Stratcom, said. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested a long time.”
“US to send hi-tech nuclear weapons to Nato bases amid rising tensions with Russia,” The Telegraph, October 27, 2022
US to send hi-tech nuclear weapons to Nato bases amid rising tensions with Russia
Deployment of B61-12 tactical bombs to Europe comes after Moscow held military exercises showcasing its own ballistic capabilities
?⬇https://t.co/3qYXR00eQY pic.twitter.com/vyXPJUxjSI
— Telegraph World News (@TelegraphWorld) October 28, 2022

“Finland May Allow NATO to Place Nuclear Weapons on Border With Russia,” Newsweek, October 26, 2022
"The U.S. already has around 100 nuclear weapons in Europe, positioned in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey"
"The Polish government said it had held discussions with the U.S. government about hosting U.S. nuclear weapons"https://t.co/aajILTBF24
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 30, 2022

“US Air Force to deploy nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to Australia as tensions with China grow,” ABC News, October 30, 2022
No debate, no discussion — democracy shelved. ‘No nukes’ policy trashed — US is making northern Australia prime targets for their planned war with China.
Military madness is fanning tensions with China. US to deploy nuclear B-52 bombers to Australia.  https://t.co/FrbMKHosG8
— Peter Cronau (@PeterCronau) October 30, 2022

“US general on rare visit to nuclear-armed sub in Arabian Sea,” Associated Press, October 19, 2022
The top U.S. military commander for the Middle East boarded a U.S. ballistic missile submarine in the Arabian Sea on Wednesday, a rare move that highlighted U.S. nuclear undersea capabilities during tense times with #Iran and #Russia.https://t.co/6QkYAfcfJQ
— Jason Brodsky (@JasonMBrodsky) October 20, 2022

In October 2022, Ukraine’s NATO-backed leader Zelensky called for a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Russia:
"President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky called on NATO to launch a preemptive strike against the Russian Federation in the event of a threat from its side to use nuclear weapons. He stated this during a video interview with the Lowy Institute" #Ukraine 1/https://t.co/0IvVX5e2n2
— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) October 6, 2022

CIA veteran calls for US war on China and Russia, threatening nuclear strikes, in elite Foreign Policy magazine:
A CIA/Pentagon veteran at NATO’s powerful Atlantic Council think tank published an article in elite Foreign Policy magazine calling for US war on China & Russia, including “threatening nonstrategic nuclear strikes”
(This was before Russia invaded Ukraine)https://t.co/fqgbGjZYu5
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) May 5, 2022

Neoconservative pundit Anne Applebaum wrote in The Atlantic magazine: “Fear of Nuclear War Has Warped the West’s Ukraine Strategy: Leaders shouldn’t give in to Putin’s nuclear rhetoric”
The US Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles wanted to drop nuclear bombs on China and Vietnam: “When Ike Was Asked to Nuke Vietnam,” Washington Post, 1982
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (a leader of the Cold War, architect of the US national security state, and brother of CIA director Allen Dulles) declared in a meeting with fascist-supporting NATO that nuclear bombs were now "conventional" weapons and would be used on China pic.twitter.com/LgUVq3vccz
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 15, 2021

Foreign Minister Wang Yi said at the United Nations General Assembly in September stressed that “China is the only country in the world that pledges to keep to a path of peaceful development in its constitution,” and “is the only one among the five nuclear weapons states [the permanent members of the UN Security Council] that is committed to no first use of nuclear weapons”:
"China is the only country in the world that pledges to keep to a path of peaceful development in its constitution"
"It is the only one among the five nuclear weapons states [the permanent members of the UN Security Council] that is committed to no first use of nuclear weapons" pic.twitter.com/JImgLCPOie
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 24, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: Ukraine’s National Guard boasts of Nazis killing Russian Muslim ‘orcs’ with lard bullets. 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: Azov Battalion, Chechnya, Islamophobia, Russia, Ukraine

Output:
Ukraine’s National Guard praised its neo-Nazi fighters from the white-supremacist Azov movement for greasing bullets with pig fat to kill Russian Muslims, demonizing them as “orcs.”

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
Ukraine’s Western-backed National Guard has praised its Nazis fighters for greasing bullets with lard to kill Russian Muslims, demonizing them as “orcs.”
The official, verified Twitter account of the Ukrainian National Guard tweeted a video on February 27 showing a soldier from the neo-Nazi Azov movement dipping bullets in pig fat.
“Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs?,” the Ukrainian National Guard wrote.
Azov fighters of the National Guard greased the bullets with lard against the Kadyrov orcs?
Бійці Азова Нацгвардії змастили кулі салом проти кадировських орків?
Підписуйтесь на наш телеграм канал https://t.co/SBQltMr4bM pic.twitter.com/A1ci7tZL8r
— НГУ (@ng_ukraine) February 27, 2022

“Kadyrov” is a reference to Ramzan Kadyrov, the leader of the Chechen Republic, a Muslim-majority region of the Russian Federation.
The Ukrainian National Guard dehumanized these Muslim Chechen fighters in the Russian army by referring to them as “orcs,” brutish monsters from fantasy books like “The Lord of the Rings.”
The Ukrainian Nazi soldier in this video is also greasing bullets with lard as a way to insult Muslims.
In Islam, pork and other pig products are seen as haram, that is to say unclean and forbidden.
In other words, the Western-backed Ukrainian state is publicly portraying Muslims as barbarians, and praising its Nazi soldiers for threatening to kill them with lard-greased bullets that they hope will send Chechen fighters to Hell.
Azov is an explicitly neo-Nazi militia that helped lead a violent US-sponsored coup in Ukraine in 2014, and was subsequently incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard.
Azov uses Nazi symbols like the German Wolfsangel and preaches a white-supremacist fascist ideology that portrays Ukrainians as a pure white race fighting supposedly impure “Asiatic” Russians.
The Nazi symbols used by Ukraine’s Azov Battalion
Russia militarily intervened in Ukraine on February 24, claiming its goal is to demilitarize and “denazify” its neighbor’s government.
Ukraine’s Western supporters have long insisted that Russian claims of Nazi influence in Ukraine are false or greatly exaggerated.
But Ukraine’s own National Guard publicly praising its neo-Nazi fighters for insulting and killing Muslims shows that far-right extremist ideology is pervasive in the Ukrainian state, especially in the security services.
In the back of this photo, you can also see a Canadian officer, alongside US military officers, meeting with Ukraine's neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, which uses Nazi-era symbols.https://t.co/8tOZ9A7YGK pic.twitter.com/dAZBeFaHdU
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 16, 2018

Nazi Azov fighters have received training from the US military and support from other Western governments.
NATO’s de facto think tank, the Atlantic Council, which is funded by the US State Department and Western governments, has previously praised Azov neo-Nazi fighters as anti-Russian heroes.
NATO’s think tank the Atlantic Council, funded by the US and European governments, promoted Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in 2014, depicting its far-right extremist fighters as anti-Russia heroes while whitewashing their fascist ideology.https://t.co/5kisKUJPhf
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 23, 2022

Western corporate media outlets have also amplified Azov Nazi propaganda as recently as this January and February.
Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion organized a photo op training Ukrainian elderly women and children to shoot guns.
Top US and British media outlets eagerly spread the fascist propaganda to demonize Russia.https://t.co/NHFiMr4e7E
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) February 21, 2022