Instruction: Write an article about: In neocolonial rant, EU says Europe is ‘garden’ superior to rest of world’s barbaric ‘jungle’. 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: colonialism, EU, Europe, European Union, Josep Borrell, racism, Russia, Ukraine

Output:
EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell showed the West’s neocolonial mentality claiming “the world needs Europe” as a “beacon” and beautiful “garden” to civilize the barbarous “jungle” in the Global South. He also called for regime change to create a “post-Putin Russia.”

The European Union’s top foreign-policy official showed how the colonialist mentality is still very much alive on the continent.
EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell said “Europe is a garden,” which is “beautiful” and superior to the vast majority of the countries on Earth. On the other hand, he claimed, “Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden.”
Borrell argued that “the world needs Europe,” because it is a “beacon” that must civilize the rest of the world.
The enlightened Western “gardeners have to go to the jungle,” he insisted, because if the supposed barbarians are not tamed, “the rest of the world will invade us.”

Borrell delivered this overtly racist rant at the inauguration of the European Diplomatic Academy in Brussels on October 13.
According to the official transcript, published at the EU website, Borrell said the following:
Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build – the three things together. And here, Bruges is maybe a good representation of beautiful things, intellectual life, wellbeing.
The rest of the world – and you know this very well, Federica – is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden. The gardeners should take care of it, but they will not protect the garden by building walls. A nice small garden surrounded by high walls in order to prevent the jungle from coming in is not going to be a solution. Because the jungle has a strong growth capacity, and the wall will never be high enough in order to protect the garden.
The gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us, by different ways and means.
Yes, this is my most important message: we have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world.
The EU foreign-policy chief failed to mention that, for more than 500 years, European colonialist powers have run the most violent empires in human history, overseeing mass genocides, racialized chattel slavery, ethnic cleansing, and constant wars.
Instead, Borrell continued later in his remarks portraying Europe as a superior “beacon” of civilization:
Believe me, Europe is a good example for many things. The world needs Europe. My experience of travelling around the world is that people look at us as a beacon.
Why [do] so many people come to Europe? Are there flows of illegal or irregular migrants going to Russia? Not many. No, they are coming to Europe but for good reasons.
Keep the garden, be good gardeners. But your duty will not be to take care of the garden itself but [of] the jungle outside.
In the same speech, Borrell claimed Europe is superior because of its “institutions”:
There is a big difference between Europe and the rest of the world – well, the rest of the world, understand me what I mean, no? – is that we have strong institutions. … The big difference between developed and not developed is not the economy, it is institutions.
Here, we have a judiciary – a neutral, independent judiciary. Here, we have systems of distributing the revenue. Here, we have elections that provide a free for the citizens. Here, we have the red lights controlling the traffic, people taking the garbage.
…
The big difference between us and an important part of the rest of the world is that we have institutions.
Despite his implications, countries across the Global South do indeed have independent judiciaries, tax services, free elections, traffic lights, and garbage collectors. But the EU’s top foreign-policy official apparently believes that the majority of the world’s population consists of illiterate knuckle-dragging cavemen.
Borrell evidently could see that his comments were racist, so he cautiously added, “I cannot go to emerging countries and build institutions for them – they have to be built by them. Otherwise, it would be a kind of neo-colonialism.”
But while he superficially rejected neocolonialism, Borrell’s remarks reflected a blatant neocolonialist mentality.
And the EU foreign-policy chief’s use of the term “emerging countries” made it clear that his rant was aimed specifically at the formerly colonized nations in the Global South.

In the same October 13 speech, Josep Borrell obliquely acknowledged that the West is fighting a new cold war against Russia and China.
“Now, we are definitely out of the Cold War and the post-Cold War. The post-Cold War has ended with the Ukrainian war,” he said.
Borrell made it clear that the EU’s goal is regime change in Moscow, to create a “post-Putin Russia” that can be integrated into the Western-dominated imperialist order.
“After this war [in Ukraine], it will become a period of instability and we will have to build a new security order,” he implored. “How do we integrate Russia – the post-Putin Russia – in this world order is something that will put a lot of work for people thinking on diplomacy, and on how to practice and to implement it.”
In the address, Borrell also praised US diplomat George Kennan, who was himself a staunch cold warrior and architect of the “containment” policy against the Soviet Union.
Borrell called this moment a “time of exceptional change,” and said, “We live in a world of power politics. The rules-based system that we defend is challenged like never before.”
“And we are certainly living also a ‘moment of creation’ of a new world. Because this war is changing a lot of things, and certainly it is changing the European Union. This war will create a different European Union, from different perspectives,” he added.
In the entire speech, Borrell only once acknowledged criticism. “There are people who say that this war means the end for the European Union to have a foreign policy because we are following blindly the United States,” he conceded. But he insisted that this is false, and that Brussels is creating its own independent policies.
Borrell’s remarks followed a similar address given the day before by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen at the EU Ambassadors Conference in Brussels.
As Multipolarista reported, von der Leyen warned that China and Russia are “threats” in a “war for the future of the entire world.”
The EU leader declared the China-Russia strategic partnership a “global challenge” to Western hegemony, and she called for weakening their influence in the Global South, cutting their access to raw materials, opposing Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, and expanding the EU.
EU leader Ursula von der Leyen said China and Russia are "threats" to Western hegemony and the proxy war in Ukraine is "a war for the future of the entire world"
She called to weaken their influence worldwide
Full video: https://t.co/rLikCTRyhI
Article: https://t.co/yxwgaBnT05 pic.twitter.com/YwtVpOg5K3
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 15, 2022

In his October 13 address, Josep Borrell boasted that the European Union had spent a lot time and resources pressuring countries around the world to vote at the United Nations the day before to oppose the incorporation of the former Ukrainian regions of Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhia into the Russian Federation.
“There was a lot of work behind it, a lot of outreach to many people in order to be sure that we were above the 140 line – which was the result of the first vote,” he bragged.
But he complained that “too many” countries in the Global South refused to condemn Russia.
“I have also to say that I am worried because there were too many abstentions,” Borrell lamented. “When more or less 20% of the world community decided not to support or not to reject the Russian annexation – for me, it is too many. It is too many.”
When discussing the proxy war in Ukraine, Borrell also cavalierly touched on the possibility of nuclear war. The EU foreign-policy chief pledged that, if the conflict escalates to that degree, “the Russian army will be annihilated”:
And then, there is the nuclear threat and Putin is saying he is not bluffing. Well, he cannot afford bluffing. And it has to be clear that the people supporting Ukraine and the European Union and the Member States, and the United Stated and NATO are not bluffing neither. And any nuclear attack against Ukraine will create an answer, not a nuclear answer but such a powerful answer from the military side that the Russian Army will be annihilated, and Putin should not be bluffing.
This is a serious moment in the history, and we have to show our unity, and our strength and our determination. Complete determination.
Borrell has repeatedly opposed attempts at brokering a peaceful, diplomatic settlement to the conflict in Ukraine. He instead publicly insists that the only solution is a military victory: “This war will be won on the battlefield.”
Touched by the resilience, determination and hospitality of @ZelenskyyUA & @Denys_Shmyhal.
I return with a clear to do list:
1. This war will be won on the battlefield. Additional €500 million from the #EPF are underway. Weapon deliveries will be tailored to Ukrainian needs. pic.twitter.com/Jgr61t9FfW
— Josep Borrell Fontelles (@JosepBorrellF) April 9, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: Why does the US support Israel? A geopolitical analysis with economist Michael Hudson. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran, Israel, Michael Hudson, Middle East, oil, Saudi Arabia, West Asia

Output:
A geopolitical analysis of why the United States so strongly supports Israel: Economist Michael Hudson discusses with journalist Ben Norton.

Why does the United States so strongly support Israel? Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton interviewed economist Michael Hudson to explore the reasons why Israel is such an important part of U.S. foreign policy and Washington’s attempt to dominate not only the region of the Middle East, but the entire world.

Israel is an extension of U.S. geopolitical power in one of the most critically important regions of the world.
In fact, it was current U.S. President Joe Biden, back in 1986, when he was a senator, who famously said that, if Israel didn’t exist, the United States would have to invent it:
If we look at the Middle East, I think it’s about time we stop, those of us who support, as most of us do, Israel in this body, for apologizing for our support for Israel.
There is no apology to be made. None. It is the best $3 billion investment we make.
Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region; the United States would have to go out and invent an Israel.
I am with my colleagues who are on the floor of the Foreign Relations Committee, and we worry at length about NATO; and we worry about the eastern flank of NATO, Greece and Turkey, and how important it is. They pale by comparison…
They pale by comparison in terms of the benefit that accrues to the United States of America.
It goes without saying that the so-called Middle East, or a better term is West Asia, has some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas, and the entire world’s economic infrastructure relies heavily on fossil fuels.
The planet is gradually moving toward new energy sources, which is needed to fight climate change, but fossil fuels are still absolutely critical to the global economy. And Washington’s goal has been to make sure that it can maintain steady prices in global oil and gas markets.
But this is about something much bigger than just oil and gas. The U.S. military’s stated policy since the 1990s, since the end of the Cold War and the overthrow of the Soviet Union, is to try to maintain control over every region of the world.
This was stated clearly in 1992 in the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine. The U.S. National Security Council wrote:
[The United States’] goal is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies. These regions include Europe, East Asia, the Middle East/Persian Gulf, and Latin America. Consolidated, nondemocratic control of the resources of such a critical region could generate a significant threat to our security.
Then, in 2004, the U.S. government published its National Military Strategy, in which Washington stressed that its goal was “Full Spectrum Dominance – the ability to control any situation or defeat any adversary across the range of military operations”.
Historically, when it came to West Asia, the U.S. relied on a so-called “twin pillar” strategy. The west pillar was Saudi Arabia, and the east pillar was Iran.
Until the 1979 revolution, Iran was governed by a shah, a dictatorial monarch who was backed by the United States and served U.S. interests in the region.
However, following the 1979 revolution, the U.S. lost one of the pillars of its twin pillar strategy, and Israel became increasingly important for the United States to maintain control over this crucially strategic region.
Many of the world’s top oil and gas producers are located in West Asia.

Furthermore, some of the most important trading routes on Earth go through this region.
It would be difficult to overstate how important Egypt’s Suez Canal is. It connects trade transiting from West Asia going into Europe, from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean.
Around 30% of all of the world’s shipping containers pass through the Suez Canal. That represents around 12% of the total global trade of all goods.
Then, directly south of the Suez Canal, where the Red Sea enters the Arabian Sea, there is a crucial geostrategic choke point known as the Bab al-Mandab Strait, off the coast of Yemen. There, more than 6 million barrels of oil pass through every single day.

Historically, the United States has tried to dominate this region in order to maintain control of energy supplies and ensure these global trade routes that the globalized capitalist system is built on.
As U.S. influence in the region has weakened in an increasingly multipolar world, Israel has become even more important for the United States to try to exercise hegemony in the region.
One can see this clearly in the discussions over oil prices in OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has essentially been expanded to OPEC+ to include Russia.
Today, Saudi Arabia and Washington’s archenemy, Russia, play a key role in determining global oil prices.
Historically, Saudi Arabia was a loyal U.S. proxy, but Riyadh has increasingly pursued a more non-aligned foreign policy. And a very big reason for that is that China is now the biggest trading partner of many of the countries in the region.
For a decade, China has been the largest importer of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, whereas U.S. oil imports peaked in 2005.
Due to massive expansion of production and the shale boom in the 2010s, the United States established itself as one of the top three oil producers on Earth, reducing its need for crude from Persian Gulf.
Meanwhile, through its global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China is moving the center of world trade back to Asia. And the “road” in BRI is a reference to the New Silk Road.

Can you guess which region is crucial in the New Silk Road and the BRI? Of course, it’s the Middle East – or, again, a better name is West Asia, and that term actually much better explains the geostrategic importance of this region, because it connects Asia to Europe.
This explains why the United States has been so desperate to try to challenge the Belt and Road with its own attempts to build new trade routes. In particular, the U.S. seeks to make a trade route going from India into the Persian Gulf, and then up through Israel.
So in all of these projects, Israel plays an important role, as an extension of U.S. imperial power in one of the most important regions of the world. That is why Biden said back in 1986 that if Israel didn’t exist, the U.S. would have to invent it.
That is also why Biden repeated this in a White House meeting with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog on October 27, 2022:
We’re also going to discuss the ironclad commitment – and this is, I’ll say this 5000 times in my career – the ironclad commitment the United States has to Israel, based on our principles, our ideas, our values; they’re the same values.
And I have often said, Mr. President [Herzog], if there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one.
And even as recently as October 18, 2023, Biden again repeated the same thing in a speech he made in Israel: “I have long said, if Israel didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it”.
In that speech in 2023, Biden traveled to Israel in order to support the country as it was carrying out a brutal bombing campaign in Gaza, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians as part of what legal experts around the world have referred to as a “textbook case of genocide”.
Top United Nations experts have warned that the Palestinian people are in danger of genocide by Israel.
And the United States has steadfastly been supporting Israel, because, as Joe Biden said, Israel is an extension of U.S. imperial power in West Asia, and if it didn’t exist, Washington would have to invent it.

Below follows a transcript of the interview that Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton conducted with economist Michael Hudson, author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire.
BEN NORTON: Michael, thanks for joining me today. We are speaking on November 9, and the latest death toll in the war in Gaza is that Israel has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians.
The United Nations has referred to Gaza as a “graveyard for children”. More than 4,000 children have been killed. About 40% of the casualties are children.
And the United States has continued to support Israel, not only diplomatically and politically, not only by, for instance, vetoing resolutions in the U.N. Security Council that call for a ceasefire, but furthermore, the U.S. has been sending billions of dollars to Israel.
Not only the $3.8 billion that the U.S. always gives to Israel every year in military aid, but additionally, tens of billions of dollars more.
So I am wondering if you could provide your analysis of why you think the U.S. is investing so many resources in supporting Israel while it is clearly committing war crimes.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, certainly it is supporting Israel, but it’s not supporting Israel because this is an altruistic act.
To the United States, Israel is its landed aircraft carrier in the Near East. Israel is the takeoff point for America to control the Near East.
And from the very time there was talk of creating an Israel, it was always that Israel was going to be an outpost, first of England, then of Russia, then of the United States in the Near East.
And I can give you an anecdote. Netanyahu’s main national security advisor for the last few years has been Uzi Arad. I worked at the Hudson Institute for about five years, 1972 to ‘76. And I worked very closely with Uzi there.
Uzi and I made two trips to Korea and Japan to talk about international finance. So we had a good chance to get to know each other. And on one trip, we stopped over from New York to San Francisco. And in San Francisco, there was a party or a gathering for people to meet us.
And one of the U.S. generals came over and slapped Uzi on the back and said, you’re our landed aircraft carrier over there. We love you.
Well, I could see Uzi feeling, tightening up and getting very embarrassed and didn’t really have anything to say. But the United States has always viewed Israel as just our foreign military base, not Israel.
So of course, it wants to secure this military base.
But when England first passed the act saying there should be in Israel the Balfour Declaration, it was because Britain wanted to control the Near East and its oil supplies.
When Israel was formed in the United Nations, the first country to recognize it was Stalin and Russia, who thought that Russians were going to have a major influence over Israel.
And then after that, of course, when Truman came in, the military immediately saw that America was replacing England as the chief of the Near East. And that was even after the fight, the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953.
So from the United States, it’s not Israel’s wagging the American tail, just the opposite. You mentioned that America is supporting Israel. I don’t think America is supporting Israel at all, nor do most Israelis, nor do most Democrats.
America is supporting Netanyahu. It’s supporting Likud, not Israel. The majority of Israelis, certainly the non-religious Israelis, the core population of Israel since its founding, is opposing Likud and its policies.
And so what really is happening is that to the United States, Netanyahu is the Israeli version of Zelensky in the Ukraine.
And the advantage of having such an unpleasant, opportunist, and corrupt person as Netanyahu, who is under indictment for his bribery and corruption, is precisely that all of the attention now of the whole world that is so appalled by the attacks going on in Gaza, they’re not blaming the United States.
They’re blaming Israel. They’re blaming Netanyahu and Israel for it, when it’s the United States that has been sending plane load after plane load of bombs, of guns. There are 22,000 machine guns, automatic guns, that are banned for sale in the United States that America is sending for the settlers to use on the West Bank.
So there’s a pretense of good cop, bad cop. You have Mr. Blinken telling Netanyahu, when you bomb hospitals, make sure you do it according to the rules of war. And when you kill 100,000 Gaza children, make sure it’s all legal and in the war. And when you talk about ethnic cleansing and driving a population out, make sure that it’s all done legal.
Well, of course, it’s not the rules of war, and there are war crimes being committed, but the United States is pretending to tell Netanyahu and the Israeli government, use smaller bombs. Be more gentle when you bomb the children in the hospital, when actually this is all for show.
The United States is trying to say, well, we’re only there to give help to an ally. The whole world has noticed that the U.S. now has two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, right off the Near Eastern shore, and it has an atomic submarine near the Persian Gulf.
Why are they there? President Biden and Congress say we are not going to have American troops fighting Hamas in Gaza. We’re not going to get involved. Well, if the troops are not going to get involved, why are they there?
Well, we know what the American planes are doing. Yesterday, they bombed yet another airport and a fuel depot in Syria. They’re bombing Syria. And it’s very clear that they’re there not to protect Israel, but to fight Iran.
Again and again, every American newspaper, when it talks about Hamas, it says Hamas is acting on behalf of Iran. When it talks about Hezbollah, and is there going to be an intervention from Lebanon against northern Israel, they say Hezbollah are the Iranian puppets.
Any time they talk about any Near Eastern leader, it’s really that all these leaders are puppets of Iran, just like in Ukraine and Central Europe, they talk about Hungary and other countries as all being puppets of Putin in Russia.
Their focus, really – America isn’t trying to fight to protect Ukraine. It’s fighting for the last Ukrainian to be exhausted in what they’d hoped would be depleting Russia’s military. Well, it hasn’t worked.
Well, the same thing in Israel. If the United States is pushing Israel and Netanyahu to escalate, escalate, escalate, to do something that at a point is going to lead Nasrallah to finally say, okay, we can’t take it anymore. We’re coming in and helping rescue the Gazians and especially rescue the West Bank, where just as much fighting is taking place. We’re going to come in.
And that’s when the United States will then feel free to move not only against Lebanon, but all the way via Syria, Iraq, to Iran.
What we’re seeing in Gaza and the West Bank today is only the catalyst, the trigger for the fact that the neocons say we are never going to have a better chance than we have right now to conquer Iran.
So this is the point for the showdown, that if America is to control Near Eastern oil, and by controlling Near Eastern oil, by bringing it under the US control, it can control the energy imports of much of the world.
And therefore, this gives American diplomats the power to cut off oil and gas and to sanction any country that tries to go multipolar, any country that tries to resist US unipolar control.
BEN NORTON: Yeah, Michael, I think you’re really hitting such an important point, which is how this is one of the most geostrategic regions of the world, especially when it comes to hydrocarbons.
The entire global economy is still very heavily reliant on oil and gas, and especially considering the US is not part of OPEC, and especially now considering that OPEC has really expanded essentially to OPEC+ and now includes Russia.
That means that Saudi Arabia and Russia essentially can help control global oil prices. And we’ve seen this really, in fact, in the United States in the past few years with the rise of consumer price inflation.
We saw that the Biden administration was concerned about gas prices, in particular in the lead up to the midterm elections. And the Biden administration has been releasing a lot of oil from the strategic oil reserves of the United States.
And we can also see these kinds of statements in particular when we go back and look at the Bush administration. There are numerous people involved in the Bush administration and the so-called “War on Terror” who openly talked about how important it was for Washington to dominate this region.
And I’m really thinking of, in 2007, when the top US general and NATO commander Wesley Clark famously disclosed that the Bush administration had made plans to overthrow seven countries in five years. And those were countries in North Africa and West Asia.
Specifically, he revealed in an interview with journalist Amy Goodman on Democracy Now that Washington’s plans were to overthrow the governments of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran:
WESLEY CLARK: About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me.
And one of the generals called me and he said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second”.
I said, “Well, you’re too busy”. He said, “No, no”. He says, “We’ve made the decision; we’re going to war with Iraq”.
This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq, why?” He said, “I don’t know”. He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do”.
So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no”. He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They’ve just made the decision to go to war with Iraq”.
He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments”.
And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail”.
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan.
I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that”.
He said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper, and he said, “I just got this down from upstairs”, meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office today, and he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran”.
I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir”. I said, “Well, don’t show it to me”.
And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” And he said, “Sorry, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”
AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry, what did you say his name was? (laughs)
WESLEY CLARK: I’m not going to give you his name. (laughs)
AMY GOODMAN: So go through the countries again.
WESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and then back to Iran.
BEN NORTON: And since then, we of course saw the U.S. war on Iraq. We of course saw the proxy war in Syria that still goes on in many ways. The U.S. is occupying one-third of Syrian territory, including the oil rich areas.
And Trump himself, President Donald Trump, boasted in a 2020 interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that he was leaving U.S. troops in Syria to take the oil:
DONALD TRUMP: And then they say, “He left troops in Syria”. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil.
LAURA INGRAHAM: We’re not taking the oil. We’re not taking it.
DONALD TRUMP: Well, maybe we will, maybe we won’t.
LAURA INGRAHAM: They’re protecting the facilities.
DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know, maybe we should take it. But we have the oil. Right now, the United States has the oil.
So they say, “He left troops in Syria”. No, I got rid of all of them, other than we’re protecting the oil; we have the oil.
BEN NORTON: We also saw the U.S. impose sanctions on Lebanon, which contributed to hyperinflation and the destruction of the Lebanese economy. And that was largely because Hezbollah is part of the government, and the U.S. has been pressuring the Lebanese government to create a new government without Hezbollah.
We also saw, of course, that NATO destroyed the Libyan state in 2011. Somalia also has a failed state. And Sudan was divided in no small part thanks to the U.S. and Israel supporting South Sudan’s separatist movement on ethno-religious lines, using religious sectarianism.
So if you look at the list of countries that Wesley Clark named in 2006, the seven countries in five years, again, that was Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran; the only country that really has been able to maintain state stability, that has not been completely devastated by the United States, is Iran.
Of course, it took longer than five years, but the U.S. was pretty successful. And of course Israel has played an important role in this U.S. goal to destabilize those governments in the region.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, let’s look and see how this was done. Remember after America was attacked on 9/11, there was a meeting at the White House, and everybody knew that the pilots were Saudi Arabians, and they knew that some of the pilots had been staying at the Saudi embassy in Los Angeles, I think, in the United States.
But after 9/11, there was a cabinet meeting, and Rumsfeld said to the people there, look and find any link you can get to Iraq, forget Saudi Arabia, no problem, Iraq is the key. And he directed them to find it, and 9/11 became the excuse for attacking not Saudi Arabia, but Iraq, and going right on with it.
Well, you needed a similar crisis in Libya. They said in Libya, there was some, I think, fundamentalists in the suburbs of one of the [cities], not the capital city, that were causing problems. And so you have to “protect” the innocent people from [Muammar Gadhafi], and you go in and grab all of their gold reserves, all of their money, and you take over the oil on behalf of France’s oil monopoly.
Well, this is the role of the fighting in Gaza today. Netanyahu’s fight against Gaza is being used as the excuse for America moving its warships there, its submarines, and bombing, along with Israel, the Syrian airport so that the Syrians are not able to move weapons or any kind of military support either to Lebanon, to the west, or Iran, to the east.
So it’s obvious that all of what we’re seeing is somehow to soften up public opinion for the fact that, well, just like we had to invade Iraq because of 9/11, we have to now finally fight and take out the oil refineries of Iran and their scientific institutes and any laboratories where they may be doing atomic research.
And Iran realizes this. Last week, the Iranian press TV said that their defense minister says that if there’s any attack on Iran, whether by Israel or by anyone else, the U.S. and its foreign bases are going to be hit hard.
Iran, Russia, China have all looked at the Gaza situation not as if it’s an Israeli action, but as if it’s the U.S. action. They all see exactly that it’s all about Iran, and the American press only says when it talks about Gaza or Hamas or Hezbollah or any other group, it’s always the Iranian tool so-and-so.
They’re demonizing Iran in the same way that the neocons have demonized Russia to prepare for America declaring an undeclared war against Iran. And they may even declare war.
Last night, on [November] 8, the Republicans had their presidential debate without Trump, and Nikki Haley said, you know, we’ve got to fight Iran, we’ve got to conquer it. And DeSantis of Florida said, yes, kill them all. He didn’t say who the them was. Was it Hamas? Was it everybody who lives in Gaza? Was it all of the Arabs in the Middle East?
And we’re really seeing something very much like the Crusades here. It’s a real fight for who is going to control energy, because, again, the key, if you can control the world’s flow of energy, you can do to the whole world what the United States did to Germany last year by blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines.
You can grind its industry to a halt, its chemical industry, its steelmaking industry, any of its energy-intensive industries, if countries do not agree to U.S. unipolar control. That’s why it wants to control these areas.
Well, the wildcard here is Saudi Arabia. Well, in two days, I think you’re going to have the Iranian president visit Saudi Arabia, and we’re going to see what’s going to happen.
But Saudi Arabia finds that while its role is key, Saudi Arabia could simply say we’re not going to export more oil until America pulls out of the Near East. But then all of Saudi Arabia’s monetary savings are invested in the U.S.
The United States is holding the world hostage, not only by controlling its oil and gas and energy, but by controlling its finance. It’s like you have your money in a mafia bank or in Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency mutual fund. They can do whatever they want with it.
So I think what would happen is it’s very unlikely that Saudi Arabia is ostensibly going to visibly break with the United States because the U.S. would hold it hostage.
But I think what it would do would be what has been talked about ever since the 1960s, when similar problems came with Iran. And Iran’s ace in the hole has always been the ability to sink a ship in the Hormuz Strait, where the oil goes through a very narrow little strait, where if you sink a tanker there or a warship, it’s going to block all of the sea trade with Saudi Arabia.
And that would certainly, number one, take Saudi Arabia off the hook for saying, we can’t help it. Of course, we’d love to export oil, but we can’t because the shipping lanes are all blocked because you, America, attacked Iran and they defended themselves by sinking the ship. So you can’t send your aircraft carriers and submarines to attack Iran. That’s very understandable.
But the United States is causing a world crisis.
Well, obviously, the United States knows that that’s going to happen because it’s been discussed literally for 50 years. Since I was at the Hudson Institute working on national security, it was being discussed what to do when Iran sinks the ship in the Strait of Hormuz.
Well, the United States figures, okay, oil prices are going to go up. And if Iran fights back in this way, we then will have the power to do to the world what we did to Germany in 2022 when we cut off its oil. But in this case, we don’t take the blame.
We’ll say, oh, we didn’t block the Saudi and Arab oil trade. It was that Iran that blocked it, and that’s why we’re going to bomb Iran, assuming that they can.
So that, I think, is the contingency plan. And just as America had a contingency plan just like that, waiting for an opportunity, like 9-11, they needed a trigger, and Netanyahu has provided the trigger. And that’s why the United States has been backing Netanyahu.
And of course, Iran says, well, we have the ability to really wipe out Israel. And in Congress, General Miley and the others have all said, well, we know that Iran could wipe out Israel. That’s why we have to attack Iran.
But in attacking Iran, you send its missiles off to Israel, and again, Israel will end up being the Near Eastern equivalent of Ukraine. And that sort of is the plan, and I think a lot of Israelis see this, and they’re the ones who are worried and are opposing Netanyahu and trying to prevent him from triggering a whole set of military exchanges that Israel won’t be able to resist.
And even though Iran, I’m sure they can bomb some places in Iran, but now that you have Russia, China, all supporting Iran through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, you’re having the lines being drawn very, very clearly.
So it seems that this scenario is inevitable because Mearsheimer pointed out that it’s impossible to have a negotiated solution or settlement between Israel and Palestine. He said you can’t have a two-state solution because the Palestinian state is going to be like an Indian reservation in America, all sort of cut apart and isolated, not really a state.
And you can’t have a single state because a single state is a theocratic state. It’s like, again, it’s like the United States in the Wild West in the 19th century.
And I think the way to put it in perspective is to realize that what we’re seeing today in the attempt to split the world is very much like, excuse me, very much like what happened in the 12th and 13th century with the Crusades.
BEN NORTON: Yeah, Michael, you raise a lot of very important points there. And I know you want to talk further about the Crusades and the historical analogy. And I think you made a really good point about the US empire standing in as the new Crusaders.
But before you move away from the more contemporary political discussion, I wanted to highlight two very important points that you stressed.
One is not only the hydrocarbon reserves in the Middle East, which are so important for the world economy and in the US attempt to maintain control over oil and gas supplies and in particular energy costs.
There’s also an election coming up in 2024, and the US is concerned about gas prices and inflation. And of course, energy inputs are a key factor in inflation.
But furthermore, this region is strategic because of trade routes. Of course, the Suez Canal, according to looking at data here from the World Economic Forum, 30% of the world’s shipping container volume transits through the Suez Canal and 12% of all global trade consists of goods that pass through the Suez Canal.
And we saw this in 2021 when there was this big media scandal when a US ship got stuck in the Suez Canal. And this, of course, also came at the time when the world was coming out of the pandemic and there were all these supply chain shocks.
So we can see how sensitive the global economy is to even small issues in the global supply chain. And when you talk about shipping routes, we’re not only talking about the Suez Canal, we’re also talking about in the Red Sea toward the south.
You also have the Bab al-Mandab. This is a very important strait off of the coast of Yemen. And in the war in Yemen, starting in 2014 and 2015, a lot of the fighting back by the U.S. in this war was in the south, off of the Bab al-Mandab, because this is such an important strait where every single day millions of barrels of oil flow through this strait.
And this also reminded me, Michael, you were talking about the historical context. And if you go back to 1956, Israel invaded Egypt. And why was that? Israel invaded Egypt because Egypt’s leftist president, Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal.
And at that moment, what was very interesting is that the U.K. and France were strongly supporting Israel in this war against Egypt because they were concerned also about Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez. At that moment, the U.S. wasn’t as deeply pro-Israel as it later became.
Of course, in 1967, in the Six-Day War, Israel attacked the neighboring Arab states and occupied part of Egypt, the Sinai, and then also what became Gaza. Israel occupied the Golan Heights of Syria, which remain illegally occupied Syrian territory today. And Israel occupied the West Bank, what we call the West Bank today.
But another important detail about that is, after the 1967 war, Israel increasingly became much more of a U.S. ally.
Whereas the first generation of Israeli leaders were much more, many of them were European, whereas the later generations of Israelis have been really American.
I mean, someone like Netanyahu, he is an American. Netanyahu was raised in the United States. He went to high school in Philadelphia. He went to high school with Reggie Jackson, by the way. He spent his most formative years in the U.S. He went to college at MIT.
He then worked in Boston, and he worked with many Republicans that he became friends with, like Mitt Romney, like Donald Trump. And then when he went back to Israel, he was sent to the U.S. to be a diplomat in the United States.
So the new generation of Israeli leaders is much more American, essentially.
And another detail you mentioned about Iran is so important, because, up until the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Iran of the Shah, the U.S.-backed monarchy, was such an important ally in the region.
And in fact, Saudi Arabia and Iran were famously referred to as the twin pillars. Saudi Arabia was the west pillar and Iran was the east pillar. The U.S. used to try to dominate this region, of course, with the support of Israel as well.
Well, with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the U.S. lost that crucial east pillar, which meant that Israel became even more important from the perspective of the U.S. imperialism to maintain control over this region.
So I just wanted to mention those details of the strategic importance of the trade routes, like the Bab al-Mandab Strait, like the Suez Canal, and also the fact that the Iranian Revolution fundamentally shifted U.S. policy in the region and made Israel even more important from the perspective of U.S. imperialism.
And now we’re in a moment where, as you mentioned, the U.S. is even losing control over Saudi Arabia. So it’s losing both of its pillars, which is, again, why Washington is so desperate in propping up Israel, despite the fact that the entire region is completely against these settler-colonialist policies and these ethnic cleansing policies that Israel is carrying out right now, as the entire world is watching.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, to U.S. diplomats, what you call the support of Israel is really the support of the U.S.’ ability to militarily control the rest of the Near East.
It’s all about oil. America is not giving all this money to Israel because it loves Israel, but because Israel is the military base from which the United States can attack Syria, Iraq, and Iran and Lebanon. So it’s a military base.
And of course, it can frame this in terms of pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish policy, but this is only for the public relations view of the State Department.
If American strategy is based on energy in the Near East, then Israel is only a means to this end. It’s not the end itself. And that’s why the United States needed to have an aggressive Israeli government.
You can look at Netanyahu as being, in a way, a U.S. puppet, very much like Zelensky. Their positions are identical in their reliance on the United States against the majority of their own people.
So you keep talking about America’s support of Israel. It’s not supporting Israel at all. It rejects the majority of Israelis. It supports the Israeli military, not the Israeli society or the culture, have nothing to do with Judaism at all. This is pure military politics, and that’s how I’ve always heard it discussed among the military and national security people.
So you want to be careful not to be taken in by the cover story.
There’s one other means of control, I think, that we should mention, and that is, you’ve had in the last month or so all sorts of statements by the United States that as soon as Russia conquers the Ukraine and solidifies its control, it’s going to bring up claims against war crimes, crimes against humanity, against Russia.
America is trying to use the crooked court system. The International Criminal Court is a branch of the Pentagon in the State Department, and it’s the kangaroo court. The idea is that somehow the kangaroo court can give America judgments against Putin as they’ve declared him to be arrested anywhere he goes of people who respect the kangaroo court, and they can have all sorts of sanctions against Russian property elsewhere.
Well, look at how on earth are they going to justify these claims of war crimes against Russia if in the view of what’s happening between Israel and Gaza right now, and in fact, the arms and the bombs that are being used against Gaza are U.S. bombs, U.S. arms. The U.S. is fueling it all.
How on earth can the United States not accuse itself of war crimes on the basis of what it’s trying to accuse Russia of? Part of the splitting of the world that you’re going to see, whether or not the United States can actually bomb Iran, is going to be a whole setup of parallel courts and an isolation, not only of the United States, but as Europe is coming in.
Basically, there’s a fight for who is going to control the world right now, and that’s why I mentioned the Crusades.
I want to say I’ve been writing a history of the evolution of financial policy. I’ve done two volumes already, one on the Bronze Age Near East, …and forgive them their debts, and the other on classical antiquity, The Collapse of Antiquity. I’m now working on the third volume, which covers the Crusades to World War I.
It’s really all about an attempt by Rome, that had hardly any economic power at all, to take over all of the five Christian bishoprics that were made. Constantinople was really the new Rome. That was the head of Orthodox Christianity.
The emperor of Constantinople was really the emperor over the whole Christian world. It was followed by Antioch, Alexandria, and finally Jerusalem.
The Crusades really began, before they attacked the Near East it began in the 11th century. And Rome was finally being attacked by the Norman armies that were coming in and grabbing parts of France and had moved into Italy.
So the papacy made a deal with the Norman warlords, and it said, “We will give you the divine right to rule, we will recognize you as the Christian king, and we will excommunicate all of your enemies, but you have to pledge feudal fealty, loyalty to us, and you have to let us appoint your bishops and control the churches, which control most of your land, and you have to pay us tribute”.
The papacy all during the 10th century was controlled by a small group of aristocratic families around Rome that treated the papacy just as they treat the local political mayor of a city or the local administrators.
The church was just sort of run by a family. It had nothing to do with Christian religion at all. It was just, this is the church property, and one of our relatives, we’re always going to have as the pope.
Well, the popes didn’t have any troops in the late 11th century, and so they got the troops by making a deal with the Normans, and they decided, okay, we’re going to have an ideal, we’re going to mount the Crusades, and we’re going to rescue Jerusalem from the “infidels”, the Muslims.
Well, the problem is that Jerusalem didn’t need a rescue, because all throughout the medieval world, throughout Islam, no matter what the religion of the governing classes was, there was a religious tolerance, and that continued for hundreds of years under the Ottoman Empire.
There was only one group that was intolerant, and that was the Romans, that said, “We have to control all of Christianity, in order to prevent these aristocratic Italian families from taking over again”.
And so they mounted the Crusades, nominally against Jerusalem, but they ended up sacking Constantinople, and two centuries later, by 1291, the Christians lost in Acre.
The whole Crusade against the Near East failed.
I think you can see the parallel that I’m going to be drawing.
So most of the Crusades were not fought against Islam, because Islam was too strong.
The Crusades were fought against other Christians. And the fight of Roman Christianity was against the original Christianity for itself, as it existed over the last 10 centuries.
Well, you’re having something like that today. Just as Rome appointed the Normans as feudal rulers, William the Conqueror in Sicily, the U.S. appoints Zelensky, supports Netanyahu, supports client oligarchs in Russia, supports Latin American dictators.
So you have a U.S. view of the world that is not only unipolar, but in order to have unipolar U.S. control of the world, the U.S. has to be in charge of treating any foreign state, any foreign president as a feudal serf, basically, that they owe feudal loyalty to the United States’ sponsors.
And just as you had the Inquisition formed in the 12th century, really, to enforce this obedience to Rome as opposed to independent southern France, and independent Italy, and Arab science in Spain, you have today the U.S. using the National Endowment for Democracy, and all of the organizations controlled by Victoria Nuland with her cookies, to support things.
Well, you’re having the whole strategy of the Roman takeover, how it was going to take over other countries, how it was going to prevent other countries from becoming independent of Rome, is almost sentence for sentence what you get in American national security reports, how to control other countries. And that’s really the fight that we’re seeing there.
And against that, you’re finding the fight of other countries, the global majority. But in this case, whereas Constantinople was looted in 1204 and sort of destroyed by the Fourth Crusade, Russia, and China, and Iran and the other countries have not been looted.
The only thing that the United States can do right now is it’s setting up this military plan to attack Iran. What is the role going to be of, for instance, India? The attack on Iran and on oil is at the same time an attack on the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative, the whole attempt to control transportation, not only oil, but transportation by the global majority for each other’s mutual growth, mutual gain, mutual trade.
And the United States is trying to have an alternative plan for all of this that would run from India, essentially largely through Israel, and making a cut right across Gaza, which is one of the big problems that are being discussed now, to the Israeli control of Gaza, which would control its offshore oil and gas.
So you’re having the wild cards in the U.S. plan, India, Saudi Arabia, what will it do, and Turkey, because Turkey also has an interest in this oil and gas. And if the Islamic countries decide that they’re really under attack, and this attack by the Christian West against Islam is really a fight to the death, then Turkey will join with Saudi Arabia and with all of the other countries, the Shiites, and the Sunnis, and the Alawites will join together and say, what we have in common is the Islamic religion.
That is really going to be essentially the extension of America’s fight against China and Russia.
So what we’re seeing, I’m going to try to summarize now, what we’re really seeing is having fought Russia to the last Ukrainian, and threatening to fight Iran to the last Israeli. The United States is trying to send arms to Taiwan to say, wouldn’t you like to fight to the last Taiwanese against China? And that’s really the U.S. strategy all over the world.
It’s trying to fuel other countries to fight wars for its own control. That’s how Rome used the Norman armies to conquer southern Italy, England, and Yugoslavia.
Israel, and what is in the news over the whole attacks in Gaza, is only the opening stage, the trigger for this war, just as the shooting in Sarajevo started World War I in Serbia started everything.
BEN NORTON: Well, you raised so many interesting points, Michael, and I think your analysis is very fresh and unique and very insightful. I wish we had more time to go into some of these topics, but we’ve already been speaking for about an hour.
So I think we’re going to wrap up here. But I do want to thank you, Michael, for joining us. And of course, we’ll be back very soon for more analysis.
For people who are interested, I actually have interviewed Michael. I did an interview recently on classical antiquity, and Rome and Greece. And he has also written about the history of debt up through the creation of Christianity in his book And Forgive Them Their Debts. And now he is working on this political, economic, materialist history of the Crusades.
MICHAEL HUDSON: I didn’t realize when I began the book in the 1980s, drafting it, I didn’t realize how critical the Roman papacy was, and how similar it was to the State Department, and CIA, and the blob today in its plans for world conquest.
BEN NORTON: Well, I’m sure in the future we will have many opportunities to discuss that research. Of course, for people who want to get more of Michael’s very important analysis, you should check out the show that he co-hosts here with friend of the show, Radhika Desai, and that is Geopolitical Economy Hour.
If you go to our website, geopoliticaleconomy.com, or if you go to our YouTube channel, you can find a playlist with all of the different episodes of Geopolitical Economy Hour. So thanks again, Michael, and we’ll definitely have you back very soon.
MICHAEL HUDSON: It’s good to be here. Thank you.


Instruction: Write an article about: US blew up Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russia to Germany, journalist Seymour Hersh reports. 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: CIA, George Friedman, Germany, Joe Biden, Mike Pompeo, NATO, Ned Price, Nord Stream, Norway, Russia, Seymour Hersh, Stratfor, US Navy, Victoria Nuland, Zbigniew Brzezinski

Output:
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported the US government destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines that delivered Russian gas to Germany. The Biden administration approved the CIA operation, which used explosives and Navy divers, with help from NATO member Norway.

Renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has reported that the US government destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines that delivered Russian gas to Germany.
The pipelines were blown up with explosives in a covert operation that was planned by the CIA and carried out by divers from the US Navy, Hersh reported.
NATO member Norway also played a key role, using its Navy and Secret Service to assist in the attack.
The remotely triggered explosives were placed on the Nord Stream pipelines in June 2022, during NATO military exercises in the Baltic Sea. They were subsequently blown up on September 26.
The operation was reportedly approved by US President Joe Biden and overseen by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland.
Hersh’s report is based on an internal “source with direct knowledge of the operational planning”. The source admitted that the sabotage of the pipelines constituted “an act of war”.

Seymour Hersh is one of the most highly respected journalists in the world. He won the Pulitzer Prize, the top award in Western journalism, for his reporting on US war crimes in Vietnam.
He has spent decades building up sources inside the US government. Hersh has also earned accolades for exposing US atrocities and cover-ups targeting Iraq, Iran, and Syria.
The Biden White House and CIA both vehemently denied Hersh’s report on the Nord Stream pipelines, claiming it is false.
According to US law, the White House and CIA can lie to the public about the existence of covert operations. In his own reporting on joint CIA-NATO sabotage operations inside Russian territory, prominent journalist and US military veteran Jack Murphy noted, “Under Title 50 of the U.S. Code which authorizes covert actions, the CIA can lawfully deny the existence of these operations to everyone except the so-called ‘Gang of Eight’” – a reference to top level US Congressional officials.
Hersh explained in his report that the Biden administration decided to carry out the Nord Stream sabotage operation using the CIA and Navy divers, not US Special Operations forces, to avoid the legal obligation to notify the Gang of Eight.

The Pulitzer prize-winning journalist published the bombshell article at his personal account on the blogging website Substack on February 8. In an accompanying piece, Hersh explained that he decided to use Substack because he has faced a long history of censorship from the mainstream corporate media outlets he has worked with, which litter his reports “with Pentagon denials” and act in “their publishers’ economic interests”.
After Nord Stream was sabotaged, many US media outlets absurdly accused Russia of destroying its own pipelines. Hersh pointed out that these reports were not organic; they were “spurred on by calculated leaks from the White House”.
While the US press fueled these outlandish conspiracy theories, the German media reported that the CIA had warned Berlin weeks before about possible attacks on gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.
Reuters also revealed that a reconnaissance jet from the US Navy flew near the Nord Stream wreckage just hours after the explosion.

According to Hersh, the Biden administration’s meetings planning to destroy Nord Stream began in December 2021 – more than two months before Russia invaded Ukraine.
The CIA developed the sabotage strategy by early 2022, before Russia sent in its troops on February 24, 2022.
As Geopolitical Economy Report previously noted, President Biden personally threatened on February 7, 2022 that, “If Russia invades” Ukraine, “then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it”.
Under Secretary of State Nuland made similar comments in a press conference on January 27, 2022, stating, “With regard to Nord Stream 2, we continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies, and I want to be clear with you today: If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
CIA analyst turned State Department spokesman Ned Price used the exact same prepared phrase a day before, telling NPR, “I want to be very clear: if Russia invades Ukraine one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward”.
A month before Russia invaded, the neoconservative 3rd in command of the State Dep't, Victoria Nuland (main architect of the 2014 coup in Ukraine), threatened:
“I want to be clear with you today: If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward” pic.twitter.com/nuX1ChSC51
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 8, 2022

According to Hersh, the sabotage operation was carried out by divers from the US Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center, which is located in Florida’s Panama City. They put explosives on all four pipelines that make up Nord Stream.
The Nord Stream system consists of two main pipelines, each of which has two smaller pipelines, known as Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. The attack destroyed three of the four.
Immediately after the attack, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken gloated, “Ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy… That’s very significant, and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come”.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines:
"It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy"
"We've significantly increased our [gas] production… We’re now the leading supplier of LNG to Europe" pic.twitter.com/vS9SgDUd2i
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 8, 2022

According to Seymour Hersh’s report, the “Norwegians were key” in the attack on Nord Stream.
The US used NATO member Norway as its base of operations. Hersh noted that “the U.S. military has vastly expanded its presence inside Norway” in recent years, using the Scandinavian nation to spy on Russia.
Every year, in June, NATO holds military exercises in the Baltic Sea known as Baltic Operations 22, or BALTOPS 22.
During these exercises, off the coast of Denmark’s Bornholm Island, NATO divers practiced placing mines, tracking them, and destroying them.
After the trap had been placed on Nord Stream in June, the Norwegian navy followed US orders and dropped a sonar buoy to set off the C4 explosives on September 26, Hersh wrote.
Norway even surrendered its sovereignty to the US military in 2022, passing the Supplementary Defense Cooperation Agreement (SDCA), which makes Washington the legal authority in northern parts of the country, preventing the local government from prosecuting US soldiers.
Current NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was himself Norway’s former prime minister. Hersh observed that Stoltenberg is an aggressive war hawk who has collaborated with US intelligence agencies, and his source referred to the NATO chief as “the glove that fits the American hand”.
Hersh added: “The Norwegians may have had other interests as well. The destruction of Nord Stream—if the Americans could pull it off—would allow Norway to sell vastly more of its own natural gas to Europe”.
What Hersh did not mention in his article is another striking detail: Just hours after Nord Stream was sabotaged, NATO members Norway, Denmark, and Poland announced the official opening of a new natural gas pipeline, the Baltic Pipe.
The Baltic Pipe was built with funding from the European Union, and was meant expressly as an alternative to Nord Stream.

Since the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up, Norway has replaced Russia as Europe’s largest supplier of pipeline gas.
Norwegian gas shipments to Germany in particular have reached record highs. In 2021, Norway had provided Germany with less then 20% of its gas supply. By 2022, that figure had shot up to 33%.
Meanwhile, the United States has also become the world’s largest liquified natural gas (LNG) exporter (tied with Qatar).
European imports made up the “lion’s share” of US LNG exports in 2022, quickly replacing Asia as the new top market.

In its move away from cheap Russian pipeline gas, Europe imported record amounts of much more expensive LNG in 2022, enriching fossil fuel corporations and importers.

In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Russia on January 26, 2023, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland declared with pride, “I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea”.
3rd in command of the US State Dept, Ukraine coup architect Victoria Nuland, told Republican Senator Ted Cruz this January 26:
“I am and I think the administration is very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea” pic.twitter.com/pfLpzZlldY
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 9, 2023

Nuland was responding to questions from Republican Senator Ted Cruz. Like Cruz, Nuland is a hard-line neoconservative.
Nuland was a key figure in the violent US-backed coup in 2014 that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected, geopolitically neutral government and installed a pro-Western regime.
Another high-profile neoconservative politician in Europe, Radek Sikorski, the former foreign minister and defense minister of Poland, expressed his gratitude to Washington one day after the attack on Nord Stream.
“Thank you, USA,” Sikorski tweeted, sharing a photo of the wreckage in the Baltic Sea, as the pipelines leaked environmentally destructive gas into the atmosphere.

Before Nord Stream was physically attacked, the United States had waged economic warfare against the pipelines.
The US government had sanctioned companies involved in the project, and even repeatedly threatened to impose sanctions on German firms.
Due to US pressure, Nord Stream 2 was never officially opened, even after it was completed in September 2021, following years of construction and billions of dollars of investment from various European companies.
In 2020, Donald Trump’s CIA Director turned Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pledged that the US government would “do everything we can” to stop Nord Stream 2. He said the pipeline was “dangerous” and a “threat”, boasting, “We’re the toughest administration ever on Russia”.
After US Secretary of State Blinken called the attacks on Nord Stream a "tremendous opportunity" (3 times), Canada's Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly echoed:
"We have increased our production" and "exported to the US for it to be sent to Europe"
She advertised a new LNG facility pic.twitter.com/Mi5lcbppid
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 8, 2022

Nord Stream 1, which was opened in 2011, under the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, provided Germany with a cheap, plentiful source of natural gas.
This concerned the United States, which has long worried that German economic integration with Russia would challenge Washington’s hegemony.
US imperial strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and oversaw the CIA proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, warned of the danger of a German-Russian alliance in his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard”.
A “Russo-German or a Russo-French flirtation” would come at “the detriment of Europe’s transatlantic connection with America”, Brzezinski wrote, emphasizing that preventing “the emergence of a dominant and antagonistic Eurasian power remains central to America’s capacity to exercise global primacy”.
As the website UnHerd noted, another prominent US imperial strategist, George Friedman, wrote in 2010 that “the mere possibility that [Russia] might collaborate with Europe and particularly Germany opens up the most significant threat in the decade, a long-term threat that needs to be nipped in the bud”.
Friedman served as chair of Stratfor, a private intelligence company that is so closely linked to US spy agencies that it is popularly known as the “shadow CIA”.
In a 2015 speech, Friedman stated clearly: “The primordial interest of the United States, over which, for a century, we have fought wars — the First, Second, and Cold War — has been the relationship between Germany and Russia, because united they are the only force that could threaten us, and to make sure that that doesn’t happen”.
US imperial strategist and ex chair of "shadow CIA" Stratfor, George Friedman, said in 2015:
"The primordial interest of the U.S., over which for a century we have fought wars — the First, Second, and Cold War — has been [to sabotage] the relationship between Germany and Russia" pic.twitter.com/Huhaje2HOE
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 11, 2023


Instruction: Write an article about: South Koreans protest US military drills simulating war with North. 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, DPRK, Korea, Moon Jae-in, North Korea, podcast, Russia, South Korea, THAAD, Yoon Suk-yeol

Output:
South Koreans held huge protests against the US military and its largest joint war exercises in years, simulating attacks on the DPRK (North Korea) and the assassination of its leadership.

South Koreans held huge protests against the US military and its largest joint war exercises in years, simulating attacks on the DPRK (North Korea) and the assassination of its leadership.
Multipolarista spoke with Echo (Hyunsook Elizabeth Cho) and Colleen Moore from the peace groups Women Cross DMZ and Korea Peace Now to discuss the mass movement against US militarization and imperialism.


Instruction: Write an article about: NATO’s 2022 plan declares second cold war on Russia and China. 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, Finland, G7, INF, Jens Stoltenberg, King Felipe VI, NATO, new cold war, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Russia, Sweden, Turkey

Output:
NATO’s 2022 “strategic concept,” its first new plan since 2010, declares Russia a “threat” and China “systemic challenge.” It demonizes the Eurasian powers as “authoritarian actors” and “strategic competitors,” essentially declaring a second cold war to maintain Western hegemony.

The US-led NATO military alliance has published a historic new plan outlining its goals. The document, officially titled the 2022 “Strategic Concept,” is the first such blueprint NATO has released since 2010.
The 2022 Strategic Concept is essentially a call for a new cold war on both Russia and China.

In the document, NATO condemned Russia and China as “authoritarian actors” and “strategic competitors” that pose “systemic challenges.”
NATO referred to the Russian Federation specifically as “the most significant and direct threat.” It also claimed China “challenge[s] our interests, security and values” and “strives to subvert the rules-based international order.”
The plan made it clear that the US-led military cartel is very concerned about the growing Eurasian alliance between Beijing and Moscow.
“The deepening strategic partnership between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation and their mutually reinforcing attempts to undercut the rules-based international order run counter to our values and interests,” NATO wrote.
The document euphemistically refers to this new cold war climate as an “environment of strategic competition.”
NATO leaders at the 2022 Madrid summit
The 2022 Strategic Concept was adopted unanimously by the leaders of NATO member states in a summit in Madrid, Spain in late June.
NATO briefly summarized the plan stating that it “identifies Russia as the most significant and direct threat to Allied security, addresses China for the first time and includes other challenges like terrorism, cyber and hybrid.”
Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said “NATO’s new Strategic Concept is the blueprint for the Alliance in a more dangerous and competitive world.”
The Madrid summit showed how the US-led military cartel is expanding, and not just in Europe, but also in the Pacific region.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg meets with Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at the Madrid summit on June 29
Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand – all of which are very far from the North Atlantic region – attended the NATO summit for the first time.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg meets with Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol on June 30
NATO member Turkey also revealed that it had reached an agreement with Sweden and Finland to allow the countries to join the alliance. (Finland shares a border with Russia, and in World War Two it allied with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union.)
After the Madrid summit, NATO boasted that it had agreed to “the biggest overhaul of Allied collective defence and deterrence since the Cold War.”
The US-led cartel announced more common funding, and said member states agreed to increase their national military spending to 2% or more of GDP.
NATO promised to increase military support not only to Ukraine, but also to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Moldova.
The Madrid summit came just one day after a meeting of the G7, the group of seven wealthy Western countries and Japan. This brought together the leaders of the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, and Japan, as well as the European Union, in the Bavarian Alps from June 26 to 28.
Like the NATO conference, the G7 summit was clearly aimed at coordinating tactics in a new cold war to weaken Russia and China. At that meeting, the G7 pledged $600 billion in spending on public-private partnerships to challenge Beijing’s global Belt and Road Initiative.
The 2022 G7 summit in Germany
While dubbing Russia its top “threat” and China a “systemic challenge” and “strategic competitor,” NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept portrays the second cold war that it is waging as a supposed battle between “democracy” and “authoritarianism.”
“Pervasive instability, rising strategic competition and advancing authoritarianism challenge the Alliance’s interests and values,” the US-led military cartel wrote on the opening page of the plan.
“Authoritarian actors challenge our interests, values and democratic way of life,” it added.
In addition to focusing on Russia and China, the Strategic Concept portrayed Iran, Syria, and North Korea as threats.
The document asserted that NATO exists to “safeguard our freedom and democracy” and is based on “shared democratic values,” in order to protect a “rules-based international order.”
Left completely unmentioned was that numerous authoritarian regimes are currently members of NATO, including Turkey, Hungary, and Poland.
Portugal’s former fascist dictatorship was likewise a founding member of NATO in 1949.
NATO’s insistence that it is supposedly dedicated to protecting democracy, and not US hegemony, is especially ironic considering that the Madrid summit prominently featured Turkey’s autocratic leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkey’s authoritarian leader Erdogan at the Madrid summit on June 28, signing an agreement to let Sweden and Finland join
Western officials’ constant refrain at the Madrid summit that NATO exists to defend democracy was similarly undermined by the fact that Sweden and Finland refused to hold popular referenda on membership, meaning their people had no voice in the process and no opportunity to vote on whether or not they think joining the US-led military cartel is a good idea.
NATO’s democratic window dressing was even more transparently contradicted by the opening of the summit on June 28, which featured a “special address” by Spain’s King Felipe VI.
“The long-standing global struggle between tyranny and democracy is as relevant as ever,” Spain’s unelected hereditary monarch declared, without a hint of irony.
“Great power competition is everywhere,” he added, obliquely referring to the new cold war on Russia and China.
Later that night, NATO noted on its program that King Felipe VI hosted a “Royal Gala Dinner” at the “Royal Palace.”
The paradoxical and hypocritical symbolism of the summit was striking, given the ubiquitous presence of the crown and the Spanish coat of arms, both representing the monarchy, on the official logo NATO used for its Madrid summit.
These anti-democratic symbols appeared behind speakers as they waxed poetic about non-Western “authoritarianism.”
Spain’s King Felipe VI introduces NATO’s Madrid Summit on June 28, 2022
In the 2022 Strategic Concept, NATO claimed, “Authoritarian actors challenge our interests, values and democratic way of life.”
“They interfere in our democratic processes and institutions and target the security of our citizens through hybrid tactics, both directly and through proxies,” the document continued, referencing the Russiagate conspiracy theory, which despite being thoroughly debunked lives on in NATO’s rhetoric.
In the plan, the US-led military cartel also emphasized its commitment to continue expanding.
“NATO’s enlargement has been a historic success,” it insisted, underlining, “We reaffirm our Open Door policy.”
NATO reaffirmed its promise to add former Soviet states Ukraine and Georgia as members, writing, “We reaffirm the decision we took at the 2008 Bucharest Summit and all subsequent decisions with respect to Georgia and Ukraine.”
The US-led military cartel also called to deepen collaboration with Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It similarly emphasized its close alliance with the European Union, describing it as a “unique and essential partner,” adding, “NATO and the EU play complementary, coherent and mutually reinforcing roles.”

The 2022 Strategic Concept described NATO as a “defensive alliance,” despite its offensive wars on Libya in 2011, Afghanistan from 2001 to 2021, and Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
NATO claimed it has “three core tasks: deterrence and defence; crisis prevention and management; and cooperative security.”
The US-led military cartel hinted it is ready for World War III if deemed necessary, underscoring that it is prepared for “high-intensity, multi-domain warfighting against nuclear-armed peer-competitors.”
The Strategic Concept emphasized its firm commitment to nuclear weapons, describing them as unnegotiable: “As long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance.”
It added that its “posture is based on an appropriate mix of nuclear, conventional and missile defence capabilities, complemented by space and cyber capabilities.”
NATO accused Russia of “violations and selective implementation of its arms control obligations and commitments.” It did not mention that it is the US government that has unilaterally killed numerous arms control agreements with Moscow.
In 2019, the Donald Trump administration withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF). Nobel Peace Prize-winning group the International Campaign on Nuclear Weapons called the unilateral US withdrawal “an irresponsible move that opens the path for a new nuclear arms race” and that “puts Europe (and the world) at risk.”
While NATO blamed Russia, the International Campaign on Nuclear Weapons stated clearly, “Trump has fired the starting pistol on Cold War II. Only this one could be bigger, more dangerous, and the world may not be so lucky this time around.”
Similarly, the 2022 Strategic Concept described Russia’s military operation in Ukraine as a “war of aggression” that “has shattered peace.” It failed to mention that there has not been peace in Ukraine since a 2014 US-sponsored coup violently overthrew the country’s democratically elected government, setting off a civil war that caused at least 14,000 deaths by the end of 2021, according to the United Nations.
The US-led military cartel claimed “NATO does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to the Russian Federation,” although the alliance has surrounded Moscow with hostile military bases and repeatedly expanded right up to its borders.
A map of NATO expansion


Instruction: Write an article about: UK refuses to admit Saudi Arabia is authoritarian, while condemning China and Russia. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Britain, China, Liz Truss, Poland, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, UK, United Kingdom

Output:
While demonizing China and Russia as “threats” to “democracy,” British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss refused to admit that Saudi Arabia is authoritarian, declined to condemn the monarchy’s execution of 81 people in one day, and would not acknowledge a single human rights abuse.

British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss refused to admit that Saudi Arabia is an authoritarian regime and would not acknowledge a single human rights abuse that the Gulf monarchy has committed, repeatedly evading questions by a member of parliament.
She even declined to condemn Saudi Arabia’s execution of 81 people on one day.

The top UK diplomat claimed “our overall objectives [are] promoting freedom and democracy around the world,” and she boasted of a global “Network of Liberty” being built by Britain.
But at the same time, Truss praised the authoritarian Persian Gulf monarchies as key “partners” and “important allies of the United Kingdom.” She even noted that the UK is negotiating a trade deal with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).
While celebrating the Saudi dictatorship, the British foreign secretary demonized China, Russia, and Iran as authoritarian, calling them “malign actors” and “threats” to so-called Western democracies.
When pressed, Truss admitted that this clear double standard is rooted in economics, and specifically the fossil fuel industry.
“What I’m focused on is making sure that we are dealing with the major threats to the world,” she said. “The number one threat we’re dealing with at the moment is the threat from Russia. In order to do that, we need to make sure that we have alternative energy sources. One of the key sources of energy is the Gulf region.”
Liz Truss made these comments in response to questions from the UK Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, which held a hearing on June 28 to discuss the work of the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
In the meeting, a member of parliament asked Truss seven times to name a human rights concern that she raised with a leader of a Gulf monarchy. She was unable to identify a single one, evading the questions.
And the Saudi monarchy was not the only autocratic regime that Truss praised. While attacking China, Russia, and Iran for supposed authoritarianism, Truss reaffirmed Britain’s steadfast support for the dictatorship in Rwanda and the far-right authoritarian regime in Poland.
“Of course, the United Kingdom and Rwanda have a very close relationship, which the Foreign Office is responsible for,” she boasted.
“Rwanda is a country where we are building a series of partnerships with Rwanda on a number of issues,” Truss added.
Rwanda’s authoritarian leader Paul Kagame has governed the country with an iron fist for more than two decades, thanks to staunch Western support.
Truss also boasted of the UK’s close partnership with Poland, which has an authoritarian far-right government.
When discussing the need to expand military spending and invest in more weapons in order to fight Russia, the British foreign secretary proudly noted, “We’re also working on this with our allies and partners, say, for example, Poland, who we have a defense agreement with.”
Even mainstream Western media outlets, like the UK government’s own BBC, have acknowledged that Poland, an EU and NATO member, is authoritarian.
While praising the authoritarian Western-backed regimes in Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, and Poland, Truss criticized the “geopolitical efforts by malign actors,” which she identified as Russia and China.
She referred to both Eurasian nations as “key threats,” and called for strengthening and expanding NATO, including into the Pacific (very far from the North Atlantic region).
“Russia is our number one immediate threat, although I do believe that in the long term we should be very, very concerned about China,” Truss said.
“NATO needs to be more actively looking at the threat from China,” she emphasized.
This June 28 parliamentary hearing was by no means the only time that British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has celebrated the Saudi monarchy as an ally against Russia.
On March 23, Truss tweeted that she had spoken with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, a member of the royal family, about “Russia’s egregious use of violence in Ukraine” and the importance of a coordinated “humanitarian response.”
Truss made no mention of the 81 people who were executed by the Saudi monarchy on March 12, less than two weeks before their friendly call.
Spoke to Saudi Arabia’s @FaisalbinFarhan. The UK is committed to working with international partners to call out Russia’s egregious use of violence in Ukraine and to support the humanitarian response. It is vital that the @UN speaks with one voice. pic.twitter.com/7vU4ZB9dbz
— Liz Truss (@trussliz) March 23, 2022

Even Human Rights Watch (HRW), which is notorious for its extreme pro-Western bias, loudly condemned Riyadh’s mass execution, noting, “Rampant and systemic abuses in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system suggest it is highly unlikely that any of the men received a fair trial.”
HRW pointed out that 41 of those executed were members of the Shia Muslim minority, “who have long suffered systemic discrimination and violence by the” Saudi regime.
And on March 2, just three weeks before Truss’ call, HRW reported that a “Saudi man who was 14 at the time of his alleged crime and whose previous death penalty conviction was overturned by the Saudi Supreme Court was sentenced to death again.”
Saudi authorities’ execution of 81 men on March 12, 2022 was its largest mass execution in years.
Rampant and systemic abuses in Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system suggest it is highly unlikely that any of the men received a fair trial. https://t.co/MV56iKyBP1 pic.twitter.com/gzpudT0iI3
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) March 15, 2022

On February 25, a day after Russia invaded Ukraine, Truss tweeted that she discussed the issue with representatives of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Poland, and Hungary, all of which have authoritarian governments.
Have spoken to nations across the world today including Poland, Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, Estonia, Hungary and USA. ??????????????
The UK is clear, all members of the UN should stand up for Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. ??
— Liz Truss (@trussliz) February 25, 2022

In the June 28 parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Labour MP Chris Bryant grilled Liz Truss for four minutes over the British government’s support for the Saudi monarchy.
A transcript of their heated exchange follows below:
CHRIS BRYANT: You were talking about authoritarian regimes earlier, and you have said that the UK should be a robust counterweight to authoritarian regimes, and that we are ending our dependency on authoritarian regimes for energy. How would you describe the Gulf states?
LIZ TRUSS: I would describe the Gulf states as partners of the United Kingdom. We’re currently negotiating a trade deal with the GCC. Now is every country that we work with exactly in line with United Kingdom policy on everything? No, they’re not. But they are important allies of the United Kingdom.
CHRIS BRYANT: Hang on, Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, no? Yeah?
LIZ TRUSS: I, what I would say, is that –
CHRIS BRYANT: Is he responsible?
LIZ TRUSS: Saudi Arabia is an important partner of the United Kingdom.
CHRIS BRYANT: 81 executions, all on one day in Saudi Arabia. And you don’t think that that’s an authoritarian regime?
LIZ TRUSS: What I’m focused on is making sure that we are dealing with the major threats to the world. The number one threat we’re dealing with at the moment is the threat from Russia. In order to do that, we need to make sure that we have alternative energy sources. One of the key sources of energy is the Gulf region. We’re not dealing in a perfect world. We’re dealing in a world where we need to make difficult decisions. And I think it is right that we build that closer trading relationship with the Gulf states.
CHRIS BRYANT: If a country is an authoritarian regime, it’s fine to do business with it as long as the authoritarianism is only within its own borders, is that right?
LIZ TRUSS: What we’re facing with Russia is a regime that is actively seeking to invade sovereign nations and create a greater Russia, recreate the former Soviet Union. What we’re seeing with China –
CHRIS BRYANT: But we went hand in cap to them for 12 years, and now we’re doing the same with Saudi Arabia.
LIZ TRUSS: Well, I think that was wrong. The approach that was taken to Russia by the West.
CHRIS BRYANT: You supported it.
LIZ TRUSS: It was wrong.
CHRIS BRYANT: In the Gulf trade document that you just published, you say the government will continue to hold those who violate human rights to account. How are you doing that in the Gulf States at the moment?
LIZ TRUSS: Well, these issues are raised regularly with the relevant ministers and leaders who we meet in the Gulf states.
CHRIS BRYANT: You have personally?
LIZ TRUSS: I have personally, yes.
CHRIS BRYANT: Well, your spokesman said that you hadn’t. So what was the last human rights issue that you raised with a Gulf state leader?
LIZ TRUSS: I would have to come back to the committee on the precise timing of that.
CHRIS BRYANT: Well anything, just tell us anything that you have said on human rights.
LIZ TRUSS: Well I certainly have raised it when I was in –
CHRIS BRYANT: Go on, tell us one now.
LIZ TRUSS: I’m just trying to remember my most recent visit. But I can assure you, I’ve raised it, and I will write to you with the details.
CHRIS BRYANT: You can’t remember a single human rights issue that you’ve raised with a Gulf state leader?
LIZ TRUSS: Well, I’ve raised particular issues when I’ve been in the Gulf.
CHRIS BRYANT: Well name one.
LIZ TRUSS: I’m not going to go into all the details of private conversations, which I will come back to you on in due course.
CHRIS BRYANT: Name one.


Instruction: Write an article about: Western media goes white nationalist, calls Ukraine more ‘civilized’ than Iraq, whitewashes US wars. 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: corporate media, Israel, media, Russia, Somalia, Syria, Ukraine, Yemen

Output:
Media outlets are calling Ukraine “civilized,” emphasizing that its people are white European Christians, while ignoring or whitewashing the US military occupations of Syria and Iraq, Western-backed Saudi bombing of Yemen, and constant Israeli attacks on Syrians and Palestinians.

Western corporate media outlets that published demonstrable lies to try to justify the 2003 US invasion of Iraq have done a 180 and suddenly become staunch anti-war voices condemning Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, which began on February 24.
Mainstream North American and Western European journalists have adopted what is essentially a white-nationalist narrative that has been widely denounced as racist, depicting Ukraine as a “civilized” European Christian country that is more worthy of sympathy than formerly colonized countries in the Global South, where the United States and its allies are killing civilians every day.
The US has roughly 800 foreign bases around the planet, with a military presence in the majority of the countries on Earth. The US is illegally militarily occupying both Iraq and Syria’s oil-rich territory, while helping Saudi Arabia bomb civilian areas in Yemen, in a nearly seven-year Western-backed war that has killed at least 377,000 Yemenis.
In fact, within hours of the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States bombed Somalia, Western-sponsored Saudi forces bombed Yemen, and Israel bombed Syria, just after Israeli occupation soldiers killed a teenage Palestinian.
The Times of Israel newspaper, without a hint of irony, even published an article on February 25 titled “Ukraine fighting reportedly not expected to keep Israel from bombing Syria.”

Meanwhile, Western media networks have bent over backward to portray Ukrainians as more “worthy victims,” emphasizing their whiteness, European culture, and Christianity, while these same outlets dehumanize or simply ignore dark-skinned people and Muslims in the Global South who are “unworthy victims” of Western wars.
This double standard was made blindingly obvious in comments by CBS News foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata.
In a broadcast on February 25, titled “Russia closes in on Kyiv with more explosions reported across Ukraine overnight,” D’Agata insisted that the war in Ukraine is unique because the country is “civilized,” unlike nations invaded by the United States.
“This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan, that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilized, relatively European — I have to choose those words carefully, too — city, where you wouldn’t expect that or hope that it’s going to happen,” the CBS News foreign correspondent declared.
Western corporate media coverage of Ukraine has gone full-on white nationalist, calling Ukrainians “civilized” white European Christians while whitewashing the US war on Iraq, bombing of Yemen, and Israeli attacks on Syrians & Palestinians
Read more here: https://t.co/YZCBzv4wXy pic.twitter.com/f4HZPOcaLz
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 28, 2022

The US war on Iraq killed more than 1 million people, and its two-decade war on Afghanistan killed hundreds of thousands more.
But the “unworthy victims” of US wars are dehumanized as “uncivilized,” whereas the “worthy victims” of Washington’s adversary Russia are portrayed as “civilized” white Christians.
D’Agata later apologized for his remarks, but he was by no means alone.
NBC News correspondent Kelly Cobiella stated openly, “Just to put it bluntly, these are not refugees from Syria. These are refugees from neighboring Ukraine. I mean, that, quite frankly, is part of it. These are Christians. They’re whites. They’re very similar to people who live in Poland.”
"Just to put it bluntly, these are not refugees from Syria. These are refugees from neighbouring Ukraine. I mean, that, quite frankly, is part of it. These are Christians. They're Whites. They're very similar to people who live in Poland."pic.twitter.com/T90tA101H9
— Zeeshan Khan (@IbnKhayyam) February 27, 2022

In the same vein, Ukraine’s deputy chief prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze, emphasized in an interview on the BBC that Ukrainians are unique victims because many have blond hair and blue eyes.
“It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair being killed, children being killed every day, with Putin’s missiles, and his helicopters, and his rockets,” Sakvarelidze said.
Western media outlets deny that Ukraine has a massive Nazi problem (it does), while they spread Nazi-esque propaganda: "It's very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair being killed with Putin's missiles" ? https://t.co/gCbnsm5EB4
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 27, 2022

Sakvarelidze was formerly a member of parliament in Georgia, from the right-wing, pro-Western party of former President Mikheil Saakashvili, one of Washington’s most loyal allies in the region.
Yet Sakvarelidze was given Ukrainian citizenship and appointed deputy general prosecutor in 2015, soon after the US-sponsored 2014 coup overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected president and installed a pro-Western puppet regime.
Sakvarelidze’s Eurocentric rhetoric was echoed on Britain’s ITV News, by its correspondent Lucy Watson.
Recalling seeing Ukrainian children in strollers (or “buggies,” in British English), Watson said in exasperation, “Every single one of those buggies is a young child who was at nursery school, who was being looked after by their parents. Their parents were going to work, eating, drinking in cafes, doing the things that you and I were doing two, three days ago.”
“Now the unthinkable has happened to them. And this is not a developing, third world nation; this is Europe,” she added.
'Now the unthinkable has happened to them, and this is not a developing, third world nation, this is Europe.' pic.twitter.com/BFYvql7iie
— black lives matter (@jrc1921) February 27, 2022

British Conservative politician Daniel Hannan exemplified the imperial hypocrisy in an article in the right-wing Telegraph newspaper on February 26, titled “Vladimir Putin’s monstrous invasion is an attack on civilisation itself.”
“They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking. Ukraine is a European country. Its people watch Netflix and have Instagram accounts, vote in free elections and read uncensored newspapers,” Hannan wrote. “War is no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. It can happen to anyone.”
Ironically, many people in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and other countries attacked by the United States do indeed have Instagram accounts, and Netflix is available in some of these nations as well.
But the obvious implication of this media narrative is that Global South countries invaded, bombed, and militarily occupied by the United States and its Western allies are not civilized, and therefore that Washington’s and Brussels’ wars are justified.
This flagrant differentiation in treatment is a textbook example of the concept of “unworthy victims,” articulated by scholars Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in their classic 1988 book “Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media.”
“Worthy victims” are those who are killed or abused by the US government’s Official Enemies – such as Russia, China, Iran, or Venezuela.
“Unworthy victims” are the people killed and abused by the US government and its allies – in Yemen, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Nicaragua, Somalia, Panama, Congo, and beyond.
Herman and Chomsky wrote:
Our hypothesis is that worthy victims will be featured prominently and dramatically, that they will be humanized, and that their victimization will receive the detail and context in story construction that will generate reader interest and sympathetic emotion.
In contrast, unworthy victims will merit only slight detail, minimal humanization, and little context that will excite and enrage.
Western media coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine makes this imperial hypocrisy as clear as day.