Instruction: Write an article about: Cuba at UN: Biden continues Trump’s criminal attacks and unconventional warfare. 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: Cuba, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Miguel Díaz-Canel, Puerto Rico, reparations, UN, United Nations, Venezuela

Output:
Excerpts from Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s speech at the UN, where he condemned US imperialism, while calling for reparations for slavery and independence for colony Puerto Rico

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel spoke at the United Nations General Assembly on September 23.
The Cuban leader condemned US imperialism in Latin America and around the world.
Noting that the Joe Biden administration has continued Donald Trump’s aggressive policies of unconventional warfare in seek of regime change, Díaz-Canel said the failure of the two-decade military occupation of Afghanistan shows that “where the United States intervenes, it increases instability, deaths, suffering, and leaves long-lasting scars.”
Díaz-Canel also called for reparations for slavery and independence for US colony Puerto Rico.
Translated key excerpts of his speech follow below.
At the UN, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel denounced US imperialism, which "threatens, extorts and pressures sovereign states," demanding its "allies" help "overthrow legitimate governments"
He noted murderous sanctions have "become the central instrument of US foreign policy" pic.twitter.com/SCVdIEp8f3
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021

“Under the leadership of and with the permanent instigation by the United States, a dangerous international schism is being promoted.”
“With the harmful use and abuse of coercive economic measures, which has become the central instrument of the foreign policy of the United States, the government of that country threatens, extorts, and pressures sovereign states so that they speak out and act against those that are deemed adversaries.”
“It [the US] demands that its allies build coalitions to overthrow legitimate governments, break trade agreements, abandon and ban certain technologies, and apply unjustified legal measures against citizens of countries that don’t submit to them.”
Cuba's president condemned the Biden admin. for continuing Trump's same criminal policies, waging an "unconventional war," with millions of dollars, "through campaigns of manipulation and lies."
The US goal is "to erase the Cuban Revolution."
"They do not accept alternatives." pic.twitter.com/wXA8qBe7XH
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021

“The current Democratic administration [of Joe Biden] has maintained, without any changes, the 243 coercive measures adopted by the government of Donald Trump, including its decision to put Cuba on the false and immoral list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism.”
“It is in this context that an unconventional war is being waged against our country, to which the US government dedicates, as is publicly documented, millions of dollars, through campaigns of manipulation and lies, which use new information technologies and other digital platforms to internally and externally project an absolutely false image of Cuban reality, to sow confusion, to destabilize, to discredit the country, and to justify its doctrine of regime change.”
“They have done all of this to erase the Cuban Revolution off the political map of the world. They do not accept alternatives to the model they have in mind for their ‘backyard.’ Their plan is perverse and incompatible with the ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ they preach.”
"For more than 60 years, the US government has not for one minute stopped its attacks against Cuba."
At the UN, Cuban President Díaz-Canel condemns the United States for tightening its murderous blockade "in such a criminal and opportunist way, in the middle of the pandemic." pic.twitter.com/mROK7ZIoPi
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021

“Independent and sovereign states are being driven, under many pressures, to subordinate themselves to Washington’s will, and to a political order based on ever-changing rules.”
“For more than 60 years, the United States government has not for one minute stopped its attacks against Cuba. But in this crucial and challenging moment for all of the world’s nations, its aggression is over the limits.”
“The longest and cruelest economic, comercial, and financial blockade that has ever been imposed on any nation [the US blockade on Cuba] has gotten even worse, in such a criminal and opportunist way, in the middle of the pandemic.”
At the United Nations, Cuban President Díaz-Canel noted the US uses the term "international community" only to refer to its client states.
"It is behavior associated with ideological and cultural intolerance, with a heavily racist influence and hegemonic goals," he said. pic.twitter.com/9GlEU9FVys
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021

“It [the US] often uses the term ‘international community’ to refer to a small group of governments that go along with, without ever questioning, the will of Washington. As for the rest of the world’s countries, the vast majority of this organization, it seems we do not have space in the definition of ‘international community’ that the United States promotes.”
“It is behavior associated with ideological and cultural intolerance, with a heavily racist influence and hegemonic goals.”
Cuba used its global platform at the United Nations General Assembly to call for reparations for slavery pic.twitter.com/RD05FnM57j
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021

“We join the nations of the Caribbean in their call for just reparations for the horrors of slavery and the treatment of slaves. We support their right to a fair, special, and defined agreement, which is indispensable to confront the challenges caused by climate change, natural disasters, the unjust international financial system, and the difficult conditions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.”
At the United Nations, Cuba called for an end to US colonialism in Puerto Rico.
“We reaffirm that the brotherly people of Puerto Rico should be free and independent, after more than a century subjected to colonial domination.” pic.twitter.com/xmwjw3YXPW
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021

“We reaffirm that the brotherly people of Puerto Rico should be free and independent, after more than a century subjected to colonial domination.”
Cuba: "It has been proven that, where the US intervenes, it increases instability, deaths, suffering."
"The United Nations cannot ignore the lesson in Afghanistan." After two decades of US occupation, the only one who benefited from the war was the Military-Industrial Complex. pic.twitter.com/Jf3CvmUmEV
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021

“The United Nations cannot ignore the lesson in Afghanistan. They had to go through two decades of occupation, with an outcome of thousands of deaths, 10 million people displaced, and billions of dollars spent, which became profits for the Military-Industrial Complex, all to come to the conclusion that terrorism can neither be prevented nor combatted with bombs, that occupation only leaves destruction, and that no country has the right to impose its will on sovereign nations.”
“Afghanistan is not an isolated case. It has been proven that, where the United States intervenes, it increases instability, deaths, suffering, and leaves long-lasting scars.”
In the final section of his speech at the United Nations, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel also addressed numerous important issues in international affairs.
He reaffirmed support for Venezuela and Nicaragua, and called for an end to US aggression against those countries.
Díaz-Canel demanded “the end to foreign interference in Syria and full respect for its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The Cuban president called for justice for Palestinians and an end to the illegal Israeli occupation.
He condemned the criminal sanctions imposed on Iran.
Díaz-Canel reaffirmed solidarity with the people of Western Sahara.
He condemned the “unilateral and unjust sanctions” imposed on the DPRK (North Korea).
“We demand the end to the foreign interference in the internal affairs of the Republic of Belarus,” the Cuban leader added, reiterating support for its President Alexander Lukashenko.
Díaz-Canel emphasized Cuba’s endorsement of the One China Policy, recognizing Taiwan as part of China, adding, “we oppose any attempt to harm the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China, as well as interference in its internal affairs.”
He also denounced “the intent to expand NATO’s presence up to the borders of Russia, the interference in affairs that are inherent to its sovereignty, and the imposition of unilateral and unjust sanctions against it.”


Instruction: Write an article about: Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia back Peru’s President Castillo, condemn ‘anti-democratic harassment’. 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: AMLO, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Evo Morales, Gustavo Petro, Luis Arce, Mexico, Pedro Castillo, Peru

Output:
Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Bolivia released a joint statement supporting Peru’s elected President Pedro Castillo, saying he is a “victim of anti-democratic harassment,” following a US-backed right-wing coup.

The governments of Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Bolivia released a joint statement supporting Peru’s democratically elected President Pedro Castillo, saying he is a “victim of anti-democratic harassment.”
Castillo was overthrown in a coup d’etat on December 7, led by the infamously corrupt right-wing opposition that controls Peru’s unicameral congress, which has an approval rating of between 7% and 11%.
The US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) and State Department have openly supported the coup, backing unelected leader Dina Boluarte, who declared herself president in collaboration with the congress.
Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, and Colombia wrote that they “express their profound concern for the recent events that resulted in the removal and detention of José Pedro Castillo Terrones, president of the Republic of Peru.”
“For the world, it is not news that President Castillo Terrones, since the day of his election, was victim of anti-democratic harassment,” the countries wrote.
Comunicado conjunto de los gobiernos de Argentina, Colombia, México y Bolivia sobre la situación en Perú ??https://t.co/IINiFFqLSa
— Cancillería Argentina ?? (@CancilleriaARG) December 12, 2022

They added that Castillo has also been subjected to illegal “judicial treatment” – an allusion to the relentless lawfare (judicial warfare) that Peru’s right-wing opposition has waged against the president and his top officials and political allies.
Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, and Colombia stressed that this harassment violates the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights.
“Our governments call on all actors involved in the previous process to prioritize the citizens’ will that was expressed at the ballot box,” they wrote, adding, “We urge those who make up the institutions to refrain from reversing the popular will expressed by the free vote.”
In other words, they called for recognizing Castillo as the only democratic, constitutional president of Peru.
The countries emphasized, “We also request that the authorities full respect the human rights of the President Pedro Castillo and that he is guaranteed legal protection” that is established in the American Convention on Human Rights.
When the coup in Peru was carried out, on December 7, Mexico’s left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) wrote:
“We considerate it terrible that, because of the interests of economic and political elites, since the beginning of the legitimate presidency of Pedro Castillo, an environment of confrontation and hostility was maintained against him, leading him to take decisions that have served his adversaries to remove him.”
AMLO was referring to Castillo’s decision to dissolve Peru’s coup-plotting congress – an action that is allowed in certain cases of obstructionism according to article 134 of the country’s constitution.
desde el comienzo de la presidencia legítima de Pedro Castillo, se haya mantenido un ambiente de confrontación y hostilidad en su contra hasta llevarlo a tomar decisiones que le han servido a sus adversarios para consumar su destitución 2/3
— Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) December 7, 2022

Colombia’s first ever left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, likewise wrote that “Pedro Castillo, for being a teacher from la Sierra [the mountainous rural region in the Andes], elected by the people, was cornered from the first day.”
“When I met Pedro Castillo, they [the right-wing opposition] were trying to break in to the presidential palace to detain his wife and his daughter,” Petro recalled.
“He received me distressed. A parliamentary coup was already being developed against him,” the Colombian president said.
Cuando conocí a Pedro Castillo intentaban allanar el palacio de gobierno para detener a su esposa y a su hija. Atribulado me recibió. Ya se desarrollaba un golpe parlamentario en su contra
Me sorprendii que se quedaran encerrados en el Palacio, aislados del pueblo que los eligio
— Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) December 8, 2022

On the day of the coup, Bolivia’s President Luis Arce also publicly warned, “Since the beginning, the Peruvian right tried to overthrow the government that was democratically elected by the people, by the humble classes that seek more inclusion and social justice.”
“We regret what has occurred in the sisterly republic of Peru, where we send our solidarity,” he said.
The Bolivian president added, “The constant harassment by anti-democratic elites against progressive, popular, and legitimate governments should be condemned by everyone.”
El constante hostigamiento de élites antidemocráticas contra gobiernos progresistas, populares y legítimamente constituidos, debe ser condenado por todas y todos. Abogamos porque la democracia, la paz y respeto a los Derechos Humanos, prevalezcan en beneficio del pueblo peruano.
— Luis Alberto Arce Catacora (Lucho Arce) (@LuchoXBolivia) December 7, 2022

Bolivia’s former President Evo Morales, who was himself overthrown in a US-backed right-wing coup in 2019, said the latest putsch showed “once again that the Peruvian oligarchy and the US empire do not accept that leaders who are union organizers and Indigenous rise to government to work for the people.”
Morales added that “the political crisis” in Peru “was provoked by the permanent conspiring of the Fujimorista right wing and right-wing media outlets against a government elected at the ballot box, whose ‘unforgiveable crime’ was representing the poorest people.”
La crisis política que afecta al hermano pueblo peruano, al Perú profundo especialmente, fue provocada por la conspiración permanente de la derecha fujimorista y medios derechistas contra un gobierno elegido en las urnas cuyo "delito imperdonable" fue representar a los más pobres
— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) December 7, 2022

Morales later tweeted that the “congressional coup by the right wing in Peru calls us to have a deep reflection.”
“A government elected by the people never should abandon its ideological base, or distance itself from its militancy. Thinking that the right wing will accept presidents from popular movements is the worst historical error,” he cautioned.
El golpe congresal de la derecha en Perú nos llama a una profunda reflexión. Un gobierno elegido por el pueblo nunca debe abandonar su base ideológica ni alejarse de su militancia. Pensar que la derecha puede aceptar presidentes de movimientos populares es el peor error histórico
— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) December 10, 2022

When the Peruvian people took to the streets in large protests against the coup, demanding the freedom of Castillo, fresh elections, and a new constitution, Morales wrote on December 12:
“In the November 2019 coup, humble people confronted the armed repression of the coup-plotters in Bolivia. In the congressional coup in Peru, humble people are confronted by the repression of the coup-plotting right wing. The Patria Grande [movement seeking Latin American regional unity] demands justice for our massacred brothers.”
En el golpe de noviembre de 2019, el pueblo humilde enfrentó la represión armada de los golpistas en #Bolivia. En el golpe congresal de #Perú, el pueblo humilde se enfrenta a la represión de la derecha golpista. La Patria Grande reclama justicia para nuestros hermanos masacrados pic.twitter.com/WrKagcyOnW
— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) December 13, 2022

Morales followed up again on December 13, stating:
“We join the shout that defenders of life and human rights are making demanding a stop to the massacres of our Indigenous brothers in Peru, that they respect their vote and a democracy that represents them. No government whose hands are stained with the blood of the people is legitimate.”
Nos unimos al clamor de defensores de la vida y Derechos Humanos para exigir que paren la masacre de nuestros hermanos indígenas en #Perú que reclaman respeto a su voto y una democracia que los represente. Ningún gobierno que se manche las manos con sangre del pueblo es legítimo pic.twitter.com/8NTwnFT3Mj
— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) December 13, 2022


Instruction: Write an article about: Argentina will attend BRICS summits, at China’s invitation, in step toward ‘formal entry’. 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: Alberto Fernández, Argentina, Brazil, BRICS, China, IMF

Output:
China invited Argentina to attend the 2022 summits of the BRICS economic bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Argentina’s ambassador says it’s a step toward “formal entry” to the grouping, an alternative to the US-dominated financial system.

China has invited Argentina to attend the 2022 summits of the BRICS, a loose economic bloc bringing together Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
The BRICS was founded as an alternative to the US-dominated financial architecture, uniting semi-peripheral countries in the imperialist world system, often referred to as “emerging economies.”
The grouping is a model of the principle of South-South cooperation.
Chinese President Xi Jinping personally sent a special invitation to Argentina to attend the BRICS summits, and Buenos Aires accepted Beijing’s offer.
Argentina’s ambassador to China, Sabino Vaca Narvaja, said the invitation “is extremely important,” and constitutes a step toward “formal entry” into the BRICS.
BRICS will hold virtual summits for the foreign ministers and presidents of its members on May 20 and June 24, respectively.
This is not the first time Argentina’s incorporation into the BRICS framework has been discussed. In early 2014, India called for Argentina to be added to the alliance, and Russia invited the South American nation to the summit that same year.
If Argentina joins, the grouping may be renamed BRICSA.
At the heart of the BRICS is the New Development Bank, an alternative to the World Bank, as well as the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, a rival to the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF).
BRICS members have already said they would support Argentina joining the bloc’s New Development Bank.
Argentina is trapped in $44.5 billion of odious debt from the IMF, and has sought other financial opportunities to ease this crushing burden.
This February, Argentine President Alberto Fernández took a historic trip to China and Russia In his meeting with President Xi, Fernández said he wants his country to join the BRICS.
“I’m certain Argentina has to stop being so dependent on the [International Monetary] Fund and the United States, and has to open up to other places, and that is where it seems to me that Russia has a very important place,” Fernández explained in Moscow.
During his visit to Beijing, Fernández signed an agreement officially incorporating Argentina into China’s global Belt and Road Initiative.
Argentina is trapped in $44 billion of odious debt from the US-controlled IMF.
Seeking alternatives to US hegemony, Argentina's President Alberto Fernández traveled to Russia and China, forming an alliance with the Eurasian powers, joining the Belt & Roadhttps://t.co/rTbO1ZGsPE
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) February 6, 2022

The foreign policy of Argentina’s centrist government, led by Alberto Fernández, is full of contradictions.
While trying to strengthen its relations with China, and to a lesser extent Russia, Argentina has also been careful not to upset the United States.
Fernández did oppose the US-backed far-right coup that overthrew Bolivia’s democratically elected socialist government in 2019, and subsequently provided refuge to toppled President Evo Morales and officials from his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) Party.
But Fernández’s centrist administration has taken an aggressive approach against other leftist governments in the region.
Although Argentina claims to have a non-interventionist foreign policy, it has joined the US-led campaign to isolate Nicaragua’s socialist Sandinista government.
Fernández’s government likewise joined Washington in voting to expel Russia from the UN Human Rights Council over its war in Ukraine.
The rise of far-right presidents Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Narendra Modi in India, both of whom are very supportive of the United States, has weakened the BRICS framework since it was founded in 2009.
But Brazil’s left-wing former president Lula da Silva, a co-founder of the BRICS, has vowed to strengthen the bloc if he wins the October 2022 elections. Polls show him consistently leading over Bolsonaro.
Lula’s former foreign minister, Celso Amorim, has said that a Brazil under Lula’s leadership would strongly support Argentina joining the BRICS, calling it “very important” for the region.
Argentina has the third-largest economy in Latin America, following Brazil and Mexico.
Mexico has also been considered as a potential member, but was likely excluded because it is already part of the Western-led Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).


Instruction: Write an article about: Atrapada en la deuda del FMI, Argentina se alia con Rusia y China y se une a la Franja y la Ruta. 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: Alberto Fernández, Argentina, China, Covid-19, deuda, FMI, Rusia, vacunas, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping

Output:
Argentina está atrapada con $44 mil millones de deuda odiosa del FMI, controlado por EEUU. Buscando alternativas a la hegemonía estadounidense, el presidente Alberto Fernández viajó a Rusia y China, formando una alianza con las potencias euroasiáticas, incorporándose a la Iniciativa de la Franja y la Ruta.

(You can read this article in English here.)
Estados Unidos interviene constantemente en los asuntos internos de América Latina, organizando golpes de estado, desestabilizando gobiernos independientes, endeudando a las naciones e imponiendo sanciones. Washington ve la región como propiedad propia, y el presidente Joe Biden se refirió a ella este enero como su “patio delantero”.
En busca de alternativas a la hegemonía estadounidense, los gobiernos progresistas de América Latina han mirado cada vez más al otro lado del océano para formar alianzas con China y Rusia.
El presidente de Argentina, Alberto Fernández, hizo exactamente eso este febrero, realizando viajes históricos a Beijing y Moscú para reunirse con sus homólogos Xi Jinping y Vladimir Putin.
Fernández firmó una serie de acuerdos estratégicos, incorporando oficialmente a Argentina a la Iniciativa de la Franja y la Ruta de Beijing, al tiempo que ampliaba sus alianzas económicas con las potencias euroasiáticas y decía a Moscú que Argentina “debe ser la puerta de entrada” a América Latina.
China le ofreció $23.700 millones de dólares en financiamiento para proyectos de infraestructura e inversiones en la economía argentina.
En las reuniones, Fernández también pidió que Argentina se sume al sistema BRICS, junto a Brasil, Rusia, India, China y Sudáfrica. Según los informes, Xi y Putin estuvieron de acuerdo.
“Argentina tiene que dejar de tener esa dependencia tan grande que tiene con el FMI y los Estados Unidos, y tiene que abrirse camino hacia otros lados”, Fernández dijo.
Los comentarios y las reuniones del presidente argentino con Putin y Xi molestaron al gobierno de EEUU.
Argentina es una gran potencia latinoamericana, con importantes recursos naturales y la tercera economía más grande de la región (después de Brasil y México, que tienen poblaciones significativamente más grandes).
Pero el desarrollo de Argentina a menudo ha sido lastrado por trampas de la deuda impuestas desde el exterior, lo que ha creado frecuentes crisis económicas, ciclos inflacionarios y devaluaciones de la moneda.
El Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI), un brazo económico de Estados Unidos, sobre el cual solo Washington tiene poder de veto, tiene un control significativo sobre Argentina, habiendo atrapado a la nación en enormes sumas de deuda odiosa.
En 2018, el presidente derechista de Argentina, Mauricio Macri, solicitó el préstamo más grande en la historia del FMI: un asombroso rescate de $57.100 millones de dólares.
Macri era infame por su corrupción, y esto no era un secreto. Al aceptar dar una suma tan enorme de dinero al gobierno de Macri, plagado de escándalos, el FMI sabía que estaba atrapando a Argentina en una deuda que no podría pagar. Pero esta no fue la primera vez que el instrumento financiero dominado por Estados Unidos había atrapado a Argentina en una deuda odiosa.
En diciembre de 2021, el FMI publicó un informe interno en el que admitió que el rescate de 2018 fracasó por completo en estabilizar la economía argentina.
Pero cuando el presidente de centroizquierda de Argentina, Alberto Fernández, asumió el cargo en diciembre de 2019, su país estaba atrapado en una deuda de $44.5 mil millones de este programa que el propio FMI admitió que fue un fracaso total. ($44,500 millones del préstamo de los $57,100 millones ya se habían desembolsado, y Fernández canceló el resto.)
El gobierno argentino ha intentado renegociar la deuda, pero el FMI ha impuesto condiciones que restringen severamente la soberanía de la nación – como nombrar a un economista británico que “será virtualmente el nuevo ministro de economía“, actuando como una especie de “cogobierno”, advirtió la destacada diplomática Alicia Castro.
Buscando formas de evitar estas trampas de la deuda de EEUU, Fernández decidió en febrero volverse hacia las dos superpotencias emergentes de Eurasia.
El 3 de febrero, el presidente Alberto Fernández viajó a Rusia para reunirse con el presidente Vladimir Putin.
“Yo estoy empecinado en que la Argentina tiene que dejar de tener esa dependencia tan grande que tiene con el Fondo y con Estados Unidos. Tiene que abrirse camino a otros lados y me parece que ahí Rusia tiene un lugar muy importante”, dijo el mandatario.
???? | "Estamos dando un paso importante para que la Argentina y Rusia profundicen sus lazos", expresó el presidente @alferdez en una declaración conjunta que brindó junto a su par Vladímir Putin. #GiraPresidencial
? @KremlinRussia_Ehttps://t.co/aHl8tOuPZy pic.twitter.com/APoQR6VHtU
— Casa Rosada (@CasaRosada) February 3, 2022

Fernández agregó, “Tendríamos que ver la manera de que Argentina se convierta en una puerta de entrada para que Rusia ingrese a América Latina”.
El mandatario argentino le dijo a Putin, “Yo quiero que usted tenga la certeza de que veo una gran oportunidad para que podamos avanzar. Y quiero que sepa que tiene en mí un amigo que quiere ver de qué modo podemos avanzar juntos”.
Los dos líderes hablaron de la inversión rusa en la economía argentina, el comercio, la construcción de ferrocarriles y la tecnología energética.
Fernández también agradeció a Moscú por colaborar con su país en la producción de su vacuna Sputnik V contra la covid-19. Argentina fue el primer país del hemisferio occidental en hacerlo.
El presidente argentino incluso señaló en su reunión que ha recibido tres dosis de la vacuna Sputnik V. Putin agregó: “Yo también”.
Putin dijo que los dos países están de acuerdo en muchos temas y calificó a Argentina como “uno de los socios claves de Rusia en América Latina”.
Es un honor haberme reunido con Vladímir Putin, presidente de Rusia.
Tuvimos la oportunidad de intercambiar ideas sobre cómo podemos complementar mucho más el vínculo entre nuestras naciones. pic.twitter.com/ntmDGn6jtD
— Alberto Fernández (@alferdez) February 3, 2022

Apenas tres días después de reunirse con Putin, el presidente Alberto Fernández viajó a China el 6 de febrero para reunirse con el presidente Xi Jinping.
En este viaje histórico, Argentina se unió oficialmente a la Iniciativa Belt and Road de Beijing, un programa de infraestructura global masivo.
Fernández y otros altos funcionarios argentinos firmaron acuerdos por $23.700 millones de dólares en financiamiento chino, incluyendo inversiones y proyectos de infraestructura.
El financiamiento se desembolsará en dos partes: una, que ya está aprobada, proporcionará a Argentina $14 mil millones para 10 proyectos de infraestructura; el segundo, por $9.700 millones, financiará la integración de la nación sudamericana a la Franja y la Ruta.
Hay tres proyectos chino-argentinos que encabezaban la lista de Fernández: la creación de redes 5G, el desarrollo de la industria argentina del litio y la construcción de la planta de energía nuclear Atucha III.
Tuve una cordial, amistosa y fructífera reunión con Xi Jinping, presidente de China. Acordamos la incorporación de Argentina a la Franja y la Ruta de la Seda.
Es una excelente noticia. Nuestro país obtendrá más de US$ 23 mil millones de inversiones chinas para obras y proyectos. pic.twitter.com/LGyIJ6zWdG
— Alberto Fernández (@alferdez) February 6, 2022

Fernández también habló de la producción argentina de la vacuna de Sinopharm contra la covid-19, además de la Sputnik V de Rusia.
Argentina y China firmaron un memorándum de entendimiento integral, que incluye 13 documentos de cooperación en áreas como energía verde, tecnología, educación, agricultura, comunicación y energía nuclear.
Fernández y Xi hablaron de maneras para “profundizar las relaciones de cooperación política, comercial, económica, científica y cultural entre ambos países”, según una declaración del gobierno argentino tras la reunión.
Aparentemente, los dos líderes se llevaron muy bien, y Fernández le dijo a Xi, “Si usted fuera argentino, sería peronista“.
???? | El presidente @alferdez mantuvo reuniones sobre el proyecto de producir en Argentina la vacuna de Sinopharm, participó de la inauguración de los JJOO de Invierno #Beijing2022 y visitó el Museo de la Historia del Partido Comunista. #GiraPresidencialhttps://t.co/acSH9rvpM7 pic.twitter.com/Edz7hHRLE8
— Casa Rosada (@CasaRosada) February 4, 2022

La incorporación de Argentina a la Franja y la Ruta se produce pocas semanas después de que Nicaragua se uniera a la iniciativa en enero, y Cuba en diciembre.
Los crecientes vínculos de América Latina con China y Rusia muestran cómo el sistema internacional cada vez más multipolar ofrece a los países del Sur Global nuevos aliados que pueden servir como baluartes y alternativas a la hegemonía de Washington.
Mientras los líderes derechistas de América Latina siguen mirando al norte a Estados Unidos como su brújula política, los gobiernos progresistas cruzan el océano hacia las potencias euroasiáticas de China, Rusia e Irán, construyendo nuevas alianzas internacionales que debilitan el control geopolítico de Washington sobre una región que el presidente de EEUU aún insiste es su “patio delantero”.


Instruction: Write an article about: Menos de 15 países reconocen al golpista venezolano Juan Guaidó. 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: golpe de estado, Juan Guaidó, Julio Borges, Leopoldo López, Nicolás Maduro, PSUV, Venezuela

Output:
Un ex aliado de Juan Guaidó admitió que un máximo de 15 países reconocen al líder golpista como el supuesto “presidente interino” de Venezuela. La administración demócrata de Joe Biden en EEUU es una de ellas.

(You can read this article in English here.)
El 23 de enero de 2022 marca el tercer aniversario del intento de golpe de estado de Estados Unidos contra el único gobierno constitucional de Venezuela, el del presidente Nicolás Maduro.
Ese día en 2019, la administración de Donald Trump nombró al opositor venezolano Juan Guaidó, quien era poco conocido en su país y nunca había recibido un solo voto en una elección presidencial, como el supuesto “presidente interino” de la nación caribeña.
En la cima del intento de golpe liderado por EEUU, menos de 60 de los 193 estados miembros de la ONU reconocieron a Guaidó. Y ese número ha caído precipitadamente desde entonces.
Uno de los principales exfuncionarios de Guaidó, el derechista Julio Borges, admitió en una entrevista que un máximo de solo 15 países aún reconocen a Guaidó, a partir de enero de 2022.
Los principales medios de comunicación occidentales han reconocido que Guaidó en realidad no controla nada dentro de Venezuela, aparte de lo que Estados Unidos robó para él.
Sin embargo, la administración de Joe Biden ha mantenido la política de Trump de apoyo a Guaidó.
Este reconocimiento ha continuado a pesar de las elecciones regionales de noviembre de 2021 en Venezuela, que fueron observadas por la Unión Europea, en las que el partido de Guaidó fue derrotado aplastantemente, y el Partido Socialista Unido (PSUV) del Presidente Maduro ganó en una victoria contundente.
El golpista venezolano Juan Guaidó en la Casa Blanca con el Presidente de Estados Unidos Donald Trump en febrero de 2020
Las naciones que aún se niegan a reconocer al presidente constitucional de Venezuela, Maduro, consisten principalmente en Estados Unidos y sus aliados derechistas en América Latina, incluyendo Colombia, Brasil, Guatemala, Paraguay y Ecuador – junto con la Organización de Estados Americanos (OEA), que es controlada por Washington.
El gobierno Liberal del Primer Ministro Justin Trudeau de Canadá todavía respalda a Guaidó también.
Reino Unido es uno de los únicos países europeos que se niegan a reconocer a Maduro, en parte porque, al continuar reconociendo formalmente a Guaidó, le da una excusa judicial para que el Banco de Inglaterra pueda robar casi $2 mil millones de oro venezolano.
De hecho, el régimen golpista de Guaidó usó dinero incautado ilegalmente del Banco Central de Venezuela para pagar los costos legales en Reino Unido, en sus esfuerzos por controlar estos miles de millones de dólares en oro venezolano saqueado, el periodista John McEvoy ha revelado.
Incluso España, que alberga a venezolanos prófugos de la justicia que organizaron violentos intentos de golpe de estado contra el gobierno chavista, ya no reconoce realmente a Guaidó.
Quizás la figura más poderosa de la oposición de Venezuela, Leopoldo López, un extremista de derecha de una familia oligarca ultra rica, vive actualmente en Madrid, donde ha disfrutado del apoyo del gobierno español. Esto es a pesar del hecho de que López admitió haber orquestado violentos intentos de golpe y planeado una invasión fallida de Venezuela en mayo de 2020, conocida como Operación Gedeón.
En una admisión implícita de que todos estos esfuerzos por derrocar al gobierno legítimo de Venezuela habían fracasado, la Unión Europea dejó de reconocer a Guaidó a partir de enero de 2021.
Julio Borges, el político de la oposición venezolana que dijo que un máximo de solo 15 países aún reconocen a Guaidó, lo sabe por experiencia propia.
Borges se desempeñó anteriormente como el llamado “canciller” del régimen golpista paralelo de Guaidó, que nunca ha ejercido el poder dentro de Venezuela y nunca fue elegido por el pueblo venezolano.
Borges renunció al régimen golpista de Guaidó en diciembre de 2021, y dijo que el “gobierno interino se ha desformado” y “debe desaparecer”.


Instruction: Write an article about: Brazilian neo-Nazis see Ukraine as their model: Behind the fascist campaign to ‘Ukrainize’ Brazil. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Azov, Brazil, fascism, Jair Bolsonaro, Nazis, Russia, Ukraine

Output:
Brazilian neo-Nazis and supporters of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro have spent years collaborating with violent fascists in Ukraine, and even launched a campaign to “Ukrainize” Brazil.

(This article was first published at MintPress News, under a Creative Commons license.)
SÃO PAULO – A small group of supporters of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro became social media celebrities after they crossed the border into Ukraine this February and March to fight against Russia.
These right-wing Brazilians posed with assault rifles on Instagram, reciting prayers to the special forces, sharing video monologues praising the brotherhood of people from around the world who had gathered in a training base near the Ukrainian city of Lviv to kill Russian “communists.” The group’s inexperience was demonstrated by the fact that most of their social media posts included their geo-location information.
This all changed following a missile attack on the training base near the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on March 13, after which a series of more humble photos and videos began cropping up on their Twitter and Instagram feeds.
From across the Polish border, Bolsonaro supporter Jefferson Kleidian posted a selfie brandishing an injured pinky finger and thanking God for one more day on Earth.
Brazilian Bolsonaro supporter and former combatant Jefferson Kleidian thanks God for one more day on Earth from a safe place in Poland
Another right-wing influencer, Andre Hack, posted that he had lost friends at the base. 28-year-old shooting-range instructor and Bolsonaro fanatic Tiago Rossi tweeted a video saying he had fled the base immediately before the missile strike.
“Our entire legion was destroyed, the information I have is that everyone died. You don’t understand what it’s like to have a fighter jet fire a missile at you. I didn’t think it was a real war,” Rossi said.
"You guys don't understand what it's like to have a jet shoot a missile at you."So war isn't a movie or a video game.Brazilian describes what happened when Russians missiles hit the base where the foreign legion was deployed.Thanks to @BrianMteleSUR for translation. https://t.co/1HFcXi6zby pic.twitter.com/DZRPDQmiDP
— Margaret Kimberley (@freedomrideblog) March 14, 2022

What were these Brazilians doing in Ukraine in the first place? In order to answer that question, one has to look back at the resurgence of Nazi ideology in Brazil and the deepening relationship between Brazil’s neo-Nazi groups, which have grown by a staggering 270% since Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019, and Ukrainian neo-Nazi organizations like Azov.
During the 1930s, Brazil was home to the largest German Nazi party outside of Europe and had a much larger local fascist movement, called the integralistas, that tried to enact a coup in 1938. The coup was crushed, but the ideology lived on in a country that already suffered from severe structural racism as the last place in the Americas to eradicate slavery.
Brazil’s current president, Jair Bolsonaro, made it into power only after a joint operation by the US Department of Justice and Brazilian public prosecutors to jail the leading 2018 presidential candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on false charges.
Bolsonaro began his career as an army captain during a sub-fascist military dictatorship, which employed Gestapo tactics like death squads and torture against labor union leaders, intellectuals, and communists.
As a congressman in 2004, Bolsonaro wrote a series of letters to neo-Nazi websites, saying things like “you guys are the reason I am in politics.”
Grounded on a platform of anti-communist hate speech, his presidency unleashed a flood of public support for fascism, which had been latent since the end of the dictatorship.
According to Brazilian law, Nazi organizations are illegal, but according to anthropology professor and anti-Nazi researcher Adriana Dias, there are currently 530 neo-Nazi cells operating in Brazil.
Since 2012, these organizations have had increasing interactions with Ukrainian Nazi organizations, which have resulted in Brazilian Nazis gaining combat experience with Azov in Donbas.
This has also led to a campaign to “Ukraine Brazil,” run by a right-wing extremist faction of Bolsonaro supporters.
Sara Fernanda Giromini was a teenager involved in Nazi skinhead gangs in Sao Paulo when she opened a VK account, made friends with Russian and Ukrainian neo-Nazis, and learned about FEMEN, after reading about it on Facebook. VK is a popular Russian social media platform.
Giromini first visited Ukraine in 2011, where she met and trained with FEMEN leaders and other actors from the Ukrainian far-right. After returning to Brazil in 2012, she started calling herself Sarah Winter in homage to the English fascist of the 1920s.
A series of topless protests transformed Giromini into a celebrity, but FEMEN Brazil imploded in less than a year.
Bruna Themis, number two in the organization, resigned and gave a series of whistleblowing interviews, saying that the Ukrainians demanded they kick out any Brazilian woman who didn’t meet their sexist physical appearance and weight standards; that the real leader of the group was a minor far-right politician named Andrey Cuia, who frequently traveled back and forth to Ukraine; and that Cuia and Giromini were ripping off donors and keeping the money for themselves.
After posing with guns and threatening violence against Supreme Court ministers, Brazilian fascist “Sara Winter (Sara Giromini) was put under house arrest
Shortly afterward, FEMEN Ukraine announced that FEMEN Brazil had nothing to do with them, despite the fact that Giromini was arrested during a FEMEN protest in Kiev in 2012. Giromini now says that during her time in FEMEN, they paid her $2,000 per protest.
According to Adriana Dias, the anti-Nazi researcher, after FEMEN folded, Giromini began inviting Ukrainian neo-Nazis to Brazil. She remains friends with several leaders of Azov and the Phoenix Battalion on her VK account to this day.
In 2016, civil police in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, home to several waves of German and Italian immigration and a long fascist tradition of its own, carried out an investigation into neo-Nazi groups that were planning violent attacks against Afro-Brazilians, Jews, and LGBT+ people.
They discovered that a Ukrainian neo-Nazi militia, Misanthropic Division, was recruiting Brazilian Nazis in seven cities in the state to serve as volunteer combatants with Azov in the Donbas region.
The investigation, which was dubbed “Operation Azov,” received ample coverage in the Brazilian and Israeli press at the time.
After leading candidate Lula da Silva was arbitrarily imprisoned during the 2018 election campaign, Bolsonaro was swept into office on a wave of Nazi-influenced anti-communist propaganda that led him to label any person or organization that ever criticized him as a communist. At one point he even called the oldest conservative magazine in the world, The Economist, “The Communist.”
Giromini, by this time a vocal member of the anti-abortion movement, campaigned heavily for Bolsonaro. After he took office in 2019, she began a public call to “Ukrainize Brazil.”
Many of the most reactionary public figures associated with Bolsonaro, like openly fascist Rio de Janeiro lawmaker Daniel Silveira, joined the campaign.
Dias says, “Azov’s tactic has always been to bring a group of 300 people to a city and, through training activities with locals, start a right-wing extremist movement.”
Giromini relocated to the capital Brasilia and started an organization called the “Group of 300” to help build support for the Ukrainization of Brazil.
In 2020, after the Brazilian Supreme Court blocked one of Bolsonaro’s attempts to bypass the constitution, Giromini’s Group of 300 camped out on the national esplanade, held a series of tiki torch-wielding protests in front of the court building, and shot fireworks at it.
Posing for selfies with guns, Giromini called for violence against Supreme Court ministers. On July 15, 2020, the Supreme Court ordered her arrest. After two weeks in jail, she was given an ankle bracelet, transferred to house arrest, and ordered to stay off social media. She has been there ever since.
Brazilian fascist Sara Winter (Sara Giromini) leading a “Group of 300” protest in front of the Supreme Court
Sara Giromini AKA Winter, leading a protest in front of the Supreme Court
Meanwhile, Ukrainian flags and symbols of the Ukrainian far-right became more and more popular at pro-Bolsonaro rallies.
In 2020, a former soldier and security consultant named Alex Silva, who has been living in Kiev since 2014 and says he is a member of an “auxiliary volunteer police force” there, triggered a media controversy that led to an official disclaimer from the Ukrainian Embassy when he hoisted a red-and-black Right Sector flag onto a sound truck at a Bolsonaro rally and was photographed walking through the crowd wearing it like a cape.
Silva, now back in Kiev, has become another internet celebrity to the Brazilian far-right, posting videos of his armed voluntary patrols of Kiev as recently as this March.
Far-right Brazilian influencer Alex Silva, a former soldier and “voluntary auxiliary policeman” in Kiev, draped in a Right Sector flag at a 2020 protest in Sao Paulo
Leonel Radde is a Porto Alegre city councilor who spends a lot of his time investigating neo-Nazi groups in Rio Grande do Sul. Asked about connections between Brazilian and Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups, he said:
We see clearly that the majority of Nazi groups here use Ukrainian design elements. They are using the same symbols – mainly the black sun — and they all use this discourse of Ukrainizing Brazil. They also talk among themselves about adapting Ukrainian tactics for setting up camps and occupying public squares and things like that. They are definitely trying to copy what happened in Ukraine in 2014. We are trying to figure out how much they are just copying things they see on the internet or if they are being financed from the Ukraine, although Sarah Winter spent time near Porto Alegre doing organizing work and she started this whole thing.”
Meanwhile, far-right social media influencers like Alex Silva are still sending reports from Ukraine.
This March the Ukrainian Embassy in Brasilia said it received 100 requests from Brazilians asking to volunteer for the Ukrainian army, and UOL reports that analysis of pro-Bolsonaro social media groups shows that 500 others are planning to go.
Whether the missile attack near Lviv and reports coming in from scared-looking former Brazilian combatants who have escaped to Poland will change any of that has yet to be seen.
Regardless, it is clear that political indoctrination by Ukrainian Nazis has taken hold among Brazil’s growing far-right, and will be a factor in the 2022 presidential election season.


Instruction: Write an article about: Taiwan separatists lose key ally, Honduras recognizes China – just 12 small countries remain. 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, coup, Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, Nicaragua, Taiwan, Xiomara Castro

Output:
Honduras’ leftist President Xiomara Castro officially recognized China. Now only 12 UN member states have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan separatists. They have a combined population of less than 39 million, or 0.49% of the planet.

Update (March 26):
Honduras announced on March 25 that it officially established formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China.
The Honduran Foreign Ministry publicly recognized the One China Policy – that there is only one China, represented by the People’s Republic, and that Taiwan is a province of it.
“The two governments agreed to develop links of friendship”, the Honduran Foreign Ministry wrote, pledging to negotiate “agreements in areas of cooperation, such as finance, trade, infrastructure, energy, technology, culture, tourism, education, and health, among others, based on mutual benefit and shared integral development”.
“With this historic decision, the Government of the Republic widens the horizon of development for the Honduran people”, the Foreign Ministry added.
?????| La República de Honduras y la República Popular China establecen Relaciones Diplomáticas. pic.twitter.com/slUPC26fbt
— Cancillería Honduras (@CancilleriaHN) March 26, 2023

Original article (March 16):
The government of Honduras has announced that it is breaking formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan and recognizing the People’s Republic of China.
Honduras’ leftist President Xiomara Castro had pledged during her 2021 campaign that, if she won the election, she would recognize China. This March, she fulfilled that promise.
This means that just 12 United Nations member states have formal diplomatic relations with the so-called “Republic of China” on the island of Taiwan.
The other 99.51% of the global population live in countries that formally recognize that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China.

These 12 UN member states that recognize Taiwan have a combined population of only 38.9 million – representing just 0.49% of the global population of 8 billion.
The following list consists of the countries that still do not have formal relations with the People’s Republic of China, accompanied by the size of their populations, according to CIA World Factbook data:
12 UN member states:
Guatemala – 17.98 million
Haiti – 11.47 million
Paraguay – 7.44 million
Eswatini – 1.13 million
Belize – 419,137
Saint Lucia – 167,591
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – 100,804
Marshall Islands – 80,966
Saint Kitts and Nevis – 54,817
Palau – 21,779
Tuvalu – 11,639
Nauru – 9,852
Non UN member:
Vatican City – c. 1000

Even the United States technically recognizes that Taiwan is part of China, at least on paper.
Washington signed Three Communiqués with Beijing when the governments normalized diplomatic relations. The first communiqué, signed in 1972, stated clearly:
The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.
Despite its legal commitments, Washington has been gradually increasing its support for separatist forces in Taiwan.
The US military has deployed troops on Taiwan island, and sold it billions of dollars of weapons. Top US officials like former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi have also made provocative trips to the Chinese province, backing separatists.

Xiomara Castro (of no relation to Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro) made this historic announcement on March 14.
In a tweet, Castro said, “I have instructed Foreign Minister Eduardo Reina to arrange the opening of official relations with the People’s Republic of China, as a demonstration of my determination to fulfill the Plan of Government and expand the frontiers of liberty in concert with the nations of the world”.
He instruido al Canciller Eduardo Reina, para que gestione la apertura de relaciones oficiales con la República Popular China, como muestra de mi determinación para cumplir el Plan de Gobierno y expandir las fronteras con libertad en el concierto de las naciones del mundo.
— Xiomara Castro de Zelaya (@XiomaraCastroZ) March 14, 2023

Castro’s decision enraged US politicians.
Republican Senator Bill Cassidy tweeted threateningly, “The Honduran people will suffer because of her failed leadership”.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro is moving her country closer to Communist China while the world is moving away. The Honduran people will suffer because of her failed leadership.
— U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (@SenBillCassidy) March 15, 2023

In a subsequent interview explaining the decision, Reina said that China has offered to help Honduras economically.
There are “great needs that the Honduran people have”, and, “Unfortunately, the needs are enormous, and we have not seen this response” from Taiwan, the foreign minister emphasized.
Reina also noted that Honduras is trapped in billions of dollars of odious debt owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other US-dominated institutions, and China could potentially ease this burden.
US-backed coup regimes trapped Honduras in unpayable odious debt, warns new President Xiomara Castro

Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere. Roughly three-quarters (74%) of its population of 10 million live in poverty.
The United States sponsored a military coup in Honduras in 2009, which overthrew the country’s democratically elected left-wing President Manuel Zelaya and installed a brutally repressive right-wing regime.
This ultra-conservative coup regime, which was closely linked to drug trafficking, ran Honduras with an iron first from 2009 until the end of 2021. Poverty skyrocketed, and violence and organized crime became such systemic problems that Honduras had the highest murder rate on Earth.
Meanwhile, the coup regime, which blatantly stole two elections, enjoyed the staunch support of not only the United States, but also Taiwan.
In fact, during the November 2021 vote, Taiwan meddled in Honduras’ elections. Honduran activists published photos and videos across social media that showed Taiwan providing aid to the right-wing National Party, the party of the coup regime.
Taiwan is meddling in Honduras' presidential election, coming up on the 28th, giving aid to the ruling right-wing National Party, which has brutally ruled the country since a US-backed 2009 military coup
The leftist Libre Party candidate pledged to establish relations with China https://t.co/EMzwYQKOo9
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 25, 2021

Taiwan has been similarly meddling in the political system of Honduras’ western neighbor, Guatemala, pressuring the country to maintain diplomatic relations.
The Associated Press reported in 2022 that Taiwan paid Guatemala $900,000 to hire a top ally of Donald Trump to lobby in Washington on behalf of its right-wing President Alejandro Giammattei, a notoriously corrupt millionaire and dual citizen of Italy.
Honduras’ southern neighbor, Nicaragua, on the other hand, has a leftist government led by the Sandinista Front.
In 2021, Nicaragua broke ties with Taiwan, recognizing the People’s Republic of China. Since then, Managua and Beijing have become close allies, and the two governments are negotiating a comprehensive free trade agreement.
China is helping Nicaragua expand its public housing program, building thousands of homes for poor and working families. Beijing has also signed agreements to develop infrastructure, hospitals, and renewable energy.
Nicaragua has even made plans with China to construct an interoceanic canal, which would challenge the monopoly of the Panama Canal and offer enormous economic opportunities for the Central American nation.
Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government had first recognized China back in the 1980s, but after a decade of a CIA-sponsored Contra terror war and an illegal US blockade against Nicaragua, a right-wing regime came to power in 1990, which reveretd to diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Sandinista Nicaragua allies with China, Russia, Iran against US imperialism


Instruction: Write an article about: Brazil’s Lula proposes creating Latin American currency to ‘be freed of US dollar’ dependency. 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: ALBA, Bolivarian Alliance, Brazil, dollar, Ecuador, Hugo Chávez, Lula da Silva, Rafael Correa, Sucre, Venezuela

Output:
Brazil’s left-wing leader Lula da Silva says if he wins the 2022 presidential elections, “we are going to create a currency in Latin America,” called the Sur (“South”), to combat “the dependency on the dollar”

(Se puede leer esta nota en español aquí.)
Brazil’s left-wing leader Lula da Silva has proposed creating a pan-Latin American currency, in order to “be freed of the dollar.”
A founder of Brazil’s Workers’ Party, Lula served as president for two terms, from 2003 to 2011. He is now the leading candidate as Brazil’s October 2022 presidential elections approach.
If he returns to the presidency, “We are going to create a currency in Latin America, because we can’t keep depending on the dollar,” Lula said in a speech at a rally on May 2.

He revealed that the currency would be called the Sur, which means “South” in Spanish.
Lula explained that countries in Latin America could still keep their sovereign domestic currency, but they could use the Sur to do bilateral trade with each other, instead of having to exchange for US dollars.
The Sur could also help to contain inflation in the region, Lula argued.
Lula said the goal of the currency would be to deepen Latin American integration and strengthen the region’s economic sovereignty, weakening its dependence on the United States.
Under Brazil’s current government, led by far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, the South American giant has subordinated itself to Washington, while viciously attacking the left-wing governments in the region.
Bolsonaro’s Brazil has refused to recognize the legitimacy of the leftist Chavista government in its neighbor Venezuela, and has even supported violent cross-border terrorist attacks against it.
If he returns to the presidency, Lula pledged that Brazil “will strengthen its relations with Latin America.”
Lula has also vowed to revive the BRICS system, integrating Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa in an independent economic architecture to challenge Western financial hegemony.
In 2020, Lula published a call “For a Multipolar World.” He explained his goal is “the creation of a multipolar world, free from unilateral hegemony and from sterile bipolar confrontation,” that “would permit a true re-founding of the multilateral order, based on principles of real multilateralism, in which international cooperation can truly flourish.”
Lula’s proposal for the Sur is certainly not the first time progressive politicians in Latin America have tried to create a common currency. This has long been a dream of left-wing leaders in the region.
Venezuela’s revolutionary former president Hugo Chávez developed an international currency as part of the Bolivarian Alliance (ALBA), an economic coalition of left-wing governments in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This currency was called the Sucre, and was adopted in 2009 by Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, and Ecuador.
The ALBA summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2009 in which the Sucre was adopted
Sucre was an acronym for “Unified System for Regional Compensation,” but also a reference to Antonio José de Sucre, who helped lead the South American independence struggle against Spanish colonialism, alongside Simón Bolívar.
Ecuador’s government, under leftist President Rafael Correa, who has a Ph.D. in economics, was the main adopter of the Sucre.
At its peak in 2012, the Sucre was used for more than $1 billion in bilateral annual trade in the region.
The symbol for the Sucre, used by the ALBA
But the currency fell out of use by 2016, following Chávez’s death in 2013, a massive drop in commodity prices in 2014, the imposition of US sanctions on Venezuela in 2015, and violent coup attempts against Chávez’s successor Nicolás Maduro.
Ecuador’s subsequent right-wing President Lenín Moreno, with US backing, later removed his country from the ALBA, dealing a huge blow to the Sucre and dreams of regional integration.
Brazil’s presidential elections will be held in October 2022.
Polls consistently show Lula leading over far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s sitting president.
Bolsonaro only came to power in the 2018 elections due to a soft coup d’etat backed by the United States.
Lula had been significantly ahead in the polls in the lead-up to the 2018 vote, but Brazil’s judicial system imprisoned him on false charges, handing the victory to Bolsonaro.
The US Justice Department helped support this campaign of what Lula calls legal warfare, or lawfare, to prevent him from returning to the presidency.
The US government also backed the 2016 political coup against Brazil’s democratically President Dilma Rousseff, also a member of Lula’s left-wing Workers’ Party.
The UN Human Rights Committee found this April that the prosecution of Lula was politically motivated and violated his rights.
“The investigation and prosecution of former President Lula da Silva violated his right to be tried by an impartial tribunal, his right to privacy and his political rights,” the UN legal experts determined.


Instruction: Write an article about: Despite Biden’s claims, Gaza health ministry death toll is accurate, scientific studies show. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Gaza, Israel, Palestine, The Lancet

Output:
US President Biden criticized Gaza’s health ministry, but its statistics on Israel’s killings of Palestinians are accurate, according to peer-reviewed articles in top medical journal The Lancet.

The death toll of Israel’s war on Gaza reported by the Palestinian health ministry is accurate, according to two peer-reviewed studies by scientific experts published in top medical journal The Lancet.
As of December 18, Israel had killed 19,453 Palestinians in Gaza, the ministry reported. Two-thirds of the deaths were children (7,729) and women (5,153).
United Nations bodies, human rights organizations, and major media outlets have often used these statistics, because they have a history of being accurate.

“International organizations including the United Nations usually rely on these same figures as they are seen as the best available”, the Washington Post acknowledged.
“Many experts consider figures provided by the ministry reliable, given its access, sources and accuracy in past statements”, the prominent US newspaper wrote.
Israel has claimed, without any evidence, that Gaza’s health ministry is untrustworthy, because it is supposedly run by the political party Hamas. (In reality, the Gaza health ministry is partially funded by and linked to Hamas’ political rival, the Palestinian Authority, based in the Occupied West Bank.)
The US government has echoed Israel’s disinformation. President Joe Biden said in an October 25 press conference, “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed… I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using”.
Despite Biden’s criticism, HuffPost revealed that the US State Department uses the Palestinian health ministry figures in its own reports on Gaza.
In one of such memos, a US official acknowledged that, if anything, “The numbers are likely much higher, according to the UN and NGOs reporting on the situation”.
This was exactly the conclusion reached by scientific experts at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The peer-reviewed article “No evidence of inflated mortality reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health”, published in leading medical journal The Lancet on December 6, noted that the Palestinian institution “has historically reported accurate mortality data”.
In past conflicts, discrepancies between Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) data and independent United Nations figures were only between 1.5% and 3.8%.
Gaza MoH data were also quite similar to figures from Israel’s own Foreign Ministry, with a difference of just around 8%.
Scholars Benjamin Q Huynh, Elizabeth T Chin, and Paul B Spiegel wrote that they “found no evidence of inflated rates”.
Scientific experts from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine came to a similar conclusion in their own peer-reviewed article in The Lancet, published on November 26.
For this previous study, scholars Zeina Jamaluddine, Francesco Checchi, and Oona M R Campbell reviewed death statistics from October 7 to 26, analyzing the list of 7028 deaths compiled by the Gaza Ministry of Health.
Out of the 7028 names, only one had a duplicated ID number, one had an implausible age, and just 281 lacked an ID number.
The experts concluded that the data were reasonable, writing, “We consider it implausible that these patterns would arise from data fabrication”.
They also reviewed MoH figures from previous wars in Gaza, and found them to be reliable.
“Assessments of Palestinian MoH data validity in the 2014 conflict had shown them to be accurate, and we saw no obvious reason to doubt the validity of the data between Oct 7 and Oct 26, 2023”, the scholars stated.
If anything, they concluded that the Gaza MoH figures may be rather conservative.
“The death reporting system currently being used by the Palestinian MoH was assessed in 2021, 2 years before the current war, and was found to under-report mortality by 13%”, they wrote, adding that “it is plausible that the current Palestinian MoH source also under-reports mortality because of the direct effect of the war on data capture and reporting, for example by omitting people whose bodies could not be recovered or brought to morgues”.


Instruction: Write an article about: Brazil and Argentina preparing new Latin American currency to ‘reduce reliance on US dollar’. 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: Andrés Arauz, Argentina, Brazil, CELAC, dollar, Financial Times, Latin America, Lula da Silva, MERCOSUR, Sergio Massa, Sur, UNASUR

Output:
Brazil and Argentina are making plans for a Latin American currency called the Sur, to “boost regional trade and reduce reliance on the US dollar”. Lula had pledged it while running for president.

The governments of Brazil and Argentina are making plans to create a new currency for Latin America, called the Sur (“south” in English), according to a report in the Financial Times.
Other countries in the region will be invited to use the currency.
Their goal is to “boost regional trade and reduce reliance on the US dollar”, the newspaper noted, citing government officials.

Argentina’s Economic Minister Sergio Massa told the Financial Times that the South American nations will soon “start studying the parameters needed for a common currency, which includes everything from fiscal issues to the size of the economy and the role of central banks”.
Massa said they are preparing “a study of mechanisms for trade integration”. But he cautioned that it could take years to develop, and this is just “first step on a long road which Latin America must travel”.
Brazil and Argentina will discuss the currency plans at the meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Buenos Aires on January 24.
Brazil has the largest economy in Latin America, and Argentina has the third biggest (after Mexico).

Argentina-based Spanish economist Alfredo Serrano Manc, who directs a think tank dedicated to regional integration, the Latin American Strategic Center of Geopolitics (CELAG), told the Financial Times that “the path is to find mechanisms which substitute the dependence on the dollar”.
He added that now is the moment, given that “there are many governments that are ideologically similar”, with left-wing leaders across Latin America.
Me consultaron en @FinancialTimes para esta nota sobre los desafíos de la cumbre CELAC. La vía es buscar mecanismos para sustituir la dependencia del dolar. Y sí se puede si se quiere. Y más ahora que hay muchos gobiernos afines en lo ideológico. https://t.co/kXjklZgZ1b
— Alfredo Serrano Manc (@alfreserramanci) January 22, 2023

Brazil’s leftist President Lula da Silva returned to power on January 1.
During his electoral campaign, Lula had floated the possibility of creating a regional currency for trade.
At a rally in May 2022, the Workers’ Party leader had said, “We are going to create a currency in Latin America, because we can’t keep depending on the dollar”.
Lula revealed that it would be called the Sur. He added that it would not be based on the euro model, in that countries could maintain their sovereign domestic currency.
Instead, the plan would be to use the Sur for regional trade, Lula said.
Brazil’s left-wing leader Lula da Silva says if he wins the October presidential elections, “we are going to create a currency in Latin America,” called the Sur (“South”), to combat “the dependency on the dollar”https://t.co/NSgzcHtuBB
— Geopolitical Economy Report (@GeopoliticEcon) May 7, 2022

After Lula won the October 2022 election, Ecuador’s left-wing politician and economist Andrés Arauz published a blueprint for a “new regional financial architecture” for Latin America.
Arauz said the plan would be to revive regional institutions like the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Banco del Sur (Bank of the South), and to create a Banco Central del Sur (Central Bank of the South) to oversee the new currency.
The goal is “to harmonize the payment systems of” the countries that make up UNASUR in order “to carry out inter-bank transfers to any bank inside of the region in real time and from a cellphone”, he wrote.
Arauz was a presidential candidate who came close to winning Ecuador’s 2021 election. He is also finishing a PhD in economics.
Advising Brazil’s President-elect Lula, Ecuadorian economist and leftist presidential candidate @EcuArauz made a blueprint for a “new regional financial architecture” to unite Latin America, including a currency to challenge the hegemony of the US dollar https://t.co/o7L0fN236F
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 1, 2022

Argentina has suffered with odious debt owed to foreign colonial powers for 200 years.
Today, Argentina is trapped in $44 billion of debt with the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF).
This dollar-denominated foreign debt has led to a constant drain of foreign currency out of Argentina, fueling high levels of inflation.
Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández visited China and Russia in February 2022, seeking alternatives to the US-dominated financial system, and joining Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Argentina has also applied to join the extended BRICS+ bloc, with Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Buenos Aires attended the group’s 2022 summits at Beijing’s invitation.
As former president, Lula was himself a co-founder of the BRICS.
China invited Argentina to attend the 2022 summits of the BRICS economic bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa.
Argentina’s ambassador says it’s a step toward “formal entry” to the grouping, an alternative to the US-dominated financial systemhttps://t.co/ilTBO37LQi
— Geopolitical Economy Report (@GeopoliticEcon) May 9, 2022

Both Brazil and Argentina are already part of a South American trade bloc, known as Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur, or Common Market of the South).
Lula has for years emphasized the importance of economic and political integration of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Immediately after returning to office in January, Lula moved to revive and strengthen regional institutions like CELAC, UNASUR, and Mercosur.
Brazil’s previous far-right President Jair Bolsonaro had sought to sabotage these organizations, withdrawing or suspending the country’s membership and instead aligning the South American giant closely with the United States.
Bolsonaro came to power thanks to two US-backed political coups in Brazil, including a parliamentary putsch against Workers’ Party President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the politically motivated imprisonment of Lula on false charges in the lead-up to the 2018 election.
Soon after entering office, Bolsonaro traveled to Virginia to visit CIA headquarters.
Fearing legal consequences in Brazil for his flagrant corruption and for policies that caused the mass deaths of citizens, Bolsonaro fled to Florida two days before his term ended. He has since been living in the United States as a fugitive from justice.
Lula da Silva returns as Brazil’s president, calling to fight poverty and hunger, re-industrialize, strengthen the BRICS, and deepen Latin American integration.
Far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro fled to Florida, fearing legal consequences for his corruptionhttps://t.co/RZYABG6oQY
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 4, 2023


Instruction: Write an article about: How the imperialist system works, and how Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution resists it. 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: Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chávez, imperialism, Nicolás Maduro, Socialism of the 21st Century, Venezuela

Output:
A Venezuelan sociologist explains how the imperialist system is built on a murderous, savage capitalism, and how Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution has resisted it, based on Hugo Chávez’s concept of 21st-century socialism.

This article by Venezuelan sociologist María Páez Victor is based on her presentation at the webinar “Imperialism and the Western Left” organized by the Geopolitical Economy Research Group and International Manifesto Group on April 24, 2022.
There are many characteristics of imperialism, but essentially it involves the desire and the ability of one nation to overpower, dominate, and or persuade other nations to act in the best interests of the empire’s own aims.
Imperialism is not a new phenomenon, but today it can be said to involve a new colonialism. This brand of colonialism does not necessarily take over militarily large tracts of lands of peoples or nations, but seeks to destroy the sovereignty of established states, weaken them, and impose a tutelage over them, in its quest of natural resources, advantages and hegemonic power.
Moreover, today there is a new way of waging war has been added to military war: hybrid war, which is economic, diplomatic, legalistic, mediatic, and equally lethal.
There is only one empire in the world right now; it is the United States of America, and it is intent on remaining so, on being the one hegemon, the one superpower, with the help of its firm allies in Europe and Canada.
The United States is the only nation that has approximately 800 military bases across the planet. It has the largest armed forces in the world, and is the number one arms manufacturer and seller on Earth.
War has been its main instrument and business, for most of the 20th and now the 21st century. Consequently, Washington’s foreign, diplomatic, economic, and financial policies are no longer different from its military objectives.
The US private and the public spheres have largely combined with the militarization of its foreign policy, and this cloaks a profound class struggle, domestic as well as international, counting on the formidable power of corporate media.
Empires have always tried to mask their military power with their “auctoritas” (authority): the narrative façade about the empire’s worth, quality, superiority, and benevolence. This provides an apparent reason for its domination of other peoples and nations.
Empires cannot hold their power just by force alone, as that would be prohibitively expensive; they need to convince other nations to submit. An empire does this through its ideology, its superstructure, that masks, upholds, and promotes its military infrastructure.
US society – historically, culturally, and psychologically – is seeped in racism, which is an integral part of its hegemonic ideology.
Yet today, Washington has lost a great deal of its hegemonic aura, after a slew of failures and lies, such as the “domino theory” of the Vietnam War or the claim of non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” that was used to try to justify the invasion of Iraq.
The US government’s series of futile wars, endless coups d’etat, interferences in other nations’ governance, and trashing of international law when it suits it has not helped either.
In other words, the ideology of the US empire has worn thin. Whether Washington likes it or not, a multipolar world is emerging, and the empire’s rationalizations are not so believable any more.
The economic system of imperialism is capitalism, which is in a present stage referred to as corporate capitalism, but which Venezuelan revolutionary leader Hugo Chávez called “savage capitalism“ (capitalismo salvaje). Washington is its main exponent.
This system is characterized by a preponderance of corporate finance and speculation. It is only marginally geared towards producing and satisfying citizens’ needs; labour and its representatives have been undermined and marginalized.
The corporate market largely determines political decisions in this system, thus undermining democratic institutions such as parliaments, political parties, law, and judicial power.
We are witnesses to corporate unrestrained power, which has led to widespread inequality and political polarization, as economist Thomas Pickety most clearly pointed out in his 2013 book “Capital in the Twenty-First Century“.
Domestic auctoritas is also fractured within the USA. Author Chris Hedges even considers that the United States is today “in the last stage in the emergence of corporate totalitarianism.”
Finance capitalism adds nothing of value to the real economy; it is a casino capitalism made possible by degrading the institutions that guard the common good: education, health, unions, even law.
There is an inherent contradiction between the single-minded search for profits of the corporations, and the protection of the social common good, most especially, the democratic good.
Corporations are not democratic entities; they defy real democracy and dominate nation-states. Their power meshes with that of the US empire. In other words, you cannot disengage corporate power from imperialism.
A reality often overlooked is that today’s main industries – weapons, energy, and telecommunication – cannot exist in a financial vacuum. They need specific natural resources from the extractive industries, such as petroleum, lithium, rare minerals, coltan, and other ores.
The great economic power is largely concentrated in the Global North – the USA and its allies – but the grand bulk of the absolutely essential natural resources are in the South.
Thus a new colonialism has emerged, camouflaged with all sorts of smoke and mirrors: “free trade” (that is not free), promises of “trickle-down” investments (that never trickle down), and supposed “humanitarian interventions” to protect human rights (only some of them).
Global North governments claim to help countries in the South develop (only where convenient to their enterprises), to teach other nations about the supposed “rule of law” (based on their rules), and even to promote NGOs to purportedly protect democracy and the environment (while these organizations act as spies and saboteurs).
Venezuela is a case study. There, from 2002 to 2012 alone, CIA cutout the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) gave $100 million to create 300 NGOs opposed to the Bolivarian Revolution launched by President Chávez.
We are also witnesses to an uncontrolled expansion of corporate capitalism which euphemistically or cynically is referred to as “progress”. It is necessarily predatory.
This system’s insatiable consumerism, rampant industrialization, and appalling individualism have catastrophically injured the natural world, polluted land and waters, caused climate change, increased species extinctions, and depleted biodiversity.
It is leading us to the sixth extinction, if not stopped.
Natural resources seem to be viewed as the property of the North, not the South where they are found. This divide is profoundly eurocentrist, classist, and racist.
A shocking example was the 2010 European Commission report on critical raw materials for the EU, which, in a matter-of-fact- bureaucratic vocabulary, unashamedly defined environmental risk as “the measures that might be taken by countries with the intention of protecting the environment and by so doing endangering the supply of raw materials to the European Union.”
The people most severely impacted by this natural resource devastation in Latin America are the rural campesinos and the indigenous peoples.
Because of its natural resource richness and its strategic geographical position, the most important area of the world that the US empire believes it absolutely needs to dominate is Latin America and the Caribbean – not Europe, not Canada, not Asia, not Middle East, not even Russia or China.
In this region, the USA has carried out roughly 90 coups d’etat, destablization campaigns, or invasions since 1900.
Virtually every progressive leader or reformer in Latin America has been threatened to be killed, opposed, or deposed by Washington. The victims among the people are countless.
Atilio Boron, a distinguished Argentine intellectual, points out that there are no Monroe Doctrines for any other part of the world, except for Latin America.
Washington considers the region its “backyard” – or as ignominiously Biden has said, trying to soften the insult, the US “front yard”.
The farce of the USA being any sort of “defender” of Latin America from European threats, as the Monroe Doctrine spouts, was shown to be a lie when Washington backed the UK’s colonialist war against Argentina over the Malvina Islands (Falklands).
The last word on imperialism belongs to revolutionary Che Guevara, who stated that “it is the nature of imperialism that makes men into beasts, that turns them bloodthirsty animals, that are willing to slit throats, to kill, to destroy the last image of the revolutionary, of the supporter of a government that has fallen under his boot or that fights for his freedom.”
El Che warned that “imperialism cannot be trusted for a minute, not even a little bit.”
There are too many examples to cite, in Latin America, Africa, Middle East, and even in the less powerful nations of Europe, where they have all felt the boot of empire on their throats.
The opposite of imperialism today is the movement of Socialism of the 21st Century. It is the hope for the future of Latin America, and the world, against the savagery of imperialism.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was re-elected for his second term in 2006 by an overwhelming majority who voted for his electoral promise of building what he called Socialism of the 21st Century, as the basis of the Bolivarian Revolution.
The instrument of this revolution is the PSUV, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which is formed by many smaller parties and grassroots organizations. It is not just a government party.
Many figures on the Western left, in the USA, Canada, and Europe, have claimed for years that Venezuela’s revolution is not truly socialist. These armchair revolutionaries have too often disdained the Bolivarian Revolution because it did not “fit” with their narrow eurocentric theoretical framework.
Some mistrusted Chávez because he was a military man; others ridiculed him because he was an acknowledged Catholic; and yet others on the left have gone so far as saying Venezuela did not really have a revolution because its revolutionaries did not take up arms outright and kill the capitalists.
When speaking on panels about my homeland Venezuela, I have been confronted various times by those who want to see blood on the ground – not their blood of course, but somebody else’s.
They have said to me that because it was not born by taking up arms, like the Cuban Revolution, Venezuela’s is not truly a revolution.
In one of these occasions, I had the great honor of sitting next to the consul general of Cuba, who whispered in my ear to pay no attention to such nonsense, as if Fidel Castro and El Che had wanted to kill their compatriots, as if they had thought killing was the cornerstone of a socialist revolution.
Venezuela’s revolution does include the analysis of Marx and Engels, but not exclusively so, because it is also based on Venezuela’s indigenous communitarian traditions, and on the principles of its revolutionary liberator Simón Bolívar.
These Bolivarian principles were sovereignty, egalitarianism, repudiation of slavery and imperialism, and regional Latin American integration.
The Bolivarian Revolution is also nurtured by other Venezuelan heroes, incorporating Simón Rodríguez’s views on education, or Ezequiel Zamora’s on land reform.
The genius of Hugo Chávez is that he was able to articulate a socialist ideology that was rooted in Venezuelan cultural and political history. Before that, socialist and communist inroads had been weak because they were seen as a foreign thing, Northern, theoretical, and alien to the history, culture, and cosmology of ordinary Venezuelans.
The Bolivarian Revolution is also humanistic and spiritual, inclusive, and respectful of indigenous cosmologies. It is inspired by Liberation Theology.
The Bolivarian Revolution is likewise participatory and democratic, as it gained power through the ballot box.
It does not follow the patterns of the revolutions in Russia, China, or even entirely in Cuba. It is its own thing. The Venezuelan people recognize it as “their” socialism.
The goals of Venezuela’s socialism are to obtain the health and happiness of a people who can exercise self-determination without foreign pressure, to rid racist and classist elites of political power so that the people have power both through democratic representation and through the exercise of participatory democracy in communes, collectives, and communal councils.
Chávez proclaimed socialism after the fall of the Berlin Wall, after the dissolution of the USSR, after the rumors that history had come to an end. In this way, Chávez showed the world that socialism was not remotely dead.
This flew in the face of those who, while professing socialism, were looking for the illusion of a “third way”.
Let us count the ways how revolutionary Venezuela is.
A quick comparison with the policies espoused by Marx in the Communist Manifesto, when considering the changes that time and history have brought about, shows a remarkable parallel with the policies and gains of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution:
Two of Marx’s proposed policies that have not been implemented in Venezuela are a centralized means of communication, which would not be accepted today in view of the human rights to freedom of speech, and the prohibition of inheritance rights. But many the fundamental policies considered by Marx are in full view in Venezuela’s revolution.
Venezuela has asserted its sovereignty over its natural resources, taking over control from elites and international corporations. This set a regional example of independence, which Washington considers a threat to its hegemony, especially given that Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world and the second-biggest gold fields.
Under the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuelan society underwent a strong social transformation. This began by redefining the state itself, with a new constitution, anchored in the concepts of human rights, both individual and social rights, including the rights of indigenous peoples, the rights of women and children, and social rights to education, health, and a protected environment.
Venezuela has wrestled power from the comprador class, the supremist elites, the upper classes that had ruled for decades and drove their people into abject poverty, while wasting the equivalent of 15 Marshall Plans worth of wealth on corruption and illicit enrichment.
The revolution has reduced not only poverty but also inequality.
Venezuela’s participatory democracy does recognize private property, but also state, communal and social ownership. It also enshrines the communal state of communal councils and communes. These are not add-ons, but part of state power.
And these new forms of participatory democracy are truly distinct from the representative democracy and bourgeois state created by a market capitalist society, which is eminently individualistic and competitive.
The welfare state was designed to temper, to soften the market. But corporate capitalism declared war on the welfare state, and with much success.
Socialism bolsters the policies that preserve the common good.
Venezuela has carried out effective land reform, transforming agriculture to the point that today the nation has relatively more food security, and is even exporting food for the first time in 100 years.
This is due to the masterful policies of President Nicolás Maduro, who has steered the country through the illegal US sanctions that have almost destroyed the economy and killed 100,000 Venezuelans.
The Venezuelan working class has been the backbone of the productive invigoration of the economy.
President Maduro is referred to as “the worker president”, as he drove a bus for nine years in Caracas, and has strong links to and understanding of the working class and the unions.
President Maduro’s measures to diversify the economy, to implement an effective internal revenue system, revigorated the economy and battled inequality. He has successfully gotten rid of hyperinflation and made Venezuela a stronger more viable country.
Venezuela’s GDP is estimated to grow by an astonishing 20% in 2022, as calculated by Swiss bank Credit Suisse. This is after losing 99% of government revenue due to illegal US sanctions, according to the top UN expert. That is quite an extraordinary achievement.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, grassroots organizations, the communes, and communal councils, united with the PSUV and public health institutions to protect the people.
Due to illegal US sanctions, medical supplies and masks were sometimes unavailable, and vaccines were denied to Venezuela, but it was still very successful at controlling the pandemic, especially in the context of the region. Venezuela was eventually able to get vaccines thanks to the solidarity of China, Russia, and Cuba.
While not demeaning for a second the very positive and brave, heroic struggles and contributions of members of the oldest political party in the country, the Communist Party of Venezuela, the fact is that it never achieved a significant popular following in or out of elections, because it was not rooted in the people’s profound sense of history, their culture, traditions, and spirituality.
The Bolivarian Revolution on the other hand was able to accomplish all of this, while also making clear the class struggles and dynamics of capitalism.
To its admirable merit, the Communist Party of Venezuela has supported the PSUV in particular in its struggles against imperialism, even when the party did not fully agree with Bolivarianism. This is a shining example of solidarity that the international left should learn from.
Domestically, many who proclaim to be on the left and who criticize the government and President Maduro are in fact armchair theorists who use the excuse of “self-criticism” to simply oppose a government and a movement which has rejected them and their advice, as they have been very far from the grassroots and real links to the people.
These criticisms are cheap as these figures bear no responsibility in feeding and nurturing a population, not to mention facing a formidable foreign power. They invariably end up becoming darlings of the right.
Venezuela does not think that it has already “arrived” at socialism; it considers this to be a process, a road that it must go down until the entire bourgeois state has been transformed.
Much of the Western left, on the other hand, has had reservations from the very beginning, if not openly criticizing Venezuela’s brand of socialism. The reasons are ugly, tainted by cultural determinism and even racism.
Firstly, there is eurocentrism. For many Northern leftists, anything that deviates from Marx and Engels, or any other Northern socialist movement, is not the “real thing”.
This is actually quite ironic, if not knee-slapping funny, in view of the fact that none of these Western theorists or activists have actually been able to carry out any socialist revolution in North America or Europe. Yet they think they have the right to point out to the “lesser” beings in Latin America what is real and what is not, and that they have got it all wrong.
Secondly, the foreign critics of the Bolivarian Revolution are often ignorant of the Venezuelan culture, specifically its political culture. And I suspect that this is a willful ignorance that is also tainted with racism.
They have not fully understood that there is not one road to socialism, but many; that Venezuela revolts at the thought that it has to pattern its revolution on one unique pattern, on a foreign strategy that would force it to give up its identity and its own idiosyncrasies.
As if these accomplishments were not enough – as if Venezuela’s heroic triumphs against illegal sanctions, paramilitary attacks, sabotages, assassinations, coup attempts, and demonization of the hybrid war were not enough – just consider the enemies that have lined up against Venezuela: the US empire and its allies, the international banking system, the international media, and all the fascist organizations of the world.
They do recognize a revolution when they see it. Why can’t much of the Northern left?
Despite such formidable challenges, Venezuela has prevailed and triumphed. Venezuela today is more unified, stronger, more economically viable, and a more politically determined nation on the road to socialism. So Venezuela must be doing something right.
The choice could not be clearer: Will the world continue to give a free ride to a devious, amoral, predatory imperialism? Or will the freely chosen, revolutionary socialism of Venezuela, which feeds, shelters, heals, clothes, inspires, and defends its people, be given the international recognition and solidarity that it deserves, as a road to hope, peace, and justice in the world?
Venezuela’s answer is the same as Cuba’s: Venceremos! We will prevail.