Instruction: Write an article about: ‘War on drugs has failed’: At UN, Colombia condemns ‘addiction to money and oil’. 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: Amazon, capitalism, climate change, coal, Colombia, Gustavo Petro, oil, UN, United Nations

Output:
Colombia’s first ever left-wing President Gustavo Petro delivered a historic UN speech declaring, “The war on drugs has failed.” He warned capitalism is destroying the environment, with its “addiction to money and oil,” and called for debt relief for the Global South.

Colombia’s first ever left-wing President Gustavo Petro delivered a historic speech at the United Nations declaring, “The war on drugs has failed.”
Petro emphasized that drug addiction is a social problem, and cannot be solved with violence and militarization. Rather, he argued, it is a mere symptom of a much deeper problem: the capitalist system itself, with its “addiction to money and oil.”

The Colombian leader warned that the infinite greed of capitalism is destroying the planet, threatening life on Earth.
“The cause of the climate disaster is capital – the logic of dedicating ourselves to consume more and more, to produce more and more, and so that a small few can earn more and more [money],” Petro proclaimed.
The “logic of increasing accumulation of capital” is ravaging the environment, he warned. “The increasing accumulation of capital is the increasing accumulation of death.”
In a jab directed toward the Global North, Petro added, “You all insist that the market will save us from what the market itself has created. Humanity’s Frankenstein is allowing the market and greed to act without any planning, giving up our brains and reason, making human rationality kneel before greed.”

Petro’s powerful speech, delivered on September 20, was the first time the Colombian president had addressed the UN General Assembly since winning elections in June and entering office in August.
Unlike many of the world’s presidents, who have their words carefully decided by speechwriters, Petro himself penned large parts of the address.
Knowing how explosive it would be politically, Petro kept the speech secret, sharing it with just a small handful of his closest aides, telling them, “Keep it safe, so no one can read it.”
Spain’s establishment newspaper El País noted that Petro’s UN address includes “all of his ideological corpus: anti-capitalism, environmentalism, even the anti-Americanism in which many leftists of his generation were raised.”
For decades, Colombia had been at the center of the US-led “war on drugs.” Washington spent billions of dollars militarizing the South American country through its Plan Colombia program.
Petro used the platform at the United Nations to declare that this policy has been an utter disaster, fueling countless deaths in Latin America, as well as racist mass incarceration in the United States itself.
“For destroying or possessing the coca leaf, 1 million Latin Americans are killed, and they imprison 2 million African-Americans in North America,” he said.
While demanding an end to the “war on drugs,” Petro called in general for peace and an end to all wars.
He urged a peaceful settlement to the proxy war in Ukraine, while also condemning the Western wars on Iraq, and Libya, and Syria.
“There is no total peace without social, economic, and environmental justice,” he said. “We are at war, as well, with the planet. Without peace with the planet, there will be no peace between nations.”
Petro condemned the Global North for its rampant abuse of refugees and migrants, comparing their cruel policies to Nazi Germany.
He called on the North to forgive the debt of the Global South, so it can invest resources in saving the environment.
“If it is more important to dedicate the money to weapons than to life, then reduce the external debt to free our own state budgets, and with those we can fulfill the duty of saving humanity and life on the planet,” Petro implored.
Gustavo Petro opened his speech emphasizing the natural beauty of his country. He warned, however, that this is being destroyed.
The Amazon rainforest helps combat climate change by absorbing CO2 and creating oxygen. But the rainforest is being cut down and polluted in the name of corporate profits. Petro stressed that this endangers life itself.
There were some problems with the translation done by the UN’s English-language interpreter, perhaps because it was done simultaneously and was thus rushed. Petro repeatedly mentioned coal and oil, but the interpreter mistakenly translated “coal” (carbón in Spanish) as “carbon” (carbono in Spanish).
Colombia is a significant oil producer, and petroleum-based products make up the value of nearly one-third of its total exports. But Colombia is also the world’s fifth-largest exporter of coal.
Multipolarista has translated the bulk of Petro’s speech and published it below.
The Colombian president said:
The jungle that tries to save us is, at the same time, being destroyed.
To destroy the coca plant, they spray poisons, glyphosate en masse that runs through the waters. They arrest and imprison those who grow it.
For destroying or possessing the coca leaf, 1 million Latin Americans are killed, and they imprison 2 million African-Americans in North America.
“Destroy the plant that kills,” they shout from the North, “destroy it!” But it is just one plant, among the millions more species that perish when they unleash the fire on the jungle.
Destroy the jungle, the Amazon, has become the slogan followed by states and businessmen. It doesn’t matter that scientists are crying out, baptizing the jungle as one of the great climatic pillars.
For the power relations of the world, the jungle and its inhabitants are to blame for the plague that ravages them. The power relations are ravaged by the addiction to money, to keep on, to oil, to cocaine, and to the hardest drugs to be able to anesthetize themselves more.
[There is] nothing more hypocritical than the discourse about saving the jungle.
The jungle is burning, gentlemen, while you wage war and play with it. The jungle, the climatic pillar of the world, disappears with all its life. The great sponge that absorbs the planetary CO2 evaporates.
The jungle, our savior, is seen in my country as the enemy to defeat, as the weeds to be extinguished. The space of coca and of the peasants who cultivate it, because they have nothing else to cultivate, are demonized.
For you all, my country is of no interest except to spray poisons into its jungles, to throw its men to jail, and push its women into exclusion. You all are not interested in the education of the child, but rather in killing his jungle and extracting the coal and oil from its entrails.
The sponge that absorbs the poisons is useless, they prefer to spray more poisons into the atmosphere.
We are only useful to you all to make up for the emptiness and loneliness of your own society, which leads you to live in bubbles of drugs. We hide your problems that you refuse to reform. It is better to declare war on the jungle, on its plants, on its peoples.
While you let the jungles burn, while hypocrites destroy the plants with poison to cover up the disasters in their own society, you ask us for more and more coal, more and more oil, to calm the other addiction: the addiction of consumption, of power, of money. What is more harmful to human beings: cocaine, coal, or oil?
The judgment of power has declared that cocaine is a poison must be destroyed, even though it causes few deaths by overdose, and more because of the mixtures which lead to it being trafficked.
But on the other hand, coal and oil must be protected, even though their use can lead to the extinction of all humanity.
This is the way world power works, with injustice, with irrationality, because world power has become irrational.
They see in the exuberance of the jungle, in its vitality, a sign of lust and sinfulness, the guilty cause of the sadness in their societies, imbued with the limitless drive to have, to have and to consume.
[They] hide the loneliness in people’s hearts, the drought in societies without affection, that are so competitive they imprison souls in loneliness, by putting the blame on the plant, the people who cultivate it, the secret freedoms of the jungle.
According to the irrational power of the world, it is not the fault of the market, that cuts off existence; it is the fault of the jungle and those who live in it.
Bank accounts have been filled without limits. The most powerful people on Earth have stashed so much money they couldn’t even spend it in centuries.
The sadness of existence that is produced by that artificial call for competition, it is filled with noise and drugs.
The addiction to money and to possession, it has another face: drug addiction in people who lose the competition, the artificial race that they have transformed humanity into.
The disease of loneliness is not cured by spraying the jungle with glyphosate. It is not the jungle that is guilty.
What is guilty is their society taught to endlessly consume, in the stupid confusion between consumption and happiness, which is what allows the pockets of the powerful to be filled with money.
The cause of drug addiction is not the jungle; it is the irrationality of their world power.
In the next part of his speech, Petro stated clearly that the “war on drugs” has been a complete failure, and called on the world to abandon it:
The war on drugs has lasted for 40 years. If we do not correct our course, and it goes on for another 40 years, the United States will see 2.8 million young people die of overdoses on fentanyl, which is not produced in our Latin America.
It will see millions of African-Americans incarcerated in its private prisons. The African-American prisoner will become the business of prison corporations.
Another million Latin Americans will be killed. They will fill our waters and our green fields with blood.
They will see the the dream of democracy die, both in my America [Latin America] and in Anglo-Saxon America.
…
To hide the truth, you will see the jungle and democracies die.
The war on drugs has failed.
The struggle against the climate crisis has failed.
The deadly consumption of soft drugs has increased. It has moved to harder drugs. It has caused a genocide on my continent and in my country. It has condemned millions of people to prison.
To cover up their social causes, they have blamed the jungle and its plants. Their narratives and policies have been filled with irrationality.
I call on you all here, from my wounded Latin America, to end the irrational war on drugs.
Wars and guns are not needed to decrease drug consumption. What is needed is that we all build a better society: a society with more solidarity, with more affection, where the intensity of life saves people from addiction and new forms of slavery.
Do you want fewer drugs? Think of fewer profits and more love. Think of the rational use of power.
Do not touch the beauty of my homeland with your poisons. Help us, without hypocrisy, to save the Amazon rainforest, to save the life of humanity on the planet.
Petro went on in his speech to warn that climate science is being ignored, and that wealthy countries in the Global North have used war as an excuse to not take action to stop it:
You brought together the scientists, and they spoke with reason, with mathematics and climatological models.
They said that the end of the human species was approaching, that the time left to us is not millennia, not even centuries. Science sounded the alarm. And we stopped listening.
War served us as an excuse to not take the necessary measures.
When action was needed most, when speeches were no longer useful, when it was indispensable to invest money to save humanity, when we had to move away as soon as possible from coal and oil, they started one war after another.
They invaded Ukraine, but also Iraq, and Libya, and Syria. They invaded in the name of oil and gas.
In the 21st century, they discovered the worst of their addictions: the addiction to money and oil.
Wars have served them as an excuse to not act against climate change. Wars have shown them how dependent they are on that which will put an end to the human species.
Petro continued discussing the migration crisis from Latin America, and emphasized its roots in these very same economic problems.
He condemned the Global North’s abuse of refugees and migrants, likening it to the genocidal policies of Nazi Germany:
You observe that people suffer from hunger and thirst, and immigrate in their millions toward the north, toward where there is water, then you lock them up, you build walls, you use machine guns, you shoot at them, you expel them as if they were not human beings.
You multiply by five the mentality of those who who created the policies of gas chambers and concentration camps. You are reproducing 1933 on a planetary scale – that era of the great victory of the assault on reason.
Do you not see that the solution to the great exodus scrambling toward your countries in the North is returning to filling the rivers with water and filling the countryside with nutrients?
The climate disaster fills us with viruses, which are swarming to lay waste to us. But you all are doing business with medicines, and even turning vaccines into merchandise.
You all insist that the market will save us from what the market itself has created. Humanity’s Frankenstein is allowing the market and greed to act without any planning, giving up our brains and reason, making human rationality kneel before greed.
Petro warned that Global North countries are fighting to save their empires, while destroying the environment and the possibility for life on the planet:
Why have war if what we need is to save the human species? What is the point of NATO and empires, if what is coming is the end of intelligence?
The climate disaster will kill hundreds of millions of people.
And listen up: it is not the planet that produces this; it is capital that produces this.
The cause of the climate disaster is capital. The logic of dedicating ourselves to consume more and more, to produce more and more, and so that a small few can earn more and more [money]. That is what produces the climate disaster.
They applied the logic of increasing accumulation of capital to the energy motors of coal and oil, and they unleashed a hurricane: the chemical change of the atmosphere keeps getting deeper and deadlier.
Now in a parallel world, the increasing accumulation of capital is the increasing accumulation of death.
From the lands of jungle and beauty, there, where they decided to turn a plant from the Amazon rainforest into an enemy, to extradite and imprison those who grow it, I ask you all to stop the war and to stop the climate disaster.
Petro argued “the true addiction of this phase of human history” is “the addiction to irrational power, to profit and to money.”
He concluded his speech with a powerful call for peace, but underscored that peace is only possible with justice:
Here, in this Amazon rainforest, there is a failure of humanity. From the stakes where they burn it, from the poisoning, there is a wholesale civilizational failure of humanity.
Behind the addiction to cocaine and drugs, behind the addiction to oil and coal, there is the true addiction of this phase of human history: the addiction to irrational power, to profit and to money. This is the enormous deadly machinery that can extinguish humanity.
I request of all of you, as president of one of the most beautiful countries on Earth, and one of the most bloodstained and brutalized countries, that you end the war on drugs, and end all wars, and let our people live in peace.
I call on all of Latin America with that purpose. I call on the voice of Latin America to unite to defeat the irrationality that is tormenting our body.
I call on you to save the Amazon rainforest, as a whole, with resources that can be devoted around the world to life.
If you don’t have the capacity to finance the fund to revitalize the jungles, if it is more important to dedicate the money to weapons than to life, then reduce the external debt to free our own state budgets, and with those we can fulfill the duty of saving humanity and life on the planet.
We can do it ourselves if you all, those in the North, do not want to. Just exchange the debt for life; just exchange the debt for nature.
I proposal this to you all, and I call on Latin America to do this, to hold dialogue to end war.
Don’t pressure us to pick a side in the fields of war. This is the time of peace.
The Slavic peoples should speak to each other; the peoples of the world should speak to each other. War is just a trap that brings the end of the times closer in a grand orgy of irrationality.
From Latin America, we call on Ukraine and Russia to make peace. Only in peace can we save life on our shared Earth.
There is no total peace without social, economic, and environmental justice.
We are at war, as well, with the planet. Without peace with the planet, there will be no peace between nations.
Without justice, there is no social peace.


Instruction: Write an article about: UN human rights chief: End Venezuela sanctions, which ‘exacerbated economic crisis and hindered human rights’. 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: Alena Douhan, Michelle Bachelet, sanctions, Venezuela, Volker Türk

Output:
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said sanctions on Venezuela “have exacerbated the economic crisis and hindered human rights”, calling for the unilateral coercive measures to be lifted.

(Se puede leer esta nota en español aquí.)
The United Nations human rights chief has called for sanctions on Venezuela to be lifted, stating that they “exacerbated the economic crisis and hindered human rights” and created “hurdles” for “the country’s recovery and development”.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk visited Venezuela in January. There, he met with government officials, right-wing opposition leaders, civil society groups, and religious institutions.
“I heard from across the spectrum of people I spoke to, including humanitarian actors and UN agencies, about the impact of sectorial sanctions on the most vulnerable segments of the population and the hurdles sanctions create for the country’s recovery and development, not least in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic”, Türk said.
“It is clear that the sectorial sanctions imposed since August 2017 have exacerbated the economic crisis and hindered human rights”, he added.

The UN human rights chief’s comments reflect similar remarks made by the international organization’s top expert on sanctions, Alena Douhan, the UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights.
Douhan visited Venezuela in 2021 and reported that “unilateral sanctions increasingly imposed by the United States, the European Union and other countries have exacerbated the [economic crisis]”.
The UN sanctions expert stated that the Venezuelan “government’s revenue was reported to shrink by 99% with the country currently living on 1% of its pre-sanctions income”.
Douhan wrote (emphasis added):
The Special Rapporteur notes with concern that sectoral sanctions on the oil, gold and mining industries, the economic blockade of Venezuela and the freezing of Central Bank assets have exacerbated pre-existing economic and humanitarian situation by preventing the earning of revenues and the use of resources to develop and maintain infrastructure and for social support programs, which has a devastating effect on the whole population of Venezuela, especially those in extreme poverty, women, children, medical workers, people with disabilities or life-threatening or chronic diseases, and the indigenous population.
Volker Türk is an Austrian lawyer who became the UN high commissioner for human rights in October 2022, replacing his predecessor, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.
Bachelet was criticized and accused of anti-Venezuela bias by Alfred de Zayas, a prominent UN lawyer and expert. De Zayas said Bachelet’s reports on Venezuela were “fundamentally flawed” and “unbalanced”. He also warned that the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has become increasingly slanted and influenced by the US government.
#Venezuela: UN Human Rights chief concludes visit after meeting w/ authorities & 125+ civil society reps.
High Commissioner @volker_turk welcomes extension of our Office’s presence & calls #UDHR75 “real chance" to tackle long-standing issues.
? https://t.co/7Lx3Ljdmus pic.twitter.com/Ff7NbiEiSl
— UN Human Rights (@UNHumanRights) January 28, 2023

In his official statement on Venezuela, Türk said (emphasis added):
I heard from across the spectrum of people I spoke to, including humanitarian actors and UN agencies, about the impact of sectorial sanctions on the most vulnerable segments of the population and the hurdles sanctions create for the country’s recovery and development, not least in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. People I met described their struggle to get basic and essential products to sustain their livelihoods, the impossibility of finding medicines their loved ones so badly need, and the mental impact, anxiety, and depression of falling ever further into debt to survive.
While the roots of Venezuela’s economic crisis predate the imposition of economic sanctions, as I highlighted in my interactions, it is clear that the sectorial sanctions imposed since August 2017 have exacerbated the economic crisis and hindered human rights.
My Office has repeatedly recommended that Member States suspend or lift measures that have a detrimental effect on human rights and that are aggravating the humanitarian situation, a call we make with regard to unilateral coercive measures imposed on other countries too.


Instruction: Write an article about: Why Peruvians keep protesting against an unelected coup regime. 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 Fujimori, BirGün, Dina Boluarte, José Williams, Keiko Fujimori, Pedro Castillo, Peru

Output:
Turkish newspaper BirGün interviewed Ben Norton about the protests in Peru against the unelected government of Dina Boluarte, installed after a coup against President Pedro Castillo.

The Turkish newspaper BirGün interviewed Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton about the months-long protests in Peru against the unelected government of Dina Boluarte, installed after a US-backed coup in December 2021 against President Pedro Castillo.
The interview was translated into Turkish, but the original English-language version is below.
Dinmeyen öfke oligarşiyi bitirecek
Peru’da solcu Başkan Castillo’nun 7 Aralık’ta azledilmesinin ardından başlayan protestolar sürüyor. Siyaset bilimci Norton, “İstikrar isteniyorsa Peru’nun oligarşik yapısı ve anayasası temelden değiştirilmeli” diyorhttps://t.co/1f6Bo9d7rw pic.twitter.com/cg7tfw5UuZ
— BirGün Gazetesi (@BirGun_Gazetesi) February 17, 2023

What do the Peruvian protesters want?
The protesters in Peru have three main demands:
Who is participating in the protests?
The protests have been organized by activist organizations, Indigenous communities, human rights groups, and left-wing political parties like Nuevo Perú and Perú Libre.
Working-class Peruvians of Indigenous descent, who largely live in rural areas, make up the main base of the demonstrations.
They will continue protesting until their demands are met.
The problem is that Peru’s congress – which is notoriously corrupt and controlled by wealthy right-wing oligarchs, and recently had a 7% approval rating – refuses to hold new elections; it is repeatedly blocking attempts to organize a vote.
Can the process in Peru be similar to that of Bolivia?
There are similarities between Peru and Bolivia. Both have majority Indigenous-descent populations who were largely ignored and marginalized by the mainstream political system for decades. But the political situation in Bolivia is very different.
Bolivia’s leftist Indigenous leader Evo Morales first came to power in 2006, and he completely transformed the country. His Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party has governed since then (excluding the year-long rule of an unelected right-wing regime after a violent coup d’etat in November 2019).
Under Morales, Bolivians democratically created a new constitution, establishing a plurinational state. His successor, current President Luis Arce, has continued that revolutionary process.
For many protesters in Peru, Bolivia is a political model for what they would like to try to accomplish in their own country. In fact many demonstrators have called for creating a plurinational state as well, in which Indigenous nations have equal representation.
But in Peru, the left is significantly weaker and less organized, particularly because the Fujimori dictatorship used extreme violence to repress left-wing forces in the 1990s.
What does the structure of the Congress tell us about the political crisis in the country?
Peru’s former dictator Alberto Fujimori, who ruled in the 1990s, destroyed all democratic institutions. The Peru of today inherited the structural problems he created.
As part of Fujimori’s changes, he established a unicameral congress, which according to article 113 of the constitution can overthrow the elected president by declaring that the head of state has a “moral incapacity”. All the congress needs is a two-thirds vote.
Numerous scandals, like the infamous Mamanivideos, have shown how corrupt Peru’s congress is. Rich right-wing politicians and their corporate sponsors have been caught bribing congressmembers to vote for or against this impeachment process, which is known as “presidential vacancy”.
Immediately after Castillo was elected, the congress tried to overthrow him using this process. When he tried to dissolve the congress on December 7, it was in order to prevent such a parliamentary coup. And some Peruvian legal experts have argued that Castillo had the right to do so according to article 134 of the same constitution.
These structural problems explain why Peru has had seven presidents in six years. Peru’s political system and constitution must be fundamentally changed if it wants stability.
Castillo had campaigned for president on the promise that he would change the constitution. That is why he won the 2021 presidential election in the first place. And that is why people are in the streets protesting today.
Boluarte’s request for early elections was rejected. What is the Congress’ plan?
It is hard to say with certainty what the congress is planning, but it is clear that what Peru is going through now is a power struggle between different factions of the country’s right-wing oligarchy.
At the current moment, the right-wing and conservative forces are in charge of the state, in alliance with Boluarte (who was expelled from the leftist Perú Libre party in January 2022, and who said she never even believed in its ideology in the first place).
But the far-right, fascistic Fujimorista forces want control of the Peruvian state. The Fujimoristas are those who supported the dictatorship in the 1990s and want to bring back its policies. The movement’s leaders are in fact family members of the former dictator Alberto Fujimori (who is in prison for crimes against humanity), including his daughter Keiko and son Kenji (who is also currently in prison on corruption charges, although Keiko hopes to free them both).
The Fujimoristas have significant influence in the congress, and in other institutions. So their strategy may be to either form an alliance with and co-opt Boluarte, or to replace her with someone like José Williams, the current president of the congress.
Williams is a former military chief who oversaw massacres and is linked to drug trafficking. He would likely be very amenable to the Fujimoristas’ interests.
The Fujimoristas desperately want to prevent new elections from being held, because they are very unpopular among the vast majority of Peruvians, and they know they would likely lose.
What does it mean for the police and the state to take political sides, like we have seen in Brazil?
The military and police in Peru have long been linked to the right wing. During the far-right Fujimori dictatorship in the 1990s, they were the key to maintaining him in power. The military and police committed massacres against people accused of being Maoist guerrillas from the group Shining Path, although in many cases they were actually killing civilians.
There are parallels with the situation in Brazil, which also had a far-right military dictatorship until the 1980s. But we shouldn’t overstate the similarities.
Some elements of the Brazilian military were indeed loyal to far-right former leader Jair Bolsonaro, but he never had the support of most of the military leadership. This is why the coup attempts led by the Bolsonaristas failed.
In Peru, the state is even less democratic, and the military and police have significant power over the civilian government. That is how they were able to easily imprison Pedro Castillo.
We have seen how this political power in the hands of the Congress leads to danger. How should changes be made so that the Peruvian people can have their voice?
The path for the changes that Peru needs is quite clear: a constituent assembly in which the people of Peru democratically create a new constitution to replace the current one that was written by the Fujimori dictatorship.
The Peruvian oligarchy is clearly against this, as it benefits economically and politically from the Fujimorista constitution.
But a constituent assembly is one of the main demands of the protesters in the streets, and it is the only solution that will provide true stability for Peru.


Instruction: Write an article about: BRICS expanding into economic powerhouse: Petrodollar under threat. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Argentina, Bandung Conference, Brazil, BRICS, China, Cuba, Cyril Ramaphosa, Javier Milei, Lula da Silva, Patricia Bullrich, South Africa, Xi Jinping

Output:
In its South Africa summit, BRICS invited six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The bloc now represents 37% of global GDP (PPP), 40% of global oil production, and roughly 1/3rd of global gas production, challenging the US petrodollar system.

In its summit in Johannesburg, South Africa this August, BRICS invited six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
The bloc now represents 37% of global GDP (measured at purchasing power parity, or PPP), as well as 40% of global oil production and roughly 1/3rd of global gas production.
The inclusion of top oil producers like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have long priced their crude in dollars, is a direct challenge to the US petrodollar system.

All of the invited nations have indicated that they will officially join the extended BRICS+ bloc on 1 January 2024.
Four of Earth’s top 10 gas producers are now de facto BRICS+ members, making up 32% of global production.
Seven of the world’s 10 largest oil producers are now de facto BRICS+ members. According to 2022 data from the US Energy Information Administration, these include the:

In this video I discuss the importance of the expansion of BRICS
The BRICS+ bloc now represents:-37% of global GDP (PPP)-40% of global oil production-1/3rd of global gas production
It can challenge the petrodollar system that undergirds US economic hegemony
Full video below pic.twitter.com/SDQm1ymacV
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) August 25, 2023

A key topic at the Johannesburg BRICS summit from 22 to 24 August was de-dollarization – the international movement of countries seeking alternatives to the hegemonic US currency.
The Russian government has confirmed that some BRICS members are slowly making plans for a new global currency for international trade, to settle balance of payments, and to hold in central bank foreign-exchange reserves.
Brazil’s President Lula da Silva, an original co-founder of the BRICS, used the meeting in South Africa as a platform to call for creating a new international reserve currency, to challenge the dollar.
BRICS has a working group dedicated to developing concrete proposals for this new reserve currency.
Lula emphasized that it would be “a unit of account for trade, which will not replace our national currencies”.
These comments made it clear that BRICS model is not the euro; it is rather something like the bancor, the international unit of account proposed by economist John Maynard Keynes at the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference (which ended up adopting the dollar as the global reserve currency, under US pressure).
Discussions of a new international unit of account are still in the early stages, however, and the currency is only on the horizon in the medium-to-long term.
In the short term, BRICS members voted to increase their use of national currencies in bilateral trade.
The BRICS New Development Bank (NDB), now under the leadership of Brazil’s former President Dilma Rousseff, has promised to gradually de-dollarize the bank’s lending, instead providing financing for projects in the national currencies of members.
In an August article published before the BRICS bloc announced its expansion, economic geographer Mick Dunford explained:
In 2022, the combined economic output of the five BRICS members, measured in purchasing power parity, exceeded for the first time that of the US-led G7.
At market exchange rates in 2021, the BRICS accounted for 26.1 percent of global GDP and 53.1 percent of world population, compared with 43.5 percent and 9.8 percent for the G7. However, GDP is misleading.
If one examines the production of manufactures, energy and raw materials and food, the BRICS countries account for 36.6 percent, 28.3 percent and 53.1 percent of world output, respectively (compared with 35.5 percent, 28.1 percent and 14.1 percent in the case of the G7).
This contribution to the production of real goods vital for human survival significantly exceeds the BRICS’ share of GDP (without correcting for purchasing power differences which significantly raise its shares) while those of the G7 are much smaller than its GDP share.
The bloc has become a massive economic powerhouse – and is only growing in influence.
President Xi Jinping stressed in his speech at the BRICS summit that China does not want a “new cold war”.
Xi called for “win-win cooperation”, guided by the goal of “common prosperity” for all.
At the same time, the Chinese leader warned of the “hegemonic and bullying acts” of “some country” – obviously a reference to the United States.
Xi stated:
We need to promote development and prosperity for all. Many emerging markets and developing countries (EMDCs) have come to what they are today after shaking off the yoke of colonialism. With perseverance, hard work and huge sacrifices, we succeeded in gaining independence and have been exploring development paths suited to our national conditions.
Everything we do is to deliver better lives to our people. But some country, obsessed with maintaining its hegemony, has gone out of its way to cripple the EMDCs. Whoever is developing fast becomes its target of containment; whoever is catching up becomes its target of obstruction.
But this is futile, as I have said more than once that blowing out others’ lamp will not bring light to oneself.
China's President Xi at the BRICS summit:
"some country [hint: the USA], obsessed with maintaining its hegemony, has gone out of its way to cripple the EMDCs (emerging markets and developing countries). Whoever is developing fast becomes its target of containment; whoever is… https://t.co/mjXvydA5yz pic.twitter.com/XNHc0aYsPT
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) August 23, 2023

On the sidelines of the summit, Xi also met with Cuba’s President Díaz-Canel. State media reported that Xi pledged that “China will continue to firmly support Cuba in defending national sovereignty and opposing external interference and blockade”.
In a similar vein, Brazil’s President Lula condemned the unjust, Western-dominated international financial system and insisted that countries need “a fairer, more predictable, and equitable global trade”.
“We cannot accept a green neocolonialism that imposes trade barriers and discriminatory measures under the pretext of protecting the environment”, he added.
In his speech at the BRICS summit, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa compared the bloc to the 1955 Bandung Conference, which was organized to oppose colonialism.
“When reflecting on the purpose and role of BRICS in the world today, we recall the Bandung Conference of 1955, where Asian and African nations demanded a greater voice for developing countries in world affairs”, he said.
“We still share that common vision”, Ramaphosa added. “Through the 15th BRICS Summit and this Dialogue we should strive to advance the Bandung spirit of unity, friendship and cooperation”.
Among the six countries invited to join BRICS+, a question mark is hanging over the head of one.
Argentina’s current, centrist government, led by President Alberto Fernández, has vowed to join BRICS+. However, whether or not the South American country actually does depends on the results of the elections approaching in October.
Two of the three main presidential candidates have publicly stated that they will not join BRICS+: the right-wing candidate Patricia Bullrich and the far-right extremist candidate Javier Milei.
Milei wants to abolish Argentina’s central bank, abandon monetary sovereignty, and adopt the US dollar as the official national currency (while also implementing mass privatizations of state institutions, building private for-profit prisons, and heavily militarizing the country).
When asked if he would consider joining BRICS+ if he won the election, the far-right extremist Milei declared: “Our geopolitical alignment is with the U.S. and Israel. We are not going to align with communists”.


Instruction: Write an article about: Mexico’s President AMLO condemns EU Parliament as ‘corrupt reactionary coup-plotters’. 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, Bolivia, EU, European Parliament, European Union, Juan Guaidó, Mexico, Venezuela

Output:
The European Parliament condemned Mexico’s left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for his “populist rhetoric” against the biased corporate media. He responded by blasting the EU body as a reactionary interventionist gang of coup-plotters, declaring, “we are no longer a colony of anyone”

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
Mexico’s left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador published a blistering statement denouncing the European Parliament as “flunkies of the reactionary and coup-plotting strategy of the corrupt” right-wing oligarch-backed opposition in his country.
López Obrador, who is known popularly by the acronym AMLO, criticized the European Union’s lawmaking body for meddling in Mexico’s internal affairs, and implored its members to “evolve, leave behind your obsessive meddling disguised as good intentions.”
Noting that he has a 66% approval rating, which is higher than any leader in Europe, AMLO stressed, “Don’t forget that we are no longer a colony of anyone. Mexico is a free, independent, and sovereign country.”
López Obrador made these trenchant remarks in response to a resolution that was overwhelmingly approved by the European Parliament on March 10, which condemned Mexico for allegedly violating the freedom of the press and the rights of journalists.
While it is true that the level of violence against journalists in Mexico is very high, this has been a consistent problem for decades. The European Parliament resolution, however, blamed President AMLO’s “populist rhetoric” for the death of reporters, despite the fact that he has only been in power since December 2018.
López Obrador has criticized corporate media outlets in his country, many of which are owned by right-wing oligarchs and have been notoriously biased against him and his progressive government. Major newspapers have published demonstrably false stories and propaganda to try to sabotage AMLO’s ambitious project of social change, called the Fourth Transformation.
Some of these right-wing anti-AMLO journalists have been funded by the US government and EU through interventionist soft-power organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), US Agency for International Development (USAID), and European Endowment for Democracy.
The European Parliament resolution condemning Mexico was approved with 607 votes in favor, and just two against, with 73 abstentions.
The EU’s law-making body has a long history of supporting coups, regime-change operations, and interventionist policies across the Global South.
In 2019, the European Parliament recognized unelected US-appointed coup leader Juan Guaidó as supposed “president” of Venezuela, in another overwhelming vote of 439 for and 104 against, with 88 abstentions.
Later that same year, the European Parliament supported a violent far-right coup against Bolivia’s democratically elected socialist president, Evo Morales, the first and only indigenous leader in the history of the nation-state.
The European Parliament even honored Bolivian coup leader Jeanine Añez in 2021 by making her a finalist for its prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, named after a Western-backed right-wing anti-Soviet dissident. (The prize that year ended up going to Western-sponsored Russian regime-change activist Alexei Navalny, a far-right nationalist who has demonized Muslim immigrants as “cockroaches” and participated in racist marches with skinheads.)
The EU praised Añez as a hero while ignoring the fact that she was a corrupt and brutal right-wing dictator who oversaw massacres of indigenous pro-democracy protesters and violently repressed progressive social movements, while imposing neoliberal shock therapy policies, privatizing state assets and selling them off to foreign corporations for pennies on the dollar.
Comunicado del gobierno de la República al Parlamento Europeo.https://t.co/VNfogiVCX9 pic.twitter.com/IylpebkJGx
— Gobierno de México (@GobiernoMX) March 11, 2022

The office of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) wrote the following letter to the European Parliament on March 10. Multipolarista has translated it from its original Spanish into English, and published the statement in full below:
“To the members of the European Parliament:
“Enough with the corruption, lies, and hypocrisies.
“It is unfortunate that you all are allowing yourself to become flunkies of the reactionary and coup-plotting strategy of the corrupt group that is opposed to the Fourth Transformation, driven by millions of Mexicans to confront the monstrous inequality and violence inherited by the neoliberal economic policies that were imposed on our country for 36 years.
“Know, European lawmakers, that Mexico has ceased to be a land of conquest, and, as in very few occasions in your history, it values freedom-loving principles like equality and democracy.
“Here no one is repressed; the freedom of expression and work of journalists is respected. The state does not violate human rights like happened with previous governments, when you all, by the way, were complicit in your silence.
“Mexico is a pacifist country that has chosen non-violence, and we support dialogue, not war. We don’t send weapons to any country under any circumstance, as you all are doing now.
“If we were in the situation that you all describe in your resolution, our president would not be supported by 66% of the citizens, as was published yesterday in a poll by the firm Morning Consult, which puts him [López Obrador] in second place among the presidents of the world’s largest countries.
“By the way, that is higher approval than European leaders.
“For the next [declaration], inform yourselves and carefully read your resolutions before voting.
“And don’t forget that we are no longer a colony of anyone. Mexico is a free, independent, and sovereign country.
“Evolve, leave behind your obsessive meddling disguised as good intentions. You all are not the world government.
“And don’t forget what was said by that giant of the Americas, President Benito Juárez: ‘Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace.'”


Instruction: Write an article about: Illegal US blockade against Cuba continues harming millions on 60th anniversary. 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: blockade, Cuba, Donald Trump, embargo, Joe Biden, sanctions

Output:
February 3, 2022 is the 60th anniversary of the illegal blockade against Cuba, which the US admitted aims “to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” Cuba estimates the embargo has cost its economy $144.41 billion.

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
February 3, 2022 marks 60 years since the United States officially declared an economic embargo against Cuba.
Washington imposed this blockade in order “to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government,” as a former US State Department official admitted.
Cuba’s government has condemned the illegal US embargo as “the most complex, prolonged and inhuman act of economic warfare ever committed against any nation,” stating that it “constitutes a massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of all Cubans.”
Cuba estimates that the blockade has cost its economy at least $144.41 billion.
When the people of Cuba overthrew the right-wing dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in a popular revolution on January 1, 1959, the United States responded with coercive measures aimed at punishing the country for toppling Washington’s loyal client regime.
On February 3, 1962, the already existing US sanctions escalated into a full on blockade, when President John F. Kennedy issued Proclamation 3447, declaring an “Embargo on All Trade with Cuba.”
Washington’s Proclamation 3447 claimed that Cuba’s revolutionary government “is incompatible with the principles and objectives of the Inter-American system,” due to “the subversive offensive of Sino-Soviet Communism with which the Government of Cuba is publicly aligned.”

This US embargo, which continues to this day, is flagrantly illegal under international law.
Cuba’s Foreign Ministry published a statement condemning the blockade on its 60th anniversary, stating, “Washington’s policy of siege and economic suppression has become the core of a strategy designed to curtail the legitimate right of the Cuban people to defend their sovereignty and realize a program of development free of imperialist domination.”
“Although the blockade against Cuba was officially declared in 1962, its application goes back to the very moment of the victory of the revolution,” the Foreign Ministry added.
In April 1960, just over a year after the revolution, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Lester Mallory published a memo titled “The Decline and Fall of Castro.” This document is a smoking gun, clearly revealing the goals behind the US blockade: “hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
Mallory admitted that the “majority of Cubans support Castro” and that there “is no effective political opposition.”
The senior US diplomat wrote that the “only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship.”
The US State Department memo declared that “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba,” in order to make “the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

Cuba’s Foreign Ministry said the US embargo has “constrained the scope for economic growth, being designed to impede trading relations with third countries, cause maximum possible obstruction of banking and other financial operations, deter foreign investment and cut off all sources of revenue.”
Blatantly violating international law, the US blockade “uses pressure, blackmail and penalties in seeking to isolate Cuba and penalize those who establish any trading, commercial or financial links with the country,” the Foreign Ministry wrote.
“It is a practical expression in the 21st century of the Monroe Doctrine, which takes a proprietorial view of Latin America and the Caribbean as either America’s ‘back yard’ or ‘front yard,'” the Cuban government added.
For the 29th year in a row, basically the entire world voted at the United Nations against the illegal, murderous US blockade on Cuba.
184 countries voted to end the US blockade.
Only 2 voted for it: the USA and Israel.
3 US client regimes abstained: Colombia, Ukraine, and UAE pic.twitter.com/roZsqCu0NG
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) June 23, 2021

Washington’s illegal blockade against Cuba is opposed by almost the entire international community.
In June 2021, 184 of the United Nations’ 193 member states (95%) voted against the US embargo on Cuba. Only the United States and Israel voted in support of the blockade, while just Colombia, Ukraine, and Brazil abstained.
This was the 29th consecutive year in which the US blockade was condemned with the vast majority of votes at the United Nations.
At the 2021 UN vote, Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla called the blockade a “massive, flagrant and unacceptable violation of the human rights of the Cuban people,” which constitutes “an economic war of extraterritorial scope against a small country already affected in the recent period by the economic crisis derived from the pandemic.”
“Like the [Covid-19] virus, the blockade asphyxiates and kills,” Rodríguez said. “It must stop.”

While 95% of the countries on Earth oppose Washington’s illegal blockade, it has bipartisan support inside the United States.
The Donald Trump administration imposed hundreds of new economic sanctions against Cuba. The Joe Biden administration has refused to lift these unilateral coercive measures, and has instead imposed even more.
The New York Times noted that “Biden is taking an even harder line on Cuba than his predecessor, President Donald J. Trump.”