Instruction: Write an article about: Entire world votes 185 to 2 against blockade of Cuba – US and Israel are rogue states at UN. 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, Israel, sanctions, United Nations

Output:
For the 30th year in a row, almost every country on Earth voted at the United Nations General Assembly to oppose the illegal six-decade US blockade of Cuba. 185 nations voted against just two: the United States and Israel.

(Se puede leer esta nota en español aquí.)
For the 30th year in a row, almost every country on Earth voted at the United Nations to oppose the six-decade US blockade of Cuba.
On November 3, the UN General Assembly voted an overwhelming 185 to two to condemn Washington’s suffocating embargo.

The only countries that supported the illegal blockade were the United States itself and the Israeli apartheid regime.
Just two nations abstained: Brazil’s far-right Jair Bolsonaro administration, and the NATO client regime in Ukraine.
The UN General Assembly vote against the US blockade of Cuba, on November 3, 2022
Moreover, the real number of member states that would have voted against the blockade is 186. However, Venezuela was unable to do so because its UN voting rights were temporarily suspended, due to Venezuela’s inability to pay member fees to the United Nations, ironically because of the illegal US blockade and sanctions against it.
There are 193 members states of the United Nations. This means that 96% of the countries on Earth voted to condemn the US blockade of Cuba.
In June 2021, the vote was almost exactly the same. The only difference was that Colombia’s previous right-wing government had abstained, whereas its new left-wing President Gustavo Petro opposes the blockade.
The UN General Assembly vote against the US blockade of Cuba, on November 3, 2022
The US embargo was officially declared in 1962, but in reality Washington began imposing illegal unilateral sanctions almost immediately after the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
Why has the United States waged such relentless economic war on Cuba for so many decades? An internal State Department memo from 1960 clearly explains Washington’s imperial intentions.
The UN just voted 185 to 2 to condemn the illegal, 60-year US blockade of Cuba
An internal govt memo admits the US goal is to "deny money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government"
Full video: https://t.co/6EK7Qre8vr pic.twitter.com/woWiFxQhvl
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 3, 2022

In the document, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Lester D. Mallory admitted that the “majority of Cubans support [Fidel] Castro” and there “is no effective political opposition.”
“The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship,” he concluded.
The top State Department official insisted that “every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba.”
Washington’s goal, Mallory wrote, was 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.”
Sociopathic: The US government has imposed a murderous, illegal, 60-year blockade on Cuba to "decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government"
But now the State Dep't pretends to care about a lack of food & medicine that IT CAUSED https://t.co/aErOsPdP6Z pic.twitter.com/SbAvYItcAn
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 21, 2022

On October 28, there was a similar UN General Assembly vote in which the United States and apartheid Israel once again showed themselves to be rogue states on the international stage. An overwhelming 152 member states voted against just five to tell Israel to give up its illegal nuclear weapons and abide by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
In the 2022 General Assembly resolution, the UN Development Program (UNDP) stated clearly that the US “embargo limited the acquisition of medicines and medical equipment and supplies, it affects the external economic relations of Cuba, and its impact can be observed in all spheres of the country’s social and economic activities.”
“The embargo has an impact on the population’s most vulnerable groups and on human development in general,” the UNDP wrote, adding that it “affects opportunities for national and local development and creates economic hardship for the population.”
The UN body cited official estimates that the illegal US blockade caused Cuba’s economy to lose $144.4 billion from the early 1960s to 2020.
In the resolution, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) added that the US blockade also affect third countries and companies, not just Cuba, writing, “The embargo imposes strict limitations on the Caribbean nation, with extraterritorial effects that hinder its relations with third countries and affect the well-being of the Cuban population.”
The UN commission noted that the Donald Trump administration imposed an additional 240 unilateral sanctions on Cuba, and that the Joe Biden administration has renewed the criminal economic measures.
“The numerous United States sanctions produce real harm that obstructs the access of Cuban citizens to basic goods and violates their rights,” the UN ECLAC wrote. “These policies are an obstacle to economic, social and environmental development.”
“In short, the numerous United States sanctions constitute the most severe and prolonged system of unilateral coercive measures ever applied against any country and continue to hinder the development of the potential of the Cuban economy,” the UN commission concluded.
The UN resolution A/76/405, officially titled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba,” was voted on at the 77th session of the 28th plenary meeting of the General Assembly.
The document received more than 170 pages of responses from dozens of member states and UN bodies explaining why Washington must end its illegal blockade.
Numerous international organizations explained how the US embargo greatly harms the Cuban population as a whole.
The UN Development Program wrote:
In pandemic conditions, the embargo remains in place, and its negative impact has been more specific and significantly larger than in previous years, particularly on commerce and financial activities.
The embargo limited the acquisition of medicines and medical equipment and supplies, it affects the external economic relations of Cuba, and its impact can be observed in all spheres of the country’s social and economic activities.
The embargo also maintains the restrictions on the use of the United States dollar and on imports from Cuba. It affects opportunities for national and local development and creates economic hardship for the population.
The embargo has an impact on the population’s most vulnerable groups and on human development in general.
According to official estimates, the cumulative direct and indirect losses for the Cuban economy owing to the embargo from the early 1960s until March 2020 amount to $144.4 billion at current prices.
The UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean wrote:
During the Administration of President Donald Trump, over 240 coercive measures were activated against Cuba in the framework of the United States embargo against the island, and these still remain in force.
In fact, on 7 September 2021, the President of the United States, Joseph Biden, extended the law regulating the embargo against Cuba under the so-called Trading with the Enemy Act, until 14 September 2022.
In a memorandum addressed to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Treasury, the President ordered the extension of the sanctions that heavily limit trade with Cuba under these rules. Former President Trump had renewed these in September 2020.
The embargo imposes strict limitations on the Caribbean nation, with extraterritorial effects that hinder its relations with third countries and affect the well-being of the Cuban population. These restrictions deepen the multiple challenges imposed on the island by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and multiply its adverse socioeconomic, health and financial effects. On several occasions, they have hindered the arrival of humanitarian aid in Cuba.
…
The numerous United States sanctions produce real harm that obstructs the access of Cuban citizens to basic goods and violates their rights. These policies are an obstacle to economic, social and environmental development.
…
In short, the numerous United States sanctions constitute the most severe and prolonged system of unilateral coercive measures ever applied against any country and continue to hinder the development of the potential of the Cuban economy.
The International Labor Organization (ILO) wrote:
The embargo has intensified in recent years and has significantly constrained development possibilities in Cuba, greatly impacting the living conditions of the Cuban people. Among the effects, just to name a few:
• Restrictions on the transfer of remittances still imply a higher indirect tax burden on salaries legitimately earned abroad and sent for household spending on basic human needs such as food, clothing, education, housing, water and sanitation.
• Limitations on commerce and financial transactions still represent a serious bottleneck and an additional cost for business development and job creation, especially in sectors like agriculture and tourism, as decent work largely depends on productive investment and access to financing.
• Limited access to technology transfer implies further difficulties for enterprises, as well as for social and economic development.
The implementation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act intensifies the embargo by affecting business and investment opportunities in Cuba for third-country investors; the creation of new job sources; and decent work in Cuba.
The direct and indirect effects of the embargo on the Cuban economy and people affect not only the enterprises, but even more their workers and the population in general. The International Labour Organization (ILO) is particularly concerned about the impacts on children, workers and the elderly. Ending the embargo would turn the overall loss into an opportunity for productive investment, employment generation and new business opportunities, as well as for achieving the Plan Nacional de Desarrollo Económico y Social hasta 2030 and other reforms aimed at improving the economic and social system, for example monetary unification and the expansion of self-employment schemes.
In the context of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic recovery, the embargo is limiting the possibilities for the country to implement jobs and economic recovery strategies.
The UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) wrote:
Given that Cuba is subject to an embargo, projects implemented by FAO in the country are affected with regard to the procurement of equipment and supplies that complement the technical assistance because the resources that could be imported from the United States have to be imported from far more distant markets, at much higher prices and higher freight costs. If acquisitions could be made in the United States, it would be much cheaper and more activities could be supported through the available budget.
The most recent embargo measures against Cuba, under which third-country companies trading with Cuba can be sued in United States courts, have had a negative impact on Cuban trade by drastically reducing the commercial partners that operate in the country. This has had a direct impact on the procurement operations that FAO carries out in Cuba in the framework of its technical cooperation projects.
…
Under the embargo, conditions hinder the processes of payments and banking transactions to and from suppliers who provide services for cooperation projects and to the FAO country office. This is demonstrated by banks’ rejections of transfers from FAO for sales to Cuba; the impossibility for suppliers to offer products to Cuba obtained from other North American companies; and the inability of suppliers to transfer funds to Cuba for payment of services contracted in the country.
In addition, banks reject commercial and financial transactions by Cuban enterprises in United States dollars and in other currencies, which hinders payment for certifications of Cuban products with a high potential to be commercialized in Europe.
FAO staff continue to be affected by expensive and long formalities in banking processes.
A summary of the negative effects caused by the embargo in some of the sectors in which FAO is providing technical support and other sectors included within its country programming framework is presented below.
The losses originated mainly in:
(a) Price differences owing to changes in the import market;
(b) Additional costs related to freight insurance;
(c) Additional costs owing to a freeze of assets;
(d) Monetary damages;
(e) Losses owing to lack of access to the latest technology from the United States;
(f) Relocation of exports.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) wrote:
the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) continued to express concern regarding the negative impact that extraterritorial sanctions have on human rights.
…
Seven United Nations human rights experts reiterated this in a message, requesting the United States of America to lift its economic and financial embargo on Cuba that is obstructing humanitarian responses to help the country’s health-care system fight the COVID-19 pandemic.
…
Particular difficulties were reported in countries subject to unilateral coercive measures, including Cuba, to obtain medical equipment vital to fight the pandemic, including oxygen supply and ventilators, protective kits and spare -parts software
…
The Human Rights Council expressed its grave concern that, in some countries, such measures impede the full realization of social and economic development and hinder the well-being of the populations, with particular consequences for women, children, the elderly and persons with disabilities.
…
the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reiterated her call for the lifting of unilateral sectoral sanctions, given their negative impact on human rights, including the right to health.
…
four mandate holders of the Special Procedure of the Human Rights Council stressed that unilateral sanctions impinge on the right to development and called on countries that impose unilateral sanctions to withdraw or at least to minimize them to guarantee that the rule of law and human rights, including the right to development, are not affected.
They explicitly referred to Cuba as a targeted country and pointed out that owing to the unilateral sanctions some countries sink into poverty because they cannot get essential services like electricity, housing, water, gas and fuel, let alone medicine and food.
…
the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that sanctions can create severe and undue suffering for individuals who have neither perpetrated crimes nor otherwise bear responsibility for improper conduct. When sanctions target an entire country, or address entire economic sectors, it is the most vulnerable people in that country – those who are least protected – who are likely to be worst harmed.


Instruction: Write an article about: US votes against peace in Gaza, defying vast majority of planet at UN. 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, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, UN, United Nations, Venezuela

Output:
The United States voted against a proposed humanitarian truce in Gaza, opposing the vast majority of the world in the United Nations General Assembly and protecting Israel as it kills thousands of Palestinian civilians.

The vast majority of countries on Earth voted in the United Nations General Assembly for a proposed humanitarian truce in Gaza.
The United States was one of the few nations that voted against the measure.
Washington has protected and armed Israel as it has killed thousands of Palestinian civilians and carries out an ethnic cleansing operation in the densely populated Gaza strip.

On October 27, the UN General Assembly held a vote on a resolution calling for an “immediate, durable and sustained humanitarian truce leading to a cessation of hostilities”.
The final vote was 121 countries in favor of the humanitarian truce, with 14 countries against and 44 abstentions.
When the results were first reported, there was a mistake. Iraq said there was a technical error on its machine; Baghdad made it clear that it had not meant to abstain and had actually voted in support of the resolution.
So the real number was 121 countries in favor, not 120.

The vast majority of the Global South voted for the humanitarian truce. The only large countries in the Global South that abstained were India and the Philippines, both of which have right-wing governments that are allied with the United States.
Most nations in Asia and Africa supported the proposal. In Latin America, only a small handful of right-wing, US-allied governments voted against it or abstained.
Even a few countries in Europe backed the measure, including France, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Switzerland.

The final vote would have been 122 if Venezuela were able to vote.
The South American nation has strongly supported Palestine. Venezuela does not have formal diplomat relations with Israel, and has accused Tel Aviv of genocide and apartheid, referring to it as the “murderer arm of the US empire”.
However, illegal US unilateral sanctions have prevented Venezuela from accessing its bank accounts and therefore paying its membership fees at the United Nations.
The illegal US blockade has therefore taken away Venezuela’s voice at the UN General Assembly.
In addition to this vote in the General Assembly, the United States used its veto power in the UN Security Council to kill a resolution calling for a ceasefire, which was drafted by Russia and voted on on October 16, as well as a measure proposing a humanitarian pause, which was introduced by Brazil and voted on on October 18.


Instruction: Write an article about: CNBC calls for ‘cyber terrorism’ against Russia and ‘blank check’ for US weapons corporations. 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: Jim Cramer, Lockheed Martin, military-industrial complex, Raytheon, Russia, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky

Output:
CNBC pundit Jim Cramer called for “cyber terrorism” against Russia and a “blank check” for US weapons corporations – including the same companies he encourages his viewers to invest in.

CNBC pundit Jim Cramer used his platform on network TV to call for “cyber terrorism” against Russia and a “blank check” for US weapons corporations – including the same companies he constantly encourages his viewers to invest in.
Cramer, a former hedge fund manager who got his start working at the infamous bank Goldman Sachs, runs CNBC’s “Investing Club.”

In a June 27 segment titled “Jim Cramer explains why he thinks every Russian sanction has failed,” the pundit complained that the heavy Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its war in Ukraine have “failed” to destroy the nation’s economy.
“As long as India and as long as China buy their [Russia’s] oil, it doesn’t matter. They’re exporting more oil now then they did before this,” Cramer noted.
He lamented that the Russian currency “the ruble is strong,” although he did boast that “there is a huge part of the GDP that has been eliminated because of our pull-out.”
Given the failure of the West’s economic war on Moscow, Cramer proposed turning to “cyber terrorism.”
CNBC pundit @JimCramer used his platform on network TV to call for “cyber terrorism” against Russia and a “blank check” for US weapons corporations – including the same companies he constantly tells his viewers to invest in.
Full video: https://t.co/nLUeRZeciU pic.twitter.com/kx1k5JPGN0
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) July 7, 2022

“If you want to find a way to create a sanction, find a way to be able to reprogram their [Russia’s] missiles through cyber terrorism,” he insisted.
Cramer called on the US military to “reprogram” Moscow’s missiles to reverse or malfunction, in order to hurt Russia.
“We should have everybody who is in the army working, anybody who has potential to do cyber, to reprogram those [Russian] missiles,” the CNBC pundit declared.
The segment showed how major corporate media networks are actively fanning the flames of war, aggressively pushing for the US government to escalate the proxy war in Ukraine.
When asked if any other sanctions could be imposed to hurt Russia’s economy, Jim Cramer responded emphatically, “The only sanction is to send every single piece of artillery that they [Ukraine] need, that Zelensky would tell you that they need!”
“Where are the new Javelins? Why isn’t the United States sending them thousands of Javelins?” he roared, referring to an anti-tank missile system built by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
Cramer proposed that Washington should give a “blank check” to private for-profit weapons corporations to arm Ukraine with whatever it requests.
“Why don’t we give a blank check to Raytheon and to Lockheed Martin?” Cramer asked.
The CNBC pundit may have a vested financial interest in calling for endless US government contracts for the military-industrial complex.
Cramer constantly encourages his viewers to buy stocks in Raytheon and Lockheed Martin.
Back in May, CNBC published a segment titled “Jim Cramer says investors should have these four defense stocks on their shopping lists,” which recommended Raytheon and Lockheed Martin as numbers one and two, respectively.
Jim Cramer says investors should have these four defense stocks on their shopping lists https://t.co/2fIB10Sbng
— CNBC (@CNBC) May 19, 2022

“There’s at least one industry that’s booming right now,” Cramer said excitedly in May. “I’m talking about the defense industry, which is on fire.”
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a game-changer for the defense industry,” he added, salivating over the potential profits.
In November 2021, Cramer even did a friendly softball interview with the CEO of Lockheed Martin.
While the former hedge fund manager called for further escalating the US proxy war on Russia, with taxpayers subsidizing blank checks to the arms industry, he also went out of his way to attack those who want a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
“There’s another school of thought which says there is a peace deal being worked on,” Cramer said dismissively. He complained that this type of diplomatic solution would be a “sell-out of Zelensky.”
“If you don’t give Zelensky what he needs, he will lose,” the CNBC pundit stressed.
When asked about NATO’s proposal to put 300,000 troops in high readiness positions, he cheered it on: “They better! They better! They better protect Poland.”
Apparently unconcerned about the possibility of escalating into nuclear war, Cramer fearmongered, “I do believe that if the West lets them [Russia] get away with this, then anyone who goes nuclear has a silver barrel.”
“I mean, if we decide that we have to be fearful of every nuclear nation, well, we’re going to be feel fearful of Pakistan; we’ll be fearful of Iran. This has to stop!” he warned.
Iran does not have nuclear weapons, and its government has repeatedly insisted it does not want them. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei even issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, arguing they are incompatible with Islam.
Warmongers like Jim Cramer are ignoring the analysis of actual military experts like Scott Ritter, a former UN arms inspector and US Marine Corps intelligence officer.
“No matter what the U.S. and NATO do in terms of serving as Ukraine’s arsenal, Russia is going to win the war,” Ritter cautioned.
“The longer the war continues, the more Ukrainians will die,” he added ominously.
This is a price that Cramer is willing to pay, along with further financial hardship for the global poor, for the sake of intensifying the war on Russia.
It does help that the CNBC pundit may financially benefit from these policies, given that he frequently encourages his viewers to invest in the stocks of the very same US weapons corporations that are arming Ukraine.


Instruction: Write an article about: US ambassador lectures China ‘threat’: ‘We’re the leader in this region (Asia)’!. 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: AmCham China, American Chamber of Commerce in China, Antony Blinken, Chamber of Commerce, China, Iran, Israel, Myron Brilliant, Nicholas Burns, Thomas Nides, Victoria Nuland

Output:
In an interview with the Chamber of Commerce, US Ambassador Nicholas Burns referred to China as a “threat”, “great challenge”, and “very difficult government”, stating arrogantly, “The United States is staying in this region. We’re the leader in this [Indo-Pacific] region”.

Washington’s ambassador to Beijing referred to China as a “threat” and “great challenge”. He stated arrogantly, “The United States is staying in this region. We’re the leader in this region”, referring to the Indo-Pacific.
The ambassador, Nicholas Burns, insisted, “We’re going to hold our own out here. And I feel optimistic – I’m just concluding my first year as ambassador – about the American position in this country [China] and in this region”.
In an interview with the US Chamber of Commerce, Burns made very aggressive comments, going so far as to blame China for the coronavirus pandemic, claiming Beijing is not being “honest about what happened three years ago in Wuhan, with the origin of the Covid-19 crisis”.
The ambassador simultaneously praised the “bipartisan support in the Congress between Republicans and Democrats for a really robust American policy to defend our interests out here in the Indo-Pacific, to compete with the Chinese”.

Burns said all of this at a February 27 event organized by the Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful corporate lobby group in Washington.
The panel discussion, titled “American Leadership in an Age of Uncertainty”, also featured the US ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, and the third in command of the State Department, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland.
Nuland is a hard-line neoconservative who was a key sponsor of a 2014 coup that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected, geopolitically neutral President Viktor Yanukovych and installed a pro-Western regime, setting off the war that continues to this day.
This Chamber of Commerce event on “American leadership” came one day before the US Congress held the first hearing of its hawkish “Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party”. The committee’s chairman, Republican Congressmember Mike Gallagher, described Washington’s new cold on Beijing in extreme terms: “This is not a polite tennis match. This is an existential struggle over what life will look like in the 21st century — and the most fundamental freedoms are at stake”.
Great conversation with my friend @MyronBrilliant and two public servants I admire, Thomas Nides @USAmbIsrael and Victoria Nuland @UnderSecStateP, at the @USChamber InSTEP event about U.S. leadership in the world.  Watch here: https://t.co/Vt0xO8yRtn
— Ambassador Nicholas Burns (@USAmbChina) February 28, 2023

On the Chamber of Commerce panel, Ambassador Burns said “China is going to be one of the great challenges for Americans going forward”. He added, “This is obviously a very difficult moment in the US-China relationship”.
Referring to this “difficult relationship”, Burns complained that the Xi Jinping administration is “a very difficult government here in the People’s Republic of China”.
The ambassador insisted that the US is not waging a new cold war on China and Russia, but rather a forceful campaign of “competition”.
“From my perspective, sitting here in China, looking out at the Indo-Pacific, our American position is stronger than it was five or 10 years ago. It’s the strength of our alliances; it’s the strength of our private sector; it’s our innovative capacity and our R&D capacity which comes from our research institutions and our Big Tech companies”, Burns said.
He called for “competing” with Beijing in four areas – military, economy, technology, and human rights:
One of the great advantages we have right now, in dealing with a very difficult government here in the People’s Republic of China, in a competitive relationship, is that we have large-scale bipartisan agreement that we ought to be competing with China for military power in the Indo-Pacific.
Competing in the economic and trade sphere for a much more level playing field for American business, because it’s not level right now.
We’re certainly competing on technology.
And of course we defend our values. We defend human rights. We take issue, great issue, with what the Chinese have done in Xinjiang, and Tibet, and Hong Kong, with the lack of religious freedom here.
And I think there’s large-scale agreement, frankly, in our country, and also between Republicans and Democrats in Congress, that we’ve got to be competing in those four areas.
Burns hysterically condemned “the balloon incident”, calling it “an outright violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the United States”, adding that “President Biden was absolutely correct in ordering the shoot-down of that balloon”.
The ambassador didn’t mention that US government experts have acknowledged that the Chinese balloon likely had crossed into US territory by accident, due to unforeseen weather conditions.
He also failed to note that the US military later spent roughly $2 million to shoot down a $12 hobbyist balloon.
Burns depicted Chinese tech firms as threats to US national security. “Technology is going to remain a contested area”, he insisted, stressing that “there are real limits” on the ability of “Chinese companies to invest in companies in the United States in technology areas that we deem to be important for our national security”.
The ambassador gloated:
The Chinese believe, the Chinese leadership, that the East is rising and that the West, particularly the United States, was declining.
I think two years into this administration, and on a bipartisan basis, I can say the United States is a strengthened position in the Indo-Pacific, and now the United States and NATO, and the United States and the European Union, are beginning to see the threat from China and the competition from China in the same way.
Burns also called for strengthening US military support for Taiwan, asserting, “It is our obligation, obviously, to maintain our own military strength in and around Taiwan, in this part of the world, to make sure that the Taiwan authorities have the ability to deter any kind of Chinese offensive action, now or in the future”.
In a Freudian slip, the US ambassador accidentally referred to Taiwan as a “country”, stating, “We want to live in a world where big countries can’t push small countries around – or in this case, not a country, but the Taiwan authorities”.
The Chamber of Commerce event highlighted the incestuous relationship between US corporations and top diplomats in the State Department.
The panel was moderated by the Chamber of Commerce’s executive vice president and head of international affairs, Myron Brilliant.
He opened the discussion by approvingly quoting former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who declared, “If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future”.
Brilliant said, “We’re going to pose the question today: Is America still the indispensable nation? Do we have the tools we need to project our leadership in a time of economic and geopolitical uncertainty?”
All of the US diplomats on the panel responded by insisting, yes, the US is still the “leader” of the world.
As ambassador, Burns’ main job is to act as a liaison for US corporate interests.
“Supporting U.S. businesses here in China is one of my top priorities”, Burns tweeted proudly in June 2022, after meeting with the American Chamber of Commerce in China (AmCham China).
Supporting U.S. businesses here in #China is one of my top priorities. Thanks to @AmCham_China Government Affairs Conference and its 150+ participants for the opportunity to speak with you. pic.twitter.com/b4FWolrrb0
— Ambassador Nicholas Burns (@USAmbChina) June 24, 2022

Burns collaborates very closely with representatives of US corporations, meeting with the AmCham at least once per month.
I had an important meeting with @AmCham_China. We want to help the 1100 U.S. businesses here compete on a more level playing field and meet challenges from the lockdown. pic.twitter.com/RCmvajUcNL
— Ambassador Nicholas Burns (@USAmbChina) May 25, 2022

In May 2022, he complained that US corporations in China want “a more level playing field”.
Upon meeting with the AmCham yet again in April, Burns reiterated, “I strongly support American businesses”.
Thanks to the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai for today’s discussion with ?? companies. I strongly support American businesses and their employees as they face difficult challenges during the Shanghai lockdown. @AmChamSh pic.twitter.com/kFxPaQfRIL
— Ambassador Nicholas Burns (@USAmbChina) April 25, 2022

Burns’ pro-corporate concerns were similarly reflected in a landmark speech delivered in May 2022 by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The top US diplomat essentially declared a new containment policy toward China, while complaining about its socialist policies and “market-distorting policies and practices, like subsidies and market access barriers, which China’s government has used for years to gain competitive advantage”.
Like Burns, Blinken called for a “level playing field” for US corporations, lamenting, “Unlike U.S. companies and other market-oriented firms, Chinese companies don’t need to make a profit – they just get another injection of state-owned bank credit when funds are running low”.
The February 2023 Chamber of Commerce event echoed this neoliberal economic ideology.
The Chamber of Commerce vice president, Brilliant, complained about China’s “emphasis on state-owned enterprises and the regulatory behavior of the government”.
Referring to the US “competition” with China and Russia, Brilliant said, “I think the private sector role in this has never been more important in working with our government, and we continue to do that”.
He underscored his life goal is “to work with the private sector and ensure that we continue to see that close cooperation between the public and private sector”.
Brilliant also lamented that Germany is too soft on China and India is too soft on Russia.
The US ambassador to Israel, Thomas Nides, who was also on the panel, spoke openly of the incestuous relationship between the Chamber of Commerce and State Department.
Nides told Brilliant, with a very casual tone, “You and I are good pals. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about things. I’m honored to be your friend”.
The US ambassador referred to the interaction between them as “the game”: “Listen man, you and I have known each other for a long time, we’ve had lots of fun enjoyable trips together, a lot of activity. You represent what’s great about getting in the game”.
Nides continued: “As the three of us have gotten into the game at different points, you’ve been in the game at a really important time, which is that the relationship between the business community and government is critical. None of us forget that”.
He added: “I’ve had the honor to be in business. I’ve had the honor to be in the government. The reality is business and government need to work together; they need to have common agendas”.

As US ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns has taken a very hawkish tone.
In February, when the Chinese Foreign Ministry published a devastating report called “US Hegemony and Its Perils”, documenting Washington’s crimes around the world, Burns attacked it angrily as “crude propaganda” that is “unworthy of a great power”.
This is crude propaganda and unworthy of a great power. The United States remains ready for meaningful cooperation to tackle shared global challenges. https://t.co/ZsntCxDIML pic.twitter.com/AEepa7X06b
— Ambassador Nicholas Burns (@USAmbChina) February 23, 2023

Under former President George W. Bush, Burns served as US ambassador to NATO, as well as under secretary of state for political affairs, the third-most powerful position in the State Department.
He is a close ally of Victoria Nuland, the neoconservative under secretary of state for political affairs.
In the February 27 Chamber of Commerce vent, Burns heaped praise on Nuland, commenting on “what a pleasure it is to serve with people like Toria Nuland, who is one of my closest friends and closest partners in the US foreign service”.
In her remarks on the panel, Nuland stated, “Obviously, we are now at the end of the post-Cold War period. We’re in the post-post-Cold War period”.
“So to me, unfortunately, it feels a lot like it did at the beginning of my career, that we have large powers contesting the rules of the road that favor freedom. They are doing it by threatening their neighbors, by coercing countries around the world”, Nuland added.
“And therefore US leadership, which has always been essential, is even more essential”, she said.
Nuland left the event earlier explaining, “I gotta run off and see Canadians and work on another hot problem, which is Haiti”.
Nuland has been part of a group of Western hawks pushing for military intervention in Haiti. Canada has already deployed military planes and ships to the Caribbean nation, as Haitians warn of mission creep leading to a new Western occupation of their country.
Also on the February 27 Chamber of Commerce panel was US Ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides.
He denounced what he called a dangerous “axis” between Iran, Russia, and China.
Blasting Tehran for selling drones to Moscow, Nides warned, “If you think there’s not an axis here between Iran and Russia, and God hopefully not China, it should be a wake-up call to all of us”.
The US ambassador boasted that support for Israel remains bipartisan, despite the far-right extremist government in Israel, which includes representatives of a neo-fascist party and was compared to Nazi Germany by mainstream liberal newspaper Haaretz.
“We have an unbreakable bond with the state of Israel. Regardless of who the prime minister is, regardless of the situation on the ground, that is not going to change”, he reaffirmed.
Nides fearmongered about Iran, saying he is collaborating closely with Israel, and “we’re working on this day and night to make sure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon”.
The US ambassador expressed staunch support for the anti-government protests in Iran. Nides added, “We don’t support regime change, I guess publicly anyway”.


Instruction: Write an article about: US gov’t creates Ministry of Truth run by cold warrior who smears independent media as ‘Russian disinformation’. 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: censorship, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Nina Jankowicz, Russia, Ukraine

Output:
The authoritarian Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that oversaw the War on Terror created a “Disinformation Governance Board,” led by anti-Russia information warrior Nina Jankowicz, who ran regime-change ops at a CIA front, smears independent anti-war US media outlets as “Russian disinfo,” and called WikiLeaks “scum.”

The US government has created what is essentially a Ministry of Truth. It is led by a censorial cold warrior who worked for a CIA cutout overseeing regime-change operations targeting Russia and Belarus, and who smears independent anti-war American media outlets as supposed “Russian disinformation.”
This new US information czar has also denounced whistleblowing journalistic publication WikiLeaks as “scum,” claiming without evidence that it is part of a supposed Russian “operation” that spreads so-called “malinformation.”
Washington’s de facto Ministry of Truth will be overseen by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which is infamous for violating civil liberties in the name of the so-called War on Terror.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has warned of DHS’ authoritarian tendencies and called for it to be dismantled. Noting the department’s use of “horrific tactics” against protesters, the ACLU wrote that the “short history of DHS has been filled with violence, the stoking of fear, and a lack of oversight.”
In 2018, DHS published a press release that echoed the white-supremacist “14 words” slogan used by neo-Nazis.
Instead of reining in this scandalous department, the US government is giving DHS even more power over Americans’ freedom of speech.
On April 27, 2022, DHS announced the creation of a “Disinformation Governance Board,” which it said would be dedicated to combatting so-called “Russian disinformation.”
CIA Director William Burns had admitted back in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in March that the United States is waging an “information war” on Russia, and boasted that its President Vladimir “Putin is losing.”
DHS’ new Disinformation Governance Board is part of this US government information war, which is in turn a key front in Washington’s new cold war on both Russia and China.
In the guise of fighting supposed “Russian disinformation,” this notoriously authoritarian US institution is threatening to impose more censorship on critics of Washington’s foreign policy. And it has recruited a hard-line information warrior to lead these efforts.

To run this Disinformation Governance Board, the Joe Biden administration selected a fanatical cold warrior named Nina Jankowicz.
Jankowicz claims to be an expert on so-called “disinformation”; in reality she is an anti-Russia information warrior who has extensive experience working for the US and Ukrainian governments, including a shady CIA cutout.
This newly appointed executive director of DHS’ Disinformation Governance Board has smeared independent American media outlets that expose crimes committed by the US government abroad as vehicles for purported “Russian disinformation,” and has clearly suggested that she supports censoring them.
Jankowicz established herself professionally in Washington by working for several years for the National Democratic Institute (NDI).
This NDI is a branch of the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA front created by the Ronald Reagan administration at the end of the first cold war to fund regime-change operations from the Eastern Bloc to Nicaragua.
NED co-founder Allen Weinstein admitted in the Washington Post in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
The NDI is an arm of the NED that is affiliated with the Democratic Party. (The Republican Party has its own branch of the NED, called the International Republican Institute, or IRI.)
At the NDI, Jankowicz oversaw so-called “democracy assistance programs” in Russia in Belarus. In other words, she helped run regime-change operations aimed at overthrowing these independent Eastern European governments.
US intelligence cutouts like the NDI frequently use “democracy assistance” as a euphemism to mean regime change.
According to her NDI bio, Jankowicz joined the CIA cutout in 2013, and worked for two years on destabilization operations targeting Russia and Belarus.
Then in 2015, she moved to the NDI’s “Government Relations and Communications team,” where Jankowicz said she bridged “her passion for democracy assistance and social media.”

In a 2016 article in Democracy Works, the NDI’s official publication, Jankowicz described herself as “someone who has made a career in democracy assistance.”
“I have worked in support of democratic progress around the world since 2011 and joined NDI in fall 2013,” she boasted.
Jankowicz added that she was “proud to be a participant in democratic progress in the United States and and proud to work for NDI — an organization that supports democratic progress the world over.”
When Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election, the Democratic Party hatched a conspiracy theory that blamed Russia for Hillary Clinton’s loss. Many Democratic operatives in Washington subsequently transitioned their careers to cash in on the “counter-disinformation” racket.
Jankowicz moved away from “democracy assistance” and rebranded herself as an expert on so-called “Russian disinformation.”
She moved to Ukraine and began working for its new right-wing, viciously anti-Russian government, which had been installed after a violent US-sponsored 2014 coup.
Jankowicz boasts on her website that, from 2016 to 2017, “she advised the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry on disinformation and strategic communications.”
Jankowicz’s work for Ukraine’s post-coup regime was sponsored by a US Fulbright-Clinton Public Policy Fellowship.
After her year in Ukraine, Jankowicz was given a cushy position as a “disinformation fellow” at the Wilson Center, a hawkish US government-funded think tank that advocates for an aggressive foreign policy.
There, Jankowicz worked on churning out anti-Russia information warfare for the Kennan Institute, named after infamous cold warrior George F. Kennan, a US diplomat who helped to create “containment” policy toward the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, Jankowicz spread some disinformation of her own, citing US spies to repeatedly claim that the leak of files from Hunter Biden’s laptop was part of a “Russian influence op.” (The authenticity of these files was later confirmed by both the New York Times and Washington Post.)
Jankowicz also set her targets on independent anti-war media outlets, smearing them as so-called “Russian disinformation.”
On Twitter in November 2017, Jankowicz attacked the whistleblowing journalistic publication WikiLeaks, calling it “scum.”

In May 2018, she accused WikiLeaks of spreading “malinformation,” although the outlet has been shown to have 100% accuracy in all of its publications.
Jankowicz claimed, without any evidence, that “Wikileaks is a cog in a much larger [Russian] operation.” She also implied that WikiLeaks’ founder and former editor Julian Assange, a UN-recognized political prisoner persecuted by the US government, is part of a “Russian influence op.”

The current US information czar similarly went after independent journalists in the United States.
On Twitter in 2020, Jankowicz boasted that she had blocked journalist Aaron Maté, a critic of US foreign policy who exposed many of the lies behind the Russiagate conspiracy theory.
Jankowicz called the independent US news website The Grayzone “a source of disinfo,” claiming that it was supposedly “implicated in a Russian disinfo op.”
The current US government official, who made her career overseeing US regime-change operations in Eastern Europe, claimed The Grayzone “spreads incredibly damaging disinformation” and “calls popular protests ‘color revolutions’ and papers over Stalinist crimes against humanity.”

In addition to blocking Maté on Twitter, Jankowicz blocked the author of this present report, Multipolarista editor Benjamin Norton, even though he had never engaged with her.
Jankowicz’s eagerness to block independent American journalists who are critical of US foreign policy clearly shows that this cold warrior is not very concerned about the freedom of speech or freedom of the press.
As a so-called “disinformation expert” at the US government-funded Wilson Center, Jankowicz also went after independent journalists who exposed the US government’s role in waging a decade-long dirty war on Syria, in which the CIA armed and trained Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaeda and ISIS.
When American journalist Ben Swann correctly said in May 2018 that the US government was funding the Syrian opposition group the White Helmets, Jankowicz declared that he was a “conspiracy theorist” who should be censored.
It is an objective, undeniable matter of public record that the US government gave tens of millions of dollars to the White Helmets. In fact mere weeks after Jankowicz’s tweet, in June 2018, the Donald Trump administration gave the Syrian opposition group an additional $6.6 million.

Similarly, Jankowicz has repeatedly rejected the undeniable historical fact that the US government backed a violent coup in Ukraine in 2014, calling it “Russian disinformation.”
While Jankowicz markets herself as a “disinformation expert,” in reality she is a devoted soldier in the US government’s information war on Russia.
In 2020, Jankowicz made her status as an information warrior clear as day, publishing a book titled “How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict.”

While Jankowicz frequently smears Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, and other targets of US foreign policy as “authoritarian” (and even accuses Cuba and Venezuela of supposedly meddling in US elections), she had no problem working for an authoritarian right-wing regime in Ukraine.
Jankowicz advised Ukraine’s government when it was led by billionaire oligarch Petro Poroshenko, who only came to power thanks to the violent overthrow of former elected president Viktor Yanukovych in a coup in which neo-Nazis and far-right extremists played a key role.
While Jankowicz worked for Poroshenko’s government, he was advised by a fascist extremist who wrote “Heil Hitler” on Facebook and was photographed posing with extremist soldiers wearing Nazi symbols.
Poroshenko’s regime imposed a series of far-right, anti-democratic policies, banning all communist parties and making it a crime punishable by years in prison to use socialist symbols or sing the leftist anthem The Internationale.
The Poroshenko regime made it mandatory for Ukrainians to honor Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera, turning fascists who participated in massacres of Jews, Poles, and Romanis during World War II into official, state-appointed national heroes, while simultaneously banning books that exposed their crimes.
Jankowicz is likewise eerily quiet about atrocities committed by the United States. Although she is very active on Twitter and constantly condemns US anti-war journalists for supposedly being soft on Russia, Jankowicz has never mentioned the seven-year war on Yemen.
Jankowicz is sure to never diverge from the bipartisan neoconservative foreign policy consensus in Washington.
She strongly supported Hillary Clinton and her ultra-hawkish foreign policy, tweeting in 2016, “So proud to support HRC as she calls out boundless Russian aggression in Syria.” Jankowicz added the hashtag #ImWithHer.
Jankowicz has similarly fawned over former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, repeatedly referring to her as her “role model.” In an interview on CBS’ program 60 Minutes in 1996, Jankowicz’s role model justified the deaths of half a million Iraqi children due to suffocating sanctions, claiming it was “worth it” to advance US foreign policy interests.
During the Donald Trump administration, many Democratic politicians condemned the Department of Homeland Security, highlighting in particular the horrific abuse of migrants and refugees carried out by Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE), which is overseen by the department.
The fact that proud Democrats like Jankowicz and the Biden administration would embrace this notoriously authoritarian department in order to escalate the new cold war on Russia and China reflects how DHS is trying to rebrand.
The Department of Homeland Security was created by the George W. Bush administration after the September 11, 2001 attacks, and was a fundamental part of the architecture of mass surveillance and the so-called War on Terror.
Given DHS’ close associations with these repressive right-wing policies, some Democrats even claimed they wanted to abolish the department.
Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), for instance, proposed dismantling DHS in 2019, stating, “Don’t let people rewrite history as if DHS/ICE always existed, or is a no-brainer. It’s a young agency, ill-conceived after 9/11 & sacrificed our civil liberties – like the Patriot Act.”
But many Democrats who superficially opposed DHS during the Trump era have since done a political 180. The Biden administration has helped the department try to rebrand as a supposedly “anti-extremist” institution, claiming it is combatting far-right groups in the United States.
DHS in fact deceptively announced the creation of its “Disinformation Governance Board” by claiming it would be focused on opposing racist fake news spread by right-wing demagogues about immigrants. This was transparently an attempt to deceive liberal critics into believing the institution could serve progressive ends.
This is political cover for DHS’ main activities, which in addition to terrorizing immigrants and refugees also are focused on surveilling left-wing protesters who oppose US government policies, especially its hawkish foreign policy.
The ACLU has emphasized that “DHS has surveilled Black Lives Matter activist circles; descended into mosques and community centers to infiltrate Muslim communities; shot and killed foreign nationals across the border; and monitored protests using fusion center intelligence sharing hubs.”
But the Biden administration, just like the Trump administration, has joined in the bipartisan campaign to strengthen this authoritarian institution, by giving it power to police Americans’ access to information.
This is a flagrant US government attack on the freedom of speech and freedom of the press. It demonstrates how, as Washington escalates its new cold war on Russia and China, civil liberties are increasingly under threat.


Instruction: Write an article about: Invoking Monroe Doctrine, US congressman calls Argentina a ‘threat’ over China alliance. 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, Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, Republican Party, Russia, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping

Output:
Trump-allied Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz called Argentina a “threat” to US “security,” complaining that its alliance with China challenges the 200-year-old colonialist Monroe Doctrine.

(Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.)
An influential right-wing US lawmaker invoked the 200-year-old colonialist Monroe Doctrine on the floor of Congress and called Argentina a “threat” because of its alliance with China.
Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, a key ally of former president Donald Trump, said in a speech in the House of Representatives on February 7 that there is a “significant threat to our nation accelerating rapidly close to home.”
“Argentina, a critical nation and economy in the Americas, has just lashed itself to the Chinese Communist Party, by signing on to the One Belt One Road Initiative,” Gaetz fumed.
Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz, a key ally of Donald Trump, invoked the 200-year-old colonialist Monroe Doctrine on the floor of the Congress and called Argentina a "threat" to US "security" because of its alliance with China.
Read more here: https://t.co/aCiWQ7fGOc pic.twitter.com/xyVYkxfFT9
— Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) February 8, 2022

The Florida lawmaker was reacting to the news that Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández visited Moscow and Beijing for meetings with Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping on February 3 and 6, respectively.
Explaining his trips, Fernández said, “I am consistently working to rid Argentina of this dependence on the IMF and the US. I want Argentina to open up new opportunities.”
Argentina signed on to join Beijing’s international infrastructure campaign, the Belt and Road Initiative, and China offered the South American nation $23.7 billion in investments and infrastructure projects. Moscow similarly pledged to strengthen political and economic ties with what it called “one of Russia’s key partners in Latin America.”
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

Representative Matt Gaetz angrily described Argentina’s growing links with China as “a direct challenge to the Monroe Doctrine.”
The Monroe Doctrine, which dates back to 1823, was a message to European colonialists that the United States considers Latin America to be its own colonial territory.
Two centuries ago, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams created the doctrine, and President James Monroe made it government policy, insisting that the US would not intervene in the European colonial powers’ spheres of influence as long as they recognized Central and South America to be Washington’s imperial sphere of influence.
This attitude that Latin America is US colonial property is still very much alive today, and thoroughly bipartisan in Washington.
Multiple senior officials in the Donald Trump administration invoked the Monroe Doctrine to justify their coup attempt in Venezuela, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton.
This January, President Joe Biden echoed colonial Monroe Doctrine rhetoric by referring to Latin America as Washington’s “front yard.”
While Matt Gaetz, like his political mentor Donald Trump, sometimes opportunistically criticizes other right-wing factions such as “neocons,” he pushes a similarly hawkish imperialist foreign policy.
One constant in virtually all of Gaetz’s speeches is his obsessive demonization of China. He strongly advocates for a new cold war to contain the Asian superpower.
While many neoconservatives and liberal-interventionists push for an aggressive policy against Russia, Gaetz’s message is essentially that China is the real threat to the United States, not the Kremlin, and that Washington should seek war with Beijing instead of war with Moscow.
In his House speech declaring Argentina a “threat,” Gaetz reiterated this talking point, claiming, “China is a rising power. Russia is a declining power. Let us sharpen our focus so that we do not join them in that eventual fate.”
Gaetz, who represents Florida’s northwestern Panhandle, joined the Trump administration in strongly supporting a right-wing coup attempt in Venezuela.
The Republican lawmaker frequently calls for the overthrow of Cuba’s government as well, while spreading fake news claiming that “Venezuelan thugs, flavored w[ith] Russians, are now ‘kill squads’ going through homes. They are slaughtering adults and abducting children.”
Gaetz is closely linked to far-right extremists. In 2018, he invited a notorious white-nationalist blogger who has promoted Holocaust revisionism to Trump’s State of the Union address.
In addition to his extreme political views, Gaetz has been investigated by US authorities for the alleged sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl.


Instruction: Write an article about: Poverty is growing in Puerto Rico, under US colonialism: 57.6% of children live in poor households. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: colonialism, poverty, Puerto Rico

Output:
Poverty is rising in one of the world’s oldest colonies: In Puerto Rico, 41.7% of people, including 57.6% of children, live in poverty. This is nearly four times the US rate. And Puerto Rican workers are getting poorer even while unemployment falls.

Poverty in Puerto Rico, under US colonialism, is getting worse over time, not better.
More than two-fifths of Puerto Ricans suffer from poverty, and nearly three-fifths of Puerto Rican children live in poor households.
In 2022, the poverty rate in the colonized US “territory” grew from 40.5% to 41.7%, according to US Census Bureau data.
A staggering 57.6% of Puerto Rican children live in poverty. And 38.8% of families are below the poverty line.
Poverty has been growing in Puerto Rico even at a time when more people are working. The unemployment rate fell from 13.1% to 9.9% in 2022, while poverty got worse.
These statistics from the US Census Bureau may be very conservative. Anti-poverty activists in Puerto Rico have criticized the official figures and argued they downplay the hardship in the colonized nation.
As Yale University’s Genocide Studies Program notes, “Puerto Rico is one of the world’s oldest colonies, having been under some form of military occupation or protectorate status since 1508″.
The United States seized the nation from its former colonizer Spain in an 1898 war.
Washington claims that being a US “territory” makes Puerto Ricans wealthier, but after more than a century of colonization, their poverty rate is nearly four times the US average, while their incomes are roughly one-third those of the United States.
Puerto Rico’s poverty rate of 41.7% stands in stark contrast to the US national average of 11.5%, according to the Census Bureau.
In Puerto Rico, per capita income is just $14,047, while median household income is $21,967.
Across the United States, per capita income is $37,638, and median household income is $69,021.
In wealthy US states such as Maryland, Massachussets, or New Jersey, median household income is around $90,000 – more than four times that of Puerto Rico.
Even the poorest US states, like Mississippi, West Virginia, and Louisiana, still have a median household income of roughly $50,000 – more than double that of Puerto Rico.
The already dire economic situation for Puerto Rican families has only gotten worse in the past two years, as a rise in consumer price inflation has further eroded their purchasing power.
Meanwhile, the US federal government has fueled mass displacement and outward migration, by turning Puerto Rico into a tax haven.
Right-wing libertarians and corporate oligarchs have happily proclaimed, “Move to Puerto Rico!“, not because they care about the nation, its people, its culture, and its history, but simply because US citizens who relocate there do not have to pay federal income tax or capital gains tax.
This policy has unleashed colonial gentrification, incentivizing rich North Americans to displace local Puerto Rican residents.
It has also fueled rampant real estate speculation. Skyrocketing housing prices have only exacerbated the cost of living crisis, forcing many indigenous Boricuas out of the homes their families have lived in for generations.
Journalist Bianca Graulau has documented this colonial gentrification:


Instruction: Write an article about: US Congress plots to save dollar dominance amid global de-dollarization rebellion. 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: Blaine Luetkemeyer, Congress, Daniel McDowell, dollar, Marshall Billingslea, Michael Faulkender, Tyler Goodspeed, Young Kim

Output:
The US Congress held a hearing titled “Dollar Dominance: Preserving the U.S. Dollar’s Status as the Global Reserve Currency”, as countries around the world join the de-dollarization rebellion against Washington’s “exorbitant privilege”.

The US Congress held a hearing to discuss the growing international movement toward de-dollarization.
Numerous lawmakers expressed concern over what they referred to as mounting “threats” to the “supremacy” of the dollar, warning that China and Russia are challenging the US-dominated international financial system.
Economists invited to testify in the session cautioned that Washington’s aggressive imposition of unilateral sanctions has backfired, weakening dollar dominance by encouraging targeted countries to develop new, alternative financial institutions.

Titled “Dollar Dominance: Preserving the U.S. Dollar’s Status as the Global Reserve Currency”, the June 7 hearing was organized by the House of Representatives Financial Services Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, Illicit Finance, and International Financial Institutions.
The tone of the two-hour event was deeply schizophrenic. Speakers would triumphantly argue that the dollar remained unbeatable, that its hegemony was inevitable and natural, before a few minutes later complaining that foreign adversaries are conspiring to undermine it.
A neoconservative political economist who spoke, Daniel McDowell, boasted of how the dollar is “the king of all currencies” and “a powerful symbol of American financial royalty”.
Michael Faulkender, who served as Donald Trump’s assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy, declared in the session, “As assistant secretary, I told my team that the Treasury secretary proudly states that the dollar will never not be the world’s reserve currency, and our job is to make sure that’s true”.
Representative Monica de la Cruz, a Republican from Texas, said dismissively, “Now this hearing comes at a critical time when some academics and naysayers are spreading theories that de-dollarization has begun, and that the beginning of the end has arrived for the dollar’s dominant role as a global reserve currency”.
The session was chaired by Republican Representative Blaine Luetkemeyer, a hard-line anti-China hawk from Missouri.
“The conversation around the dollar being the reserve currency is becoming louder and louder, as we have more and more I think threats to it”, he cautioned.
Luetkemeyer boasted of the many “economic advantages” that dollar hegemony gives to the United States:
The US dollar has been the preferred global currency since the end of World War Two, providing our nation inherent economic advantages, as well as responsibilities.
Today, an estimated 88% of all currency transactions by value are conducted in US dollars. Among other things, this limits the risk of a balance of payments crisis, which inherently lowers our exchange rate risk.
The dollar’s position also allows the United States and Americans to borrow at rates such as 50 to 60 basis points lower.
Our currency strength not only benefits the United States government, but also helps American consumers by lowering the price of imported goods, resulting in an estimated $25 to $45 billion a year in savings.
The bipartisan hearing was mostly dominated by Republicans, but it also featured some Democrats.
The ranking member of the subcommittee, Ohio Democratic Representative Joyce Beatty, began the session saying, “Thank you to our witnesses for appearing here today to discuss the preservation of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, a topic which we all agree is of the utmost importance”.
Beatty’s rhetoric was less aggressive than that of Luetkemeyer, but she essentially echoed the same talking points, stating:
The dominance and supremacy of the currency affords the United States numerous benefits, from reduced borrowing costs, to increased financial stability, to influence over global financial markets.
It also allows us to leverage economic measures against those that seek to threaten our national security and foreign policy.
Given the undeniable value of the U.S. dollar’s dominance, it is critical that we address the currency and the present threats to it.
As we speak, foreign adversaries like Russia and China are actively working to undermine the U.S. dollar and cripple our global power and influence. We see this in Russia’s rapid accumulation of gold reserves over the last decade, as well as China’s development of non-SWIFT systems to settle and clear transactions involving the RMB.
Furthermore, several other countries are pushing efforts to bypass use of the U.S. dollar and the U.S.-led financial system.
That is why I agree that the subject of this hearing unquestionably deserves our time and attention in Congress and in this subcommittee.
The hearing also featured testimony from Tyler Goodspeed, a right-wing economist who chaired the Council of Economic Advisers when Trump was president.
Goodspeed boasted:
The fact that 90% of all foreign exchange transactions continue to involve the United States dollar, and that global central banks continue to hold almost 60% of their foreign exchange reserves in U.S. dollars, confers net economic benefits on the United States economy.
First, foreign demand for reserves of U.S. dollars raises demand for dollar-denominated securities, in particular United States treasuries. This effectively lowers the cost of borrowing for U.S. households; U.S. companies; and federal, state, and local governments.
It also means that, on average, the United States earns more on its investments in foreign assets than we have to pay on foreign investments in the United States, which allows the United States to import more goods and services than we export.
Second, foreign demand for large reserves of U.S. dollars and dollar-denominated assets raises the value of the dollar, and a stronger dollar benefits U.S. consumers and businesses that are net importers of goods and services from abroad.
Third, large reserve holdings of U.S. currency abroad, in effect, constitutes an interest free loan to the United States worth about $10 to $20 billion per year.
Fourth, the denomination of the majority of international transactions in U.S. dollars likely modestly lowers the exchange rate risks faced by U.S. companies.
Fifth, given the volume of foreign U.S. dollar holdings and dollar-denominated debt, monetary policy actions by foreign central banks generally have a smaller impact on financial conditions in the United States than actions by the United States central bank have on financial conditions in other countries.
Marshall Billingslea, the Treasury’s assistant secretary for terrorist financing under Trump, who also previously worked in the Pentagon, expressed concern that the central banks of China and Russia have been de-dollarizing their foreign-exchange reserves and instead buying other assets, such as gold, which cannot be easily sanctioned:
If we look at what Russia did in the run-up to its further invasion of Ukraine, they began dumping ownership of Treasury bonds in 2018. In that year, they plummeted from $96 billion in holdings down to $15 billion.
And they also started buying large amounts of gold.
China is now … embarking on its own gold-buying spree. I haven’t seen the data for May, but April marked the sixth straight month of Chinese expansion in its gold holdings.
And I’m not sure I believe the official figures. We have to recall that China is the dominant gold-mining player around the world, and half of those gold-mining companies are state-owned.
So the actual size of China’s war chest, when it comes to gold reserves, may be far higher, in fact I suspect inevitably far higher than official numbers suggest.
Last year, China also started dumping its treasuries. 2022 marked the largest or second-largest decrease on record, with a drop of about $174 billion, and China stood at the lowest level since 2010 in terms of its holdings.
In the hearing, Billingslea also warned that, as China stockpiles gold in its foreign-exchange reserves, it could start issuing yuan-denominated contracts that are backed by gold:
The thing I do worry – I come back to this fact that they’ve been buying a lot of gold – is that one of the things that they could do, which would be very concerning, if they wind up having larger reserves of gold than we we believe, is they could start issuing yuan-, or gold-denominated, gold-backed yuan contracts.
That would further their ambition for introducing the yuan onto the world stage.
Also present in the hearing was Daniel McDowell, an associate professor in the political science department at Syracuse University in New York, and author of the book “Bucking the Buck: US Financial Sanctions and the International Backlash Against the Dollar”.
McDowell argued that, by imposing more and more sanctions on countries around the world, Washington is actually weakening the dominance of the dollar.
The US has sanctions on nations that represent more than one-third of the global population and 29% of the world’s GDP.
McDowell explained:
Dollar preeminence and U.S. financial centrality are not without consequence for American coercive power, as you all know.
With little more than the stroke of the president’s pen, or through an act of Congress, the U.S. government can use financial sanctions to impose enormous economic costs on targeted foreign actors, be they individuals, firms, or state institutions, by freezing their dollar assets or cutting them off from access to the banks through which those dollars flow.
As the United States has increased its reliance on financial sanctions as a tool of foreign policy, it has provoked anti-dollar policy responses from our adversaries.
Though such steps are unlikely to upend the dollar’s position as top international currency, including the reserve currency role, over time such policies could diminish the coercive capabilities that the United States derives from dollar centrality.
Over the last two decades, the United States has used the tool of financial sanctions with increasing frequency.
For example, in the year 2000 just four foreign governments were directly targeted under the U.S. Treasury country program, overseen by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC. Today, that number is greater than 20; and if we include penalties from secondary sanctions, the list gets even longer.
The more that the United States has reached for financial sanctions, the more it has made adversaries in foreign capitals aware of the strategic vulnerability that stems from dependence on the dollar.
Some governments have responded by implementing anti-dollar policies, measures that are designed to reduce an economy’s reliance on the U.S. currency for investment and cross-border transactions.
While these measures sometimes fail to achieve their goals, others have produced modest levels of de-dollarization.
Notable examples here include Russian steps to cut its dollar reserves and reduce the use of the dollar in trade settlement in the years leading up to its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, or China’s ongoing efforts to build its own international payments network based on the yuan – efforts that have taken on a new sense of urgency as Beijing has become more aware of its own strategic vulnerabilities from dollar dependence.
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The growing number of states espousing anti-dollar viewpoints and adopting anti-dollar policies does threaten to weaken the future potency of U.S. financial sanctions.
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Finally, whenever possible, U.S. financial sanctions should be coordinated with our allies in Europe and Asia, who should feel as if they are key stakeholders in the dollar system, and not vassals to it.
Another Republican congresswoman who participated in the hearing, Young Kim from California, complained that China has developed other ways to provide financing to countries that don’t involve the US dollar.
Kim singled out the currency swap-line agreements that the People’s Bank of China has signed with the central banks of other countries, such as Argentina, which is a way for Beijing to give liquidity or credit in yuan, bypassing Washington-dominated financial institutions like the SWIFT inter-bank messaging system:
We should all be troubled by the increase of central bank swap-line agreements deployed by the People’s Bank of China [PBOC].
According to a 2021 PBOC report, it said that it has swap facilities with 40 countries, with a combined capacity of almost 4 trillion yuan, or about $570 billion dollars.
And just a few days ago, Argentina, a country facing a deep currency devaluation and 109% annual inflation, they announced a deal to renew its currency swap line with China and double the amount it can access to nearly $10 billion dollars.
So the PBOC justifies the swap lines as a way to force countries to utilize the yuan as a method of exchange.
So I want to ask you, Mr. Billingslea, instead of liberalizing its capital account and allowing the yuan to be fully convertible into the currency exchange markets, the CCP has opted to increase its bilateral swap-line agreements to further internationalize its currency.
So is there anything that the United States can do to slow down or reduce adaptation of the PBOC’s currency swap lines?
All the participants in the hearing treated the hegemony of the US currency as desirable, arguing it must inevitably be maintained. The five expert witnesses who were invited insisted that there is no short-term threat to dollar dominance.
The two-hour hearing did not address possible plans for the BRICS bloc to create a new international reserve currency. Instead, the participants only spoke of existing national currencies like the Chinese renminbi, Russian ruble, or euro as potential challengers to the US dollar – while ultimately dismissing all of them.
The idea that BRICS could develop an international currency (similar to John Maynard Keynes’ idea of the Bancor) was not even raised as a possibility.


Instruction: Write an article about: ‘Human rights NGOs’ HRW and Amnesty show cozy ties with US government. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Input: Amnesty International, CIA, Ford Foundation, George Soros, HRW, human rights industry, Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, Luis Kutner, NED, Open Society Foundations, OSF, Peter Benenson, USAID

Output:
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International claim to be independent, but they have a revolving door with the US government, and serve its foreign-policy interests, with funding from CIA-linked foundations and billionaire oligarchs.

The human rights industry often portrays itself as independent from the US government, but in reality the nonprofit-industrial complex is closely tied to Washington.
Even the use of the term “non-governmental organization” (NGO) is misleading, because many so-called NGOs not only collaborate with Western governments, but are often directly funded by them.
Iraq War architect Colin Powell referred to human rights NGOs as “force multipliers” for the US military, calling them “an important part of our combat team.”
As secretary of state for the George W. Bush administration, General Powell gathered leaders of top human rights organizations at the State Department in October 2001 and told them that their work would be crucial in the coming War on Terror.
Powell said he had contacted US ambassadors and “instructed them to make every effort to work with NGOs.” He told the human rights industry’s heavy-hitters, “it is the very fact of your being independent and not an arm of government that makes you so valuable.”
Colin Powell: ‘Human rights’ NGOs are ‘force multipliers’ for US military, part of ‘combat team’

Two decades later, the US government continues employing this same strategy.
This March 16, Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted that he had just met with the directors of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International to discuss “human rights challenges, including in Ukraine, Russia, China, and the Middle East.”
HRW and Amnesty are the leading players in the Western human rights industry. They both insist on being independent, but are anything but, with extensive links to the United States and other Western governments.
Spoke today with @HRW’s @KenRoth and @Amnesty’s @AgnesCallamard on human rights challenges, including in Ukraine, Russia, China, and the Middle East. Human rights are central to U.S. foreign policy. We support the important work of human rights defenders. https://t.co/fA9dtkLOWq
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) March 16, 2022

In his tweet, Blinken linked to a November 2021 report by the State Department titled “U.S. Support for Human Rights Defenders.” The document details how Washington supports so-called “civil society” organizations to advance its foreign-policy interests.
In the report, the State Department writes openly that the “U.S. government provides quick help to human rights defenders around the world with emergency technical and financial assistance.”
The document shows how the State Department uses so-called “human rights defenders,” who are really just pro-US activists, as fifth columns to destabilize countries that Washington has targeted for regime change.
But it is not only “civil society” organizations in the Global South that are instrumentalized by Washington to push its agenda. Mainstream Western groups like HRW and Amnesty are willing accomplices as well.
Kenneth Roth, the longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch, who almost always obediently echoes US foreign-policy orthodoxy, started out his career as a US government attorney. (Roth also retweeted Blinken’s post in approval.)
HRW itself has its origins in Helsinki Watch, an anti-Soviet lobby group that played a key role in US cold war architecture. It existed simply to demonize the socialist bloc and advance Washington’s political objectives.
Under Roth’s leadership, HRW has lobbied Washington for more aggressive sanctions against the leftist governments in Venezuela and Nicaragua – even in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The current secretary general of Amnesty International, Agnes Callamard, previously served for a decade as executive director of ARTICLE 19, an organization that purports to be dedicated to “defending freedom of expression and information,” but in reality serves as a tool of Western foreign-policy interests.
ARTICLE 19 is funded by a who’s who of Western regime-change front groups and CIA cutouts, including the US State Department, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID, Freedom House, British Foreign Office, Canadian government, European Commission, Ford Foundation, and Open Society Foundations.

For their part, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International say they don’t accept funding from any governments. But they don’t need to take money directly from the US government to serve its interests.
HRW is notorious for hiring many former US government officials, CIA operatives, and NATO war criminals. The organization has long been criticized for its revolving door with Washington.
HRW’s top donor is CIA-linked anti-communist billionaire George Soros, who gave the organization a $100 million grant. The oligarch and his Open Society Foundations have collaborated closely with Washington in regime-change operations targeting socialist governments in Eastern Europe.
The Washington Post revealed in 1991 that Soros was part of a group of US government-backed anti-communist “overt operatives” who “have been doing in public what the CIA used to do in private – providing money and moral support for pro-democracy groups, training resistance fighters, working to subvert communist rule.”
Amnesty International and its subsidiaries have also been bankrolled by the CIA-linked Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Open Society Foundations, which historian Frances Stonor Saunders described as “conscious instruments of covert US foreign policy, with directors and officers who were closely connected to, or even members of American intelligence,” comprising “an integral component of America’s Cold War machinery.”
The Rockefeller Foundation, like Ford, "was an integral component of America's Cold War machinery." Both were and still are closely linked to the CIA and other US government agencies and are used as pass-throughs to fund counter-insurgency, culture war, and psychological warfare. pic.twitter.com/bMTSuBJVSL
— Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 13, 2020

In fact, as MintPress’ Alan Macleod has reported, one co-founder of Amnesty International, Peter Benenson, “was an avowed anti-communist with deep ties to the British Foreign and Colonial Offices, propping up the Apartheid regime of South Africa at the British government’s request.”
The other co-founder of Amnesty, Luis Kutner, “was an FBI asset who was involved in the government’s assassination of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. Kutner went on to form an organization called ‘Friends of the FBI’, dedicated to countering and combating criticism of the Bureau.”
Macleod reported this in an article detailing how Human Rights Watch Executive Director Ken Roth supported a far-right US-backed coup in Bolivia in 2019, subsequently whitewashing a massacre of indigenous pro-democracy activists.
This example was one of many showing how the human rights industry is more than willing to abandon basic human rights when it’s in Washington’s interests.
HRW refused to apportion blame to the police death squads who mowed down protesters in November, keeping everyone in the dark about who was to blame, carrying water for the US-backed far-right coup government.
I wrote about it at the time.https://t.co/VkjkeDh2bp
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) October 25, 2020