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Write an article about: Honduras’ new president recognizes Venezuela’s real gov’t; coup leader Guaidó loses drug-trafficking ally. 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.

Honduras, JOH, Juan Guaidó, Juan Orlando Hernández, Manuel Zelaya, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela, Xiomara Castro

Honduras’ new President Xiomara Castro, the country’s first democratic leader since a 2009 US-backed coup, broke ties with unelected putschist Juan Guaidó and recognized Venezuela’s constitutional President Nicolás Maduro. Honduras’ new left-wing President Xiomara Castro took power on January 27. The same day of her inauguration, she re-established relations with the real, constitutional government of Venezuela’s elected President Nicolás Maduro. Castro is the first democratic leader of Honduras since a 2009 military coup, sponsored by the United States, overthrew former President Manuel Zelaya, Castro’s husband. The previous right-wing regime of notoriously corrupt Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was deeply involved in drug trafficking, had recognized US-appointed Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó as supposed “interim president.” The loss of Honduras is another blow to Washington’s ongoing coup attempt against Venezuela’s leftist government. A former top ally of Guaidó admitted that, as of January 2022, fewer than 15 countries recognize the Venezuelan putschist. Recuperando la Embajada de #Venezuela en #Honduras después que el impostor enviado por Guaidó la dejara abandonada y en deplorable estado. ¡Bienvenida excelentísima Embajadora Margoth Godoy! ¡Viva Venezuela!@LabGIPP_Libre @XiomaraCastroZ @NicolasMaduro pic.twitter.com/9LcibRz2Yq — Fernando R. Raudales (@NoSoyBotCreanme) January 28, 2022 Venezuelan diplomats restored their control over their lawful embassy in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa on January 27. The foreign minister of Venezuela, Felix Plasencia, was in Tegucigalpa to attend Xiomaro Castro’s inauguration. He called to “advance on the path of integration, progress, and understanding,” and said, “Long live the integration of our peoples!” En nombre del Pdte. @NicolasMaduro y nuestro pueblo de Venezuela agradecemos todos los gestos de cariño y respaldo, expresados por el pueblo valiente de Honduras iQue viva la integración de nuestros pueblos! pic.twitter.com/frLOntpChn — Felix Plasencia (@plasenciafelixr) January 28, 2022 Venezuela’s new ambassador to Honduras, Margaud Godoy, said it was an “honor to share with the first woman president of the brotherly republic of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, with whom, hand in hand with President Nicolás Maduro, we will keep strengthening our historic links that unite our countries.” Que honor compartir con la primera mujer presidenta de la República hermana de Honduras @XiomaraCastroZ , con quién de la mano del Presidente @NicolasMaduro seguiremos estrechando lazos históricos que unen a nuestros países.Juntas en Victoria!#Volvimos #Honduras ?✊ pic.twitter.com/DNzxAfHD1a — Margaud Godoy Peña (@MargaudGodoyP) January 28, 2022 On January 29, Honduras’ new foreign minister, Enrique Reina, delivered Godoy her official credentials, in the presence of Venezuelan Foreign Minister Plasencia. Recibimos las copias de estilo de la Embajadora @MargaudGpsuv en compañía del Canciller @PlasenciaFelix para el restablecimiento de relaciones diplomáticas con la República Bolivariana de Venezuela pic.twitter.com/1fwG8hJ2BZ — Enrique Reina (@EnriqueReinaHN) January 29, 2022 From 2009 to 2022, Honduras was governed by a series of right-wing authoritarian regimes that stole elections in broad daylight. These regimes, which enjoyed staunch support from the United States, were also deeply implicated in drug trafficking and organized crime networks. Xiomara Castro represents the leftist Libre Party, which is led by her husband Manuel Zelaya, the former democratically elected president of Honduras, who was overthrown in the 2009 US-backed coup. Castro and the Libre Party won Honduras’ November 2021 elections in a landslide. Previous right-wing Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) had recognized putschist Juan Guaidó from the very beginning of Washington’s coup attempt in Venezuela, launched in January 2019. Guaidó repeatedly thanked Honduras’ JOH regime for its support. In a surrealistic moment following a May 2020 virtual meeting, Guaidó even publicly thanked JOH for “his support in the fight against drug trafficking.” In reality, JOH is closely linked to drug trafficking, and reportedly used huge sums of drug money to fund his right-wing National Party. Conversé con el Presidente de #Honduras @JuanOrlandoH. Agradezco su apoyo en la lucha contra el narcotráfico y el respaldo a nuestros migrantes. Urge el Gobierno de Emergencia Nacional en Venezuela para salvar al país. La presión del mundo es vital para lograrlo. #UnidosSePuede pic.twitter.com/kRCRVbGM84 — Juan Guaidó (@jguaido) May 20, 2020 JOH’s brother Antonio “Tony” Hernández is in prison in the United States for drug trafficking. In October 2019, a US district court convicted Tony of trafficking approximately 200,000 kilograms (440,000 pounds) of cocaine and machine guns. The court added that Tony Hernández “funneled millions of dollars of drug proceeds to National Party campaigns to impact Honduran presidential elections in 2009, 2013, and 2017.” According to the court, Mexican drug lord El Chapo even paid JOH $1 million to help him rig Honduras’ 2013 national elections.

Write an article about: Top Biden official: US would overthrow Colombia’s new left-wing president 40 years ago. 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.

Colombia, Gustavo Petro, Joe Biden, Juan Gonzalez, Nicaragua, Venezuela

Biden’s top Latin America advisor Juan González threateningly said of Colombia’s new left-wing president, “40 years ago, the United States would have done everything possible to prevent the election of Gustavo Petro” and “sabotage his government.” The top Latin America advisor for US President Joe Biden, Juan Sebastián González, threateningly said of Colombia’s new left-wing president: “40 years ago, the United States would have done everything possible to prevent the election of Gustavo Petro, and once in power it would have done almost everything possible to sabotage his government.” González is the Western hemisphere director for the US National Security Council (NSC). He previously worked in the State Department and NSC in the Barack Obama administration. González made these incendiary comments in Spanish in an interview with the Colombian media. Obliquely acknowledging the long history of US meddling in Latin America’s sovereign internal affairs, González added, “Those are the policies of the Cold War, that to a certain point today for some people are a justification from revisionist perspectives that characterize the policy of the United States in the context of a local manifestation of an empire.” Petro is Colombia’s first ever left-wing president. He is a former revolutionary with socialist armed movement M-19, which signed a peace treaty and demilitarized. Petro subsequently established himself as a lawmaker and became mayor of the capital Bogotá. Although he ran a center-left campaign harshly condemning the socialist governments in Venezuela and Nicaragua, Petro has tempered his criticism since entering office. In the first vote by Petro’s administration at the US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) on August 12, Colombia refused to join in the politically motivated condemnation of Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government. Colombia was absent from the vote, alongside the governments of Mexico, Bolivia, Honduras, and El Salvador, which abstained. Petro has also rapidly pursued the normalization of relations between Colombia and its neighbor Venezuela. Just a few days after winning the election in June, then President-elect Petro held a phone call with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, discussing plans to reopen the border and establish peace. The president of Venezuela’s National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, announced on August 16 that the parliamentary body was coordinating with Colombia’s Senate in order to re-establish formal commercial and diplomatic relations. Petro was inaugurated on August 7. The ceremony was full of important political symbolism. Petro requested that the sword of anti-colonialist leader Simón Bolívar be present. Colombia's armed socialist and anti-imperialist group M-19 put down its weapons in 1990 after signing a peace treaty with the government M-19 became a legal political party. Its leader Carlos Pizarro was a presidential candidate But Colombia's intelligence agencies murdered him — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) August 16, 2022 At the inauguration, Petro was also given the presidential sash by María José Pizarro, a lawmaker from Petro’s left-wing Pacto Histórico party and the daughter of Carlos Pizarro. Carlos Pizarro was the leader of the revolutionary socialist 19th of April Movement (M-19) that Petro had been involved in in his youth. The M-19 demilitarized in 1990 after signing a peace agreement with the Colombian government. Having put down its weapons, M-19 became a legal political party, and Carlos Pizarro was its presidential candidate. But just a few weeks after signing the peace deal, the Colombian state murdered Carlos Pizarro, in an operation organized by the feared Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad (DAS), a notorious intelligence agency that acted as a kind of secret police.

Write an article about: ‘Mexico is not a US colony!’: AMLO condemns invasion threats, celebrates nationalization of oil, lithium. 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.

AMLO, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, cartels, Dan Crenshaw, drugs, Lázaro Cárdenas, Lindsey Graham, lithium, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Mexico, Mike Pompeo, oil, Venezuela, war on drugs

Mexico’s leftist President AMLO condemned “hypocritical” Republicans who want the US military to invade, declaring “Mexico is an independent and free country, not a US colony or protectorate!” In a massive rally, López Obrador also celebrated the expropriation of oil and lithium, condemning exploitative foreign corporations. Mexico’s leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) organized a massive rally in the heart of the capital, honoring the anniversary of the country’s nationalization of its oil reserves and expropriation of foreign corporations. AMLO also used the demonstration as an opportunity to publicly condemn US politicians who have proposed militarily invading Mexico to combat drug trafficking. “We remind those hypocritical and irresponsible politicians that Mexico is an independent and free country, not a colony or a protectorate of the United States!” López Obrador declared. “They can threaten us with committing some kind of abuse, but we will never, ever allow them to violate our sovereignty and trample on the dignity of our homeland!” he asserted. AMLO added, “I want to make it clear that this is no longer the time of [Felipe] Calderón or [Genaro] García Luna, that it is no longer the time of the shady links between the government of Mexico and the agencies of the US government”. The Mexican leader then led a chant: “Cooperation? Yes. Submission? No! Interventionism? No!” AMLO delivered this fiery speech on March 18 in the Zócalo, the plaza in the heart of Mexico City. His government officially convened the event to commemorate the 85th anniversary of the 1938 oil nationalization by revolutionary former President Lázaro Cárdenas. The poster of the Mexican government event celebrating the 85th anniversary of the expropriation of oil by President Lázaro Cárdenas López Obrador dedicated half of his hour-long speech to discussing the history of the Cardenista revolution, and the lessons it provides for today. AMLO praised Cárdenas for challenging foreign corporations and defending national sovereignty, while redistributing land to the poor, protecting labor rights, encouraging unions, and forming an alliance with workers and peasants against the “conservative oligarchy” that had ruled Mexico during the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, before the 1910 revolution. The speech was one of the most passionate examples of López Obrador’s left-wing nationalist ideology. AMLO made clear parallels between the government of Cárdenas and his own government today, between Cárdenas’ oil nationalization and López Obrador’s nationalization of Mexico’s lithium reserves. El zócalo lleno conmemorando la expropiación petrolera, la defensa de la soberanía y la cuarta transformación. pic.twitter.com/qefBTHwh0w — Dra. Claudia Sheinbaum (@Claudiashein) March 19, 2023 This March, a series of far-right US politicians from the Republican Party have called for the military to invade Mexico, in the name of supposedly fighting drug cartels. Extreme-right Congressmember Marjorie Taylor Greene falsely claimed in a March 15 tweet that Mexican cartels “are planting bombs on our land in our country”. (She posted a photo which did not show a bomb, according to US Border Patrol, but rather “a duct-taped ball filled with sand that wasn’t deemed a threat to agents/public”.) “Our US military needs to take action against the Mexican Cartels”, she insisted. “End this Cartel led war against America!” Greene is a Donald Trump loyalist and supporter of the neo-fascist QAnon cult. She ran for office inciting violence against the left, shooting and blowing up the word “socialism” in her campaign ads. Explosive found by Border Patrol Agents Jan 17th. Agents have surveillance of who brought it in and when and confirmed it was the Cartel.This changes everything. Not only are the Cartels murdering Americans everyday through drugs and crime, but now they are planting bombs on… pic.twitter.com/8uxwbd1sOn — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene?? (@RepMTG) March 15, 2023 But Greene is far from alone. Republican Congressmember Dan Crenshaw has introduced multiple bills to authorize the US military to attack cartels in Mexico. Legislation that Crenshaw introduced in January cites the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was passed a week after the 9/11 attacks, in order to justify the US military to invade Mexico. In an op-ed, Crenshaw compared Mexican drug cartels to ISIS, al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein. The Republican lawmaker also called for the US to impose sanctions on Mexico – one of its top three trading partners. The Mexican drug cartels are an enemy every American should want to defeat. We can’t let this chance to save American lives pass us by. My thoughts in @USAToday: https://t.co/AbIhC1qFIw — Rep. Dan Crenshaw (@RepDanCrenshaw) March 8, 2023 Greene wrote that she is “proud to co-sponsor Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s legislation to declare WAR on the Mexican cartels”. “We must authorize the use of military force to eliminate the thugs who are smuggling drugs and illegal aliens across our southern border”, Greene insisted. The far-right Republican also suggested that Washington should impose sanctions on Mexico. “There is a war going on that affects every single American, but it’s not in Ukraine or the Middle East, it’s on our Southern border”, Greene declared. I’m proud to co-sponsor @RepDanCrenshaw’s legislation to declare WAR on the Mexican cartels. We must authorize the use of military force to eliminate the thugs who are smuggling drugs and illegal aliens across our southern border, leading to crime and the murder of countless… — Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene?? (@RepMTG) March 14, 2023 In the US Senate, another Trump ally, Lindsey Graham, wants the US military to intervene in Mexico. “We are going to unleash the fury and might of the U.S. against these cartels”, Graham proclaimed in a March 8 press conference. Graham compared Mexican drug cartels to ISIS and al-Qaeda, referring to them as “narcoterrorists” and calling to “give the military the authority to go after these organizations wherever they exist”. Trump’s former CIA director and secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, published an article declaring, “It Is Time for America To Declare War on the Drug Cartels“. “As Secretary of State, I suggested we use drones to strike the cartels”, he boasted. With blatantly neocolonial rhetoric, Pompeo claimed that Mexico has a “total lack of sovereignty”. (In his memoir, Pompeo admitted that the Trump administration tried to overthrow Venezuela’s government because it supposedly put “out the welcome mat for Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, and the cartels in a twenty-first-century violation of the Monroe Doctrine“, referencing the 200-year-old colonial doctrine.) As Secretary of State, I suggested we use drones to strike the cartels. Here's why:https://t.co/hdys6kVK98 — Mike Pompeo (@mikepompeo) March 17, 2023 Borrowing George W. Bush-era “war on terror” rhetoric, Pompeo referred to the cartels as “narco-terrorist entities”, and insisted that “the U.S. government should designate the major drug cartels – the Gulf Cartel (responsible for the recent kidnapping and murders), the Cartel Del Noreste, the Cartel de Sinaloa, and the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion to name a few – as Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO)”. Pompeo also tried to link China to Mexican drug cartels as well, without any evidence. He asserted that the US war on cartels “will require going after the Chinese Communist Party-backed entities that are funneling precursor compounds to cartels”. In his March 18 speech, López Obrador declared: Friend, I cannot forget to mention that, in recent days, some legislators from the United States, who are accustomed to hypocritically throwing stones while forgetting that they live in glass houses, have a propagandistic plan. As we say here, in popular language, they are scheming. And for electoral purposes, political operatives are saying that, if we don’t stop the traffic of fentanyl to the northern border, they are going to propose in Congress that North American soldiers occupy our territory, to fight organized crime. First, I want to make it clear that this is no longer the time of [Felipe] Calderón or [Genaro] García Luna, that it is no longer the time of the shady links between the government of Mexico and the agencies of the US government. The most important thing is that, from here, from this Zócalo, the political and cultural heart of Mexico, we remind those hypocritical and irresponsible politicians that Mexico is an independent and free country, not a colony or a protectorate of the United States, and that they can threaten us with committing some kind of abuse, but we will never, ever allow them to violate our sovereignty and trample on the dignity of our homeland! Cooperation? Yes. Submission? No! Interventionism? No! AMLO then shouted out the following words, and the audience replied: “Oligarchy? No! Corruption? No! Classism? No! Racism? No! Freedom? Yes! Democracy? Yes! Honesty? Yes! Social justice? Yes! Equality? Yes! Sovereignty? Yes!” The president concluded his speech chanting: “Long live the oil expropriation! Long live the workers and technicians, of before and today, in the national oil industry! Long live General Lázaro Cárdenas del Río! Long live Mexico! Long live Mexico! Long live Mexico!” Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas declaring the nationalization of the railroads in 1937 AMLO spent the first half of his speech discussing the legacy of leftist former President Lázaro Cárdenas. He explained: General Lázaro Cárdenas did not hesitate to rely on those below to carry out his transformation. The general’s strategy can be summarized in three important, consecutive actions. First, he gave land to the peasants and helped the workers. Then, he motivated them to organize. And finally, with that social base, he was able to carry out the expropriation of the oil and other national resources, which Porfirio Díaz had given away to individuals, fundamentally to foreigners. In the Cardenista strategy, the most important thing was meeting the economic and social demands of the peasants and workers. … It is undoubtable that the peasants saw in Cárdenas a faithful representative of the revolutionary cause. The agrarian reform ensured that many people were loyal to the Cardenista government, and from then on, there was an alliance between the peasants and the state. Moreover, during Cardenismo, the workers felt that their labor rights were guaranteed, with strict adherence to the law. Cárdenas respected the economic struggle of workers for better salaries and better labor conditions. … The organization and political mobilization of the masses advanced the goal of valuing the economic independence of our country. Thereby, with the expropriation of the oil corporations, national goods and resources were returned to the nation, which since the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz had been in the hands of foreigners. … There has not existed in Mexico a president as close to humble people as General Cárdenas, nor a president as dedicated to the cause of social justice. For example, already as president, in power in 1935, he wrote in his notes the following: “Ending the miseries that the people suffer from is above all other interests”. … I quote General Cárdenas; he says: “We made considerations of the circumstances that could arise if governments like those of England and the United States, in the interest of supporting the oil companies, pressured the government of Mexico with violent measures. But we also took into account that there is already the threat of a new world war with the growing provocations of Nazi-fascist imperialism, and that this would stop them from attacking Mexico in the case of the expropriation, among other reasons”. And taking advantage of this circumstance, on March 18, 1938, the oil expropriation was carried out. … He then made known, by radio, to all of the nation, the step taken by the government, in defense of its sovereignty, reintegrating into its domain the oil wealth that, as the same general said, “Imperialist capital has been taking advantage of to keep the country in a humiliating situation”. In response to Cárdenas’ expropriation of Mexico’s oil wealth, AMLO explained, “The millionaires requested a US [military] intervention. They complained to the United States”. He then added with a sarcastic tone, “That sounds familiar, that sounds familiar, that sounds familiar”. The millionaires “went and complained so that [the United States] would come here to protect their companies”, AMLO added. But the threat of Nazi Germany and the clear signs that World War Two was coming prevented the US from militarily intervening to stop the nationalization, López Obrador argued. He also noted that the US leader at the time was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom AMLO referred to as “one of the best presidents that that country has had in all of its history”. “But the corporations were not as conscious and respectful” as FDR, López Obrador continued. Foreign corporations thought that “Mexicans were born to enrich foreigners”, he said, “and that God put important natural resources below Mexico’s soil to increase the fortunes in the treasure chests of the exploiters and concessionaires”. AMLO recalled that Cárdenas’ government was forced to “confront a boycott, pressures, and acts of sabotage promoted and funded by the foreign oil companies in our country”. The Mexican president continued: The oil expropriation caused deep discomfort among a minority, above all among the wealthy at the time, in sectors of the middle class, and in the majority of the media. It is interesting, and this is a lesson, to highlight that, historically, the right wing always regroups when a democratic change is trying to be carried out, and it becomes plainly intolerant, and even violent when it comes to social demands in favor of the people and the control of the nation. López Obrador discussed the example of Francisco Madero, a leader of the Mexican Revolution who governed as president from 1911 to 1913, but who was toppled and murdered in a coup d’etat sponsored by the United States and carried out by the right wing. AMLO emphasized: Let us remember that the overthrow of President Madero, our apostle of democracy, relied on the intervention of the US ambassador, but that overthrow was carried out by internal right-wing groups that had previously promoted a campaign of hatred and smears, consisting of ridiculing the leader, President Madero, in their newspapers, to the point of treating him as crazy and spiritualist. As an example of the long history of Mexico’s right-wing elites betraying their country’s national interests in collaboration with foreign corporations, AMLO pointed out that the country’s right-wing party PAN, which governed from 2000 to 2012, had been created in 1939 as a representation of the wealthy oligarchic forces that opposed Cárdenas’ oil expropriation. The Mexican president finally summarized his discussion of Cárdenas: “In this brief history, there are greater lessons. The main one is that only with the people, only with the support of the majority, is it possible to carry out a popular transformation to guarantee justice and confront the reactionaries who don’t want to lose their privileges”. Later in the March 18 speech, AMLO boasted of the unprecedented social spending his government has carried out: All of the [government’s] savings are used to finance social programs, such as pensions for the elderly, support for people with disabilities, single mothers, peasants and fishermen; with scholarships for students from poor families; internet for everyone; programs to build and improve housing; favorable loans; fertilizers and guaranteed prices for small producers in the country; the Wellness Bank; the drive for public education and health care, universal and free. This year, more than 25 million people will receive direct support totaling 600 billion pesos. In other words, out of the 35 million homes that there are in the country, 71% are already benefiting from at least one of the social programs. With this policy of attention to the neediest, the most vulnerable, and especially the youth, we have also been able to reduce crime … [These policies] have allowed us to avoid more debt. We have not requested additional debt since we are in government. … The price of gasoline, diesel, gas, and electricity has not increased. … Also, public investment has increased, which did not happen for many years. This year, more than 1 trillion pesos will be spent on public works. That is to say, we are going to keep building roads, bridges, trains, airports, hospitals, universities, markets, sports facilities, piers, and natural, recreational, and ecological parks. … In the time that we have been in government, the minimum wage has increased by 90% in real terms, and more than double at the border. Do you remember what the lying technocrats said about raising the salary, that there was going to be inflation? Pure nonsense! That is not true. Of course we have to increase wages in a responsible way, to strengthen the internal market, as we are doing, and thereby to achieve well-being for our people. … “We have also directed our resources and efforts toward achieving food self-sufficiency and energy self-sufficiency. … We can ensure that we are guaranteed to have oil sovereignty. Next year, we are not going to buy gasoline, diesel, or other oil products abroad. We are going to process all of our raw materials. … And recently, the lithium was nationalized, strategic minerals used in making batteries, for electric cars and the storage system for clean energy. It fills me with pride to remember that. While listing the accomplishments of his government, López Obrador also referenced the negotiations in 2018 and 2019 that led to replacing NAFTA with the new United States – Mexico – Canada Agreement (USMCA). AMLO said with pride: We were able to remove from the free trade agreement a broad chapter that compromised our oil in that agreement and put in its place a small paragraph that I am going to read to you. It says that the United States and Canada recognize that “Mexico reserves its sovereign right to reform its Constitution and its domestic legislation; and Mexico has the direct, inalienable, and imprescriptible ownership of all hydrocarbons in the subsoil of the national territory”. The Mexican president added: We are going to continue with that collective conscience. We are going to continue pushing back against the dirty war, the smear campaigns, and the manipulation attempts that they will continue to carry out because they have no other choice, our adversaries and their media outlets, sold out, bought up, in the hands of members of the corrupt conservative bloc. But at the same time, we must have faith in the wisdom and loyalty of the people. … I maintain that, whatever they do, the oligarchs will not return to power. An authentic and true democracy will continue to prevail in our beloved Mexico.

Write an article about: Cuba at UN: Biden continues Trump’s criminal attacks and unconventional warfare. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Cuba, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Miguel Díaz-Canel, Puerto Rico, reparations, UN, United Nations, Venezuela

Excerpts from Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel’s speech at the UN, where he condemned US imperialism, while calling for reparations for slavery and independence for colony Puerto Rico Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel spoke at the United Nations General Assembly on September 23. The Cuban leader condemned US imperialism in Latin America and around the world. Noting that the Joe Biden administration has continued Donald Trump’s aggressive policies of unconventional warfare in seek of regime change, Díaz-Canel said the failure of the two-decade military occupation of Afghanistan shows that “where the United States intervenes, it increases instability, deaths, suffering, and leaves long-lasting scars.” Díaz-Canel also called for reparations for slavery and independence for US colony Puerto Rico. Translated key excerpts of his speech follow below. At the UN, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel denounced US imperialism, which "threatens, extorts and pressures sovereign states," demanding its "allies" help "overthrow legitimate governments" He noted murderous sanctions have "become the central instrument of US foreign policy" pic.twitter.com/SCVdIEp8f3 — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021 “Under the leadership of and with the permanent instigation by the United States, a dangerous international schism is being promoted.” “With the harmful use and abuse of coercive economic measures, which has become the central instrument of the foreign policy of the United States, the government of that country threatens, extorts, and pressures sovereign states so that they speak out and act against those that are deemed adversaries.” “It [the US] demands that its allies build coalitions to overthrow legitimate governments, break trade agreements, abandon and ban certain technologies, and apply unjustified legal measures against citizens of countries that don’t submit to them.” Cuba's president condemned the Biden admin. for continuing Trump's same criminal policies, waging an "unconventional war," with millions of dollars, "through campaigns of manipulation and lies." The US goal is "to erase the Cuban Revolution." "They do not accept alternatives." pic.twitter.com/wXA8qBe7XH — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021 “The current Democratic administration [of Joe Biden] has maintained, without any changes, the 243 coercive measures adopted by the government of Donald Trump, including its decision to put Cuba on the false and immoral list of countries that supposedly sponsor terrorism.” “It is in this context that an unconventional war is being waged against our country, to which the US government dedicates, as is publicly documented, millions of dollars, through campaigns of manipulation and lies, which use new information technologies and other digital platforms to internally and externally project an absolutely false image of Cuban reality, to sow confusion, to destabilize, to discredit the country, and to justify its doctrine of regime change.” “They have done all of this to erase the Cuban Revolution off the political map of the world. They do not accept alternatives to the model they have in mind for their ‘backyard.’ Their plan is perverse and incompatible with the ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ they preach.” "For more than 60 years, the US government has not for one minute stopped its attacks against Cuba." At the UN, Cuban President Díaz-Canel condemns the United States for tightening its murderous blockade "in such a criminal and opportunist way, in the middle of the pandemic." pic.twitter.com/mROK7ZIoPi — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021 “Independent and sovereign states are being driven, under many pressures, to subordinate themselves to Washington’s will, and to a political order based on ever-changing rules.” “For more than 60 years, the United States government has not for one minute stopped its attacks against Cuba. But in this crucial and challenging moment for all of the world’s nations, its aggression is over the limits.” “The longest and cruelest economic, comercial, and financial blockade that has ever been imposed on any nation [the US blockade on Cuba] has gotten even worse, in such a criminal and opportunist way, in the middle of the pandemic.” At the United Nations, Cuban President Díaz-Canel noted the US uses the term "international community" only to refer to its client states. "It is behavior associated with ideological and cultural intolerance, with a heavily racist influence and hegemonic goals," he said. pic.twitter.com/9GlEU9FVys — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021 “It [the US] often uses the term ‘international community’ to refer to a small group of governments that go along with, without ever questioning, the will of Washington. As for the rest of the world’s countries, the vast majority of this organization, it seems we do not have space in the definition of ‘international community’ that the United States promotes.” “It is behavior associated with ideological and cultural intolerance, with a heavily racist influence and hegemonic goals.” Cuba used its global platform at the United Nations General Assembly to call for reparations for slavery pic.twitter.com/RD05FnM57j — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021 “We join the nations of the Caribbean in their call for just reparations for the horrors of slavery and the treatment of slaves. We support their right to a fair, special, and defined agreement, which is indispensable to confront the challenges caused by climate change, natural disasters, the unjust international financial system, and the difficult conditions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic.” At the United Nations, Cuba called for an end to US colonialism in Puerto Rico. “We reaffirm that the brotherly people of Puerto Rico should be free and independent, after more than a century subjected to colonial domination.” pic.twitter.com/xmwjw3YXPW — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021 “We reaffirm that the brotherly people of Puerto Rico should be free and independent, after more than a century subjected to colonial domination.” Cuba: "It has been proven that, where the US intervenes, it increases instability, deaths, suffering." "The United Nations cannot ignore the lesson in Afghanistan." After two decades of US occupation, the only one who benefited from the war was the Military-Industrial Complex. pic.twitter.com/Jf3CvmUmEV — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 23, 2021 “The United Nations cannot ignore the lesson in Afghanistan. They had to go through two decades of occupation, with an outcome of thousands of deaths, 10 million people displaced, and billions of dollars spent, which became profits for the Military-Industrial Complex, all to come to the conclusion that terrorism can neither be prevented nor combatted with bombs, that occupation only leaves destruction, and that no country has the right to impose its will on sovereign nations.” “Afghanistan is not an isolated case. It has been proven that, where the United States intervenes, it increases instability, deaths, suffering, and leaves long-lasting scars.” In the final section of his speech at the United Nations, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel also addressed numerous important issues in international affairs. He reaffirmed support for Venezuela and Nicaragua, and called for an end to US aggression against those countries. Díaz-Canel demanded “the end to foreign interference in Syria and full respect for its sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The Cuban president called for justice for Palestinians and an end to the illegal Israeli occupation. He condemned the criminal sanctions imposed on Iran. Díaz-Canel reaffirmed solidarity with the people of Western Sahara. He condemned the “unilateral and unjust sanctions” imposed on the DPRK (North Korea). “We demand the end to the foreign interference in the internal affairs of the Republic of Belarus,” the Cuban leader added, reiterating support for its President Alexander Lukashenko. Díaz-Canel emphasized Cuba’s endorsement of the One China Policy, recognizing Taiwan as part of China, adding, “we oppose any attempt to harm the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China, as well as interference in its internal affairs.” He also denounced “the intent to expand NATO’s presence up to the borders of Russia, the interference in affairs that are inherent to its sovereignty, and the imposition of unilateral and unjust sanctions against it.”

Write an article about: Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia back Peru’s President Castillo, condemn ‘anti-democratic harassment’. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

AMLO, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Evo Morales, Gustavo Petro, Luis Arce, Mexico, Pedro Castillo, Peru

Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Bolivia released a joint statement supporting Peru’s elected President Pedro Castillo, saying he is a “victim of anti-democratic harassment,” following a US-backed right-wing coup. The governments of Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, and Bolivia released a joint statement supporting Peru’s democratically elected President Pedro Castillo, saying he is a “victim of anti-democratic harassment.” Castillo was overthrown in a coup d’etat on December 7, led by the infamously corrupt right-wing opposition that controls Peru’s unicameral congress, which has an approval rating of between 7% and 11%. The US-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) and State Department have openly supported the coup, backing unelected leader Dina Boluarte, who declared herself president in collaboration with the congress. Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, and Colombia wrote that they “express their profound concern for the recent events that resulted in the removal and detention of José Pedro Castillo Terrones, president of the Republic of Peru.” “For the world, it is not news that President Castillo Terrones, since the day of his election, was victim of anti-democratic harassment,” the countries wrote. Comunicado conjunto de los gobiernos de Argentina, Colombia, México y Bolivia sobre la situación en Perú ??https://t.co/IINiFFqLSa — Cancillería Argentina ?? (@CancilleriaARG) December 12, 2022 They added that Castillo has also been subjected to illegal “judicial treatment” – an allusion to the relentless lawfare (judicial warfare) that Peru’s right-wing opposition has waged against the president and his top officials and political allies. Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, and Colombia stressed that this harassment violates the 1969 American Convention on Human Rights. “Our governments call on all actors involved in the previous process to prioritize the citizens’ will that was expressed at the ballot box,” they wrote, adding, “We urge those who make up the institutions to refrain from reversing the popular will expressed by the free vote.” In other words, they called for recognizing Castillo as the only democratic, constitutional president of Peru. The countries emphasized, “We also request that the authorities full respect the human rights of the President Pedro Castillo and that he is guaranteed legal protection” that is established in the American Convention on Human Rights. When the coup in Peru was carried out, on December 7, Mexico’s left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) wrote: “We considerate it terrible that, because of the interests of economic and political elites, since the beginning of the legitimate presidency of Pedro Castillo, an environment of confrontation and hostility was maintained against him, leading him to take decisions that have served his adversaries to remove him.” AMLO was referring to Castillo’s decision to dissolve Peru’s coup-plotting congress – an action that is allowed in certain cases of obstructionism according to article 134 of the country’s constitution. desde el comienzo de la presidencia legítima de Pedro Castillo, se haya mantenido un ambiente de confrontación y hostilidad en su contra hasta llevarlo a tomar decisiones que le han servido a sus adversarios para consumar su destitución 2/3 — Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) December 7, 2022 Colombia’s first ever left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, likewise wrote that “Pedro Castillo, for being a teacher from la Sierra [the mountainous rural region in the Andes], elected by the people, was cornered from the first day.” “When I met Pedro Castillo, they [the right-wing opposition] were trying to break in to the presidential palace to detain his wife and his daughter,” Petro recalled. “He received me distressed. A parliamentary coup was already being developed against him,” the Colombian president said. Cuando conocí a Pedro Castillo intentaban allanar el palacio de gobierno para detener a su esposa y a su hija. Atribulado me recibió. Ya se desarrollaba un golpe parlamentario en su contra Me sorprendii que se quedaran encerrados en el Palacio, aislados del pueblo que los eligio — Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) December 8, 2022 On the day of the coup, Bolivia’s President Luis Arce also publicly warned, “Since the beginning, the Peruvian right tried to overthrow the government that was democratically elected by the people, by the humble classes that seek more inclusion and social justice.” “We regret what has occurred in the sisterly republic of Peru, where we send our solidarity,” he said. The Bolivian president added, “The constant harassment by anti-democratic elites against progressive, popular, and legitimate governments should be condemned by everyone.” El constante hostigamiento de élites antidemocráticas contra gobiernos progresistas, populares y legítimamente constituidos, debe ser condenado por todas y todos. Abogamos porque la democracia, la paz y respeto a los Derechos Humanos, prevalezcan en beneficio del pueblo peruano. — Luis Alberto Arce Catacora (Lucho Arce) (@LuchoXBolivia) December 7, 2022 Bolivia’s former President Evo Morales, who was himself overthrown in a US-backed right-wing coup in 2019, said the latest putsch showed “once again that the Peruvian oligarchy and the US empire do not accept that leaders who are union organizers and Indigenous rise to government to work for the people.” Morales added that “the political crisis” in Peru “was provoked by the permanent conspiring of the Fujimorista right wing and right-wing media outlets against a government elected at the ballot box, whose ‘unforgiveable crime’ was representing the poorest people.” La crisis política que afecta al hermano pueblo peruano, al Perú profundo especialmente, fue provocada por la conspiración permanente de la derecha fujimorista y medios derechistas contra un gobierno elegido en las urnas cuyo "delito imperdonable" fue representar a los más pobres — Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) December 7, 2022 Morales later tweeted that the “congressional coup by the right wing in Peru calls us to have a deep reflection.” “A government elected by the people never should abandon its ideological base, or distance itself from its militancy. Thinking that the right wing will accept presidents from popular movements is the worst historical error,” he cautioned. El golpe congresal de la derecha en Perú nos llama a una profunda reflexión. Un gobierno elegido por el pueblo nunca debe abandonar su base ideológica ni alejarse de su militancia. Pensar que la derecha puede aceptar presidentes de movimientos populares es el peor error histórico — Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) December 10, 2022 When the Peruvian people took to the streets in large protests against the coup, demanding the freedom of Castillo, fresh elections, and a new constitution, Morales wrote on December 12: “In the November 2019 coup, humble people confronted the armed repression of the coup-plotters in Bolivia. In the congressional coup in Peru, humble people are confronted by the repression of the coup-plotting right wing. The Patria Grande [movement seeking Latin American regional unity] demands justice for our massacred brothers.” En el golpe de noviembre de 2019, el pueblo humilde enfrentó la represión armada de los golpistas en #Bolivia. En el golpe congresal de #Perú, el pueblo humilde se enfrenta a la represión de la derecha golpista. La Patria Grande reclama justicia para nuestros hermanos masacrados pic.twitter.com/WrKagcyOnW — Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) December 13, 2022 Morales followed up again on December 13, stating: “We join the shout that defenders of life and human rights are making demanding a stop to the massacres of our Indigenous brothers in Peru, that they respect their vote and a democracy that represents them. No government whose hands are stained with the blood of the people is legitimate.” Nos unimos al clamor de defensores de la vida y Derechos Humanos para exigir que paren la masacre de nuestros hermanos indígenas en #Perú que reclaman respeto a su voto y una democracia que los represente. Ningún gobierno que se manche las manos con sangre del pueblo es legítimo pic.twitter.com/8NTwnFT3Mj — Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) December 13, 2022

Write an article about: Argentina will attend BRICS summits, at China’s invitation, in step toward ‘formal entry’. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Alberto Fernández, Argentina, Brazil, BRICS, China, IMF

China invited Argentina to attend the 2022 summits of the BRICS economic bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Argentina’s ambassador says it’s a step toward “formal entry” to the grouping, an alternative to the US-dominated financial system. China has invited Argentina to attend the 2022 summits of the BRICS, a loose economic bloc bringing together Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The BRICS was founded as an alternative to the US-dominated financial architecture, uniting semi-peripheral countries in the imperialist world system, often referred to as “emerging economies.” The grouping is a model of the principle of South-South cooperation. Chinese President Xi Jinping personally sent a special invitation to Argentina to attend the BRICS summits, and Buenos Aires accepted Beijing’s offer. Argentina’s ambassador to China, Sabino Vaca Narvaja, said the invitation “is extremely important,” and constitutes a step toward “formal entry” into the BRICS. BRICS will hold virtual summits for the foreign ministers and presidents of its members on May 20 and June 24, respectively. This is not the first time Argentina’s incorporation into the BRICS framework has been discussed. In early 2014, India called for Argentina to be added to the alliance, and Russia invited the South American nation to the summit that same year. If Argentina joins, the grouping may be renamed BRICSA. At the heart of the BRICS is the New Development Bank, an alternative to the World Bank, as well as the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, a rival to the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF). BRICS members have already said they would support Argentina joining the bloc’s New Development Bank. Argentina is trapped in $44.5 billion of odious debt from the IMF, and has sought other financial opportunities to ease this crushing burden. This February, Argentine President Alberto Fernández took a historic trip to China and Russia In his meeting with President Xi, Fernández said he wants his country to join the BRICS. “I’m certain Argentina has to stop being so dependent on the [International Monetary] Fund and the United States, and has to open up to other places, and that is where it seems to me that Russia has a very important place,” Fernández explained in Moscow. During his visit to Beijing, Fernández signed an agreement officially incorporating Argentina into China’s global Belt and Road Initiative. Argentina is trapped in $44 billion of odious debt from the US-controlled IMF. Seeking alternatives to US hegemony, Argentina's President Alberto Fernández traveled to Russia and China, forming an alliance with the Eurasian powers, joining the Belt & Roadhttps://t.co/rTbO1ZGsPE — Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) February 6, 2022 The foreign policy of Argentina’s centrist government, led by Alberto Fernández, is full of contradictions. While trying to strengthen its relations with China, and to a lesser extent Russia, Argentina has also been careful not to upset the United States. Fernández did oppose the US-backed far-right coup that overthrew Bolivia’s democratically elected socialist government in 2019, and subsequently provided refuge to toppled President Evo Morales and officials from his Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) Party. But Fernández’s centrist administration has taken an aggressive approach against other leftist governments in the region. Although Argentina claims to have a non-interventionist foreign policy, it has joined the US-led campaign to isolate Nicaragua’s socialist Sandinista government. Fernández’s government likewise joined Washington in voting to expel Russia from the UN Human Rights Council over its war in Ukraine. The rise of far-right presidents Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Narendra Modi in India, both of whom are very supportive of the United States, has weakened the BRICS framework since it was founded in 2009. But Brazil’s left-wing former president Lula da Silva, a co-founder of the BRICS, has vowed to strengthen the bloc if he wins the October 2022 elections. Polls show him consistently leading over Bolsonaro. Lula’s former foreign minister, Celso Amorim, has said that a Brazil under Lula’s leadership would strongly support Argentina joining the BRICS, calling it “very important” for the region. Argentina has the third-largest economy in Latin America, following Brazil and Mexico. Mexico has also been considered as a potential member, but was likely excluded because it is already part of the Western-led Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Write an article about: Atrapada en la deuda del FMI, Argentina se alia con Rusia y China y se une a la Franja y la Ruta. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Alberto Fernández, Argentina, China, Covid-19, deuda, FMI, Rusia, vacunas, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping

Argentina está atrapada con $44 mil millones de deuda odiosa del FMI, controlado por EEUU. Buscando alternativas a la hegemonía estadounidense, el presidente Alberto Fernández viajó a Rusia y China, formando una alianza con las potencias euroasiáticas, incorporándose a la Iniciativa de la Franja y la Ruta. (You can read this article in English here.) Estados Unidos interviene constantemente en los asuntos internos de América Latina, organizando golpes de estado, desestabilizando gobiernos independientes, endeudando a las naciones e imponiendo sanciones. Washington ve la región como propiedad propia, y el presidente Joe Biden se refirió a ella este enero como su “patio delantero”. En busca de alternativas a la hegemonía estadounidense, los gobiernos progresistas de América Latina han mirado cada vez más al otro lado del océano para formar alianzas con China y Rusia. El presidente de Argentina, Alberto Fernández, hizo exactamente eso este febrero, realizando viajes históricos a Beijing y Moscú para reunirse con sus homólogos Xi Jinping y Vladimir Putin. Fernández firmó una serie de acuerdos estratégicos, incorporando oficialmente a Argentina a la Iniciativa de la Franja y la Ruta de Beijing, al tiempo que ampliaba sus alianzas económicas con las potencias euroasiáticas y decía a Moscú que Argentina “debe ser la puerta de entrada” a América Latina. China le ofreció $23.700 millones de dólares en financiamiento para proyectos de infraestructura e inversiones en la economía argentina. En las reuniones, Fernández también pidió que Argentina se sume al sistema BRICS, junto a Brasil, Rusia, India, China y Sudáfrica. Según los informes, Xi y Putin estuvieron de acuerdo. “Argentina tiene que dejar de tener esa dependencia tan grande que tiene con el FMI y los Estados Unidos, y tiene que abrirse camino hacia otros lados”, Fernández dijo. Los comentarios y las reuniones del presidente argentino con Putin y Xi molestaron al gobierno de EEUU. Argentina es una gran potencia latinoamericana, con importantes recursos naturales y la tercera economía más grande de la región (después de Brasil y México, que tienen poblaciones significativamente más grandes). Pero el desarrollo de Argentina a menudo ha sido lastrado por trampas de la deuda impuestas desde el exterior, lo que ha creado frecuentes crisis económicas, ciclos inflacionarios y devaluaciones de la moneda. El Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI), un brazo económico de Estados Unidos, sobre el cual solo Washington tiene poder de veto, tiene un control significativo sobre Argentina, habiendo atrapado a la nación en enormes sumas de deuda odiosa. En 2018, el presidente derechista de Argentina, Mauricio Macri, solicitó el préstamo más grande en la historia del FMI: un asombroso rescate de $57.100 millones de dólares. Macri era infame por su corrupción, y esto no era un secreto. Al aceptar dar una suma tan enorme de dinero al gobierno de Macri, plagado de escándalos, el FMI sabía que estaba atrapando a Argentina en una deuda que no podría pagar. Pero esta no fue la primera vez que el instrumento financiero dominado por Estados Unidos había atrapado a Argentina en una deuda odiosa. En diciembre de 2021, el FMI publicó un informe interno en el que admitió que el rescate de 2018 fracasó por completo en estabilizar la economía argentina. Pero cuando el presidente de centroizquierda de Argentina, Alberto Fernández, asumió el cargo en diciembre de 2019, su país estaba atrapado en una deuda de $44.5 mil millones de este programa que el propio FMI admitió que fue un fracaso total. ($44,500 millones del préstamo de los $57,100 millones ya se habían desembolsado, y Fernández canceló el resto.) El gobierno argentino ha intentado renegociar la deuda, pero el FMI ha impuesto condiciones que restringen severamente la soberanía de la nación – como nombrar a un economista británico que “será virtualmente el nuevo ministro de economía“, actuando como una especie de “cogobierno”, advirtió la destacada diplomática Alicia Castro. Buscando formas de evitar estas trampas de la deuda de EEUU, Fernández decidió en febrero volverse hacia las dos superpotencias emergentes de Eurasia. El 3 de febrero, el presidente Alberto Fernández viajó a Rusia para reunirse con el presidente Vladimir Putin. “Yo estoy empecinado en que la Argentina tiene que dejar de tener esa dependencia tan grande que tiene con el Fondo y con Estados Unidos. Tiene que abrirse camino a otros lados y me parece que ahí Rusia tiene un lugar muy importante”, dijo el mandatario. ???? | "Estamos dando un paso importante para que la Argentina y Rusia profundicen sus lazos", expresó el presidente @alferdez en una declaración conjunta que brindó junto a su par Vladímir Putin. #GiraPresidencial ? @KremlinRussia_Ehttps://t.co/aHl8tOuPZy pic.twitter.com/APoQR6VHtU — Casa Rosada (@CasaRosada) February 3, 2022 Fernández agregó, “Tendríamos que ver la manera de que Argentina se convierta en una puerta de entrada para que Rusia ingrese a América Latina”. El mandatario argentino le dijo a Putin, “Yo quiero que usted tenga la certeza de que veo una gran oportunidad para que podamos avanzar. Y quiero que sepa que tiene en mí un amigo que quiere ver de qué modo podemos avanzar juntos”. Los dos líderes hablaron de la inversión rusa en la economía argentina, el comercio, la construcción de ferrocarriles y la tecnología energética. Fernández también agradeció a Moscú por colaborar con su país en la producción de su vacuna Sputnik V contra la covid-19. Argentina fue el primer país del hemisferio occidental en hacerlo. El presidente argentino incluso señaló en su reunión que ha recibido tres dosis de la vacuna Sputnik V. Putin agregó: “Yo también”. Putin dijo que los dos países están de acuerdo en muchos temas y calificó a Argentina como “uno de los socios claves de Rusia en América Latina”. Es un honor haberme reunido con Vladímir Putin, presidente de Rusia. Tuvimos la oportunidad de intercambiar ideas sobre cómo podemos complementar mucho más el vínculo entre nuestras naciones. pic.twitter.com/ntmDGn6jtD — Alberto Fernández (@alferdez) February 3, 2022 Apenas tres días después de reunirse con Putin, el presidente Alberto Fernández viajó a China el 6 de febrero para reunirse con el presidente Xi Jinping. En este viaje histórico, Argentina se unió oficialmente a la Iniciativa Belt and Road de Beijing, un programa de infraestructura global masivo. Fernández y otros altos funcionarios argentinos firmaron acuerdos por $23.700 millones de dólares en financiamiento chino, incluyendo inversiones y proyectos de infraestructura. El financiamiento se desembolsará en dos partes: una, que ya está aprobada, proporcionará a Argentina $14 mil millones para 10 proyectos de infraestructura; el segundo, por $9.700 millones, financiará la integración de la nación sudamericana a la Franja y la Ruta. Hay tres proyectos chino-argentinos que encabezaban la lista de Fernández: la creación de redes 5G, el desarrollo de la industria argentina del litio y la construcción de la planta de energía nuclear Atucha III. Tuve una cordial, amistosa y fructífera reunión con Xi Jinping, presidente de China. Acordamos la incorporación de Argentina a la Franja y la Ruta de la Seda. Es una excelente noticia. Nuestro país obtendrá más de US$ 23 mil millones de inversiones chinas para obras y proyectos. pic.twitter.com/LGyIJ6zWdG — Alberto Fernández (@alferdez) February 6, 2022 Fernández también habló de la producción argentina de la vacuna de Sinopharm contra la covid-19, además de la Sputnik V de Rusia. Argentina y China firmaron un memorándum de entendimiento integral, que incluye 13 documentos de cooperación en áreas como energía verde, tecnología, educación, agricultura, comunicación y energía nuclear. Fernández y Xi hablaron de maneras para “profundizar las relaciones de cooperación política, comercial, económica, científica y cultural entre ambos países”, según una declaración del gobierno argentino tras la reunión. Aparentemente, los dos líderes se llevaron muy bien, y Fernández le dijo a Xi, “Si usted fuera argentino, sería peronista“. ???? | El presidente @alferdez mantuvo reuniones sobre el proyecto de producir en Argentina la vacuna de Sinopharm, participó de la inauguración de los JJOO de Invierno #Beijing2022 y visitó el Museo de la Historia del Partido Comunista. #GiraPresidencialhttps://t.co/acSH9rvpM7 pic.twitter.com/Edz7hHRLE8 — Casa Rosada (@CasaRosada) February 4, 2022 La incorporación de Argentina a la Franja y la Ruta se produce pocas semanas después de que Nicaragua se uniera a la iniciativa en enero, y Cuba en diciembre. Los crecientes vínculos de América Latina con China y Rusia muestran cómo el sistema internacional cada vez más multipolar ofrece a los países del Sur Global nuevos aliados que pueden servir como baluartes y alternativas a la hegemonía de Washington. Mientras los líderes derechistas de América Latina siguen mirando al norte a Estados Unidos como su brújula política, los gobiernos progresistas cruzan el océano hacia las potencias euroasiáticas de China, Rusia e Irán, construyendo nuevas alianzas internacionales que debilitan el control geopolítico de Washington sobre una región que el presidente de EEUU aún insiste es su “patio delantero”.

Write an article about: Menos de 15 países reconocen al golpista venezolano Juan Guaidó. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

golpe de estado, Juan Guaidó, Julio Borges, Leopoldo López, Nicolás Maduro, PSUV, Venezuela

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

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

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

Brazilian neo-Nazis and supporters of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro have spent years collaborating with violent fascists in Ukraine, and even launched a campaign to “Ukrainize” Brazil. (This article was first published at MintPress News, under a Creative Commons license.) SÃO PAULO – A small group of supporters of Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro became social media celebrities after they crossed the border into Ukraine this February and March to fight against Russia. These right-wing Brazilians posed with assault rifles on Instagram, reciting prayers to the special forces, sharing video monologues praising the brotherhood of people from around the world who had gathered in a training base near the Ukrainian city of Lviv to kill Russian “communists.” The group’s inexperience was demonstrated by the fact that most of their social media posts included their geo-location information. This all changed following a missile attack on the training base near the western Ukrainian city of Lviv on March 13, after which a series of more humble photos and videos began cropping up on their Twitter and Instagram feeds. From across the Polish border, Bolsonaro supporter Jefferson Kleidian posted a selfie brandishing an injured pinky finger and thanking God for one more day on Earth. Brazilian Bolsonaro supporter and former combatant Jefferson Kleidian thanks God for one more day on Earth from a safe place in Poland Another right-wing influencer, Andre Hack, posted that he had lost friends at the base. 28-year-old shooting-range instructor and Bolsonaro fanatic Tiago Rossi tweeted a video saying he had fled the base immediately before the missile strike. “Our entire legion was destroyed, the information I have is that everyone died. You don’t understand what it’s like to have a fighter jet fire a missile at you. I didn’t think it was a real war,” Rossi said. "You guys don't understand what it's like to have a jet shoot a missile at you."So war isn't a movie or a video game.Brazilian describes what happened when Russians missiles hit the base where the foreign legion was deployed.Thanks to @BrianMteleSUR for translation. https://t.co/1HFcXi6zby pic.twitter.com/DZRPDQmiDP — Margaret Kimberley (@freedomrideblog) March 14, 2022 What were these Brazilians doing in Ukraine in the first place? In order to answer that question, one has to look back at the resurgence of Nazi ideology in Brazil and the deepening relationship between Brazil’s neo-Nazi groups, which have grown by a staggering 270% since Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019, and Ukrainian neo-Nazi organizations like Azov. During the 1930s, Brazil was home to the largest German Nazi party outside of Europe and had a much larger local fascist movement, called the integralistas, that tried to enact a coup in 1938. The coup was crushed, but the ideology lived on in a country that already suffered from severe structural racism as the last place in the Americas to eradicate slavery. Brazil’s current president, Jair Bolsonaro, made it into power only after a joint operation by the US Department of Justice and Brazilian public prosecutors to jail the leading 2018 presidential candidate, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, on false charges. Bolsonaro began his career as an army captain during a sub-fascist military dictatorship, which employed Gestapo tactics like death squads and torture against labor union leaders, intellectuals, and communists. As a congressman in 2004, Bolsonaro wrote a series of letters to neo-Nazi websites, saying things like “you guys are the reason I am in politics.” Grounded on a platform of anti-communist hate speech, his presidency unleashed a flood of public support for fascism, which had been latent since the end of the dictatorship. According to Brazilian law, Nazi organizations are illegal, but according to anthropology professor and anti-Nazi researcher Adriana Dias, there are currently 530 neo-Nazi cells operating in Brazil. Since 2012, these organizations have had increasing interactions with Ukrainian Nazi organizations, which have resulted in Brazilian Nazis gaining combat experience with Azov in Donbas. This has also led to a campaign to “Ukraine Brazil,” run by a right-wing extremist faction of Bolsonaro supporters. Sara Fernanda Giromini was a teenager involved in Nazi skinhead gangs in Sao Paulo when she opened a VK account, made friends with Russian and Ukrainian neo-Nazis, and learned about FEMEN, after reading about it on Facebook. VK is a popular Russian social media platform. Giromini first visited Ukraine in 2011, where she met and trained with FEMEN leaders and other actors from the Ukrainian far-right. After returning to Brazil in 2012, she started calling herself Sarah Winter in homage to the English fascist of the 1920s. A series of topless protests transformed Giromini into a celebrity, but FEMEN Brazil imploded in less than a year. Bruna Themis, number two in the organization, resigned and gave a series of whistleblowing interviews, saying that the Ukrainians demanded they kick out any Brazilian woman who didn’t meet their sexist physical appearance and weight standards; that the real leader of the group was a minor far-right politician named Andrey Cuia, who frequently traveled back and forth to Ukraine; and that Cuia and Giromini were ripping off donors and keeping the money for themselves. After posing with guns and threatening violence against Supreme Court ministers, Brazilian fascist “Sara Winter (Sara Giromini) was put under house arrest Shortly afterward, FEMEN Ukraine announced that FEMEN Brazil had nothing to do with them, despite the fact that Giromini was arrested during a FEMEN protest in Kiev in 2012. Giromini now says that during her time in FEMEN, they paid her $2,000 per protest. According to Adriana Dias, the anti-Nazi researcher, after FEMEN folded, Giromini began inviting Ukrainian neo-Nazis to Brazil. She remains friends with several leaders of Azov and the Phoenix Battalion on her VK account to this day. In 2016, civil police in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul, home to several waves of German and Italian immigration and a long fascist tradition of its own, carried out an investigation into neo-Nazi groups that were planning violent attacks against Afro-Brazilians, Jews, and LGBT+ people. They discovered that a Ukrainian neo-Nazi militia, Misanthropic Division, was recruiting Brazilian Nazis in seven cities in the state to serve as volunteer combatants with Azov in the Donbas region. The investigation, which was dubbed “Operation Azov,” received ample coverage in the Brazilian and Israeli press at the time. After leading candidate Lula da Silva was arbitrarily imprisoned during the 2018 election campaign, Bolsonaro was swept into office on a wave of Nazi-influenced anti-communist propaganda that led him to label any person or organization that ever criticized him as a communist. At one point he even called the oldest conservative magazine in the world, The Economist, “The Communist.” Giromini, by this time a vocal member of the anti-abortion movement, campaigned heavily for Bolsonaro. After he took office in 2019, she began a public call to “Ukrainize Brazil.” Many of the most reactionary public figures associated with Bolsonaro, like openly fascist Rio de Janeiro lawmaker Daniel Silveira, joined the campaign. Dias says, “Azov’s tactic has always been to bring a group of 300 people to a city and, through training activities with locals, start a right-wing extremist movement.” Giromini relocated to the capital Brasilia and started an organization called the “Group of 300” to help build support for the Ukrainization of Brazil. In 2020, after the Brazilian Supreme Court blocked one of Bolsonaro’s attempts to bypass the constitution, Giromini’s Group of 300 camped out on the national esplanade, held a series of tiki torch-wielding protests in front of the court building, and shot fireworks at it. Posing for selfies with guns, Giromini called for violence against Supreme Court ministers. On July 15, 2020, the Supreme Court ordered her arrest. After two weeks in jail, she was given an ankle bracelet, transferred to house arrest, and ordered to stay off social media. She has been there ever since. Brazilian fascist Sara Winter (Sara Giromini) leading a “Group of 300” protest in front of the Supreme Court Sara Giromini AKA Winter, leading a protest in front of the Supreme Court Meanwhile, Ukrainian flags and symbols of the Ukrainian far-right became more and more popular at pro-Bolsonaro rallies. In 2020, a former soldier and security consultant named Alex Silva, who has been living in Kiev since 2014 and says he is a member of an “auxiliary volunteer police force” there, triggered a media controversy that led to an official disclaimer from the Ukrainian Embassy when he hoisted a red-and-black Right Sector flag onto a sound truck at a Bolsonaro rally and was photographed walking through the crowd wearing it like a cape. Silva, now back in Kiev, has become another internet celebrity to the Brazilian far-right, posting videos of his armed voluntary patrols of Kiev as recently as this March. Far-right Brazilian influencer Alex Silva, a former soldier and “voluntary auxiliary policeman” in Kiev, draped in a Right Sector flag at a 2020 protest in Sao Paulo Leonel Radde is a Porto Alegre city councilor who spends a lot of his time investigating neo-Nazi groups in Rio Grande do Sul. Asked about connections between Brazilian and Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups, he said: We see clearly that the majority of Nazi groups here use Ukrainian design elements. They are using the same symbols – mainly the black sun — and they all use this discourse of Ukrainizing Brazil. They also talk among themselves about adapting Ukrainian tactics for setting up camps and occupying public squares and things like that. They are definitely trying to copy what happened in Ukraine in 2014. We are trying to figure out how much they are just copying things they see on the internet or if they are being financed from the Ukraine, although Sarah Winter spent time near Porto Alegre doing organizing work and she started this whole thing.” Meanwhile, far-right social media influencers like Alex Silva are still sending reports from Ukraine. This March the Ukrainian Embassy in Brasilia said it received 100 requests from Brazilians asking to volunteer for the Ukrainian army, and UOL reports that analysis of pro-Bolsonaro social media groups shows that 500 others are planning to go. Whether the missile attack near Lviv and reports coming in from scared-looking former Brazilian combatants who have escaped to Poland will change any of that has yet to be seen. Regardless, it is clear that political indoctrination by Ukrainian Nazis has taken hold among Brazil’s growing far-right, and will be a factor in the 2022 presidential election season.

Write an article about: Taiwan separatists lose key ally, Honduras recognizes China – just 12 small countries remain. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

China, coup, Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, Nicaragua, Taiwan, Xiomara Castro

Honduras’ leftist President Xiomara Castro officially recognized China. Now only 12 UN member states have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan separatists. They have a combined population of less than 39 million, or 0.49% of the planet. Update (March 26): Honduras announced on March 25 that it officially established formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. The Honduran Foreign Ministry publicly recognized the One China Policy – that there is only one China, represented by the People’s Republic, and that Taiwan is a province of it. “The two governments agreed to develop links of friendship”, the Honduran Foreign Ministry wrote, pledging to negotiate “agreements in areas of cooperation, such as finance, trade, infrastructure, energy, technology, culture, tourism, education, and health, among others, based on mutual benefit and shared integral development”. “With this historic decision, the Government of the Republic widens the horizon of development for the Honduran people”, the Foreign Ministry added. ?????| La República de Honduras y la República Popular China establecen Relaciones Diplomáticas. pic.twitter.com/slUPC26fbt — Cancillería Honduras (@CancilleriaHN) March 26, 2023 Original article (March 16): The government of Honduras has announced that it is breaking formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan and recognizing the People’s Republic of China. Honduras’ leftist President Xiomara Castro had pledged during her 2021 campaign that, if she won the election, she would recognize China. This March, she fulfilled that promise. This means that just 12 United Nations member states have formal diplomatic relations with the so-called “Republic of China” on the island of Taiwan. The other 99.51% of the global population live in countries that formally recognize that there is only one China, and that Taiwan is a province of the People’s Republic of China. These 12 UN member states that recognize Taiwan have a combined population of only 38.9 million – representing just 0.49% of the global population of 8 billion. The following list consists of the countries that still do not have formal relations with the People’s Republic of China, accompanied by the size of their populations, according to CIA World Factbook data: 12 UN member states: Guatemala – 17.98 million Haiti – 11.47 million Paraguay – 7.44 million Eswatini – 1.13 million Belize – 419,137 Saint Lucia – 167,591 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – 100,804 Marshall Islands – 80,966 Saint Kitts and Nevis – 54,817 Palau – 21,779 Tuvalu – 11,639 Nauru – 9,852 Non UN member: Vatican City – c. 1000 Even the United States technically recognizes that Taiwan is part of China, at least on paper. Washington signed Three Communiqués with Beijing when the governments normalized diplomatic relations. The first communiqué, signed in 1972, stated clearly: The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position. Despite its legal commitments, Washington has been gradually increasing its support for separatist forces in Taiwan. The US military has deployed troops on Taiwan island, and sold it billions of dollars of weapons. Top US officials like former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi have also made provocative trips to the Chinese province, backing separatists. Xiomara Castro (of no relation to Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro) made this historic announcement on March 14. In a tweet, Castro said, “I have instructed Foreign Minister Eduardo Reina to arrange the opening of official relations with the People’s Republic of China, as a demonstration of my determination to fulfill the Plan of Government and expand the frontiers of liberty in concert with the nations of the world”. He instruido al Canciller Eduardo Reina, para que gestione la apertura de relaciones oficiales con la República Popular China, como muestra de mi determinación para cumplir el Plan de Gobierno y expandir las fronteras con libertad en el concierto de las naciones del mundo. — Xiomara Castro de Zelaya (@XiomaraCastroZ) March 14, 2023 Castro’s decision enraged US politicians. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy tweeted threateningly, “The Honduran people will suffer because of her failed leadership”. Honduran President Xiomara Castro is moving her country closer to Communist China while the world is moving away. The Honduran people will suffer because of her failed leadership. — U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (@SenBillCassidy) March 15, 2023 In a subsequent interview explaining the decision, Reina said that China has offered to help Honduras economically. There are “great needs that the Honduran people have”, and, “Unfortunately, the needs are enormous, and we have not seen this response” from Taiwan, the foreign minister emphasized. Reina also noted that Honduras is trapped in billions of dollars of odious debt owed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other US-dominated institutions, and China could potentially ease this burden. US-backed coup regimes trapped Honduras in unpayable odious debt, warns new President Xiomara Castro Honduras is one of the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere. Roughly three-quarters (74%) of its population of 10 million live in poverty. The United States sponsored a military coup in Honduras in 2009, which overthrew the country’s democratically elected left-wing President Manuel Zelaya and installed a brutally repressive right-wing regime. This ultra-conservative coup regime, which was closely linked to drug trafficking, ran Honduras with an iron first from 2009 until the end of 2021. Poverty skyrocketed, and violence and organized crime became such systemic problems that Honduras had the highest murder rate on Earth. Meanwhile, the coup regime, which blatantly stole two elections, enjoyed the staunch support of not only the United States, but also Taiwan. In fact, during the November 2021 vote, Taiwan meddled in Honduras’ elections. Honduran activists published photos and videos across social media that showed Taiwan providing aid to the right-wing National Party, the party of the coup regime. Taiwan is meddling in Honduras' presidential election, coming up on the 28th, giving aid to the ruling right-wing National Party, which has brutally ruled the country since a US-backed 2009 military coup The leftist Libre Party candidate pledged to establish relations with China https://t.co/EMzwYQKOo9 — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 25, 2021 Taiwan has been similarly meddling in the political system of Honduras’ western neighbor, Guatemala, pressuring the country to maintain diplomatic relations. The Associated Press reported in 2022 that Taiwan paid Guatemala $900,000 to hire a top ally of Donald Trump to lobby in Washington on behalf of its right-wing President Alejandro Giammattei, a notoriously corrupt millionaire and dual citizen of Italy. Honduras’ southern neighbor, Nicaragua, on the other hand, has a leftist government led by the Sandinista Front. In 2021, Nicaragua broke ties with Taiwan, recognizing the People’s Republic of China. Since then, Managua and Beijing have become close allies, and the two governments are negotiating a comprehensive free trade agreement. China is helping Nicaragua expand its public housing program, building thousands of homes for poor and working families. Beijing has also signed agreements to develop infrastructure, hospitals, and renewable energy. Nicaragua has even made plans with China to construct an interoceanic canal, which would challenge the monopoly of the Panama Canal and offer enormous economic opportunities for the Central American nation. Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government had first recognized China back in the 1980s, but after a decade of a CIA-sponsored Contra terror war and an illegal US blockade against Nicaragua, a right-wing regime came to power in 1990, which reveretd to diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Sandinista Nicaragua allies with China, Russia, Iran against US imperialism

Write an article about: Brazil’s Lula proposes creating Latin American currency to ‘be freed of US dollar’ dependency. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

ALBA, Bolivarian Alliance, Brazil, dollar, Ecuador, Hugo Chávez, Lula da Silva, Rafael Correa, Sucre, Venezuela

Brazil’s left-wing leader Lula da Silva says if he wins the 2022 presidential elections, “we are going to create a currency in Latin America,” called the Sur (“South”), to combat “the dependency on the dollar” (Se puede leer esta nota en español aquí.) Brazil’s left-wing leader Lula da Silva has proposed creating a pan-Latin American currency, in order to “be freed of the dollar.” A founder of Brazil’s Workers’ Party, Lula served as president for two terms, from 2003 to 2011. He is now the leading candidate as Brazil’s October 2022 presidential elections approach. If he returns to the presidency, “We are going to create a currency in Latin America, because we can’t keep depending on the dollar,” Lula said in a speech at a rally on May 2. He revealed that the currency would be called the Sur, which means “South” in Spanish. Lula explained that countries in Latin America could still keep their sovereign domestic currency, but they could use the Sur to do bilateral trade with each other, instead of having to exchange for US dollars. The Sur could also help to contain inflation in the region, Lula argued. Lula said the goal of the currency would be to deepen Latin American integration and strengthen the region’s economic sovereignty, weakening its dependence on the United States. Under Brazil’s current government, led by far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, the South American giant has subordinated itself to Washington, while viciously attacking the left-wing governments in the region. Bolsonaro’s Brazil has refused to recognize the legitimacy of the leftist Chavista government in its neighbor Venezuela, and has even supported violent cross-border terrorist attacks against it. If he returns to the presidency, Lula pledged that Brazil “will strengthen its relations with Latin America.” Lula has also vowed to revive the BRICS system, integrating Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa in an independent economic architecture to challenge Western financial hegemony. In 2020, Lula published a call “For a Multipolar World.” He explained his goal is “the creation of a multipolar world, free from unilateral hegemony and from sterile bipolar confrontation,” that “would permit a true re-founding of the multilateral order, based on principles of real multilateralism, in which international cooperation can truly flourish.” Lula’s proposal for the Sur is certainly not the first time progressive politicians in Latin America have tried to create a common currency. This has long been a dream of left-wing leaders in the region. Venezuela’s revolutionary former president Hugo Chávez developed an international currency as part of the Bolivarian Alliance (ALBA), an economic coalition of left-wing governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. This currency was called the Sucre, and was adopted in 2009 by Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, and Ecuador. The ALBA summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2009 in which the Sucre was adopted Sucre was an acronym for “Unified System for Regional Compensation,” but also a reference to Antonio José de Sucre, who helped lead the South American independence struggle against Spanish colonialism, alongside Simón Bolívar. Ecuador’s government, under leftist President Rafael Correa, who has a Ph.D. in economics, was the main adopter of the Sucre. At its peak in 2012, the Sucre was used for more than $1 billion in bilateral annual trade in the region. The symbol for the Sucre, used by the ALBA But the currency fell out of use by 2016, following Chávez’s death in 2013, a massive drop in commodity prices in 2014, the imposition of US sanctions on Venezuela in 2015, and violent coup attempts against Chávez’s successor Nicolás Maduro. Ecuador’s subsequent right-wing President Lenín Moreno, with US backing, later removed his country from the ALBA, dealing a huge blow to the Sucre and dreams of regional integration. Brazil’s presidential elections will be held in October 2022. Polls consistently show Lula leading over far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s sitting president. Bolsonaro only came to power in the 2018 elections due to a soft coup d’etat backed by the United States. Lula had been significantly ahead in the polls in the lead-up to the 2018 vote, but Brazil’s judicial system imprisoned him on false charges, handing the victory to Bolsonaro. The US Justice Department helped support this campaign of what Lula calls legal warfare, or lawfare, to prevent him from returning to the presidency. The US government also backed the 2016 political coup against Brazil’s democratically President Dilma Rousseff, also a member of Lula’s left-wing Workers’ Party. The UN Human Rights Committee found this April that the prosecution of Lula was politically motivated and violated his rights. “The investigation and prosecution of former President Lula da Silva violated his right to be tried by an impartial tribunal, his right to privacy and his political rights,” the UN legal experts determined.

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

Gaza, Israel, Palestine, The Lancet

US President Biden criticized Gaza’s health ministry, but its statistics on Israel’s killings of Palestinians are accurate, according to peer-reviewed articles in top medical journal The Lancet. The death toll of Israel’s war on Gaza reported by the Palestinian health ministry is accurate, according to two peer-reviewed studies by scientific experts published in top medical journal The Lancet. As of December 18, Israel had killed 19,453 Palestinians in Gaza, the ministry reported. Two-thirds of the deaths were children (7,729) and women (5,153). United Nations bodies, human rights organizations, and major media outlets have often used these statistics, because they have a history of being accurate. “International organizations including the United Nations usually rely on these same figures as they are seen as the best available”, the Washington Post acknowledged. “Many experts consider figures provided by the ministry reliable, given its access, sources and accuracy in past statements”, the prominent US newspaper wrote. Israel has claimed, without any evidence, that Gaza’s health ministry is untrustworthy, because it is supposedly run by the political party Hamas. (In reality, the Gaza health ministry is partially funded by and linked to Hamas’ political rival, the Palestinian Authority, based in the Occupied West Bank.) The US government has echoed Israel’s disinformation. President Joe Biden said in an October 25 press conference, “I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed… I have no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using”. Despite Biden’s criticism, HuffPost revealed that the US State Department uses the Palestinian health ministry figures in its own reports on Gaza. In one of such memos, a US official acknowledged that, if anything, “The numbers are likely much higher, according to the UN and NGOs reporting on the situation”. This was exactly the conclusion reached by scientific experts at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. The peer-reviewed article “No evidence of inflated mortality reporting from the Gaza Ministry of Health”, published in leading medical journal The Lancet on December 6, noted that the Palestinian institution “has historically reported accurate mortality data”. In past conflicts, discrepancies between Gaza Ministry of Health (MoH) data and independent United Nations figures were only between 1.5% and 3.8%. Gaza MoH data were also quite similar to figures from Israel’s own Foreign Ministry, with a difference of just around 8%. Scholars Benjamin Q Huynh, Elizabeth T Chin, and Paul B Spiegel wrote that they “found no evidence of inflated rates”. Scientific experts from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine came to a similar conclusion in their own peer-reviewed article in The Lancet, published on November 26. For this previous study, scholars Zeina Jamaluddine, Francesco Checchi, and Oona M R Campbell reviewed death statistics from October 7 to 26, analyzing the list of 7028 deaths compiled by the Gaza Ministry of Health. Out of the 7028 names, only one had a duplicated ID number, one had an implausible age, and just 281 lacked an ID number. The experts concluded that the data were reasonable, writing, “We consider it implausible that these patterns would arise from data fabrication”. They also reviewed MoH figures from previous wars in Gaza, and found them to be reliable. “Assessments of Palestinian MoH data validity in the 2014 conflict had shown them to be accurate, and we saw no obvious reason to doubt the validity of the data between Oct 7 and Oct 26, 2023”, the scholars stated. If anything, they concluded that the Gaza MoH figures may be rather conservative. “The death reporting system currently being used by the Palestinian MoH was assessed in 2021, 2 years before the current war, and was found to under-report mortality by 13%”, they wrote, adding that “it is plausible that the current Palestinian MoH source also under-reports mortality because of the direct effect of the war on data capture and reporting, for example by omitting people whose bodies could not be recovered or brought to morgues”.

Write an article about: Brazil and Argentina preparing new Latin American currency to ‘reduce reliance on US dollar’. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Andrés Arauz, Argentina, Brazil, CELAC, dollar, Financial Times, Latin America, Lula da Silva, MERCOSUR, Sergio Massa, Sur, UNASUR

Brazil and Argentina are making plans for a Latin American currency called the Sur, to “boost regional trade and reduce reliance on the US dollar”. Lula had pledged it while running for president. The governments of Brazil and Argentina are making plans to create a new currency for Latin America, called the Sur (“south” in English), according to a report in the Financial Times. Other countries in the region will be invited to use the currency. Their goal is to “boost regional trade and reduce reliance on the US dollar”, the newspaper noted, citing government officials. Argentina’s Economic Minister Sergio Massa told the Financial Times that the South American nations will soon “start studying the parameters needed for a common currency, which includes everything from fiscal issues to the size of the economy and the role of central banks”. Massa said they are preparing “a study of mechanisms for trade integration”. But he cautioned that it could take years to develop, and this is just “first step on a long road which Latin America must travel”. Brazil and Argentina will discuss the currency plans at the meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Buenos Aires on January 24. Brazil has the largest economy in Latin America, and Argentina has the third biggest (after Mexico). Argentina-based Spanish economist Alfredo Serrano Manc, who directs a think tank dedicated to regional integration, the Latin American Strategic Center of Geopolitics (CELAG), told the Financial Times that “the path is to find mechanisms which substitute the dependence on the dollar”. He added that now is the moment, given that “there are many governments that are ideologically similar”, with left-wing leaders across Latin America. Me consultaron en @FinancialTimes para esta nota sobre los desafíos de la cumbre CELAC. La vía es buscar mecanismos para sustituir la dependencia del dolar. Y sí se puede si se quiere. Y más ahora que hay muchos gobiernos afines en lo ideológico. https://t.co/kXjklZgZ1b — Alfredo Serrano Manc (@alfreserramanci) January 22, 2023 Brazil’s leftist President Lula da Silva returned to power on January 1. During his electoral campaign, Lula had floated the possibility of creating a regional currency for trade. At a rally in May 2022, the Workers’ Party leader had said, “We are going to create a currency in Latin America, because we can’t keep depending on the dollar”. Lula revealed that it would be called the Sur. He added that it would not be based on the euro model, in that countries could maintain their sovereign domestic currency. Instead, the plan would be to use the Sur for regional trade, Lula said. Brazil’s left-wing leader Lula da Silva says if he wins the October presidential elections, “we are going to create a currency in Latin America,” called the Sur (“South”), to combat “the dependency on the dollar”https://t.co/NSgzcHtuBB — Geopolitical Economy Report (@GeopoliticEcon) May 7, 2022 After Lula won the October 2022 election, Ecuador’s left-wing politician and economist Andrés Arauz published a blueprint for a “new regional financial architecture” for Latin America. Arauz said the plan would be to revive regional institutions like the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Banco del Sur (Bank of the South), and to create a Banco Central del Sur (Central Bank of the South) to oversee the new currency. The goal is “to harmonize the payment systems of” the countries that make up UNASUR in order “to carry out inter-bank transfers to any bank inside of the region in real time and from a cellphone”, he wrote. Arauz was a presidential candidate who came close to winning Ecuador’s 2021 election. He is also finishing a PhD in economics. Advising Brazil’s President-elect Lula, Ecuadorian economist and leftist presidential candidate @EcuArauz made a blueprint for a “new regional financial architecture” to unite Latin America, including a currency to challenge the hegemony of the US dollar https://t.co/o7L0fN236F — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 1, 2022 Argentina has suffered with odious debt owed to foreign colonial powers for 200 years. Today, Argentina is trapped in $44 billion of debt with the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF). This dollar-denominated foreign debt has led to a constant drain of foreign currency out of Argentina, fueling high levels of inflation. Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández visited China and Russia in February 2022, seeking alternatives to the US-dominated financial system, and joining Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Argentina has also applied to join the extended BRICS+ bloc, with Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Buenos Aires attended the group’s 2022 summits at Beijing’s invitation. As former president, Lula was himself a co-founder of the BRICS. China invited Argentina to attend the 2022 summits of the BRICS economic bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. Argentina’s ambassador says it’s a step toward “formal entry” to the grouping, an alternative to the US-dominated financial systemhttps://t.co/ilTBO37LQi — Geopolitical Economy Report (@GeopoliticEcon) May 9, 2022 Both Brazil and Argentina are already part of a South American trade bloc, known as Mercosur (Mercado Común del Sur, or Common Market of the South). Lula has for years emphasized the importance of economic and political integration of Latin America and the Caribbean. Immediately after returning to office in January, Lula moved to revive and strengthen regional institutions like CELAC, UNASUR, and Mercosur. Brazil’s previous far-right President Jair Bolsonaro had sought to sabotage these organizations, withdrawing or suspending the country’s membership and instead aligning the South American giant closely with the United States. Bolsonaro came to power thanks to two US-backed political coups in Brazil, including a parliamentary putsch against Workers’ Party President Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the politically motivated imprisonment of Lula on false charges in the lead-up to the 2018 election. Soon after entering office, Bolsonaro traveled to Virginia to visit CIA headquarters. Fearing legal consequences in Brazil for his flagrant corruption and for policies that caused the mass deaths of citizens, Bolsonaro fled to Florida two days before his term ended. He has since been living in the United States as a fugitive from justice. Lula da Silva returns as Brazil’s president, calling to fight poverty and hunger, re-industrialize, strengthen the BRICS, and deepen Latin American integration. Far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro fled to Florida, fearing legal consequences for his corruptionhttps://t.co/RZYABG6oQY — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 4, 2023

Write an article about: How the imperialist system works, and how Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution resists it. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Bolivarian Revolution, Hugo Chávez, imperialism, Nicolás Maduro, Socialism of the 21st Century, Venezuela

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

Write an article about: Venezuela’s economy will grow 20% in 2022, despite illegal US sanctions, predicts Western bank. 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.

Credit Suisse, economics, oil, Rafael Correa, Venezuela

Major Switzerland-based bank Credit Suisse forecasts Venezuela’s real GDP growth to be 20% in 2022 and 8% in 2023. This is despite an illegal US blockade, which starved the government of 99% of its revenue, according to the top UN expert on sanctions. (Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.) The major Switzerland-based bank Credit Suisse has predicted that Venezuela’s real GDP growth will be 20% in 2022. The prominent Western financial institution also forecasted that Venezuela’s real GDP will increase by an additional 8% in 2023. These predictions come despite an illegal US blockade imposed on Venezuela, which has starved the government of revenue, locked it out of the international financial system, and fueled an economic crisis. The top United Nations expert on sanctions estimated that the Venezuelan government lost 99% of its revenue due to the Western unilateral coercive measures, which are illegal under international law. “Unilateral sanctions increasingly imposed by the United States, the European Union and other countries have exacerbated the [economic crisis],” stated Alena Douhan, the UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, after she took a two-week fact-finding trip to Venezuela in February 2021. “The Government’s revenue was reported to shrink by 99% with the country currently living on 1% of its pre-sanctions income,” Douhan wrote, adding, “Remittances from abroad have decreased due to the blocking of state assets and the complexity of – and impediments to – bank transfers.” “The hardening of sanctions faced by the country since 2015 undermines the potential positive impact of the current reforms as well as the state’s capacity to maintain infrastructure and implement social projects,” the UN expert warned. Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves and its economy is heavily dependent on production, but the US blockade has made it very difficult for Caracas to export its crude. Many countries, even US allies, fear being hit by Washington’s secondary sanctions if they trade with Venezuela. Yet despite these suffocating and illegal Western sanctions, Venezuela’s economy is back on the path toward growth. Ecuador’s leftist former president Rafael Correa tweeted a screenshot of an April 6, 2022 Credit Suisse report on Venezuela, which appears to be private, predicting 20% growth in 2022 and 8% growth in 2023. “These are not typos!” the Swiss bank wrote. “If we are accurate, these might end up being among the strongest growth prints globally for these years.” Credit Suisse sobre Venezuela?¡Gloria al bravo pueblo! pic.twitter.com/rGnbgcvTt5 — Rafael Correa (@MashiRafael) April 6, 2022 In addition to being an influential politician, Correa is a renowned economist, with a PhD in economics. Correa and some of his former officials have provided economic advising to the Venezuelan government during this difficult period under blockade by the United States. In 2015, President Barack Obama signed an executive order declaring Venezuela to be a supposed “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” This executive order opened the floodgate for the US government to impose grueling sanctions on Venezuela. In 2019, President Donald Trump escalated the already existing US sanctions on Venezuela into a full-on embargo. Washington and several European capitals also illegally froze and/or seized all of Caracas’ foreign assets, worth billions of dollars. This brutal economic warfare supplemented a coup attempt that the United States was leading in Venezuela, forcing allies to recognize unelected right-wing opposition politician Juan Guaidó as supposed “interim president” of the country. Washington was ultimately unable to topple Venezuela’s democratically elected president, Nicolás Maduro, of the United Socialist Party (PSUV), which was founded by revolutionary former president Hugo Chávez. But the relentless US economic war on Venezuela did stoke a crisis of runaway inflation. The Chavista government has managed to rein in this hyperinflation. Venezuela’s inflation was just 1.7% in February 2022 – lower than other countries in Latin America. Credit Suisse’s prediction of 20% Venezuelan growth in 2022 and 8% more in 2023 shows that the worst of this US-fueled economic crisis has passed. Part of this recovery can be attributed to the massive rise in the price of oil. Venezuela’s economy is very dependent on oil exports, and has been for a century, since well before leftist Hugo Chávez became president in 1999 and subsequently launched the Bolivarian Revolution. Credit Suisse said its forecast “is largely based on the expectation that [Venezuela’s] oil GDP will rise more than 20%.” In March and April 2021, the price of a barrel of crude oil was around $20. By March and April 2022, it had skyrocketed to more than $100. But the Venezuelan government has put significant energy and resources into diversifying its economy beyond oil production. China, Russia, and Iran have also helped Venezuela find economic alternatives and soften the destructive impact of illegal Western sanctions.

Write an article about: CIA backed failed 2020 invasion of Venezuela, top coup-plotter says. 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.

CIA, Clíver Alcalá, Colombia, Juan Guaidó, Leopoldo López, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela

A Venezuelan army defector who helped plan a botched May 2020 invasion, Clíver Alcalá, said the coup-plotters were in touch with the CIA and other US government agencies, and had their approval to try to violently overthrow President Nicolás Maduro. (Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.) A Venezuelan army defector who helped plan a failed May 2020 invasion of Venezuela, Cliver Alcalá, said the coup-plotters were in touch with the CIA and other US government agencies. According to Alcalá, senior US officials approved of the operation, which sought to violently overthrow the leftist Chavista government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who was democratically elected. Alcalá’s lawyers made this revelation in a US court filing on January 28, the Associated Press reported. Jordan Goudreau On May 3 and 4, 2020, dozens of right-wing Venezuelan insurgents and two former US Army special operations comandos tried to invade Venezuela, with plans to kidnap President Maduro and take him to the United States. The plot, known as Operation Gideon (Operación Gedeón in Spanish), was a disaster. It was quickly foiled by the Venezuelan government, with the help of local socialist fishermen, and the invaders were arrested. The invasion had been organized by a Florida-based mercenary firm called Silvercorp USA, founded by a former US Army special forces comando named Jordan Goudreau. In a breach-of-contract lawsuit, Goudreau said he had discussed the coup plot with two US government officials at a Miami golf resort owned by former President Donald Trump, where he was given a green light. But when the operation was foiled by Venezuelan authorities, the US government immediately threw Goudreau and his team under the bus. On March 26, 2020, a few weeks before the invasion, the US government put out a series of multimillion-dollar bounties on the heads of current and former top Venezuelan government officials. One of these was the former general Clíver Alcalá. This surprised Alcalá, because by that point he had for several years been a bitter opponent of the Venezuelan government of President Maduro. In fact, in 2018 Alcalá had moved to northern Colombia, to the city of Barranquilla, near the border of Venezuela, where he began to train Venezuelan military defectors and anti-Chavista paramilitaries, making plans to wage an armed insurgency against the Venezuelan government. In northern Colombia, Alcalá worked alongside Goudreau, the US mercenary who said he had the Trump administration’s support, to create an anti-Venezuela guerrilla army. The United States had been supporting Alcalá’s efforts to try to violently overthrow Maduro. So when Washington put out the bounty, Alcalá complied and willingly turned himself in to US authorities in Colombia, where he had been residing. He agreed to be an informant and to be extradited to the US. Alcalá’s attorneys subsequently made it clear in their statements to US authorities that Alcalá’s operations had been approved by Washington. “Efforts to overthrow the Maduro regime have been well known to the United States government,” Alcalá’s lawyers wrote in a November 2021 letter, cited by the Associated Press. Alcalá’s “opposition to the regime and his alleged efforts to overthrow it were reported to the highest levels of the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Council, and the Department of the Treasury,” his attorneys added. Yacsy Álvarez This is not the first time that someone involved in the failed 2020 invasion of Venezuela said the US government was involved. A right-wing Venezuelan who helped to organize Operation Gideon, Yacsy Álvarez, said she met with FBI and DEA officials in Florida, and that the agencies knew exactly what was being planned. Álvarez had served as a translator and assistant for Goudreau, as he and Alcalá trained anti-Venezuela militants in Colombia. According to Álvarez, the Colombian government supported the failed invasion plot as well. Colombia’s far-right President Iván Duque and former president Álvaro Uribe were involved in the operation, she said. Colombia’s top intelligence agency “knew everything” about the plot, Álvarez confessed. Yet just as Alcalá was detained by the US authorities with whom he had been collaborating, Álvarez was detained by the Colombian authorities with whom she had been collaborating. Her lawyers accused Colombia’s spy agencies of setting a “trap” to blame her when the operation went awry. Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo López The major right-wing Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo López was also involved in the failed invasion. López is seen in Venezuela to be the real power behind Juan Guaidó, who was a little-known figure when the United States appointed him “interim president” in January 2019. In a June 2020 article titled “Venezuelan Opposition Guru Led Planning to Topple Maduro,” the Wall Street Journal reported that López “was behind a months-long effort to contract mercenaries to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro,” and had “considered at least six proposals from private security contractors to carry out military incursions to spur a rebellion in Venezuela’s armed forces and topple” the leftist government. López, Guaidó, and fellow members of their far-right political party Voluntad Popular (Popular Will) contracted Silvercorp USA, and worked with Goudreau and Alcalá to plot the invasion. Despite his clear involvement in an attempted invasion of his home country, and his leading role in several violent coup attempts, López lives comfortably today in Madrid. He enjoys the protection of the Spanish government, while he continues to organize the extremist Venezuelan opposition from abroad. The Joe Biden administration, for its part, has continued Trump’s policy of recognizing unelected coup leader Guaidó as the supposed leader of Venezuela, although, as of January 2022, fewer than 15 countries refuse to acknowledge that Maduro is the real president.

Write an article about: Nicaragua’s President Ortega: US/EU waging war to stop multipolar world. 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.

Che Guevara, Daniel Ortega, FSLN, imperialism, Nicaragua, Sandinistas

At the Sandinista Revolution’s 43rd anniversary, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said the US and Europe are waging wars to prevent “multipolarity.” Quoting Che Guevara, he added “imperialism cannot be trusted” (Se puede leer esta nota en español aquí.) In his speech at the 43rd anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said the United States and European Union are waging wars to prevent “multipolarity on our planet.” Ortega quoted Che Guevara, arguing “imperialism cannot be trusted even a little bit.” He added that dialogue with Washington is “impossible,” because it would be like negotiating with the devil. A transcript of some of President Ortega’s remarks follows (emphasis added): Why does the United States behave in that way? And when we say the United States, we are speaking of the North American rulers. Because when they dropped the atomic bomb above Hiroshima, they did not ask the North American people if the bomb should be dropped… And they did a count of how many thousands the bomb could kill. And the higher the number was, that they calculated that the bomb could kill, the happier and more excited they were… And they went ahead and dropped it, and killed, in one blow, hundreds of thousands of civilians, children, adults, because they dropped it on a city… Right there, they killed, murdered many more civilians than all of those who could have died now in this war that the empires have started to try to destroy the struggle that humanity is carrying out to bring about the end of hegemony, and to create multipolarity on our planet. That is the battle that is being fought over there in Ukraine, where Europe and the United States don’t want — they don’t want to see China growing economically… It is from there, it is the evil that those powers have shown throughout history, the powers that colonized Africa, Asia, Latin America, the powers that brought slaves from Africa to these regions, to sell like them animals in slave markets… When you asked me, and when it was asked, why not reach an understanding? They [the US] are not prepared to reach an understanding. They are prepared to do nothing more than impose — impose, occupy, bomb, kill, as they have done throughout history… And they [the imperialists] waged war among themselves, to take over the world. It was war between the European powers, before there was a European Union. You know it, dear brother. England, France, Spain, wanting to dominate all Europe, and dominating all of Europe, later taking over Africa, Asia, all of the Americas. A hegemonic mentality. A selfish mentality. A mentality that has nothing to do with being Christian, nothing to do with being Christian. And all of that, they did it with the blessing of the different churches that existed in that time… When they asked Roosevelt, who was a good friend of Somoza, why he was so gracious and friendly with Somoza, Somoza being a criminal, Roosevelt responded, in English, “He is a son of a…” How do you say it? “He’s a son of a bitch.” Yes, that is how he replied. “But he is OUR son (of a bitch).” Yes, “He is a son (of a bitch), but he is OUR son (of a bitch).” That was the cynical response of the yankee… I’m answering why there is no dialogue. Dialogue is impossible. Impossible. Dialogue is for one person to put a noose on your neck, and you to put your neck in the noose. Look, dear brother, what dialogue can you have with the devil? As Che said, the yankees, imperialism, you can’t trust them even a little bit, not even a little bit. Because it will end you. It will end you.

Write an article about: Mexico’s AMLO calls out US ‘oligarchy’ at Biden’s ‘democracy’ summit. 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.

AMLO, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Joe Biden, Mexico, Summit for Democracy

Mexico’s leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador used the US government’s “Summit for Democracy” to indirectly call out Washington’s hypocrisy: “The oligarchy reigns with the façade of democracy”, he said, calling for “greater equality” and “separation of economic and political power”. Mexico’s leftist President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) used the US government’s so-called “Summit for Democracy” to indirectly call out Washington’s hypocrisy. (A full transcript of his speech follows below.) AMLO strongly implied that the United States is an oligarchy, not a real democracy. He argued that the government needs to challenge the power of the economic elites if it truly wants to be democratic. López Obrador opened his speech warning, “Many of the great crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of God or in the name of democracy”. Mexico’s leftist President AMLO used the Biden admin’s so-called “Summit for Democracy” to indirectly call out US hypocrisy “The oligarchy reigns with the façade of democracy”, he said, calling for “separation of economic and political power” Full video: https://t.co/lR4kwPJZ4u pic.twitter.com/92XtabJHvl — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 31, 2023 “In some countries, the oligarchy reigns with the façade of democracy”, he said, not so subtly referencing his northern neighbor. “How can we talk about democracy if there is no separation of economic power and political power?” AMLO asked. He added that the system that exists in many countries today is “a mixture of oligarchy and democracy, or a simulated and mediated democracy”. “We must search for greater equality to have more democracy”, the Mexican president insisted. AMLO’s March 29 speech stood in stark contrast to the sycophantic remarks made by many US allies at Washington’s so-called “Summit for Democracy”. The Joe Biden administration first organized this summit in 2021 to bring together US allies in an attempt to build a united bloc to wage a new cold war on China and Russia, which were not invited to either summit. Despite its name, the 2023 “Summit for Democracy” featured numerous right-wing authoritarian regimes, from Israel, Poland, India, and beyond. (Pakistan’s unelected coup regime was invited, but decided not to attend, as it faces mass protests and instability at home.) López Obrador’s critical comments also came at a time of growing tensions between the United States and Mexico. Numerous Republican congressmembers have called for the US military to invade Mexico, proposing legislation to justify an intervention, in the name of supposedly combatting drug cartels. AMLO denounced these threats in a massive rally in the heart of Mexico City on March 18. “We remind those hypocritical and irresponsible politicians that Mexico is an independent and free country, not a colony or a protectorate of the United States!”, he declared. “They can threaten us with committing some kind of abuse, but we will never, ever allow them to violate our sovereignty and trample on the dignity of our homeland!”, the Mexican president added. ‘Mexico is not a US colony!’: AMLO condemns invasion threats, celebrates nationalization of oil, lithium Earlier, in a press briefing on February 28, AMLO blasted the US State Department’s “bad habit” of “meddling” in other country’s “internal affairs”. “There is more democracy today in Mexico than in the United States”, he said, “because here the people govern, and there the oligarchy govern”. AMLO says Mexico is more democratic than oligarch-run USA, condemns State Dep’t ‘meddling’ against electoral reform The following is the text of López Obrador’s March 29 speech at the US “Summit for Democracy”: Many of the great crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of God or in the name of democracy. It is important, because of that, to return to the original and true meaning of the concept of democracy. Aristotle said that there were three good and three bad forms of government. He came to the conclusion that democracy was the best, or the least bad, and he argued that democracy, like the Greek origin of the word, consisted of the power of the people. In our time, there is still a mixture of oligarchy and democracy, or a simulated and mediated democracy. That is to say, in some countries, the oligarchy reigns with the façade of democracy. For example, how can we talk about democracy if the elites dominate, and not the majorities? How can we talk about democracy if there is no separation of economic power and political power? How can we talk about democracy if, in recent times, there has been the most offensive concentration of wealth in a few hands in the history of the world? The fortune of a minority has increased without limits, without any moral concern, while there are a billion human beings who live on less than a dollar a day. That is why we have to move further and further away from kratos [“power” in Greek] without demos [“people” in Greek], from power without the people, and make sure that the central purpose of the government is always to seek the happiness of the people, of a government of the people and for the people. Today more than ever, it is necessary to return to our founding principles. In 1776, the United States Declaration of Independence set out the pursuit of happiness as one of the fundamental rights of the people, and signaled that guaranteeing it was one of the functions of government. The first article of the French Constitution of 1793 establishes that the aim of society is common happiness. Article 24 of our Constitution of Apatzingán of 1814 states that the happiness of the people and of each and every citizen consists in the enjoyment of equality, security, property, and freedom. The full preservation of these rights is the object of the institution of governments and the sole purpose of political associations. Because of that, we maintain that we must search for greater equality to have more democracy. May democracy be authentic, true, and may justice always triumph over power! Thank you very much.

Write an article about: End of Juan Guaidó: US-appointed Venezuelan coup leader ousted by ex allies. 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.

coup, Jesús Rodríguez Espinoza, Juan Guaidó, Nicolás Maduro, Orinoco Tribune, Venezuela

The US claimed unelected coup leader Juan Guaidó was “interim president” of Venezuela from January 2019 to December 2022, when his former allies in the right-wing opposition removed him from the position. Washington however still refuses to recognize elected President Nicolás Maduro. US President Donald Trump appointed Juan Guaidó as Venezuela’s supposed “interim president” in January 2019, despite the fact that the little-known right-wing opposition politician had never won a single vote in a presidential election. Under President Joe Biden, the US government continued formally recognizing Guaidó, until Venezuela’s opposition-controlled parallel “National Assembly” voted to oust him in December 2022. This marked the end to a nearly four-year US-led coup attempt against Venezuela’s leftist Chavista government. Yet Washington has still refused to formally recognize Venezuela’s democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro – who always remained recognized by the United Nations, throughout the coup attempt. Instead, State Department spokesman and CIA veteran Ned Price announced that the US only recognizes Venezuela’s opposition-controlled parallel “National Assembly” – which is competing with the Venezuelan government’s own National Assembly, which is part of the constitutional Venezuelan state recognized by the UN. Geopolitical Economy Report editor-in-chief Ben Norton discussed the end of Guaidó with Venezuelan journalist Jesús Rodríguez Espinoza, who runs the independent news website Orinoco Tribune. They analyzed the economic situation in the oil-rich South American country, which suffers under an illegal US embargo. The top UN expert on unilateral coercive measures, Alena Douhan, reported that Western sanctions caused the Venezuelan government’s revenue “to shrink by 99% with the country currently living on 1% of its pre-sanctions income”.

Write an article about: Bolivia intercepts US weapons shipment to right-wing separatist region. 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.

Bolivia, coup, Evo Morales, Luis Arce, Santa Cruz

Bolivia’s police intercepted a weapons shipment sent from the United States to the separatist region of Santa Cruz, the hub of violent far-right groups that led the coup in 2019. Bolivia’s police intercepted a weapons shipment sent from the United States to the separatist region of Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is the hub of fascist opposition gangs that led the violent coup in November 2019 that overthrew democratically elected President Evo Morales, of the leftist Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party. Morales was the first-ever Indigenous president of Bolivia, a country where the majority of the population is of Native heritage. Internal State Department cables published by WikiLeaks show how the US government has supported far-right separatists in Santa Cruz for years, as journalist Matt Kennard has documented. A significant number of European fascists fled to the region after losing World War II to the Soviet Union. They then formed paramilitary groups, which regularly use Nazi-style salutes. Santa Cruz Youth Union adopts Nazi salute after their leader questioned about burning down of MAS party headquarters. Oct 17 video from @diarioeldeber (FB) @markoacl @Pedro_Albornoz_ @OliviaArigho @bretgustafson pic.twitter.com/h1XFHQgtrJ — AndeanInfoNet (@AndeanInfoNet) October 31, 2019 The extremist Comité pro Santa Cruz (Pro-Santa Cruz Committee) and its youth wing the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista (Santa Cruz Youth Union) advance an explicitly neo-fascist Christian ideology. The current governor of Santa Cruz, Luis Fernando Camacho, who was a main leader of the violent 2019 coup, comes from these far-right groups. In addition to the violence of the putsch, these US-backed far-right separatists in Santa Cruz also routinely attack Indigenous Bolivians and supporters of the leftist MAS party. These are the racist far-right separatists the US govt has supported for years in Bolivia (yes, under both Republican and Democratic admins) State Department cables published by WikiLeaks show the US has long backed Santa Cruz separatism to try to weaken the leftist central govt https://t.co/u609FjPK4b — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 26, 2021

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

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

A geopolitical analysis of why the United States so strongly supports Israel: Economist Michael Hudson discusses with journalist Ben Norton. Why does the United States so strongly support Israel? Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton interviewed economist Michael Hudson to explore the reasons why Israel is such an important part of U.S. foreign policy and Washington’s attempt to dominate not only the region of the Middle East, but the entire world. Israel is an extension of U.S. geopolitical power in one of the most critically important regions of the world. In fact, it was current U.S. President Joe Biden, back in 1986, when he was a senator, who famously said that, if Israel didn’t exist, the United States would have to invent it: If we look at the Middle East, I think it’s about time we stop, those of us who support, as most of us do, Israel in this body, for apologizing for our support for Israel. There is no apology to be made. None. It is the best $3 billion investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region; the United States would have to go out and invent an Israel. I am with my colleagues who are on the floor of the Foreign Relations Committee, and we worry at length about NATO; and we worry about the eastern flank of NATO, Greece and Turkey, and how important it is. They pale by comparison… They pale by comparison in terms of the benefit that accrues to the United States of America. It goes without saying that the so-called Middle East, or a better term is West Asia, has some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas, and the entire world’s economic infrastructure relies heavily on fossil fuels. The planet is gradually moving toward new energy sources, which is needed to fight climate change, but fossil fuels are still absolutely critical to the global economy. And Washington’s goal has been to make sure that it can maintain steady prices in global oil and gas markets. But this is about something much bigger than just oil and gas. The U.S. military’s stated policy since the 1990s, since the end of the Cold War and the overthrow of the Soviet Union, is to try to maintain control over every region of the world. This was stated clearly in 1992 in the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine. The U.S. National Security Council wrote: [The United States’] goal is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies. These regions include Europe, East Asia, the Middle East/Persian Gulf, and Latin America. Consolidated, nondemocratic control of the resources of such a critical region could generate a significant threat to our security. Then, in 2004, the U.S. government published its National Military Strategy, in which Washington stressed that its goal was “Full Spectrum Dominance – the ability to control any situation or defeat any adversary across the range of military operations”. Historically, when it came to West Asia, the U.S. relied on a so-called “twin pillar” strategy. The west pillar was Saudi Arabia, and the east pillar was Iran. Until the 1979 revolution, Iran was governed by a shah, a dictatorial monarch who was backed by the United States and served U.S. interests in the region. However, following the 1979 revolution, the U.S. lost one of the pillars of its twin pillar strategy, and Israel became increasingly important for the United States to maintain control over this crucially strategic region. Many of the world’s top oil and gas producers are located in West Asia. Furthermore, some of the most important trading routes on Earth go through this region. It would be difficult to overstate how important Egypt’s Suez Canal is. It connects trade transiting from West Asia going into Europe, from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean. Around 30% of all of the world’s shipping containers pass through the Suez Canal. That represents around 12% of the total global trade of all goods. Then, directly south of the Suez Canal, where the Red Sea enters the Arabian Sea, there is a crucial geostrategic choke point known as the Bab al-Mandab Strait, off the coast of Yemen. There, more than 6 million barrels of oil pass through every single day. Historically, the United States has tried to dominate this region in order to maintain control of energy supplies and ensure these global trade routes that the globalized capitalist system is built on. As U.S. influence in the region has weakened in an increasingly multipolar world, Israel has become even more important for the United States to try to exercise hegemony in the region. One can see this clearly in the discussions over oil prices in OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has essentially been expanded to OPEC+ to include Russia. Today, Saudi Arabia and Washington’s archenemy, Russia, play a key role in determining global oil prices. Historically, Saudi Arabia was a loyal U.S. proxy, but Riyadh has increasingly pursued a more non-aligned foreign policy. And a very big reason for that is that China is now the biggest trading partner of many of the countries in the region. For a decade, China has been the largest importer of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, whereas U.S. oil imports peaked in 2005. Due to massive expansion of production and the shale boom in the 2010s, the United States established itself as one of the top three oil producers on Earth, reducing its need for crude from Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, through its global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China is moving the center of world trade back to Asia. And the “road” in BRI is a reference to the New Silk Road. Can you guess which region is crucial in the New Silk Road and the BRI? Of course, it’s the Middle East – or, again, a better name is West Asia, and that term actually much better explains the geostrategic importance of this region, because it connects Asia to Europe. This explains why the United States has been so desperate to try to challenge the Belt and Road with its own attempts to build new trade routes. In particular, the U.S. seeks to make a trade route going from India into the Persian Gulf, and then up through Israel. So in all of these projects, Israel plays an important role, as an extension of U.S. imperial power in one of the most important regions of the world. That is why Biden said back in 1986 that if Israel didn’t exist, the U.S. would have to invent it. That is also why Biden repeated this in a White House meeting with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog on October 27, 2022: We’re also going to discuss the ironclad commitment – and this is, I’ll say this 5000 times in my career – the ironclad commitment the United States has to Israel, based on our principles, our ideas, our values; they’re the same values. And I have often said, Mr. President [Herzog], if there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one. And even as recently as October 18, 2023, Biden again repeated the same thing in a speech he made in Israel: “I have long said, if Israel didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it”. In that speech in 2023, Biden traveled to Israel in order to support the country as it was carrying out a brutal bombing campaign in Gaza, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians as part of what legal experts around the world have referred to as a “textbook case of genocide”. Top United Nations experts have warned that the Palestinian people are in danger of genocide by Israel. And the United States has steadfastly been supporting Israel, because, as Joe Biden said, Israel is an extension of U.S. imperial power in West Asia, and if it didn’t exist, Washington would have to invent it. Below follows a transcript of the interview that Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton conducted with economist Michael Hudson, author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire. BEN NORTON: Michael, thanks for joining me today. We are speaking on November 9, and the latest death toll in the war in Gaza is that Israel has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians. The United Nations has referred to Gaza as a “graveyard for children”. More than 4,000 children have been killed. About 40% of the casualties are children. And the United States has continued to support Israel, not only diplomatically and politically, not only by, for instance, vetoing resolutions in the U.N. Security Council that call for a ceasefire, but furthermore, the U.S. has been sending billions of dollars to Israel. Not only the $3.8 billion that the U.S. always gives to Israel every year in military aid, but additionally, tens of billions of dollars more. So I am wondering if you could provide your analysis of why you think the U.S. is investing so many resources in supporting Israel while it is clearly committing war crimes. MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, certainly it is supporting Israel, but it’s not supporting Israel because this is an altruistic act. To the United States, Israel is its landed aircraft carrier in the Near East. Israel is the takeoff point for America to control the Near East. And from the very time there was talk of creating an Israel, it was always that Israel was going to be an outpost, first of England, then of Russia, then of the United States in the Near East. And I can give you an anecdote. Netanyahu’s main national security advisor for the last few years has been Uzi Arad. I worked at the Hudson Institute for about five years, 1972 to ‘76. And I worked very closely with Uzi there. Uzi and I made two trips to Korea and Japan to talk about international finance. So we had a good chance to get to know each other. And on one trip, we stopped over from New York to San Francisco. And in San Francisco, there was a party or a gathering for people to meet us. And one of the U.S. generals came over and slapped Uzi on the back and said, you’re our landed aircraft carrier over there. We love you. Well, I could see Uzi feeling, tightening up and getting very embarrassed and didn’t really have anything to say. But the United States has always viewed Israel as just our foreign military base, not Israel. So of course, it wants to secure this military base. But when England first passed the act saying there should be in Israel the Balfour Declaration, it was because Britain wanted to control the Near East and its oil supplies. When Israel was formed in the United Nations, the first country to recognize it was Stalin and Russia, who thought that Russians were going to have a major influence over Israel. And then after that, of course, when Truman came in, the military immediately saw that America was replacing England as the chief of the Near East. And that was even after the fight, the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953. So from the United States, it’s not Israel’s wagging the American tail, just the opposite. You mentioned that America is supporting Israel. I don’t think America is supporting Israel at all, nor do most Israelis, nor do most Democrats. America is supporting Netanyahu. It’s supporting Likud, not Israel. The majority of Israelis, certainly the non-religious Israelis, the core population of Israel since its founding, is opposing Likud and its policies. And so what really is happening is that to the United States, Netanyahu is the Israeli version of Zelensky in the Ukraine. And the advantage of having such an unpleasant, opportunist, and corrupt person as Netanyahu, who is under indictment for his bribery and corruption, is precisely that all of the attention now of the whole world that is so appalled by the attacks going on in Gaza, they’re not blaming the United States. They’re blaming Israel. They’re blaming Netanyahu and Israel for it, when it’s the United States that has been sending plane load after plane load of bombs, of guns. There are 22,000 machine guns, automatic guns, that are banned for sale in the United States that America is sending for the settlers to use on the West Bank. So there’s a pretense of good cop, bad cop. You have Mr. Blinken telling Netanyahu, when you bomb hospitals, make sure you do it according to the rules of war. And when you kill 100,000 Gaza children, make sure it’s all legal and in the war. And when you talk about ethnic cleansing and driving a population out, make sure that it’s all done legal. Well, of course, it’s not the rules of war, and there are war crimes being committed, but the United States is pretending to tell Netanyahu and the Israeli government, use smaller bombs. Be more gentle when you bomb the children in the hospital, when actually this is all for show. The United States is trying to say, well, we’re only there to give help to an ally. The whole world has noticed that the U.S. now has two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, right off the Near Eastern shore, and it has an atomic submarine near the Persian Gulf. Why are they there? President Biden and Congress say we are not going to have American troops fighting Hamas in Gaza. We’re not going to get involved. Well, if the troops are not going to get involved, why are they there? Well, we know what the American planes are doing. Yesterday, they bombed yet another airport and a fuel depot in Syria. They’re bombing Syria. And it’s very clear that they’re there not to protect Israel, but to fight Iran. Again and again, every American newspaper, when it talks about Hamas, it says Hamas is acting on behalf of Iran. When it talks about Hezbollah, and is there going to be an intervention from Lebanon against northern Israel, they say Hezbollah are the Iranian puppets. Any time they talk about any Near Eastern leader, it’s really that all these leaders are puppets of Iran, just like in Ukraine and Central Europe, they talk about Hungary and other countries as all being puppets of Putin in Russia. Their focus, really – America isn’t trying to fight to protect Ukraine. It’s fighting for the last Ukrainian to be exhausted in what they’d hoped would be depleting Russia’s military. Well, it hasn’t worked. Well, the same thing in Israel. If the United States is pushing Israel and Netanyahu to escalate, escalate, escalate, to do something that at a point is going to lead Nasrallah to finally say, okay, we can’t take it anymore. We’re coming in and helping rescue the Gazians and especially rescue the West Bank, where just as much fighting is taking place. We’re going to come in. And that’s when the United States will then feel free to move not only against Lebanon, but all the way via Syria, Iraq, to Iran. What we’re seeing in Gaza and the West Bank today is only the catalyst, the trigger for the fact that the neocons say we are never going to have a better chance than we have right now to conquer Iran. So this is the point for the showdown, that if America is to control Near Eastern oil, and by controlling Near Eastern oil, by bringing it under the US control, it can control the energy imports of much of the world. And therefore, this gives American diplomats the power to cut off oil and gas and to sanction any country that tries to go multipolar, any country that tries to resist US unipolar control. BEN NORTON: Yeah, Michael, I think you’re really hitting such an important point, which is how this is one of the most geostrategic regions of the world, especially when it comes to hydrocarbons. The entire global economy is still very heavily reliant on oil and gas, and especially considering the US is not part of OPEC, and especially now considering that OPEC has really expanded essentially to OPEC+ and now includes Russia. That means that Saudi Arabia and Russia essentially can help control global oil prices. And we’ve seen this really, in fact, in the United States in the past few years with the rise of consumer price inflation. We saw that the Biden administration was concerned about gas prices, in particular in the lead up to the midterm elections. And the Biden administration has been releasing a lot of oil from the strategic oil reserves of the United States. And we can also see these kinds of statements in particular when we go back and look at the Bush administration. There are numerous people involved in the Bush administration and the so-called “War on Terror” who openly talked about how important it was for Washington to dominate this region. And I’m really thinking of, in 2007, when the top US general and NATO commander Wesley Clark famously disclosed that the Bush administration had made plans to overthrow seven countries in five years. And those were countries in North Africa and West Asia. Specifically, he revealed in an interview with journalist Amy Goodman on Democracy Now that Washington’s plans were to overthrow the governments of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran: WESLEY CLARK: About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me. And one of the generals called me and he said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second”. I said, “Well, you’re too busy”. He said, “No, no”. He says, “We’ve made the decision; we’re going to war with Iraq”. This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq, why?” He said, “I don’t know”. He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do”. So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no”. He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They’ve just made the decision to go to war with Iraq”. He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments”. And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail”. So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that”. He said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper, and he said, “I just got this down from upstairs”, meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office today, and he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran”. I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir”. I said, “Well, don’t show it to me”. And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” And he said, “Sorry, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!” AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry, what did you say his name was? (laughs) WESLEY CLARK: I’m not going to give you his name. (laughs) AMY GOODMAN: So go through the countries again. WESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and then back to Iran. BEN NORTON: And since then, we of course saw the U.S. war on Iraq. We of course saw the proxy war in Syria that still goes on in many ways. The U.S. is occupying one-third of Syrian territory, including the oil rich areas. And Trump himself, President Donald Trump, boasted in a 2020 interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that he was leaving U.S. troops in Syria to take the oil: DONALD TRUMP: And then they say, “He left troops in Syria”. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. LAURA INGRAHAM: We’re not taking the oil. We’re not taking it. DONALD TRUMP: Well, maybe we will, maybe we won’t. LAURA INGRAHAM: They’re protecting the facilities. DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know, maybe we should take it. But we have the oil. Right now, the United States has the oil. So they say, “He left troops in Syria”. No, I got rid of all of them, other than we’re protecting the oil; we have the oil. BEN NORTON: We also saw the U.S. impose sanctions on Lebanon, which contributed to hyperinflation and the destruction of the Lebanese economy. And that was largely because Hezbollah is part of the government, and the U.S. has been pressuring the Lebanese government to create a new government without Hezbollah. We also saw, of course, that NATO destroyed the Libyan state in 2011. Somalia also has a failed state. And Sudan was divided in no small part thanks to the U.S. and Israel supporting South Sudan’s separatist movement on ethno-religious lines, using religious sectarianism. So if you look at the list of countries that Wesley Clark named in 2006, the seven countries in five years, again, that was Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran; the only country that really has been able to maintain state stability, that has not been completely devastated by the United States, is Iran. Of course, it took longer than five years, but the U.S. was pretty successful. And of course Israel has played an important role in this U.S. goal to destabilize those governments in the region. MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, let’s look and see how this was done. Remember after America was attacked on 9/11, there was a meeting at the White House, and everybody knew that the pilots were Saudi Arabians, and they knew that some of the pilots had been staying at the Saudi embassy in Los Angeles, I think, in the United States. But after 9/11, there was a cabinet meeting, and Rumsfeld said to the people there, look and find any link you can get to Iraq, forget Saudi Arabia, no problem, Iraq is the key. And he directed them to find it, and 9/11 became the excuse for attacking not Saudi Arabia, but Iraq, and going right on with it. Well, you needed a similar crisis in Libya. They said in Libya, there was some, I think, fundamentalists in the suburbs of one of the [cities], not the capital city, that were causing problems. And so you have to “protect” the innocent people from [Muammar Gadhafi], and you go in and grab all of their gold reserves, all of their money, and you take over the oil on behalf of France’s oil monopoly. Well, this is the role of the fighting in Gaza today. Netanyahu’s fight against Gaza is being used as the excuse for America moving its warships there, its submarines, and bombing, along with Israel, the Syrian airport so that the Syrians are not able to move weapons or any kind of military support either to Lebanon, to the west, or Iran, to the east. So it’s obvious that all of what we’re seeing is somehow to soften up public opinion for the fact that, well, just like we had to invade Iraq because of 9/11, we have to now finally fight and take out the oil refineries of Iran and their scientific institutes and any laboratories where they may be doing atomic research. And Iran realizes this. Last week, the Iranian press TV said that their defense minister says that if there’s any attack on Iran, whether by Israel or by anyone else, the U.S. and its foreign bases are going to be hit hard. Iran, Russia, China have all looked at the Gaza situation not as if it’s an Israeli action, but as if it’s the U.S. action. They all see exactly that it’s all about Iran, and the American press only says when it talks about Gaza or Hamas or Hezbollah or any other group, it’s always the Iranian tool so-and-so. They’re demonizing Iran in the same way that the neocons have demonized Russia to prepare for America declaring an undeclared war against Iran. And they may even declare war. Last night, on [November] 8, the Republicans had their presidential debate without Trump, and Nikki Haley said, you know, we’ve got to fight Iran, we’ve got to conquer it. And DeSantis of Florida said, yes, kill them all. He didn’t say who the them was. Was it Hamas? Was it everybody who lives in Gaza? Was it all of the Arabs in the Middle East? And we’re really seeing something very much like the Crusades here. It’s a real fight for who is going to control energy, because, again, the key, if you can control the world’s flow of energy, you can do to the whole world what the United States did to Germany last year by blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines. You can grind its industry to a halt, its chemical industry, its steelmaking industry, any of its energy-intensive industries, if countries do not agree to U.S. unipolar control. That’s why it wants to control these areas. Well, the wildcard here is Saudi Arabia. Well, in two days, I think you’re going to have the Iranian president visit Saudi Arabia, and we’re going to see what’s going to happen. But Saudi Arabia finds that while its role is key, Saudi Arabia could simply say we’re not going to export more oil until America pulls out of the Near East. But then all of Saudi Arabia’s monetary savings are invested in the U.S. The United States is holding the world hostage, not only by controlling its oil and gas and energy, but by controlling its finance. It’s like you have your money in a mafia bank or in Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency mutual fund. They can do whatever they want with it. So I think what would happen is it’s very unlikely that Saudi Arabia is ostensibly going to visibly break with the United States because the U.S. would hold it hostage. But I think what it would do would be what has been talked about ever since the 1960s, when similar problems came with Iran. And Iran’s ace in the hole has always been the ability to sink a ship in the Hormuz Strait, where the oil goes through a very narrow little strait, where if you sink a tanker there or a warship, it’s going to block all of the sea trade with Saudi Arabia. And that would certainly, number one, take Saudi Arabia off the hook for saying, we can’t help it. Of course, we’d love to export oil, but we can’t because the shipping lanes are all blocked because you, America, attacked Iran and they defended themselves by sinking the ship. So you can’t send your aircraft carriers and submarines to attack Iran. That’s very understandable. But the United States is causing a world crisis. Well, obviously, the United States knows that that’s going to happen because it’s been discussed literally for 50 years. Since I was at the Hudson Institute working on national security, it was being discussed what to do when Iran sinks the ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Well, the United States figures, okay, oil prices are going to go up. And if Iran fights back in this way, we then will have the power to do to the world what we did to Germany in 2022 when we cut off its oil. But in this case, we don’t take the blame. We’ll say, oh, we didn’t block the Saudi and Arab oil trade. It was that Iran that blocked it, and that’s why we’re going to bomb Iran, assuming that they can. So that, I think, is the contingency plan. And just as America had a contingency plan just like that, waiting for an opportunity, like 9-11, they needed a trigger, and Netanyahu has provided the trigger. And that’s why the United States has been backing Netanyahu. And of course, Iran says, well, we have the ability to really wipe out Israel. And in Congress, General Miley and the others have all said, well, we know that Iran could wipe out Israel. That’s why we have to attack Iran. But in attacking Iran, you send its missiles off to Israel, and again, Israel will end up being the Near Eastern equivalent of Ukraine. And that sort of is the plan, and I think a lot of Israelis see this, and they’re the ones who are worried and are opposing Netanyahu and trying to prevent him from triggering a whole set of military exchanges that Israel won’t be able to resist. And even though Iran, I’m sure they can bomb some places in Iran, but now that you have Russia, China, all supporting Iran through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, you’re having the lines being drawn very, very clearly. So it seems that this scenario is inevitable because Mearsheimer pointed out that it’s impossible to have a negotiated solution or settlement between Israel and Palestine. He said you can’t have a two-state solution because the Palestinian state is going to be like an Indian reservation in America, all sort of cut apart and isolated, not really a state. And you can’t have a single state because a single state is a theocratic state. It’s like, again, it’s like the United States in the Wild West in the 19th century. And I think the way to put it in perspective is to realize that what we’re seeing today in the attempt to split the world is very much like, excuse me, very much like what happened in the 12th and 13th century with the Crusades. BEN NORTON: Yeah, Michael, you raise a lot of very important points there. And I know you want to talk further about the Crusades and the historical analogy. And I think you made a really good point about the US empire standing in as the new Crusaders. But before you move away from the more contemporary political discussion, I wanted to highlight two very important points that you stressed. One is not only the hydrocarbon reserves in the Middle East, which are so important for the world economy and in the US attempt to maintain control over oil and gas supplies and in particular energy costs. There’s also an election coming up in 2024, and the US is concerned about gas prices and inflation. And of course, energy inputs are a key factor in inflation. But furthermore, this region is strategic because of trade routes. Of course, the Suez Canal, according to looking at data here from the World Economic Forum, 30% of the world’s shipping container volume transits through the Suez Canal and 12% of all global trade consists of goods that pass through the Suez Canal. And we saw this in 2021 when there was this big media scandal when a US ship got stuck in the Suez Canal. And this, of course, also came at the time when the world was coming out of the pandemic and there were all these supply chain shocks. So we can see how sensitive the global economy is to even small issues in the global supply chain. And when you talk about shipping routes, we’re not only talking about the Suez Canal, we’re also talking about in the Red Sea toward the south. You also have the Bab al-Mandab. This is a very important strait off of the coast of Yemen. And in the war in Yemen, starting in 2014 and 2015, a lot of the fighting back by the U.S. in this war was in the south, off of the Bab al-Mandab, because this is such an important strait where every single day millions of barrels of oil flow through this strait. And this also reminded me, Michael, you were talking about the historical context. And if you go back to 1956, Israel invaded Egypt. And why was that? Israel invaded Egypt because Egypt’s leftist president, Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal. And at that moment, what was very interesting is that the U.K. and France were strongly supporting Israel in this war against Egypt because they were concerned also about Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez. At that moment, the U.S. wasn’t as deeply pro-Israel as it later became. Of course, in 1967, in the Six-Day War, Israel attacked the neighboring Arab states and occupied part of Egypt, the Sinai, and then also what became Gaza. Israel occupied the Golan Heights of Syria, which remain illegally occupied Syrian territory today. And Israel occupied the West Bank, what we call the West Bank today. But another important detail about that is, after the 1967 war, Israel increasingly became much more of a U.S. ally. Whereas the first generation of Israeli leaders were much more, many of them were European, whereas the later generations of Israelis have been really American. I mean, someone like Netanyahu, he is an American. Netanyahu was raised in the United States. He went to high school in Philadelphia. He went to high school with Reggie Jackson, by the way. He spent his most formative years in the U.S. He went to college at MIT. He then worked in Boston, and he worked with many Republicans that he became friends with, like Mitt Romney, like Donald Trump. And then when he went back to Israel, he was sent to the U.S. to be a diplomat in the United States. So the new generation of Israeli leaders is much more American, essentially. And another detail you mentioned about Iran is so important, because, up until the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Iran of the Shah, the U.S.-backed monarchy, was such an important ally in the region. And in fact, Saudi Arabia and Iran were famously referred to as the twin pillars. Saudi Arabia was the west pillar and Iran was the east pillar. The U.S. used to try to dominate this region, of course, with the support of Israel as well. Well, with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the U.S. lost that crucial east pillar, which meant that Israel became even more important from the perspective of the U.S. imperialism to maintain control over this region. So I just wanted to mention those details of the strategic importance of the trade routes, like the Bab al-Mandab Strait, like the Suez Canal, and also the fact that the Iranian Revolution fundamentally shifted U.S. policy in the region and made Israel even more important from the perspective of U.S. imperialism. And now we’re in a moment where, as you mentioned, the U.S. is even losing control over Saudi Arabia. So it’s losing both of its pillars, which is, again, why Washington is so desperate in propping up Israel, despite the fact that the entire region is completely against these settler-colonialist policies and these ethnic cleansing policies that Israel is carrying out right now, as the entire world is watching. MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, to U.S. diplomats, what you call the support of Israel is really the support of the U.S.’ ability to militarily control the rest of the Near East. It’s all about oil. America is not giving all this money to Israel because it loves Israel, but because Israel is the military base from which the United States can attack Syria, Iraq, and Iran and Lebanon. So it’s a military base. And of course, it can frame this in terms of pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish policy, but this is only for the public relations view of the State Department. If American strategy is based on energy in the Near East, then Israel is only a means to this end. It’s not the end itself. And that’s why the United States needed to have an aggressive Israeli government. You can look at Netanyahu as being, in a way, a U.S. puppet, very much like Zelensky. Their positions are identical in their reliance on the United States against the majority of their own people. So you keep talking about America’s support of Israel. It’s not supporting Israel at all. It rejects the majority of Israelis. It supports the Israeli military, not the Israeli society or the culture, have nothing to do with Judaism at all. This is pure military politics, and that’s how I’ve always heard it discussed among the military and national security people. So you want to be careful not to be taken in by the cover story. There’s one other means of control, I think, that we should mention, and that is, you’ve had in the last month or so all sorts of statements by the United States that as soon as Russia conquers the Ukraine and solidifies its control, it’s going to bring up claims against war crimes, crimes against humanity, against Russia. America is trying to use the crooked court system. The International Criminal Court is a branch of the Pentagon in the State Department, and it’s the kangaroo court. The idea is that somehow the kangaroo court can give America judgments against Putin as they’ve declared him to be arrested anywhere he goes of people who respect the kangaroo court, and they can have all sorts of sanctions against Russian property elsewhere. Well, look at how on earth are they going to justify these claims of war crimes against Russia if in the view of what’s happening between Israel and Gaza right now, and in fact, the arms and the bombs that are being used against Gaza are U.S. bombs, U.S. arms. The U.S. is fueling it all. How on earth can the United States not accuse itself of war crimes on the basis of what it’s trying to accuse Russia of? Part of the splitting of the world that you’re going to see, whether or not the United States can actually bomb Iran, is going to be a whole setup of parallel courts and an isolation, not only of the United States, but as Europe is coming in. Basically, there’s a fight for who is going to control the world right now, and that’s why I mentioned the Crusades. I want to say I’ve been writing a history of the evolution of financial policy. I’ve done two volumes already, one on the Bronze Age Near East, …and forgive them their debts, and the other on classical antiquity, The Collapse of Antiquity. I’m now working on the third volume, which covers the Crusades to World War I. It’s really all about an attempt by Rome, that had hardly any economic power at all, to take over all of the five Christian bishoprics that were made. Constantinople was really the new Rome. That was the head of Orthodox Christianity. The emperor of Constantinople was really the emperor over the whole Christian world. It was followed by Antioch, Alexandria, and finally Jerusalem. The Crusades really began, before they attacked the Near East it began in the 11th century. And Rome was finally being attacked by the Norman armies that were coming in and grabbing parts of France and had moved into Italy. So the papacy made a deal with the Norman warlords, and it said, “We will give you the divine right to rule, we will recognize you as the Christian king, and we will excommunicate all of your enemies, but you have to pledge feudal fealty, loyalty to us, and you have to let us appoint your bishops and control the churches, which control most of your land, and you have to pay us tribute”. The papacy all during the 10th century was controlled by a small group of aristocratic families around Rome that treated the papacy just as they treat the local political mayor of a city or the local administrators. The church was just sort of run by a family. It had nothing to do with Christian religion at all. It was just, this is the church property, and one of our relatives, we’re always going to have as the pope. Well, the popes didn’t have any troops in the late 11th century, and so they got the troops by making a deal with the Normans, and they decided, okay, we’re going to have an ideal, we’re going to mount the Crusades, and we’re going to rescue Jerusalem from the “infidels”, the Muslims. Well, the problem is that Jerusalem didn’t need a rescue, because all throughout the medieval world, throughout Islam, no matter what the religion of the governing classes was, there was a religious tolerance, and that continued for hundreds of years under the Ottoman Empire. There was only one group that was intolerant, and that was the Romans, that said, “We have to control all of Christianity, in order to prevent these aristocratic Italian families from taking over again”. And so they mounted the Crusades, nominally against Jerusalem, but they ended up sacking Constantinople, and two centuries later, by 1291, the Christians lost in Acre. The whole Crusade against the Near East failed. I think you can see the parallel that I’m going to be drawing. So most of the Crusades were not fought against Islam, because Islam was too strong. The Crusades were fought against other Christians. And the fight of Roman Christianity was against the original Christianity for itself, as it existed over the last 10 centuries. Well, you’re having something like that today. Just as Rome appointed the Normans as feudal rulers, William the Conqueror in Sicily, the U.S. appoints Zelensky, supports Netanyahu, supports client oligarchs in Russia, supports Latin American dictators. So you have a U.S. view of the world that is not only unipolar, but in order to have unipolar U.S. control of the world, the U.S. has to be in charge of treating any foreign state, any foreign president as a feudal serf, basically, that they owe feudal loyalty to the United States’ sponsors. And just as you had the Inquisition formed in the 12th century, really, to enforce this obedience to Rome as opposed to independent southern France, and independent Italy, and Arab science in Spain, you have today the U.S. using the National Endowment for Democracy, and all of the organizations controlled by Victoria Nuland with her cookies, to support things. Well, you’re having the whole strategy of the Roman takeover, how it was going to take over other countries, how it was going to prevent other countries from becoming independent of Rome, is almost sentence for sentence what you get in American national security reports, how to control other countries. And that’s really the fight that we’re seeing there. And against that, you’re finding the fight of other countries, the global majority. But in this case, whereas Constantinople was looted in 1204 and sort of destroyed by the Fourth Crusade, Russia, and China, and Iran and the other countries have not been looted. The only thing that the United States can do right now is it’s setting up this military plan to attack Iran. What is the role going to be of, for instance, India? The attack on Iran and on oil is at the same time an attack on the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative, the whole attempt to control transportation, not only oil, but transportation by the global majority for each other’s mutual growth, mutual gain, mutual trade. And the United States is trying to have an alternative plan for all of this that would run from India, essentially largely through Israel, and making a cut right across Gaza, which is one of the big problems that are being discussed now, to the Israeli control of Gaza, which would control its offshore oil and gas. So you’re having the wild cards in the U.S. plan, India, Saudi Arabia, what will it do, and Turkey, because Turkey also has an interest in this oil and gas. And if the Islamic countries decide that they’re really under attack, and this attack by the Christian West against Islam is really a fight to the death, then Turkey will join with Saudi Arabia and with all of the other countries, the Shiites, and the Sunnis, and the Alawites will join together and say, what we have in common is the Islamic religion. That is really going to be essentially the extension of America’s fight against China and Russia. So what we’re seeing, I’m going to try to summarize now, what we’re really seeing is having fought Russia to the last Ukrainian, and threatening to fight Iran to the last Israeli. The United States is trying to send arms to Taiwan to say, wouldn’t you like to fight to the last Taiwanese against China? And that’s really the U.S. strategy all over the world. It’s trying to fuel other countries to fight wars for its own control. That’s how Rome used the Norman armies to conquer southern Italy, England, and Yugoslavia. Israel, and what is in the news over the whole attacks in Gaza, is only the opening stage, the trigger for this war, just as the shooting in Sarajevo started World War I in Serbia started everything. BEN NORTON: Well, you raised so many interesting points, Michael, and I think your analysis is very fresh and unique and very insightful. I wish we had more time to go into some of these topics, but we’ve already been speaking for about an hour. So I think we’re going to wrap up here. But I do want to thank you, Michael, for joining us. And of course, we’ll be back very soon for more analysis. For people who are interested, I actually have interviewed Michael. I did an interview recently on classical antiquity, and Rome and Greece. And he has also written about the history of debt up through the creation of Christianity in his book And Forgive Them Their Debts. And now he is working on this political, economic, materialist history of the Crusades. MICHAEL HUDSON: I didn’t realize when I began the book in the 1980s, drafting it, I didn’t realize how critical the Roman papacy was, and how similar it was to the State Department, and CIA, and the blob today in its plans for world conquest. BEN NORTON: Well, I’m sure in the future we will have many opportunities to discuss that research. Of course, for people who want to get more of Michael’s very important analysis, you should check out the show that he co-hosts here with friend of the show, Radhika Desai, and that is Geopolitical Economy Hour. If you go to our website, geopoliticaleconomy.com, or if you go to our YouTube channel, you can find a playlist with all of the different episodes of Geopolitical Economy Hour. So thanks again, Michael, and we’ll definitely have you back very soon. MICHAEL HUDSON: It’s good to be here. Thank you.

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Alberto Fernández, Argentina, Belt and Road Initiative, China, Covid-19, IMF, International Monetary Fund, Mauricio Macri, Russia, Sinopharm, Sputnik V, vaccines, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping

Argentina is trapped in $44 billion of IMF odious debt taken on by corrupt right-wing regimes. Seeking alternatives to US hegemony, President Alberto Fernández traveled to Russia and China, forming an alliance with the Eurasian powers, joining the Belt and Road Initiative. (Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.) The United States constantly intervenes in the internal affairs of Latin America, organizing coups d’etat, destabilizing independent governments, trapping nations in debt, and imposing sanctions. Washington sees the region as its own property, with President Joe Biden referring to it this January as “America’s front yard.” Seeking alternatives to US hegemony, progressive governments in Latin America have increasingly looked across the ocean to form alliances with China and Russia. Argentina’s President Alberto Fernández did exactly that this February, taking historic trips to Beijing and Moscow to meet with his counterparts Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. Fernández signed a series of strategic agreements, officially incorporating Argentina into Beijing’s international Belt and Road Initiative, while expanding economic partnerships with the Eurasian powers and telling Moscow that Argentina “should be the door to enter” Latin America. China offered $23.7 billion in funding for infrastructure projects and investments in Argentina’s economy. In the meetings, Fernández also asked for Argentina to join the BRICS framework, alongside Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Xi and Putin reportedly both agreed. “I am consistently working to rid Argentina of this dependence on the IMF and the US,” Fernández explained. “I want Argentina to open up new opportunities.” The Argentine president’s comments and meetings with Putin and Xi reportedly angered the US government. Argentina is a Latin American powerhouse, with significant natural resources and the third-largest economy in the region (after Brazil and Mexico, both of which have significantly larger populations). But Argentina’s development has often been weighed down by debt traps imposed from abroad, resulting in frequent economic crises, cycles of high inflation, and currency devaluations. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) – a de facto economic arm of the United States, over which Washington alone has veto power – has significant control over Argentina, having trapped the nation in huge sums of odious debt. In 2018, Argentina’s right-wing President Mauricio Macri requested the largest loan in the history of the IMF: a staggering $57.1 billion bailout. Macri was notorious for his corruption, and this was no secret at the time. By agreeing to give such an enormous sum of money to Macri’s scandal-plagued government, the IMF knew it was ensnaring Argentina in debt it would not be able to pay off. But this was far from the first time the US-dominated financial instrument had trapped Argentina in odious debt. In December 2021, the IMF published an internal report admitting that the 2018 bailout completely failed to stabilize Argentina’s economy. But when Argentina’s center-left President Alberto Fernández entered office in December 2019, his country was ensnared in $44.5 billion in debt from this bailout that the IMF itself admitted was a total failure. ($44.5 billion of the $57.1 billion loan had already been disbursed, and Fernández cancelled the rest.) The Argentine government has tried to renegotiate the debt, but in order to do so the IMF has imposed conditions that severely restrict the nation’s sovereignty – such as appointing a British economist who “will virtually be the new economic minister,” acting as a kind of “co-government,” warned prominent diplomat Alicia Castro. Seeking ways around these US debt traps, Fernández decided this February to turn to the two rising Eurasian superpowers. On February 3, Argentine President Alberto Fernández travelled to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin. “I’m certain Argentina has to stop being so dependent on the [International Monetary] Fund and the United States, and has to open up to other places, and that is where it seems to me that Russia has a very important place,” Fernández said, explaining his motivation for the trip. ???? | "Estamos dando un paso importante para que la Argentina y Rusia profundicen sus lazos", expresó el presidente @alferdez en una declaración conjunta que brindó junto a su par Vladímir Putin. #GiraPresidencial ? @KremlinRussia_Ehttps://t.co/aHl8tOuPZy pic.twitter.com/APoQR6VHtU — Casa Rosada (@CasaRosada) February 3, 2022 Fernández added that, for Russia, Argentina “should be the door to enter” the region, telling Putin, “We could be a venue for the development of your cooperation with Latin American nations.” The two leaders discussed Russian investment in the Argentine economy, trade, railroad construction, and energy technology. Fernández also thanked Moscow for collaborating with his country in the production of its Sputnik V covid-19 vaccine. Argentina was the first country in the western hemisphere to do so. The Argentine president even pointed out in their meeting that he has received three doses of the Sputnik V vaccine. Putin added, “Me too.” Putin said the two countries agree on many issues, calling Argentina “one of Russia’s key partners in Latin America.” Es un honor haberme reunido con Vladímir Putin, presidente de Rusia. Tuvimos la oportunidad de intercambiar ideas sobre cómo podemos complementar mucho más el vínculo entre nuestras naciones. pic.twitter.com/ntmDGn6jtD — Alberto Fernández (@alferdez) February 3, 2022 Just three days after meeting with Putin, President Alberto Fernández travelled to China on February 6 to meet with President Xi Jinping. In this historic trip, Argentina officially joined Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, a massive global infrastructure program. Fernández and other top Argentine officials signed agreements for $23.7 billion in Chinese financing, including investments and infrastructure projects. The funding will be disbursed in two parts: one, which is already approved, will provide Argentina with $14 billion for 10 infrastructure projects; the second, for $9.7 billion, will finance the South American nation’s integration into the Belt and Road. There are three joint Chinese-Argentine projects that were reportedly at the top of Fernández’s list: creating 5G networks, developing Argentina’s lithium industry, and building the Atucha III nuclear power plant. Tuve una cordial, amistosa y fructífera reunión con Xi Jinping, presidente de China. Acordamos la incorporación de Argentina a la Franja y la Ruta de la Seda. Es una excelente noticia. Nuestro país obtendrá más de US$ 23 mil millones de inversiones chinas para obras y proyectos. pic.twitter.com/LGyIJ6zWdG — Alberto Fernández (@alferdez) February 6, 2022 Fernández also discussed plans for Argentina to produce China’s Sinopharm covid-19 vaccine, in addition to Russia’s Sputnik V. Argentina and China signed a comprehensive memorandum of understanding, including 13 documents for cooperation in areas such as green energy, technology, education, agriculture, communication, and nuclear energy. Fernández and Xi discussed ways to “strengthen relations of political, commercial, economic, scientific, and cultural cooperation between both countries,” according to an Argentine government readout of the meeting. The two leaders apparently hit it off very well, with Fernández telling Xi, “If you were Argentine, you would be a Peronist.” ???? | El presidente @alferdez mantuvo reuniones sobre el proyecto de producir en Argentina la vacuna de Sinopharm, participó de la inauguración de los JJOO de Invierno #Beijing2022 y visitó el Museo de la Historia del Partido Comunista. #GiraPresidencialhttps://t.co/acSH9rvpM7 pic.twitter.com/Edz7hHRLE8 — Casa Rosada (@CasaRosada) February 4, 2022 Argentina’s incorporation into the Belt and Road comes mere weeks after Nicaragua joined the initiative in January, and Cuba in December. Latin America’s growing links with China and Russia show how the increasingly multipolar international system offers countries in the Global South new potential allies who can serve as bulwarks against and alternatives to Washington’s hegemony. While right-wing leaders in Latin America keep looking north to the United States as their political compass, progressive governments are reaching across the ocean to the Eurasian powers of China, Russia, and Iran, building new international alliances that weaken Washington’s geopolitical grip over a region that the US president still insists is its “front yard.”

Write an article about: How Mexico’s progressive gov’t nationalized its lithium, the ‘white gold’. 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.

AMLO, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, lithium, Mexico, neoliberalism, oil, podcast, Renata, Turrent

Mexican professor Renata Turrent explains how the progressive government of President AMLO nationalized lithium and reversed privatization of oil by corrupt past neoliberal leaders. Multipolarista editor Benjamin Norton is joined by Mexican professor and activist Renata Turrent to discuss how the progressive government of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) nationalized Mexico’s lithium, an important resource needed to create electronic technologies, while also reversing privatization of oil by corrupt past neoliberal governments. This video is also available at Rokfin and Rumble. You can download the podcast version of this interview at Substack. You can follow Renata on Twitter at @RTurrent.

Write an article about: ‘Free Julian Assange!’ say Latin America’s leftist leaders: Lula, AMLO, Petro, Maduro, Ortega, Kirchner, Evo, Zelaya. 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.

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Daniel Ortega, Ecuador, Evo Morales, Honduras, Julian Assange, Lula da Silva, Manuel Zelaya, Nicaragua, Nicolás Maduro, Nils Melzer, Rafael Correa, torture, Venezuela, WikiLeaks

Latin America’s leftist presidents are leading the campaign to free Julian Assange. The WikiLeaks journalist has the support of Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Honduras’ Manuel Zelaya. A movement is growing in Latin America to demand the freedom of political prisoner Julian Assange, the Australian journalist persecuted by the United States for his work exposing its war crimes. Most of the major leftist leaders in Latin America have called for Assange to be released from the maximum-security British prison where he has been held since 2019 and subjected to torture. Current and former Latin American presidents who have expressed their support for the beleaguered journalist include Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, and Honduras’ Manuel Zelaya. It was the socialist ex president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, who gave asylum to Assange in the first place. Assange, the founder of whistle-blowing journalism publication WikiLeaks, was trapped in Ecuador’s embassy in London, England for seven years, starting 2012, in what United Nations experts determined to be an illegal form of arbitrary detention by the governments of the UK and Sweden. In 2019, British authorities stormed the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested Assange. The UK’s judicial system subsequently rubber stamped Washington’s extradition request, and the WikiLeaks journalist faces up to 175 years in prison. The United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, visited Assange in London’s brutal Belmarsh prison and reported that he suffers from “all the symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture.” “While the US Government prosecutes Mr. Assange for publishing information about serious human rights violations, including torture and murder, the officials responsible for these crimes continue to enjoy impunity,” the UN expert noted. The CIA, which has organized coups against many left-wing governments in Latin America, even made plans to kidnap and kill Assange. The infamous US spy agency is now being sued by journalists who were victims of its illegal spying operations. Ecuador’s former President Correa has always been one of Assange’s most vocal supporters. Correa’s successor, Andrés Arauz, has also praised Assange. A leftist economist and former central bank manager who served as a minister under Correa, Arauz came close to winning Ecuador’s 2021 elections. “Real and also Ecuadorian journalism is that of Julian Assange,” Arauz tweeted with pride, referring to the fact that the WikiLeaks publisher was given Ecuadorian citizenship. Verdadero periodismo y además ecuatoriano es el de Julian Assange. — Andrés Arauz (@ecuarauz) July 6, 2021 Brazil’s left-wing President-elect Lula da Silva met with Assange’s colleagues from WikiLeaks on November 28, 2022. Lula said he “sent my solidarity” and expressed hope that “Assange will be freed from his unjust imprisonment.” Lula governed Latin America’s largest country from 2003 to 2010 and will return to power on January 1, 2023, after winning the October 30 elections and defeating current far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro. Estive com @khrafnsson, editor-chefe do WikiLeaks, e com o editor Joseph Farrell, que me informaram da situação de saúde e da luta por liberdade de Julian Assange. Pedi para que enviassem minha solidariedade. Que Assange seja solto de sua injusta prisão. ?: Cláudio Kbene pic.twitter.com/DuSvdEBQQY — Lula (@LulaOficial) November 29, 2022 A week before they spoke with Lula in Brazil, the editors of WikiLeaks traveled to Colombia to meet with its new President Gustavo Petro. Petro, the first-ever left-wing leader of Colombia, said he “supports the worldwide struggle for the freedom of the journalist Julian Assange.” “I will ask President Biden with other Latin American presidents so they don’t put charges on a journalist only for saying the truth,” he added. Me reuní con los voceros de Wikikeaks, para apoyar la lucha mundial por la libertad del periodista Julian Assange. Le soliciaré al presidente Biden con otros presidentes latinoamericanos que no se pongan cargos a un periodista solo por decir la verdad pic.twitter.com/kWyoXrHhyV — Gustavo Petro (@petrogustavo) November 22, 2022 Nicaragua’s socialist President Daniel Ortega said in 2021 that “Assange earned the recognition of the people, and for that he won the peace prize of the peoples of the world.” (He added, “Not the Nobel Prize, which is given to those who destroy, invade, kill, bomb.”) Ortega noted that Assange’s supposed “crime” was “having denounced the violations of human rights, the crimes committed by the North American leaders in killings, in bombings.” The revolutionary Sandinista leader condemned the hypocrisy and authoritarianism of Western governments, noting their roots in racism, monarchism, and fascism. What do UN human rights bodies have to say on Julian Assange, whose only crime was to denounce the tortures, massacres and murders of the Yankee government? President Daniel Ortega: pic.twitter.com/tnTaEdi5l6 — Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) December 11, 2021 Venezuela’s elected President Nicolás Maduro has been one of the most outspoken world leaders in defending Assange. When the journalist was imprisoned in 2019, Maduro harshly “condemned the atrocious decision” as “a shameful affront to international law and his human rights.” The Venezuelan government stressed that Assange is a victim of “political persecution” by the US government, and his “crime is having revealed to the world the darkest and most criminal face of the ‘regime-change wars’ that the US empire executes, and in particular the massive killings of civilians and the shameful violation of human rights in Iraq.” RT @jaarreaza: #COMUNICADO | The Government and People of Venezuela reject the atrocious decision to deprive Australian-Ecuadorian citizen Julian Assange of the right of diplomatic asylum, and his subsequent arrest in London, clumsily and shamefully […] https://t.co/1GkSGLqMRC — Nicolás Maduro (@maduro_en) April 12, 2019 “The Australian-Ecuadorian journalist should not be delivered to the US, where his life is in danger of a rigged judicial process,” and “where there clearly exists the intention to end his life,” Maduro added. “Out of the respect of the right to asylum, out of the respect of international law, Julian Assange must be freed immediately, his life and its integrity must be protected and respected,” the Venezuelan president stressed. Mexico’s left-wing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has praised Assange as the “best journalist of our time, in the world.” Criticizing US government hypocrisy, AMLO called for the Australian “prisoner of conscience” to be freed, and he asked, “Are we going to take the Statue of Liberty out of New York? Are we going to keep talking about democracy? Are we going to keep talking about the protection of human rights, of the freedom of expression?” In a press conference, the Mexican leader even played a clip of the “Collateral Murder” video published by WikiLeaks, which shows the US military killing journalists in Iraq. At the press conference in which Mexican President AMLO called for Julian Assange to be freed, he showed a clip of the "collateral murder" video published by @WikiLeaks, which exposed US war crimes and killing of journalists in Iraq. Read more here: https://t.co/qtR2SIOX1j pic.twitter.com/lEQw6F9rrS — Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) June 22, 2022 Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, who was president from 2007 to 2015 currently serves as vice president, has repeatedly expressed support for Julian Assange. On December 5, 2022, Kirchner met with the same WikiLeaks editors, Hrafnsson and Farrell, as part of their tour of Latin America. Recibí hoy a Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor general y a Joseph Farrell, embajador de Wikileak. Están realizando una gira latinoamericana para reclamar la libertad de Julian Assange. pic.twitter.com/C1vKhIpV4n — Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina) December 5, 2022 In 2019, Kirchner tweeted, “In the upside-down world, fake news circulates freely and those who reveal the truth are persecuted and imprisoned.” She emphasized the importance of “the citizens’ right to information,” and tagged Assange, thanking him for his journalistic work. En el mundo al revés, las noticas falsas circulan libremente y aquellos que revelan la verdad son perseguidos y encarcelados. El derecho a la información de los ciudadanos y ciudadanas, bien gracias. #Assange — Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina) April 11, 2019 Then in June 2022, while serving as Argentina’s vice president, Kirchner wrote, “The decision to facilitate the extradition of Julian Assange not only puts his life at risk but also marks an alarming precedent for all of the world’s journalists who investigate and look for the truth: journalistic disciplining for everyone.” La decisión de habilitar la extradición de Julian Assange no solo pone en peligro su vida sino que además marca un precedente alarmante para todos los y las periodistas del mundo que investigan y buscan la verdad: disciplinamiento periodístico para todos y todas. pic.twitter.com/FHVhv7Ewen — Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina) June 18, 2022 Bolivia’s socialist ex-President Evo Morales warned in June 2022 that the “decision of the United Kingdom to accept the request of the United States to extradite Julian Assange is a grave attack on journalism, on democracy, and on the search for truth.” Morales added that Assange “exposed the unpunished crimes of the empire, that is his only ‘crime.'” The former Bolivian leader reassured “all our solidarity with him and his family.” Assange expuso los crímenes impunes del imperio, ese es su único “delito”. Toda nuestra solidaridad con él y su familia. — Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) June 17, 2022 Honduras’ former President Manuel Zelaya has been a very outspoken defender of Julian Assange. Zelaya was overthrown in a US-backed right-wing military coup in 2009. Today, he officially serves as an advisor to Honduras’ current President, Xiomara Castro, who is his wife. Zelaya created an organization called the Anti-Imperialist People’s International in Defense of Humanity and Nature (Internacional Antiimperialista de los Pueblos en Defensa de la Humanidad y la Naturaleza), which launched a campaign to free Assange. “The world demands the immediate freedom of Julian Assange,” Zelaya declared. His campaign has been publicly supported by Paraguay’s left-wing former President Fernando Lugo, Ecuador’s ex foreign minister and defense minister Ricardo Patiño, Colombian lawmaker Piedad Córdoba, the lawmaker Nidia Díaz from El Salvador’s leftist FMLN party, and prominent socialist Argentine intellectual Atilio Borón. El mundo exige la libertad inmediata de Julian Assange https://t.co/78an1Pd9E7 vía @tercerainfo3i — Manuel Zelaya R. (@manuelzr) October 16, 2022 In September, Zelaya sent a letter to British Prime Minister Liz Truss, requesting a reversal of the extradition decision and freedom for Assange. In 2020, Zelaya insisted, “Assange, for informing humanity about the hidden horrors of power, should be given an award.”

Write an article about: Protesting farmer in Peru tells pro-coup media why she supports President Castillo: ‘He’s one of us’!. 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.

Juliana Oxenford, media, Pedro Castillo, Peru

In a viral interview with a pro-coup media outlet, a protesting Peruvian farmer says she supports elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo because, “All my life, those foreigners who have governed have discriminated against us,” and “it pains them that we are governed by a teacher, a farmer,” who is “humble, like us.” A farmer in Peru protesting the coup against democratically elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo explained in a viral video why she supports the overthrown leader. “All my life, those foreigners who have governed have discriminated against us,” the woman said. “But today, it pains them that we are governed by a teacher, a farmer, who knows how to eat boiled potatoes, who knows how to eat humble things, like us, the farmers,” she said. A protesting Peruvian farmer tells elite, pro-coup media she supports elected President Pedro Castillo because, “All my life, those foreigners who have governed have discriminated against us” “It pains them that we are governed by a teacher, a farmer,” who is “humble, like us” pic.twitter.com/YFHRI7Zn8m — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 13, 2022 The video, which got thousands of shares on Twitter, showed a clip from Peru’s media network ATV noticias. The presenter in the segment, Juliana Oxenford, was born in Argentina and is from a wealthy family of elite actors. Oxenford has publicly defended the coup, attacking protesters as “vandals” and demonizing democratically elected President Castillo as a “dictator.” A translated transcript of the conversation follows below: PROTESTER: It is outrageous that you, as the Peruvian media, you do not support us. We are supporting a President (Pedro Castillo) who was elected by the Peruvian people. But no, excuse me, but you, you say that he has been these things that you are mentioning, so are you defaming him? Are you defaming our president? PRESENTER: I would love to have the opportunity to have a conversation. PROTESTER: I’m going to tell you something: All my life, all my life, those foreigners who have governed have discriminated against us. All of my life. But today, it pains them that we are governed by a teacher, a farmer, who knows how to eat boiled potatoes, who knows how to eat humble things, like us, the farmers. PRESENTER: I understand the request of those who suffer the most in this country, and maybe you are part of that group ma’am, I’m sorry. PROTESTER: Who suffers? The ones who suffer, the ones who suffer, those who can’t bear the pain, are the right-wingers; it is the congress members. It is the congress members, but not us. … PRESENTER: I will never support a dictator. PROTESTER: How much do they pay you? How much do they pay you to support the right wing? PRESENTER: It doesn’t matter! It doesn’t matter how much they pay me! That is my own personal issue, not yours.

Write an article about: The U.S. is spending millions on ‘Havana Syndrome’ research – but it’s not clear if it exists. 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.

Cuba, Havana Syndrome, Moscow signal, Project Pandora, Russia, Soviet Union, USSR

U.S. government agencies have spent more than $2 million researching Havana Syndrome, but medical experts and internal reports suggest it is psychological, not physical. Similar investigations into the “Moscow signal” during the Cold War found nothing. U.S. federal agencies have spent more than $2 million researching the mysterious condition known as Havana Syndrome – and they plan on spending more. Havana Syndrome is a condition first identified in 2016 that is alleged to be afflicting some diplomats and intelligence agents in the United States and Canada. But numerous scientific experts and internal government reports have suggested the syndrome is psychological, not physical, concluding that it is “very unlikely” to be the result of attacks by a foreign adversary. Politico reported on March 9, 2023 that the U.S. Department of Defense and Army had awarded researchers at Wayne State University and the University of Michigan a grant for a “Traumatic Brain Injury and Psychological Health Research Program.” The Defense Technical Information Center’s database of public research identified the program as focusing on “anomalous health incidents” – a phrase that the Intelligence Community and State Department use for Havana Syndrome. A review of public data on USASpending.gov and SAM.gov, websites used by the government to report contracting information, reveals that the grant is not the only money recently awarded or proposed for research into Havana Syndrome. In September 2022, the same month the DoD awarded the Wayne State grant, the Department of Health and Human Services awarded a contract via the National Institutes of Health to the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, for work on “Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) and Anomalous Health Incidences (AHI),” according to USASpending. Similarly, in January 2023, the Virginia Contracting Activity, the body within the Defense Intelligence Agency responsible for contract management, posted a request for information on behalf of the DIA and the Office of the Surgeon General to SAM.gov. The publication called for proposals for a contractor to work with one or both of the agencies on what appears to be a new initiative, called the Anomalous Health Incident Program. Collectively, the studies add a new layer to a long-developing, and at times controversial, story. In 2016, a group of Central Intelligence Agency officers working under diplomatic cover at the U.S. embassy in Cuba claimed that they had experienced a constellation of odd physical and mental ailments, ranging from headaches and nausea to memory loss, after exposure to a high-pitched noise. The embassy’s chief of mission called a general meeting and encouraged staff to report any unusual symptoms. Shortly after, more cases were identified. News of the condition first broke a year later, in August 2017, when the Associated Press reported that the Trump administration had expelled two diplomats from Cuba’s embassy in Washington D.C. in connection with what State Department officials called “incidents” – suggesting that the condition was linked to attacks by a foreign government, possibly even Cuba itself. A subsequent story published by the Associated Press in October confirmed this, stating that investigators suspected the noise, which was described as sounding like a “mass of crickets,” may have come from a sonic weapon, or a weapon that uses sound waves to injure a target. However, speculation on the nature of the alleged attacks shifted, and some individuals claiming to suffer from the condition – now dubbed Havana Syndrome by the media, because of the location of the original cases – said their symptoms were the result of directed-energy weapons, or ranged weapons that attack a target with electromagnetic energy like ultra-high frequency radio waves. Soon, U.S. officials stationed abroad were reporting a range of unusual symptoms, expanding upon the scope of the attacks to include countries beyond Cuba. A CIA official in Moscow described feelings of vertigo and nausea to GQ magazine. A diplomat stationed in China claimed to NBC News that, in addition to a “pulsing pressure” in her body, she believed her dogs were being poisoned. The shift in the alleged source of the attacks highlighted a problem in the stories surrounding Havana Syndrome, however. Few news outlets covering the subject appeared to understand what they were reporting. A State Department official who has claimed to suffer from Havana Syndrome was said to have experienced both “sonic attacks” and an assault by a “microwave range” weapon by different news agencies within a three-month period. These strange dimensions to the Havana Syndrome saga have led to speculation that the condition might not exist at all. Neurologist Robert Baloh and medical sociologist Robert Bartholomew published a book in 2020 titled “Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria,” in which they argue that the condition is a kind of mass hysteria, known as a psychogenic illness, which spreads through medical misdiagnosis and media coverage. Their argument was supported by the findings of multiple federal agencies and scientific panels. In 2018, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Behavioral Analysis Unit reviewed medical information and interview transcripts supplied by the State Department and determined the cause of Havana Syndrome to be a psychogenic illness. (It later retracted those findings after pushback from State Department officials.) That same year, a separate investigatory body of scientists convened by the State Department, called JASON, came to a similar conclusion, stating that “psychogenic effects may serve to explain important components of the reported injuries.” A study published in 2019 by researchers at Dalhousie University in Canada found another possible explanation for the physical symptoms, suggesting they may have been caused by pesticides. At the time when Havana Syndrome was first reported, the Cuban government was in the midst of an aggressive fumigation campaign to combat the Zika virus. The Dalhousie study was leaked to Canadian media four months after publication, but the findings of the FBI and JASON reviews were withheld until 2021. The FBI has denied Freedom of Information Act requests for the full BAU report, citing exemptions for medical privacy reasons and an ongoing investigation. Despite mounting evidence pointing to a psychogenic illness, the State Department has remained firm in its stance that Havana Syndrome is real. In 2020, it commissioned another study, this time at the National Academy of Sciences, which argued that directed-energy weapons were the “most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases.” The following year, the State Department coordinated with the Biden administration to rebrand Havana Syndrome as “anomalous health incidents.” The phrase “anomalous health incident” has since been adopted by members of the Intelligence Community, many of whom hold conflicting positions on the subject. This has put the Anomalous Health Incident Program at the center of a fierce debate over the nature of the condition and its alleged source. On March 1, 2023, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a press release stating that it was “very unlikely” that anomalous health incidents were the result of attacks by a foreign adversary. The Washington Post reported that seven intelligence agencies participated in the assessment, with five coming to the “very unlikely” conclusion, one ruling it “unlikely,” and a final agency abstaining entirely. An unclassified statement of work included with the Virginia Contracting Activity’s request for information (RFI) identifies the Anomalous Health Incident Program by name, repeatedly using the phrase alongside occasional references to Havana Syndrome, suggesting that the Defense Intelligence Agency, VACA’s parent agency, may have been the abstaining party in the ODNI assessment. The document calls for a 26-person team of support staff, ranging from resident nurses and psychologists to industrial hygienists and case managers, to assist the DIA in medical response and data analysis of anomalous health incidents targeting the Intelligence Community in the continental United States and duty stations abroad. It is one of a number of documents produced over the years that point to a long-standing belief in anomalous health incidents by agencies within the government. An earlier version of the RFI included with the contract opportunity identifies the Office of the Surgeon General as the supervising agency and is dated for October 2019. It is unclear if the Anomalous Health Incident Program is a new program within the DIA and/or the OSG, or if the RFI is expanding upon a pre-existing one. The DIA has investigated anomalous health incidents in the past, as discovered by Freedom of Information Act researcher John Greenewald, Jr. in 2022, when a FOIA request into an alleged incident returned a response from the agency. In August of 2021, @VP Kamala Harris' flight was delayed for more than three hours due to an "anomalous health incident" / likely a "Havana Syndrome" attack. DIA found 45 pages relating to this as responsive to my #FOIA filed. They won't release a single page. pic.twitter.com/hTm15oZyzy — John Greenewald, Jr. (@blackvaultcom) April 11, 2022 The Anomalous Health Incident (AHI) Program is one of many now popping up in the public and private spheres, showing a growing financial incentive to support claims of the existence of anomalous health incidents. Researchers at Wayne State University were awarded $750,000 in September 2022 for a study that uses animal subjects in testing, by exposing them to radiofrequency waves for two hours a day over a 60-day period. Even more noteworthy is a contract awarded by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine through the National Institutes of Health, also with an action date of September 2022. The Office of the Surgeon General, one of the agencies that may be involved in the government’s AHI Program, falls under the jurisdiction of the HHS. The Henry M. Jackson Foundation contract totals $1.5 million – double the amount of the Wayne State grant – and covers research into the relationship between traumatic brain injuries and anomalous health incidents. The foundation does not list the award or the nature of the research on its website, but it may be connected to a one-time employee of the foundation, Dr. James Giordano, a professor of neurology and bioethics at Georgetown University. Giordano appears regularly in the media as a subject matter expert on anomalous health incidents, and in a 2021 op-ed referencing Havana Syndrome for Medpage Today, he included a financial disclosure stating that he has received funding from both the NIH and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation. When asked about the contract, Colleen Franklin, director of communication for the Henry M. Jackson Foundation, stated via email, “This is a government contract, we cannot respond to any media inquiries, requests for interviews or comments.” The Office of the Surgeon General did not respond to a request for comment. These studies are not the first time the U.S. government has funded inquiries into such phenomena. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) conducted radiation experiments on humans and primates, to see if microwave radiation could impede the mental and physical abilities of test subjects. The experiments were part of a larger program, Project Pandora, which sought to understand if the Soviet Union had used a directed-energy weapon on staff at the U.S. embassy in Moscow. At the time, embassy employees reported of suffering from ailments similar in character to Havana Syndrome, prompting the government to look into a so-called “Moscow Signal.” Documents made public by the National Security Archive in 2022, however, revealed that Pandora researchers could find no evidence that microwave radiation degraded mental ability or posed a physical risk at the levels reportedly used against embassy staff. One of the Pandora studies, identified as Project Big Boy, focused on human test subjects on a Navy ship, the USS Saratoga. The study found no changes between groups who had been exposed to microwave radiation through the Saratoga’s radar equipment and those who had not. “There were no significant differences discernible among the three groups, either in the dockside or underway tests with respect either to task performance, psychological effects, or biological effects,” reads a summary of findings of Big Boy in a 1979 Congressional report on Pandora. According to the report, a subsequent primate study also “did not provide an acceptable answer to the question as to whether or not any effects, either behavioral or biological, could be caused by microwave radiation of the intensity and characteristics contained in the synthetic ‘Moscow’ signal.” Project Pandora was terminated in 1970. This presents yet another question in a growing list related to anomalous health incidents: If the United States could not find evidence of their existence in earlier research, why is it funding a new round of studies over 50 years later?

Write an article about: Sanctions violate human rights and should be lifted, says UN Human Rights Council. 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.

Human Rights Council, sanctions, UN, unilateral coercive measures, United Nations

The UN Human Rights Council voted to condemn unilateral coercive measures, known more commonly as sanctions, saying they should be ended because they harm vulnerable populations. Most Global South nations supported the resolution, while Western countries opposed it. The United Nations Human Rights Council voted to condemn sanctions, stating that they violate human rights and should be lifted. Despite repeated denunciations by international legal institutions, the United States and European Union have imposed unilateral sanctions on dozens of countries, representing more than one-quarter of the global population. These Western sanctions are illegal under international law, because they have not been endorsed by the Security Council. The UN refers to these illegal sanctions as “unilateral coercive measures.” In a meeting on March 31, more than half of the 47 members of the Human Rights Council voted to condemn these sanctions. The resolution (A/HRC/49/L.6), titled “The negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights,” was passed with 27 votes in favor (57%), 14 votes against (30%), and six abstentions (13%). Most of the countries that voted in support of the resolution are from the Global South, whereas almost all of the states that opposed the measure are from the Global North. The 27 countries that voted in support of the resolution, thereby condemning sanctions, were the following: Argentina, Benin, Bolivia, China, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Eritrea, Gabon, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Kazakstan, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritania, Namibia, Nepal, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela. The 14 nations that voted against the resolution were: Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Marshall Islands, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, Republic of Korea, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and United States. The six states that abstained were: Armenia, Brazil, Cameroon, Gambia, Mexico, and Paraguay. The resolution states that it “urges all States to stop adopting, maintaining or implementing unilateral coercive measures not in accordance with international law, international humanitarian law, [or] the Charter of the United Nations.” The resolution also “strongly urges all States to refrain from imposing unilateral coercive measures, also urges the removal of such measures, as they are contrary to the Charter and norms and principles governing peaceful relations among States at all levels, and recalls that such measures prevent the full realization of economic and social development of nations while also affecting the full realization of human rights.” According to the Human Rights Council, unliteral sanctions violate the International Bill of Human Rights. The resolution emphasized that these sanctions are particularly destructive for poor people, women, children, the elderly, the disabled, and the environment. The council “expresse[d] its grave concern that, in some countries, the socioeconomic conditions of family members, particularly women and children, are adversely affected by unilateral coercive measures, imposed and maintained contrary to international law and the Charter, that create obstacles to trade relations among States, restrict movement through various means of transport, impede the full realization of social and economic development and hinder the well-being of the population in the affected countries, with particular consequences for women, children, including adolescents, the elderly and persons with disabilities.”

Write an article about: Washington Post calls for censoring Chinese media, praises purge of Russian outlets. 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.

Big Tech, censorship, Facebook, Jeff Bezos, Twitter, Washington Post

The Washington Post – owned by billionaire oligarch Jeff Bezos, who has CIA and Pentagon contracts – has called for censoring Chinese news outlets on social media, while praising Silicon Valley for purging Russian publications. Since the election of Donald Trump as US president, billionaire oligarch-owned newspaper the Washington Post has posted the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” in the logo at the top of its website. The newspaper is now calling to accelerate the death of democracy and increase the shroud of darkness, by censoring alternative media outlets that challenge the US government’s information dictatorship. The Washington Post editorial board has called for “imposing clear rules for government outlets that result in the removal of Chinese channels” from social media platforms. The newspaper insisted, with the fervor of a contemporary crusader, that censoring Chinese publications on “social media sites would land another blow in service of Ukraine. But they’d also land a blow against authoritarianism everywhere.” The Washington Post has a very close relationship to the US government, and relies heavily on officials in Washington for its stories. The Post is also owned by Jeff Bezos, one of the richest human beings in history, valued at approximately $200 billion in wealth. Bezos is the founder and executive chairman of Amazon, which has billions of dollars of contracts with numerous US government agencies, including the CIA, Pentagon, NSA, FBI, and ICE. In an article published on April 11, titled “Social media shouldn’t let China do Russia’s dirty work,” the Washington Post editorial board accused Beijing of spreading “misinformation” on social media about the war in Ukraine. The newspaper wrote that “when it comes to these platforms, there’s a way to stop the spread”: more censorship. By imposing clear rules for government outlets that result in the removal of Chinese channels, social media sites would land another blow in service of Ukraine ⁠— and against authoritarianism everywhere, the Editorial Board writes. https://t.co/jHCiDNBWvh — Washington Post Opinions (@PostOpinions) April 12, 2022 The editorial board praised “U.S. social media sites’ steps to ban Russian state media.” YouTube, which is owned by Google, banned Russian state media outlets across the entire world. Google has billions of dollars of contracts with the CIA, Pentagon, and other US government agencies. Facebook, another US government contractor, has also prohibited Russian state media outlets in Europe. As an example of the supposed “disinformation” or even “lies” allegedly spread by China, the Washington Post cited Beijing’s insistence that “NATO is to blame for the fighting.” The top US newspaper erased the history of NATO expanding 14 times to the east after the reunification of Germany, in blatant violation of promises made to Moscow, militarily surrounding Russia with hostile powers – not to mention the US-sponsored coup in Ukraine in 2014, which unleashed a civil war, fueled by billions of dollars worth of weapons, military support, and training from NATO, which led to more than 14,000 Ukrainian deaths before Russia sent a single troop in. Even the former US ambassador to Russia, William Burns, who now serves as CIA director, admitted in a 2008 State Department cable that NATO expansion to Ukraine would cross Moscow’s security “redlines” and “could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.” The Post refuses to acknowledge any of these facts, and instead claims that anyone who blames NATO for the war – as many countries in the Global South do – is guilty of “disinformation” and “lies,” and must be censored. The incredible irony is that the Washington Post accuses China and Russia of “prevent[ing] their citizens at home from hearing any voices but theirs,” while it is actively calling for censoring voices that challenge the US government’s propaganda line. It is not just Russian and Chinese state-backed media outlets that are being silenced. Anyone who opposes NATO disinformation is under threat. Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the already dangerous levels of censorship on social media platforms went into hyperdrive. On Twitter, journalist Pepe Escobar, former UN arms inspector Scott Ritter, and the popular podcast Russians with Attitude have all been censored for daring to expose Western government lies about Ukraine, just to name a few of the high-profile victims of this digital witch hunt. Independent journalists who challenge NATO government propaganda are at risk of being purged. And the editorial board of a major newspaper calling for unaccountable Big Tech corporations to wage war on the freedom of the press and freedom of expression shows how extreme this neo-McCarthyite mentality is the United States. Anyone who refuses to toe the line of the US government is in danger of having their electronic existence erased.

Write an article about: After nuking Japan, US gov’t lied about radioactive fallout as civilians died. 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.

Hiroshima, Japan, Nagasaki, nuclear weapons

After dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945, US government officials lied to the media and Congress, claiming there was “no radioactive residue” in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that civilians did not face “undue suffering,” that it was “a very pleasant way to die.” After dropping two atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, killing between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians, top US government officials lied to the media and Congress, claiming there was “no radioactive residue” in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that Japanese reports of deaths due to radiation were “propaganda.” The US general overseeing the nuclear program told Congress that Japanese civilians did not face “undue suffering,” insisting that it was in fact “a very pleasant way to die.” This information was revealed by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. On August 8, the archive published declassified documents exposing this shocking history. The archive wrote: the head of the [Manhattan] project, Gen. Leslie R. Groves, was so worried about public revulsion over the terrible effects of the new weapon – which a Navy report later in 1945 called “the most terrible agent of destruction known to man” – that he cut off early discussion within the MED of the problem. Later, he misleadingly told Congress there was “no radioactive residue” in the two devastated cities.  In doing so, he contradicted evidence from his own specialists whom he had sent to Japan to investigate.  Groves even insisted that those who had been exposed to radiation from the atomic explosions would not face “undue suffering. In fact, they say it is a very pleasant way to die.” The New York Times echoed these falsehoods on behalf of the US government, publishing an article on September 13, 1945 titled “No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin.” In this case, the newspaper of record was repeating the lies of another top US official, Brig. Gen. T. F. Farrell, chief of the War Department’s atomic bomb mission. Like Groves, Farrell ignored his own medical experts and publicly denied that Japanese civilians were dying of radioactive fallout. Doctor James N. Yamazaki was the lead physician of the US Atomic Bomb Medical Team sent to Nagasaki in 1945 to investigate the effects of the nuclear attack. In his website Children of the Atomic Bomb, published by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Yamazaki wrote: The real mortality of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan will never be known. The destruction and overwhelming chaos made orderly counting impossible. It is not unlikely that the estimates of killed and wounded in Hiroshima (150,000) and Nagasaki (75,000) are over conservative. Yamazaki added that the “bomb was a deliberate act of destruction that destroyed human bodies, brains, and genes for generations.” Multipolarista further detailed this gruesome history in a report after the assassination of Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this July: US-backed fascism in Japan: How Shinzo Abe whitewashed genocidal imperial crimes

Write an article about: Biden is expanding the US govt’s brutal anti-immigrant machine. 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.

CBP, ICE, immigration, Joe Biden

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained roughly 250,000 people in 200 jails in 2021, using brutal tactics to repress immigrants. This violent apparatus continues to grow under President Joe Biden. President Joe Biden and his top administration officials met on March 15 and signed a massive spending bill of $1.5 trillion into law. This package, which funds federal government agencies for fiscal year 2022, boosts military spending and increases discretionary spending for domestic agencies by $6.7 billion, the biggest increase in domestic discretionary spending in the past four years. The spending bill also expands the US government’s brutal deportation machine, with an additional $284.7 million for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This includes $57 million more funding for ICE’s contentious Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) office, which is responsible for detaining and removing immigrants. Overall, the Biden administration is funding ICE with $312 million more than the Donald Trump-era average. Joe Biden’s budget proposal increases funding for ICE:https://t.co/6o8gVPo67C pic.twitter.com/zXUb91gtR4 — Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) June 1, 2021 The expansion of these notoriously repressive agencies continues despite the fact that net immigration to the United States has consistently declined since 2016, and substantially dropped from 2020 to 2021, to the lowest levels in decades. The 2022 spending bill provides funding to keep roughly 20,000 people currently detained by ICE behind bars. The vast majority – 70% to 80% – of people held by ICE have no criminal record. Many of those who do have minor offenses such as traffic violations. According to court records, only 0.6% of new cases in 2022 resulted in deportation orders based on a criminal record. There are presently more than 1.7 million people waiting for immigration court hearings, as the system experiences its largest ever backlog. They are stuck in limbo. Incarceration of immigrants in private prisons is also growing under Biden. At the end of 2021, private prison corporation the GEO Group signed a deal with Charlton County in Georgia to expand immigration detention centers from 780 beds to 3,018, located in the city of Folkston, which has just 4,464 residents. Down the road near Lumpkin, Georgia is the Stewart Detention Center, which has a capacity of 1,900 detainees. The 2022 spending bill also includes an increase of $10 million for ICE’s “Alternative to Detention” (ATD) program. This expands ICE’s surveillance program in immigrant communities by patrolling their neighborhoods. As of December 2021, there were more than 150,000 people in the ATD program, which received $440 million in taxpayer dollars. That number continues to grow. The Detention Watch Network notes that the “Biden administration continues to significantly and quickly funnel people, including families, into the ICE ATD program.” As of April 9, 2022, there are more than 216,000 people monitored by the ATD program, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Harlingen, Texas, is home to the largest number of people monitored by ATD: 17,340. This is a region that is 81.8% Latino, and where the poverty rate is 29.1% – more than double the national average of 12.8%. The second-biggest area is Phoenix, Arizona, with 16,075 people monitored, followed by Los Angeles, California, with 14,726. The 2022 spending bill likewise puts aside $200 million for the US Department of Homeland Security to develop two permanent migrant processing centers on the southwest border. These will be “one-stop” processing centers to replace the “soft” tent centers that sprung up during the Donald Trump administration. As a result, that border region will see an increase in law enforcement officers patrolling. The quotas set by the US government are typically met or surpassed. In 2018, for example, the quota of ICE detention beds rose from 34,000 to 40,520. In the following year, ICE broke records by detaining more than 55,000 people and applying funding pressure. The 2022 spending bill maintains its payroll of more than 84,000 ICE and CBP employees and 50,000 border and interior enforcement officers. Thousands of people wait while the US government decides on their immigration status or the possibility of deportation. Some are held behind bars in inhumane conditions in crowded detention centers. In the fiscal year 2021, across the roughly 200 jails run by ICE, nearly 250,000 people were detained. Yet, many people in the United States are not aware of the astonishing record ICE has of depriving people of access to lawyers, denying them medical attention, and separating them from their families. These abuses were highlighted in a Detention Watch Network report that showed how ICE refused to release people held during the Covid-19 pandemic, which threatened thousands of lives. It has been consistently demonstrated that ICE is unable and unwilling to properly care for people who require medical attention. Reports indicate that poor medical care has resulted in nearly half of all deaths in ICE custody. Today, DWN released a new report that details an emerging, lethal situation in detention–ICE’s lack of sanitation and basic necessities and their troubling record of medical negligence and deaths combined with #COVID19’s risk to public health: https://t.co/KiZ3KooBT9 #FreeThemAll pic.twitter.com/eU73W51xtS — Detention Watch (DWN) (@DetentionWatch) March 26, 2020 ICE has officially reported 207 deaths of detainees since the agency was created in 2003, in what is likely a very conservative estimate. Mandated by federal law to publicly report every detainee’s death in their custody, ICE has used a loophole to avoid full accountability. The Investigative Reporting Workshop found that “ICE underreported fatalities by releasing sick inmates to hospitals, where some died shortly afterward.” IRW also discovered cases of individuals who died after being released and returned to their families. A tragic case of this was the death of Oscar López Acosta. While detained in an Ohio immigration center as Covid-19 spread around the country in 2020, López phoned his wife to tell her that he was “dying in silence.” López battled health issues such as diabetes and was worried about contracting the deadly virus. He had been in ICE custody since 2018 for re-entering the country. López was released on April 24, 2020, with deteriorating health. On May 10, he died on the couch in his home in Dayton, Ohio. He left behind a wife and children, among them a 9-year-old daughter. Lourdes Maria Mejia, López’s wife, said that she believes ICE was aware that he was infected, which was later confirmed by a hospital test after coming home. In addition to the systemic violence of ICE, there is also rampant abuse under US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the county’s largest federal law enforcement agency, which includes Border Patrol. CBP’s culture of violence, added to its lack of accountability and oversight, has led to a significant loss of life. Yet no one in the agency’s 90-year history has been successfully convicted of killing while on duty. Moreover, CBP has not consistently reported death-related information to Congress. After tracking deaths based on media coverage, the Southern Border Communities Coalition found that at least 200 people have died in encounters with CBP agents since 2010. The organization’s report on CBP-related violence showed that 31% of deaths came from fatal shootings, 29% from deadly car chases, and 23% from medical issues. 2021 the deadliest, with 58 deaths reported. So far in 2021, 45 deaths resulting from an encounter with #CBP have been reported. No agent has been held accountable, in large part because of the agency’s shadow units which work to protect agents rather than the public. https://t.co/x6aZVVUmFY pic.twitter.com/8mGYSdeenl — SBCC (@SBCCoalition) December 22, 2021 Each of the last four US presidents has left an imprint on the southern border. Biden is already making his. The US government is further militarizing the border by deploying new technology such as drones, camera-equipped towers, and now headless robot dogs to terrorize people migrating to the US. This new technology further pushes people seeking asylum or work into deadly alternative routes. This contributed to the deaths of 650 migrants crossing the US-Mexico border in 2021 – the deadliest year since reporting began in 1998. Despite this high number, the International Organization for Migration noted that “all (migrant death) figures remain undercounts.” At least 650 migrants died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021, but undercounting migrant deaths has and continues to be a big problem. Correcting this count is important because it helps determine if the U.S. should send more aid to Central America https://t.co/Rr345NjvW1 pic.twitter.com/XwGfOkkYe3 — The Conversation U.S. (@ConversationUS) February 25, 2022 Since Biden’s first day in office, he has pledged to “modernize our immigration system” with “smart” technologies. But these technologies have also been used on people inside the US protesting police killings. On May 25, 2020, when Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) used a Predator B drone to surveil protesters. Later, the Department of Homeland Security’s Air and Marine Operations division deployed drones in more than 15 cities to monitor activists protesting against police brutality. Immigrants’ rights organizations such as Mijente, Just Futures Law, and the Rio Grande Valley No Border Wall Coalition have reported on the high-tech border infrastructure that surveils disproportionately Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. The digital border wall consists of aerial drones, underground sensors, and surveillance towers over hundreds of miles capable of detecting humans, vehicles, and animals in all directions. US agencies also use biometric surveillance technology such as facial recognition, voice recognition, DNA, and iris scans to surveil individuals. The Israeli military company Elbit Systems, which creates technologies to help spy on and militarily occupy the Palestinian people, is the same company that California Border Protection hired to build towers on the US-Mexico border. Former Israeli Colonel Danny Tirza, a principal architect, explained the idea behind this mass surveillance: “It’s not enough to construct a wall. You have to construct all the systems around it.” The move to further militarize the US-Mexico border is fueled by propaganda in the mainstream corporate media, which treats the border as a war zone. This propaganda narrative claims the border is being militarized to stop criminals, cartels, and “terrorists,” when the truth is that the vast majority of people that Border Patrol face are parents and children, innocent individuals seeking asylum or work. But CBP and ICE have long tried to deceptively link immigration to terrorism – a tactic that Trump promoted, but which was also used by the George Bush and Barack Obama administrations. The development of new technologies has reduced the number of workers in various sectors, such as retail, service, and factory jobs, with a corresponding increase in automation. But the opposite is happening with law enforcement: Instead, repressive US agencies keep expanding, and racism is growing along with them. Meanwhile, each US presidential administration uses more and more taxpayer money to strengthen a system of terror targeting Black and Brown people migrating, despite Census data showing a consistent decline in migration to the United States, to the lowest levels in decades.

Write an article about: Facebook censors journalist Seymour Hersh’s report on Nord Stream pipeline attack. 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.

Facebook, Meta, Nord Stream, Russia, Seymour Hersh, Ukraine

Facebook censored a report by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines between Russia and Germany, forcing users to instead read a website funded and partially owned by NATO member Norway. Facebook has censored a report by the world’s most famous investigative journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh, on the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines between Russia and Germany. While discouraging its users from posting Hersh’s article, Facebook instead recommends a website that is funded and partially owned by the government of NATO member Norway. Facebook has millions of dollars worth of contracts with the US government, including with the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security. The Nord Stream system consisted of two sets of two pipelines each (known as Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2) that delivered natural gas from Russia, through the Baltic Sea, to Germany. Nord Stream AG, the Switzerland-based international consortium that built and oversees the pipelines, is owned by five European companies. Russia’s state gas giant Gazprom has 51% of the shares, but the other 49% belong to two German companies, a Dutch firm, and a French company. In September 2022, the Nord Stream pipelines were sabotaged in a suspicious explosion, in what amounted to a terror attack on the energy infrastructure of Europe. World-renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported that the pipelines were blown up by the US government, in an operation overseen by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland. All three officials are hard-line anti-Russia hawks. Nuland was a key architect of the violent coup d’etat that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected, geopolitically neutral government in 2014 and installed a pro-Western regime. Hersh published the bombshell story at his personal blog at the website Substack in February. If a Facebook user posts a link to this report by Hersh, a notice pops up that says: “Before you share this content, you might want to know there’s additional reporting from Faktisk. Pages and websites that repeatedly publish or share false news will see their overall distribution reduced and be restricted in other ways”. The page Facebook links to, Faktisk, is a fact-checking website from Norway, which is funded and partially owned by the government of that NATO member state. Faktisk discloses that one of its owners and main funders is NRK: the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, a state-owned media outlet. NRK states clearly on its website, “NRK is Norway’s biggest media house. The broadcaster is state-owned and the Parliament (Stortinget) has given the mandate and the ownership role to the Ministry of Culture”. It notes that “NRK is publicly financed (97%) by a individual tax everybody in Norway has to pay”. The editor-in-chief of Faktisk, Kristoffer Egeberg, discloses in his biography on the website that he served in the Norwegian Armed Forces as a soldier and officer, participating in NATO and UN operations in Lebanon, Bosnia, and Kosovo. What this means it that Facebook is censoring a report by the world’s most famous investigative journalist and instead promoting a website partially owned and funded by a NATO member state, Norway, which is edited by a former Norwegian military officer who participated in NATO operations. Facebook censored a report by Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh on the Nord Stream pipeline attack, forcing users to instead read a website funded/owned by NATO member Norway Press freedom: a casualty of the West's information war on Russia Full video: https://t.co/9j7jHE5Ujb pic.twitter.com/td0Te4zwwZ — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) April 25, 2023 The US government publicly denied Hersh’s report on the Nord Stream attacks, but Washington has always rejected the investigative journalist’s stories, which have consistently proven to be true. Hersh won his Pulitzer Prize for exposing the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which the US military killed hundreds of civilians. The US government had denied this massacre, although it was later proven to have happened. Similarly, Washington initially denied Hersh’s blockbuster 2004 report exposing the US military’s use of torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, which was similarly proven to be correct. In response to Hersh’s report on the Nord Stream attacks, anonymous US government officials used the New York Times to undermine the reporter, instead blaming an unidentified “pro-Ukrainian group”, which they claimed was not linked to the Ukrainian government or any other NATO member state. Washington and its allies in the corporate media have been desperate to smear Hersh, nitpicking over very minor details he may have mistakenly reported, but they have utterly failed to provide any tangible evidence or compelling alternative explanation of how the Nord Stream pipelines were destroyed. The massive pipelines were built out of steel, surrounded with thick concrete, and located 50 to 100 meters underwater. It would be extremely difficult for a small ragtag “pro-Ukrainian group” to sabotage these pipelines. The attack clearly involved a lot of planning and resources, which suggests that a state was very likely involved. A worker testing part of the Nord Stream pipelines Facebook is by no means the only US social media giant that has censored dissident voices over the war in Ukraine. YouTube, which is owned by Google, blocked the channels of Russia’s state media outlet RT everywhere on the planet. Like Facebook, Google has millions of dollars of US government contracts, with the CIA, Pentagon, FBI, and various police departments. Furthermore, the European Union banned RT and Sputnik, another Russian state media outlet. If someone in the EU tries to access the Twitter profiles of RT or Sputnik, a message appears stating, “Account Withheld”. The US government even went so far as to seize the domain name of Iran’s state media outlet Press TV. “The domain presstv.com has been seized by the United States Government”, reads a notice on the website, published jointly by the Departments of Justice and Commerce.

Write an article about: Ex US official admits Ukraine conflict is NATO ‘proxy war with Russia’. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

CSIS, Eliot Cohen, NATO, Russia, Ukraine

Former US State Department official Eliot Cohen stated openly that the conflict in Ukraine is a NATO “proxy war with Russia,” and called for using the country to kill as many Russian soldiers as possible, “the more and faster the better.” A former US State Department official has stated openly that the conflict in Ukraine is a NATO “proxy war with Russia,” and called for killing as many Russian soldiers as possible, “the more and faster the better.” These comments were made by Eliot A. Cohen, who served as a counselor for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from 2007 to 2009, in the George W. Bush administration’s State Department. A staunch advocate for hardline neoconservative foreign policy, Cohen published an article in The Atlantic magazine on March 14, titled “America’s Hesitation Is Heartbreaking,” in which he praised the Joe Biden administration for waging an indirect war on Russia on multiple fronts, including through information war, economic war, and proxy war in Ukraine. Cohen complained, however, that Biden should do even more to up the ante, escalating the conflict even further. The Biden administration has already sent Ukraine more than 17,000 anti-tank weapons, including Javelin missiles, as well as 2,000 stinger anti-aircraft missiles. Some of these went directly to the notorious neo-Nazi Azov regiment. After sending $350 million in arms to Ukraine in late February, the Biden administration approved an additional $13.6 billion aid package in March, including $6.5 billion in military support. NATO is sending weapons and trainers to help neo-Nazis in Ukraine’s white-supremacist Azov movement fight Russia, as the US floods the country with weapons. This follows numerous reports of Western government support for Ukrainian far-right extremists.https://t.co/5gYgmU8PFo — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 10, 2022 Eliot Cohen insisted this is not nearly enough. “The stream of arms going into Ukraine needs to be a flood,” he proclaimed in his article in The Atlantic. “The United States and its NATO allies are engaged in a proxy war with Russia,” he wrote clearly. “They are supplying thousands of munitions and hopefully doing much else—sharing intelligence, for example—with the intent of killing Russian soldiers.” Cohen added on an equally explicit note: “we must face a fact: To break the will of Russia and free Ukraine from conquest and subjugation, many Russian soldiers have to flee, surrender, or die, and the more and faster the better.” “Thus far the Biden administration has done an admirable job of winning the information war, mobilizing the NATO alliance, and imposing crippling (if not yet complete) sanctions on the Russian economy,” he continued. “It has, it appears, sped the delivery of some weapon systems (notably Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger man-portable surface-to-air missiles) to Ukrainian forces.” The neoconservative hawk called for the Biden administration to give Ukraine fighter planes. He claimed sending MiG-29 jets would not escalate the proxy war into World War III with Russia – although many experts strongly disagree with him, including leaders of the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies. “If only we have the stomach for doing what needs to be done,” he wrote. Cohen was a leading supporter of the 2003 Iraq War, and has likewise called for Washington to wage a conventional war on Iran. Although he is no longer directly in government, Cohen works at the highly influential neoconservative think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), which is funded by the US government and its allies, the weapons industry, and fossil fuel corporations. He is also a professor at the elite Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, which has a revolving door with the US government. Cohen’s ultra-bellicose views are quite representative of his fellow hawks in Washington; he is by no means alone. His article in The Atlantic provides an honest glimpse into how prominent US imperial planners see the crisis in Ukraine: as an opportunity to use the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder in a proxy war to bleed Russia.

Write an article about: Biden is deporting more migrant children than Trump. 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.

deportations, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Mexico, racism

US deportations of migrant children increased by 30% in 2021, year one of the Biden-Harris administration. 78% of the minors were not accompanied by adults. But the English-language media ignored this US government deportations of migrant children increased by 30% in 2021. In this first year of the Biden-Harris administration, 19,793 minors were deported to Mexico, more than three-quarters of whom — 15,488, or 78% — were not accompanied by adults. 2021 saw the most U.S. deportations of children in five years, including all of the time of the Donald Trump administration. These are official figures that come from Mexico’s Secretariat for Home Affairs. They were published in the major Mexican newspaper La Jornada on January 3. Yet 10 days later, there still has not been a report about this in a mainstream English-language news outlet. All of the migrant children deported by the United States to Mexico in 2021 were from the Northern Triangle of Central America — a region that has been devastated by violence, organized crime, and poverty, fueled by U.S.-backed coups, meddling, and neoliberal economic policies. The La Jornada article notes that, of the minors deported by the Biden administration in 2021, 51.7% were Guatemalan, 31.8% were Honduran, and 16.5% were El Salvadoran. While the Democratic Party rightfully criticized Trump for his racist and inhumane anti-immigrant policies, the reality is those barbaric policies have continued under Biden, with little-to-no scrutiny. And despite how much he tried, the inveterate bigot Trump was not even able to deport as many immigrants as the Obama-Biden administration did. I discussed this clear political hypocrisy in the video below:

Write an article about: Dick Cheney confirmed US goal is to break up Russia as a country, not just USSR. 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.

Dick Cheney, Iraq, Iraq War, Russia, Soviet Union, USSR

Former Vice President and Iraq War architect Dick Cheney wasn’t content only breaking up the Soviet Union. Balkanizing Russia (and China) is a bipartisan foreign-policy goal among top US national security state officials. Former US Vice President Dick Cheney, a lead architect of the Iraq War, not only wanted to dismantle the Soviet Union; he also wanted to break up Russia itself, to prevent it from rising again as a significant political power. Balkanizing Russia, as NATO did to former Yugoslavia, is a fantasy shared by many hawks in the US national security state. They will never tolerate an independent government in Moscow, regardless of whether or not it is socialist. Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote that, “When the Soviet Union was collapsing in late 1991, Dick wanted to see the dismantlement not only of the Soviet Union and the Russian empire but of Russia itself, so it could never again be a threat.” Gates made these comments in his 2014 memoir “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.” This quote was highlighted on Twitter by journalist Jon Schwarz. In Robert Gates's memoir "Duty," he describes how at the end of the Cold War, Dick Cheney—then secretary of defense—wanted to dismantle not just the Soviet Union but Russia itself. No one in the US knows or cares about this, but I bet lots of people in the Russian government do. pic.twitter.com/Dyb7NeXzJD — ☀️ Jon Schwarz ☀️ (@schwarz) January 31, 2022 Cheney was one of the most powerful vice presidents in modern US history. He exercised significant influence over President George W. Bush, who had little foreign-policy experience and knowledge. The fact that a figure at the helm of the US government not-so-secretly sought the permanent dissolution of Russia as a country, and straightforwardly communicated this to colleagues like Robert Gates, partially explains the aggressive posturing Washington has taken toward the Russian Federation since the overthrow of the USSR. The reality is that the US empire will simply never allow Russia to challenge its unilateral domination of Eurasia, despite the fact that the government in Moscow restored capitalism. This is why it is not surprising that Washington has utterly ignored Russia’s security concerns, breaking its promise not to expand NATO “once inch eastward” after German reunification, surrounding Moscow with militarized adversaries hell bent on destabilizing it. Leading US imperial planner Zbigniew Brzezinski clearly stated in his 1997 opus “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives” that the goal was to contain and weaken Russia. Washington had to “prevent the emergence of a dominant and antagonistic Eurasian power,” the former US national security advisor wrote, in order to maintain US “global primacy.” US imperial planner Brzezinski stressed they must "prevent the emergence of a dominant and antagonistic Eurasian power" to maintain US "global primacy" The US empire knows the biggest threat to its hegemony is if China & Russia can integrate Eurasia, and form a military alliance pic.twitter.com/8ekQrfOBrZ — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 21, 2021 Also in 1997, Brzezinski penned an article proposing “A Geostrategy for Eurasia.” This imperial blueprint was published in Foreign Affairs, the magazine of the powerful Council on Foreign Relations. The influential US policymaker insisted that Russia should be divided into a “decentralized political system”, with “free-market economics”. Brzezinski proposed a “loosely confederated Russia — composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic”. He added that “a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization”. The Russian Federation of today consists of 22 republics. Moscow has long accused Washington of supporting secessionist movements within its borders, aimed at breaking away some of these republics, with the goal of destabilizing and ultimately dismantling Russia. Russian security services have published evidence that the United States supported Chechen separatists in their wars on the central Russian government. British academic John Laughland stressed in a 2004 article in The Guardian, titled “The Chechens’ American friends,” that several Chechen secessionist leaders were living in the West, and were even given grant money by the US government. Laughland noted that the most important US-based pro-Chechen secessionist group, the deceptively named American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), listed as its members “a rollcall of the most prominent neoconservatives who so enthusiastically support the ‘war on terror'”: They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser; Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by predicting it would be “a cakewalk”; Midge Decter, biographer of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George Bush’s plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines. This was a Who’s Who of DC’s most influential hawks. Alongside Rumsfeld, Abrams, and company, Cheney was a key figure in these neoconservative foreign-policy circles in Washington, whose bellicose adherents fill the unelected US national security state bureaucracy, under both Republican and Democratic administrations. That is to say that Cheney was by no means alone is seeking the breakup of the Russian Federation; it is a fantasy shared by many of his Beltway colleagues. During the Second Chechen War in the 2000s, these avid proselytizers of the so-called “War on Terror” cheered on Chechen insurgents as they battled the Russian central government. The fact that far-right Salafi-jihadists made up a significant percentage of the Chechen insurgency didn’t bother these anti-Muslim neocons – just as Islamophobic “War on Terror” veterans had no problem supporting extremist head-chopping Takfiri Islamists in the subsequent US wars on Syria and Libya. Today many of these same neoconservative US national security state functionaries have turned their attention back toward supporting secessionist movements in China – in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, and especially Xinjiang. The fact that the CIA cutout the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) openly publicizes its support for Uyghur separatist groups in China shows how transparent Washington’s geopolitical objectives are. To further #humanrights & human dignity for all people in China, the National Endowment for Democracy has funded Uyghur groups since 2004. #NEDemocracy #HumanRightsDay https://t.co/C0LJEyWxq1 pic.twitter.com/OqZdehdxXN — NEDemocracy (@NEDemocracy) December 10, 2020 The idea that the US foreign-policy apparatus, and NATO as a military bloc, seeks to prevent the rise of both Russia and China as independent powers is obvious to any truly impartial analyst. Michael T. Klare, a professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, wrote at TomDispatch this January that “America’s top leaders have reached a consensus on a strategy to encircle and contain the latest great power, China, with hostile military alliances, thereby thwarting its rise to full superpower status.” Klare continued: The gigantic 2022 defense bill — passed with overwhelming support from both parties — provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of U.S. bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states. The goal is to enable Washington to barricade that country’s military inside its own territory and potentially cripple its economy in any future crisis. For China’s leaders, who surely can’t tolerate being encircled in such a fashion, it’s an open invitation to… well, there’s no point in not being blunt… fight their way out of confinement. … For Chinese leaders, there can be no doubt about the meaning of all this: whatever Washington might say about peaceful competition, the Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, has no intention of allowing the PRC to achieve parity with the United States on the world stage. In fact, it is prepared to employ every means, including military force, to prevent that from happening. This leaves Beijing with two choices: succumb to U.S. pressure and accept second-class status in world affairs or challenge Washington’s strategy of containment. It’s hard to imagine that country’s current leadership accepting the first choice, while the second, were it adopted, would surely lead, sooner or later, to armed conflict. This goal is likewise clearly reflected in a 2019 report published by the RAND Corporation, a major Pentagon-backed think tank. Titled “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground,” the document discusses various ways to exploit Moscow’s “weaknesses,” encircle it, and contain it. RAND listed the following “geopolitical measures”: Measure 1: Provide Lethal Aid to Ukraine Measure 2: Increase Support to the Syrian Rebels Measure 3: Promote Regime Change in Belarus Measure 4: Exploit Tensions in the South Caucasus Measure 5: Reduce Russian Influence in Central Asia Measure 6: Challenge Russian Presence in Moldova Excluding perhaps concerning Moldova (at least openly), the US government has pursued all of these policies to a tee. The Pentagon's privatized policymaking arm the RAND Corporation published a report in 2019 calling for the US to wage proxy war on Russia in Ukraine, Syria, Belarus, Caucasus, & Central Asia — the next region on the list, now being targeted via Kazakhstanhttps://t.co/sp6CTNFDeq pic.twitter.com/yxkxeJRuGh — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 6, 2022 The Moon of Alabama blog, which highlighted this RAND report, also noted that Victoria Nuland, the third-most powerful official in the Joe Biden administration’s State Department, served as Vice President Cheney’s principal deputy foreign policy adviser from 2003 to 2005. Nuland, today under-secretary for political affairs, held a similar senior position in the Barack Obama administration’s State Department. She used her role there to help sponsor a violent coup in Ukraine in 2014. A leaked phone call showed that Nuland chose who would make up the top members of the subsequent Ukrainian puppet government. Current State Dep person running U.S. Russia policy is Victoria 'Fuck the EU' Nuland. "From 2003 to 2005, Nuland served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney" https://t.co/9rEQVt1uVB — Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) January 31, 2022 Like her mentor Cheney, Nuland is a hard-line neoconservative. The fact that he is a Republican and she works primarily in Democratic administrations is irrelevant; this hawkish foreign-policy consensus is completely bipartisan. Nuland (a former member of the bipartisan board of directors of the NED) is also married to Robert Kagan, a patron saint of neoconservatism, and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century – the cozy home of the neocons in Washington, where he worked alongside Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and other top Bush administration officials. Kagan was a longtime Republican, but in 2016 he joined the Democrats and openly campaigned for Hillary Clinton for president. What all of this shows is that these hawkish foreign-policy positions are totally mainstream in Washington. Whether Republican or Democrat, Beltway policy-makers simply refuse to allow Russia and China to challenge US unipolar hegemony. The idea that the United States, a country on the other side of the planet, should rule Eurasia – and frankly the world as a whole – is unquestionable and sacrosanct. There are some exceptions and internal contradictions, but they are few and far between. The reality is that large parts of the US national security state clearly seek the balkanization of Russia and China. This quote from Dick Cheney only further confirms what was already apparent.

Write an article about: US and Colombia do military exercises with nuclear submarine near Venezuela, after sending warship through Taiwan Strait. 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.

Colombia, nuclear submarine, Taiwan, Ukraine, Venezuela

While the world is focused on Ukraine, the US and Colombia threatened Venezuela in military exercises with a nuclear submarine, a day after Washington intimidated China by sending a warship through the Taiwan Strait. (Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.) While the world is fixated on the war in Ukraine, the United States is taking provocative military actions against Venezuela and China. The US and Colombia held military exercises with a nuclear submarine in the Caribbean Sea, near Venezuela, just one day after Washington sent a warship through the Taiwan Strait. Both Venezuela and China saw the US military moves as clear threats, condemning the actions as provocative. On February 27 and 28, the US Navy held anti-submarine warfare exercises with the Colombian Navy. Colombia’s Ministry of Defense boasted that this was the first time they had done a military exercise with a nuclear submarine, the USS Minnesota. Por primera vez fue utilizado un submarino nuclear en un ejercicio de interoperabilidad entre Colombia y EE.UU. El submarino USS Minnesota ?? y el ARC ‘Pijao’ ?? pusieron a prueba sus capacidades, ratificando la cooperación y confianza entre ambos países. @ArmadaColombia @USNavy pic.twitter.com/WcGkBsVlvL — Mindefensa (@mindefensa) February 28, 2022 US Southern Command (Southcom) shared photos of the exercises on its official Instagram account. A post shared by U.S. Southern Command (@ussouthcom) The Colombian Defense Ministry emphasized that the exercise highlighted the “interoperability between Colombia and the US.” The private intelligence firm Stratfor, which is popularly known as the “shadow CIA,” noted that the US military exercises with Colombia were “within [the] scope of NATO.” Although the US-led military alliance is called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and the South American nation is decidedly not in the North Atlantic region, Colombia is a special “partner” of NATO. It is NATO’s first and only “partner” in Latin America. Washington and Bogotá claimed the exercises were aimed at fighting drug trafficking, but in reality Colombia’s government is deeply linked to drug cartels, organized crime, and violent paramilitary groups. Colombia’s former president Álvaro Uribe, the most powerful politician in the country and a top ally of Washington, works closely with drug cartels and death squads. And Colombia’s current, far-right president, Iván Duque, only came to power because Uribe ordered an infamous drug dealer, Ñeñe Hernández, to buy votes for him. The Colombian Navy said it felt “proud” to collaborate with the US military and deepen their integration. ? La @ArmadaColombia se siente orgullosa de hacer parte de la operación “Contralmirante José David Espitia Jiménez” en aguas del Caribe, para el progreso de la educación marítima, siendo participe de la protección y el desarrollo de los intereses nacionales. ???? pic.twitter.com/nBHTPJFGYL — Armada de Colombia (@ArmadaColombia) February 28, 2022 For its part, Venezuela recognized the US-Colombian military exercises near its borders with a nuclear submarine as a blatant threat. Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino tweeted, “Why is there such imperialist flashiness? Is this a copy of NATO expansion in the Mediterranean of the Americas?” “You don’t battle drug trafficking, the war in Arauca [in Colombia], systematic murders and terrorist groups with nuclear submarines,” he wrote. “I categorically reject this.” ¿Para qué tanta ostentación imperialista?¿Es una réplica de la expansión Otanista en el Mediterráneo de América? El narcotráfico, la guerra en Arauca, los asesinatos sistemáticos y los grupos terroristas no se combaten con submarinos nucleares. Lo rechazo de manera categórica. pic.twitter.com/aDeLONv5AO — Vladimir Padrino L. (@vladimirpadrino) February 28, 2022 Just one day before these US-Colombian naval exercises started, Washington threatened China by sending a large warship through the Taiwan Strait. On February 26, the US Navy’s guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson sailed through the narrow strait. Destroyer USS Ralph Johnson Performs Taiwan Strait Transit – USNI News https://t.co/joAxUU4480 pic.twitter.com/VG0Izmujkn — U.S. Naval Institute (@NavalInstitute) February 28, 2022 China condemned the exercise as “provocative.” “It is hypocritical and futile for the US to conduct this provocative action in an attempt to bolster the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces,” the Chinese military said. Beijing’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, then added, “If the US wants to embolden the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces in this way, then we have this to say to the US: such move will only accelerate the demise of the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces.” “The US will also pay a heavy price for its adventurist act,” he continued. “If the US tries to intimidate and pressure China in this way, then we have this stern warning: the so-called military deterrence will be reduced to scrap iron when facing the steely great wall of the 1.4 billion Chinese people.” Comment on the US guided-missile destroyer USS Ralph Johnson's recently sail through the Taiwan Strait and all the hype. pic.twitter.com/j5RXw7Vw28 — XIE Yongjun 解勇军 (@XIEYongjun_CHN) March 1, 2022

Write an article about: Pentagon says China and Russia are top US national security ‘threats,’ not terrorism. 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.

China, Cold War Two, Donald Trump, James Mattis, new cold war, Pentagon, Russia, war on terror

The US government is moving away from “war on terror” rhetoric as Defense Secretary Mattis says “great power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of US national security.” (This report was first published at The Real News.) BENJAMIN NORTON: Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, the U.S. government has justified numerous wars and interventions throughout the world under the pretext of a so-called “war on terror.” That appears to be is changing. In December, President Donald Trump released a new national security strategy, which reveals that the top priority for U.S. national security is not countering terrorism, but rather countering the influence of competing foreign states, namely China and Russia. Defense Secretary James Mattis made this incredibly significant announcement in a speech at John Hopkins University on January 19. JAMES MATTIS: The world, to quote George Shultz, is awash in change, defined by increasing global volatility and uncertainty with great power competition between nations becoming a reality once again. Though we will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists that we are engaged in today, but great power competition, not terrorism, is now the primary focus of U.S. national security. BENJAMIN NORTON: This marks a huge shift in U.S. government rhetoric on national security, which for nearly two decades has largely been synonymous with counterterrorism. The United States has used terrorism and the threat of extremist groups like al-Qaeda as an excuse to military intervene throughout the Middle East and North Africa, from Iraq to Libya, to Syria, to Yemen. Trump’s new national security strategy, however, singles out China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran as the primary targets of U.S. foreign policy. JAMES MATTIS: We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia are from each other… Rogue regimes like North Korea and Iran persist in taking outlaw actions that threaten regional and even global stability. BENJAMIN NORTON: Defense Secretary Mattis said this is the first U.S. national defense strategy in 10 years. A key part of the Trump administration’s rhetoric in the document is the myth that the U.S. military is somehow underfunded. JAMES MATTIS: The negative impact on military readiness is resulting from the longest continuous stretch of combat in our nation’s history and defense spending caps, because we have been operating also for nine of the last 10 years under continuing resolutions that have created an overstretched and under-resourced military. BENJAMIN NORTON: In reality, with a $611 billion budget in 2016, the United States already spent more on its military than the next eight largest countries combined — and six of those eight are U.S. allies. And in 2017, Congress voted to increase the already enormous U.S. military budget to a staggering $700 billion per year. Trump’s national security strategy also states that sustaining U.S. nuclear weapons and modernizing U.S. nuclear infrastructure is a key priority. These announcements from the Trump administration are yet another sign that the post-Cold War, U.S.-led hegemonic order is breaking down, and we are seeing the rise of a new multipolar world. Military rhetoric is changing from a war on terror to a more traditional, World War I-style great power rivalry. However, there has long been skepticism of the notion that the “war on terror” was ever even about stopping terror in the first place. The George W. Bush administration, which launched the endless war, falsely tried to link Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda to justify an invasion that the United Nations said was illegal. Moreover, while the United States has waged a drone war in Yemen since 2001, ostensibly to beat back al-Qaeda extremists, in recent years, there has simultaneously been a well-documented alliance between al-Qaeda and U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which have fought side-by-side against Yemen’s Houthi movement, Ansarallah. A similar alliance with al-Qaeda-linked Islamist extremists could be seen in the U.S.-backed opposition in Syria. The United States is not necessarily abandoning the war on terror, but the Trump administration’s new national security strategy stands out as one of the most frank admissions yet that U.S. foreign policy is principally about undermining foreign states that challenge U.S. economic and political interests, not about stopping extremist groups that threaten civilians. This announcement did not come out of nowhere. The shift began under former president Barack Obama, whose administration declared a “pivot to Asia” as a key part of its foreign policy. But this declaration is another indication of the Trump administration’s embrace of a more conventional, hawkish, bipartisan foreign policy. And it’s a sign of President Trump’s abandonment of any pretense of non-interventionism.

Write an article about: Biden, like Trump, breaks international law, violating UN neutrality by blocking countries. 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.

Donald Trump, Iran, Joe Biden, Russia, UN, United Nations, Venezuela

In violation of international law and its 1947 hosting agreement, the US government under both Biden and Trump has blocked foreign diplomats from the UN headquarters in New York, targeting Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and more. In a blatant violation of international law and its 1947 hosting agreement, the US government has blocked numerous countries from participating in events at the UN headquarters in New York City. The Biden administration is banning Russian diplomats, while the Trump administration illegally prohibited top officials from Venezuela and Iran. Reuters reported on September 2 that Russia has filed a formal complaint with the United Nations, after the US government has “been constantly refusing to grant entry visas” to Russian diplomats to participate in events at the UN headquarters, Moscow’s ambassador said. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and his delegation have been denied entry to the United States, barring them from the UN. This Joe Biden administration policy, which flagrantly violates international law, was likewise implemented by the Donald Trump administration. In January 2020, Foreign Policy reported that Trump had banned Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif from addressing the UN Security Council in New York, after Washington assassinated top Iranian official Qasem Soleimani, in an illegal act of war. Foreign Policy wrote, “The Iranian government was awaiting word on the visa Monday (January 6) when a Trump administration official phoned U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to inform him that the United States would not allow Zarif into the country.” The outlet noted that this US policy violates “the terms of a 1947 headquarters agreement requiring Washington to permit foreign officials into the country to conduct U.N. business.” Exclusive: Trump administration bars top Iranian diplomat from addressing U.N. Security Council, in breach of U.S.-U.N. host country agreement, FP's @columlynch and @RobbieGramer report.https://t.co/c9Pb9aqK1d — Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) January 6, 2020 In April 2020, the US government similarly barred Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro from speaking at the United Nations. A Justice Department spokesperson told CNN that Maduro would be “arrested immediately” if he stepped foot on US territory. “Nicolás Maduro will be arrested if he is in the United States,” the spokesperson said, in remarks reported in the Spanish-language press. “The government of the United States does not recognize him as head of state. Executive immunity does not apply to him.” The Justice Department spokesperson threateningly added that “Maduro would face a mandatory minimum sentencing of 50 years in prison and a maximum of life in prison.” This policy also blatantly violated international law. The United Nations always recognized Maduro as the one and only legitimate president of Venezuela. Moreover, even at the peak of the US-led coup attempt against Venezuela in 2019, more than two-thirds of UN member states – the vast majority of the international community – still recognized Maduro as Venezuela’s president, not US-appointed coup leader Juan Guaidó. EEUU advirtió sobre el "arresto inmediato" de Nicolás Maduro si llega a pisar su territorio https://t.co/nCbnEZs9Lh — infobae (@infobae) April 16, 2020 Foreign Policy magazine made it clear that this illegal US behavior is official, systematic government policy, in another report published in November 2019. Titled “Trump Turns U.N. Visas, Travel Restrictions Into Foreign-Policy Cudgel,” the article noted, “If you’re deemed hostile to U.S. interests, you may face travel limitations, arbitrary visa denials, sudden airport checks, and other forms of harassment, diplomats say.” Foreign Policy wrote: The decision to withhold federal protection for a senior Syrian official is just one among a growing number of diplomatic slights experienced by delegates from a handful of countries with poor relations with the United States during their travels to New York City for United Nations meetings. It reflects the punitive nature of U.S. foreign policy under President Donald Trump, whose administration has sought myriad ways to sanction or penalize individuals and countries that are viewed as hostile to the United States, or that simply refuse to comply with U.S. demands. It reinforces the perception among some diplomats that the United States has contempt for the United Nations. “Not exactly a high point in U.S. diplomacy,” said Larry Johnson, an American lawyer who previously served as the U.N. assistant secretary-general for legal affairs. Johnson, an adjunct professor at Columbia University Law School, said it’s not the first time the United States has “resorted to delaying tactics and harassment” to keep unwanted foreigners out of the country. But he said Washington has acted under “weak or no legal grounds” in denying access to U.N. headquarters. Representatives from the U.N. delegations of China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, and Syria say their diplomats and support staff are subjected to increasingly restrictive travel limitations, arbitrary denial of visas and driver’s licenses, additional airport security checks, and curtailed access to banking services needed to conduct their diplomatic work and pay their dues at the U.N., according to a report by a U.N. committee that monitors U.S. dealings with the U.N.’s 192 other states. Those measures, they contend, violate the host country treaty, or Headquarters Agreement, signed by the United States in 1947. In many cases, the U.N.’s lawyers agree. In an Oct. 15 statement, the U.N. legal counsel told the committee that U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is “concerned” by recent measures, including the rejection of a visa for a Russian national hired by the United Nations and new travel restrictions imposed on the Iranian delegation and foreign minister after Tehran refused to participate in talks with Washington. The statement said the U.N. was maintaining its long-standing position that the United States lacks legal authority to impose travel restrictions on states in retaliation for restrictions on U.S. diplomats serving in those countries. “There is no room for the application of measures based on reciprocity,” according to the statement. The lengthy claims of diplomatic retaliation are included in a 64-page report of the U.N. host committee that details a range of matters that bear on U.S. relations with the diplomatic community in New York. Diplomats coming from countries considered hostile to U.S. interests have been experiencing travel limitations, arbitrary visa denials, sudden airport checks, and other forms of harassment, @columlynch reports. https://t.co/FVtltVB6jl — Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) November 6, 2019

Write an article about: US TikTok ban aims to weaken China & protect Big Tech monopolies. 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.

Big Tech, China, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, technology, Tesla

The US government’s plan to either ban TikTok or force owner ByteDance to sell it to a (US) company is part of Washington’s economic war on China, and an attempt to protect Big Tech monopolies from competition. The US government has for years threatened to ban TikTok, one of the most popular social media apps in the country. It’s now looking like this might actually happen. This March, the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly to pass legislation called the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act”. This bill states that it “prohibits distributing, maintaining, or providing internet hosting services for a foreign adversary controlled application (e.g., TikTok)”. It passed with an overwhelming majority of 352 votes in favor and just 65 votes against. It will now go to the Senate, where it is likely going to pass. And President Joe Biden has said he will sign the bill. TikTok is not technically a Chinese company. It is based in Los Angeles, California, and also Singapore. The CEO of TikTok, Shou Zi Chew, is not Chinese; he is Singaporean. Shou pointed this out many times when he was grilled in the US Senate by Republicans like Tom Cotton, who portrayed him as an agent of the Communist Party of China. What the US government is trying to do with this legislation is force the owner of TikTok, the Chinese company ByteDance, to divest – and ideally sell TikTok to a US company. If ByteDance refuses to sell its popular social media to its competitors, the US government will ban TikTok. This is part of a technological war that Washington is waging against Beijing. The US is essentially trying to block competition from Chinese tech companies, to protect Big Tech monopolies in Silicon Valley. “Banning TikTok would boost Alphabet, Meta and Snap”, Forbes chirped excitedly in 2023. It noted that these “American technology giants could tack on some $431 billion in market value if the U.S. bans TikTok”. For its part, Meta (which has tens of billions of dollars of contracts with multiple US government agencies) has spent years lobbying against TikTok. The Washington Post reported in 2020, “Facebook parent company Meta is paying one of the biggest Republican consulting firms in the country to orchestrate a nationwide campaign seeking to turn the public against TikTok”. To try to sabotage Chinese competition, the US is banning apps, imposing tariffs, and restricting exports – targeting Chinese electric vehicles, Chinese solar panels, advanced semiconductors, 5G tech, and smart phones, principally from cutting-edge companies like Huawei. Washington’s goal is to prevent China from catching up technologically. And TikTok is only one part of this larger tech war. US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo made this clear as day back in 2021, stating, “If we really want to slow down China’s rate of innovation, we need to work with Europe”. The US commerce secretary has since repeated comments like this multiple times. This March, Raimondo said that the US will “do whatever it takes” to prevent China from getting access to the most advanced technology. It’s not a coincidence that, also in March, President Biden called for an investigation into the so-called “national security risks” posed by Chinese electric vehicles. The Biden White House published an official statement claiming, “Chinese automakers are seeking to flood the autos market in the United States and globally, posing new threats to our national security”. Biden made this statement just a few weeks after the billionaire oligarch Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, publicly called for trade barriers, to weaken Chinese competitors to his company (which has received billions of dollars of subsidies from the US government). “If there are no trade barriers established, [Chinese electric vehicles] will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world”, Musk complained in January. He added in despair that his Chinese competitors are “extremely good”. The European Union is doing the same thing. In October, the European Commission announced an official investigation into Chinese electric vehicles. This March, the EU revealed that it is likely going to put retroactive tariffs on Chinese EVs. (This came just a few weeks after Musk called for trade barriers.) This is the root of the issue with TikTok. The West is waging a technological war on China. Washington’s explicitly stated goal is to prevent China from catching up technologically and competing with US corporate monopolies. This is an attempt to protect US Big Tech monopolies so they can continue to dominate the entire world, so there are no alternatives to US corporate hegemony.

Write an article about: US convenes anti-China ‘Quad’ alliance, Beijing calls it ‘tool for containment and siege’. 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.

Antony Blinken, Australia, China, Cold War Two, India, Japan, new cold war, Quad, Russia, Scott Morrison, Ukraine

The US, Japan, and India held a meeting of the Quad alliance in Australia. Beijing condemned it as “a tool for containing and besieging China to maintain US hegemony,” with an “antiquated Cold War mentality.” (Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.) The United States has brought Japan, India, and Australia together in an anti-China alliance called the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad for short. Top representatives of these four countries convened in the Australian city of Melbourne on February 11, to discuss ways to counter Beijing, among other issues. The Chinese government responded to the meeting by condemning the Quad as “a tool for containing and besieging China to maintain US hegemony.” Beijing accused the alliance of seeking “to stoke confrontation,” with an “antiquated Cold War mentality.” The timing of this gathering was not coincidental; it came right in the middle of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which the US, Australia, and India had condemned with diplomatic boycotts. (Britain’s influential newspaper the Financial Times described the Beijing Olympics as “the new front line in the US-China cold war.”) The Melbourne meeting featured the foreign ministers of the US, Japan, India, and Australia, and was their fourth reunion since the Quad was re-established by the Donald Trump administration in 2017 to focus on containing Beijing. The Quad is a vital part of our vision for the Indo-Pacific and shows the priority we place on working with partners and allies in the region. We had a productive discussion on issues that shape our collective prosperity and security. pic.twitter.com/VvEhZOEVAK — Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) February 11, 2022 The Australian government enthusiastically endorsed the Quad meeting by not only sending its foreign minister but also its Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the leader of the right-wing Liberal Party, who has made fearmongering about the supposed “threat” of China a central part of his political program. Under Morrison, Australia has become a front line in the second cold war. The country joined an anti-China military alliance with Washington and London called AUKUS, and announced it is buying nuclear-powered submarines with North American and British technology – a very provocative move, given that all other countries that have nuclear submarines also have nuclear weapons. In a press conference before the Quad meeting, Morrison claimed Australia has faced “coercion and the pressure,” implying that China was guilty. He framed the conflict with Beijing as a matter of “freedom,” insisting that the alliance exists to protect “a world order that favors freedom, and particularly here in a free and open Indo-Pacific.” Appreciate that PM @ScottMorrisonMP met the Quad FMs collectively before we began talks. His insights and thoughts were valuable. We are focused on the early and effective realization of our Leaders' vision. pic.twitter.com/VfKMSRcbdw — Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) February 11, 2022 US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Quad members “share concerns that in recent years China has been acting more repressively at home and more aggressively in the region, and indeed potentially beyond.” Blinken joined the Australian prime minister in portraying the meeting as “four democracies coming together.” Juxtaposing them implicitly against Beijing, Morrison claimed the Quad consists of “great democracies, great liberal democracies.” Neither Blinken nor Morrison mentioned that Japan is essentially a one-party state that has been ruled by the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party, with few exceptions, since 1955, or that India is governed by the far-right Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which has been dismantling the secular state and attacking the rights of religious minorities. Facts like these, along with the US and Australian governments’ continued history of genocide against Indigenous peoples and brutal violations of civil rights, blatantly contradicted their attempt to portray the Quad as a symbol of freedom and democracy against supposed Chinese authoritarianism. The foreign ministers of the United States, Australia, India, and Japan at the Quad meeting in Melbourne on February 11 Following the meeting, the four Quad member states released a joint statement. From the use of language, it appears that this declaration was largely written by the United States. Blinken stated in the press conference that the Quad exists to defend the “free and open Indo-Pacific, the most dynamic region in the world with the fastest growing economies, half the world’s population.” The statement echoed this rhetoric, calling “to advance a free and open Indo-Pacific – a region which is inclusive and resilient, and in which states strive to protect the interests of their people, free from coercion.” Blinken said the Quad seeks “to defend the rules-based system that we have spent tremendous time and effort building over these many years.” The declaration used this phrase “rules-based” three times, reflecting Washington’s attempts to create a new international legal framework that it controls, in order to isolate China and Russia. Although the joint statement forcefully condemned North Korea and Myanmar, it was careful not to mention China by name. Despite this, it was overwhelmingly aimed at attacking Beijing, implicitly referring to it as a threat to the Indo-Pacific region. The Chinese government vociferously condemned the February 11 Quad meeting in Australia. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian asserted in a press conference on the same day, “China believes that the so-called Quad group cobbled together by the US, Japan, India and Australia is essentially a tool for containing and besieging China to maintain US hegemony.” The Quad “aims to stoke confrontation and undermine international solidarity and cooperation,” Zhao said. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman added, “I want to stress that as the Cold War is long over. The attempt to forge a so-called alliance to contain China wins no support and leads nowhere.” “Relevant countries should abandon the antiquated Cold War mentality, correct the wrong approach of bloc confrontation and geopolitical games, and contribute to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific,” Zhao said. A reporter in the press conference asked the Foreign Ministry spokesman to respond to US Secretary of State Blinken’s comment that “China has been acting more repressively at home and more aggressively in the region.” Zhao replied, “Speaking of being aggressive in this region and beyond, the United States is second to none.” Speaking of being aggressive in this region and beyond, the United States is second to none. pic.twitter.com/hOL0DSUF5L — Spokesperson发言人办公室 (@MFA_China) February 12, 2022 Global Times, a newspaper owned by the Communist Party of China’s official organ People’s Daily, responded to the Australia meeting with an article titled “US ropes in Quad allies to fight ‘two-front wars’ with China and Russia despite spent force.” The semi-official Chinese newspaper wrote, “The sign is clearer than ever that the US is turning Quad into a tool to serve its own strategic goal of countering China and Russia simultaneously.” It noted that Blinken brought up the conflict in Ukraine in the Quad meeting, although the alliance claims to be focused on Indo-Pacific concerns. Washington’s attempt to get its Quad allies on board with a cold war against Russia as well is less likely, however. Australia has taken a hard line against Moscow, but Japan and India have more complex relationships. Japan and Russia are certainly not allies, but until recently they had cordial diplomatic ties. A conflict in 2021 over disputed islands led to souring relations, and Moscow has criticized Tokyo for joining the US in threatening Russia over Ukraine. India’s government, led by the far-right Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has taken an extremely aggressive line against China. In fact, Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar used the Quad meeting as an opportunity to attack China, blaming it for a border dispute that has led to violence. Yet while ultra-conservative Hindu-nationalist politicians in New Delhi, like their right-wing counterparts in the West, have turned Beijing into a convenient scapegoat for their domestic problems, India has not joined the United States in its war drive against Russia. In a press conference before the Quad meeting, a journalist asked Foreign Minister Jaishankar what New Delhi’s position is on the conflict in Ukraine. He evaded the question, repeating that “this meeting is focused on the Indo-Pacific.” The Australia reunion made it clear that, while the Quad members are united in their mutual goal to contain China, they still have political differences on other issues.

Write an article about: Exposed: US DEA used criminals to spy on, destabilize Venezuela, Mexico, Bolivia. 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.

AMLO, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Bolivia, CIA, DEA, drugs, Evo Morales, Mexico, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela

Reports reveal that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) used known criminals to spy on and destabilize the left-wing governments in Venezuela, Mexico, and Bolivia. Numerous reports in major media outlets have documented how the US government has used the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in order to spy on and try to destabilize left-wing governments in Latin America. DEA meddling schemes have targeted Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, Bolivia’s former President Evo Morales, and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In these scandals, the DEA has collaborated with known criminals, including drug traffickers and money launderers, to launch sting operations against leftist politicians. The Associated Press revealed this February that the DEA “sent undercover operatives into Venezuela to surreptitiously record and build drug-trafficking cases against the country’s leadership”. Known as Operation Money Badger, it was launched in 2013 with the goal of ensnaring senior Venezuelan officials in corruption scandals. The AP reported that the DEA “authorized otherwise illicit wire transfers through U.S.-based front companies and bank accounts”. It noted that “Colombian drug traffickers” were involved. As its informants, the DEA recruited criminals. The AP wrote (emphasis added): The DEA Miami Field Division’s Group 10 recruited a dream informant: a professional money launderer accused of fleecing $800 million from Venezuela’s foreign currency system through a fraudulent import scheme. The informant’s illicit activity in Venezuela positioned him to help the DEA collect evidence against the chief target of the unilateral operation: Jose Vielma, an early acolyte of the late Hugo Chávez who in two decades of service to the Bolivarian revolution cycled through a number of top jobs, including trade minister and the head of Venezuela’s IRS. Venezuela’s sovereign, democratically elected government had expelled the DEA, so this covert operation was a clear violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty. And the US government itself acknowledged that these activities violated international law, the AP reported. The AP quoted a former DEA official who served in Venezuela who boasted, “We don’t like to say it publicly but we are, in fact, the police of the world”. Operation Money Badger started under the Barack Obama administration, but was expanded under President Donald Trump. The Trump administration launched a coup attempt in 2019, pressuring countries around the world to recognize US-appointed coup leader Juan Guaidó as the so-called “interim president” of Venezuela, despite the fact that he had never participated in a presidential election. The US government imposed several rounds of crushing sanctions and an economic embargo on Venezuela, which devastated the country’s oil industry and starved Caracas of the export revenue it needed to fund social programs and the foreign currency it needed to stabilize its national currency, fueling hyper-inflation. In 2020, the US government backed an attempted invasion of Venezuela. The attack, known as Operation Gideon, was led by two former US Army special operations commandos. One of the top Venezuelan coup-plotters involved in the failed invasion later revealed that the putschists had been in touch with the CIA and other US government agencies. CIA backed failed 2020 invasion of Venezuela, top coup-plotter says The botched invasion was overseen by a US private security company called Silvercorp, which was based in Florida and run by a former U.S. Army Green Beret commando, Jordan Goudreau. Goudreau had provided security for Donald Trump’s rallies. And he met with US government officials at Trump’s golf course in Doral, Florida to discuss the plans to invade Venezuela. For his part, Trump boasted that he tried to “take over” Venezuela and pillage its massive oil reserves. At a Republican Party convention in 2023, Trump stated, “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over; we would have gotten to all that oil; it would have been right next door”. Trump boasts he wanted to take Venezuela’s oil after overthrowing its government Trump’s neoconservative national security advisor, John Bolton, likewise bragged in a 2022 interview on CNN that he “helped plan coups d’etat” in Venezuela and “other places”. Meanwhile, US-backed coup leader Juan Guaidó and his accomplices were widely accused of extreme corruption. Even Guaidó’s erstwhile supporters in Venezuela’s right-wing opposition turned against him, accusing Guaidó and his allies of spending huge sums of humanitarian aid money on expensive nightclubs, hotels, cars, clothes, food, and alcohol. Guaidó’s coup-plotting allies also used public assets that the US, UK, and EU stole from the Venezuelan government and people in order to pay their enormous legal fees. Venezuela was by no means the only country in Latin America targeted by the DEA for destabilization. In 2008, Bolivia’s democratically elected socialist president, Evo Morales, expelled the DEA. Morales was the first ever Indigenous president of a country where the majority of the population is Indigenous. He accused DEA agents of spying on his government and collaborating with violent right-wing opposition groups. “There were DEA agents that were doing political espionage … financing criminal groups so that they could act against authorities, even the president”, Morales said, in comments reported by Reuters. At the time, US officials rejected Morales’ accusations as a crazy conspiracy theory. But in 2015, the Huffington Post revealed that DEA agents had in fact been spying on Morales and the Bolivian government, as part of an undercover sting called “Operation Naked King”. To justify its meddling, the DEA misleadingly accused Morales of supporting the drug trade, because he legalized the production of coca, a plant that can be used for non-drug purposes, such as in teas and medicines. Many poor farmers, especially in the Indigenous-majority areas that Morales was from and represented, relied on producing coca. Vice News reported in 2016 that, after Morales legalized coca, “there is less violence, less cocaine, and even less coca in Bolivia than there was before”. Morales blasted the DEA’s double standards, noting that it purchased 45,000 kilos of coca in 1992. “During our government, the model of the fight against drug trafficking was applauded and recognized by the UN and EU”, Morales tweeted in 2020. “Now, they submit themselves to the CIA and DEA to benefit the geopolitical interests of the US”, he added, condemning the then government of unelected far-right leader Jeanine Áñez of “submission” and “corruption”. Durante nuestro gobierno, el modelo de lucha contra el narcotráfico era aplaudido y reconocido por la ONU y la UE. Ahora, se someten a la CIA y DEA para beneficiar a los intereses geopolíticos de EE.UU., y anuncian gastos millonarios sin fiscalización. Sometimiento y corrupción. — Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) May 27, 2020 In 2019, Morales was overthrown in a violent coup d’etat. With US support, an unelected far-right regime came to power, which was led by Christian extremists who systematically discriminated against Bolivia’s Indigenous majority. Bolivia’s US-backed coup regime also sought to privatize the South American nation’s massive lithium reserves. Bolivia is one of the world’s top producers of lithium, a crucial material needed for battery production. When a Twitter user criticized billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk in 2020 over his support for the putsch in Bolivia, the oligarch responded, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it”. In 2021, Morales stated that, “For the CIA and DEA the so-called ‘war against drugs’ is an excuse to attack progressive and anti-imperialist governments. It is a screen to cover their geopolitical interests”. The former Bolivian leader, who was spied on and targeted in a sting operation by the DEA, pointed to a similar scandal that had been exposed in Mexico. Para la CIA y la DEA la denominada "guerra contra las drogas" es una excusa para atacar a gobiernos progresistas y antiimperialistas. Es una pantalla para encubrir sus intereses geopolíticos. El caso denunciado por #México así lo demuestra. — Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) January 16, 2021 Over decades, the DEA has repeatedly been implicated in illegal espionage operations in sovereign Mexican territory, targeting government officials and politicians, particularly those on the left. This January, the US media outlet ProPublica published a thinly sourced article alleging, without concrete evidence, that allies of Mexico’s leading left-wing politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) took money from drug cartels to try to help him win the 2006 presidential election. The report acknowledged, “The investigation did not establish whether López Obrador sanctioned or even knew of the traffickers’ reported donations”. AMLO later won the 2018 election, and has since been one of the most popular presidents on Earth, governing for five years with consistent support from around two-thirds of the Mexican population, according to the US-based firm Morning Consult. AMLO blasted the ProPublica article as “vile defamation” and “propaganda”, and he suggested that it sought to influence Mexico’s upcoming 2024 election. The candidate Claudia Sheinbaum, from AMLO’s left-wing Morena party, is leading in all of the polls, by a huge margin. The ProPublica article offered no tangible evidence, just insinuations trying to link AMLO to organized crime. But it did disclose that, in 2011, on the eve of Mexico’s 2012 elections, “DEA agents proposed a sting in which they would offer $5 million in supposed drug money to operatives working on López Obrador’s second presidential campaign”. That is to say, the DEA was blatantly meddling in Mexico’s internal politics to harm the left-wing candidate, as a presidential election soon approached. ProPublica also admitted that US “Justice Department officials closed the investigation, in part over concerns that even a successful prosecution would be viewed by Mexicans as egregious American meddling in their politics”. Mexico-based US journalist Kurt Hackbarth noted that the “only real revelation in this week’s ProPublica piece is the DEA’s plot to frame the AMLO campaign in the runup to the 2012 election”. “Unlike Russiagate, here’s a bonafide attempt to intervene in a foreign election, freely admitted to”, he added. The only real revelation in this week's @Propublica piece is the DEA's plot to frame the AMLO campaign in the runup to the 2012 election. Unlike Russiagate, here's a bonafide attempt to intervene in a foreign election, freely admitted to. Think it'll make headlines in the US? Na. pic.twitter.com/nJ261T3r3a — Kurt Hackbarth ???? (@KurtHackbarth) February 2, 2024 In a follow-up Twitter thread, Hackbarth emphasized, “Let’s take a second and appreciate the implications of this. At the precise time Felipe Calderón’s Security Minister Genero García Luna was colluding with the Sinaloa Cartel – which the DEA saw and heard no evil about – they were instead focused on this stupid sting op on AMLO”. Calderón, a conservative former president from Mexico’s right-wing PAN party, was a close US ally, so faced no serious consequences for his documented links to drug cartels. ????ANATOMY OF A HIT: Another clumsy attempt by the US to meddle in this year's Mexican presidential election. How does it work? 1.) THE SYNCHRONIZED SWIM: Spread your story at the same time across various media. (A little obvious, though, to do it at the exact same time, guys.) pic.twitter.com/t8jZMO2kh7 — Kurt Hackbarth ???? (@KurtHackbarth) January 31, 2024 AMLO, on the other hand, is an independent left-wing leader who has routinely criticized the US for violating his country’s sovereignty. In 2023, the Mexican president sent the Joe Biden administration a letter formally condemning US “interventionism” in his country. Specifically, AMLO noted that USAID was funding right-wing opposition groups. In another speech that year, AMLO condemned State Department criticism as hypocritical “meddling” and stated, “There is more democracy today in Mexico than in the United States… because here the people govern, and there the oligarchy govern”. AMLO likewise held a huge rally in which he denounced Republicans Congress members who have called for the US military to invade their southern neighbor. While honoring the Mexican state’s nationalization of the country’s large oil and lithium reserves, AMLO declared, “Mexico is an independent and free country, not a US colony or protectorate!” ‘Mexico is not a US colony!’: AMLO condemns invasion threats, celebrates nationalization of oil, lithium

Write an article about: Biden admitted in 1997 NATO expansion would cause Russian ‘hostile reaction’. 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.

Atlantic Council, Baltic, Estonia, James Woolsey, Joe Biden, Latvia, Lithuania, NATO

Current US President Joe Biden admitted in a 1997 talk at the Atlantic Council that eastward NATO expansion into the Baltic states would cause a “vigorous and hostile reaction” by Russia. Current US President Joe Biden acknowledged in 1997 that eastward NATO expansion into the Baltic states would cause “the greatest consternation,” which could “tip the balance” and result in a “vigorous and hostile reaction” by Russia. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania did indeed become part of NATO in 2004. Estonia and Latvia directly border Russia, and frequently do military exercises with Western troops a mere 100 kilometers from the border. Biden’s 1997 comments were a clear admission that Washington knew its policy of pushing the US-led military alliance right up onto Russia’s borders could force Russia to respond with force, as Moscow did by invading Ukraine in February 2022. Biden made these remarks in a June 18, 1997 event at the Atlantic Council, NATO’s de facto think tank, and one of the most powerful organizations in Washington. At the time of the event, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were actively seeking to join NATO. (They later did in 1999.) Then a senator representing Delaware, Biden enthusiastically praised NATO and criticized fellow lawmakers who opposed its expansion. Biden called for the military alliance to continue to grow into Eastern Europe. But he conceded that this expansion could precipitate a “hostile reaction” from Moscow. “I think the one place where the greatest consternation would be caused in the short term, for admission – having nothing to do with the merit and preparedness of the countries coming in – would be to admit the Baltic states now, in terms of NATO-Russian, US-Russian relations,” Biden said. “And if there was ever anything that was going to tip the balance, were it to be tipped, in terms of a vigorous and hostile reaction, I don’t mean military, in Russia, it would be that,” he added. A video clip of Biden’s comments was published on Twitter by user @ImReadinHere. Biden in 1997 saying that the only thing that could provoke a "vigorous and hostile" Russian response would be if NATO expanded as far as the Baltic states pic.twitter.com/i0yfEgIGZA — . (@ImReadinHere) March 7, 2022 When Biden made these remarks, he was the ranking member, or top Democrat, on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Biden was introduced at the event by James Woolsey, a former CIA director who at the time served as head of the Atlantic Council. Woolsey celebrated Biden as “one of the leading and most important senators… in both the areas of judiciary and foreign policy.” These 1997 comments are by no means the only time that a top US government official admitted that NATO expansion could force Russia to respond. When the Senate approved NATO expansion in 1998, it was condemned by none other than leading cold warrior George Kennan, the architect of US containment policy toward the Soviet Union. Kennan warned in prescient words published by the New York Times: I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs. In a 2008 classified State Department cable published by WikiLeaks, former US Ambassador to Russia William Burns, who now serves as Biden’s CIA director, likewise cautioned that NATO expansion into Ukraine would cross Moscow’s security “redlines” and “could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.” Ex US Ambassador to Russia William Burns (now CIA director) admitted back in 2008 that NATO expansion to Ukraine crosses Moscow's security "redlines" and could create violence & civil war, which would force Russia to intervene That's exactly what happenedhttps://t.co/8DOuuq5Og3 — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 27, 2022 Senior US, British, French, and German officials repeatedly promised the former Soviet Union in 1990 that NATO would not expand eastward after the reunification of Germany. This is an undeniable historical fact confirmed by numerous documents from Western governments. NATO broke this promise, however, adding 14 new member states, all east of Germany. A newly discovered document on a 1991 diplomatic meeting proves that the US, UK, France, and Germany promised the USSR that NATO would not expand east. It’s part of a growing body of evidence that the West broke its promise to Russia. via @Multipolaristahttps://t.co/KP6KHW2YyR — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 20, 2022

Write an article about: West votes against democracy, human rights, cultural diversity at UN; promotes mercenaries, sanctions. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

democracy, General Assembly, human rights, mercenaries, sanctions, unilateral coercive measures, United Nations

The West voted against the rest of the world on United Nations General Assembly resolutions, opposing democracy, human rights, and cultural diversity, while supporting mercenaries and unilateral coercive measures (sanctions). Western governments frequently claim that their foreign and domestic policies are motivated by “human rights” and “democracy”. They often even lecture their adversaries for purportedly failing to respect these concerns. But on the international stage, Western capitals have shown their commitments to be merely rhetorical, as they have consistently voted against these noble causes and refused to support measures that would tangibly protect them, in flagrant violation of the will of the vast majority of the international community. These stark double standards were on display on November 7 in the meeting of the United Nations General Assembly’s Third Committee, which is devoted to social, humanitarian, and cultural issues. In this three-hour session, the West opposed draft resolutions that called for promoting democracy, human rights, and cultural diversity, while  simultaneously supporting the use of mercenaries and the application of unilateral coercive measures, commonly known as sanctions. The extended West voted against the rest of the world on these issues. Its positions were virtually uniform as a bloc, led by the United States, including Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan. In fact, the chair of the General Assembly’s Third Committee is Austria’s representative to the United Nations, Alexander Marschik, and even he could not help but laugh in the session at the constant protestations of the US representative, who dominated the debate, speaking out against nearly every resolution to explain why the world should join with Washington in voting against it. (Marschik could not contain his laughter despite the fact that his own country, Austria, voted along with the US on each resolution.) Geopolitical Economy Report has created maps that illustrate the clear political divide between the West and the rest. In the November 7 session, nations debated a draft that condemned unilateral coercive measures, or sanctions, for violating the human rights of civilians in targeted countries. The resolution passed with 128 votes in favor and 54 against, and no abstentions. The General Assembly’s Third Committee likewise considered a measure that called for the “promotion of a democratic and equitable international order”. The resolution passed with 123 votes in favor and 54 against, plus 7 abstentions (from Armenia, Chile, Costa Rica, Liberia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay). Another resolution sought to promote “human rights and cultural diversity”. The measure passed with 130 votes in favor and 54 against, and no abstentions. The Third Committee deliberated a draft that called for the “promotion of equitable geographical distribution in the membership of the human rights treaty bodies”. The resolution passed with 128 votes in favor and 52 against, and no abstentions. Another measure condemned the “use of mercenaries as a means of violating human rights and impeding the exercise of the right of peoples to self-determination”. The resolution passed with 126 votes in favor and 52 against, plus 6 abstentions (from Kiribati, Liberia, Palau, Mexico, Tonga and Switzerland). The United Nations published a full video of the Third Committee’s session on November 7, in the 48th plenary meeting of the General Assembly’s 78th session.

Write an article about: CIA director calls China biggest ‘threat’, says Ukraine war benefits US geopolitically and economically. 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.

CFR, China, CIA, Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs, Russia, Ukraine, William Burns

CIA Director William J. Burns published an article demonizing China as the “bigge[st] long-term threat”, boasting that the spy agency has doubled its budget for anti-China ops. He also said the Ukraine war helps the US economically and geopolitically, and warned Taiwan could be next. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, William J. Burns, published an article in which he referred to “the United States’ principal rivals—China and Russia”, while emphasizing that “China is the bigger long-term threat”. Strongly implying that we are in the early stages of a new cold war, he wrote that “China and Russia consume much of the CIA’s attention”. Burns revealed that “the CIA has been reorganizing itself” in order to counter China. The notorious US spy agency has created a special “mission center” focusing exclusively on Beijing, and has doubled its budget for anti-China operations. He also boasted that the war in Ukraine has helped the United States geopolitically and economically, and he argued that, by supporting Kiev, Washington is sending a threatening message to Beijing over Taiwan. The CIA director wrote this article for Foreign Affairs, the official publication of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). One of the most powerful US think tanks, the New York City-based CFR has a virtual revolving door with the State Department, acting as a kind of umbilical cord between Wall Street and the State Department, coordinating economic and foreign policy. In the January 30 piece, titled “Spycraft and Statecraft: Transforming the CIA for an Age of Competition”, Burns acknowledged that China’s “economic transformation over the past five decades has been extraordinary”. China’s rapid economic and technological advances have weakened US hegemony, the CIA director lamented, writing that “China’s rise and Russia’s revanchism pose daunting geopolitical challenges in a world of intense strategic competition in which the United States no longer enjoys uncontested primacy”. Many top officials in Washington, including President Joe Biden, have claimed that the United States only seeks “competition” with China, not a new cold war. But in his article, Burns wrote that the “post–Cold War era came to a definitive end the moment Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022”. By stating that the “post-Cold War era” is over, and by frequently speaking of China and Russia together in the same breath, the US spy chief strongly implied that Washington is indeed waging Cold War Two. Nevertheless, it is not Moscow, but rather Beijing that Washington considers to be its main “threat”. “China remains the only U.S. rival with both the intent to reshape the international order and the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so”, Burns warned. The CIA director wrote (emphasis added): While Russia may pose the most immediate challenge, China is the bigger long-term threat, and over the past two years, the CIA has been reorganizing itself to reflect that priority. We have started by acknowledging an organizational fact I learned long ago: priorities aren’t real unless budgets reflect them. Accordingly, the CIA has committed substantially more resources toward China-related intelligence collection, operations, and analysis around the world—more than doubling the percentage of our overall budget focused on China over just the last two years. We’re hiring and training more Mandarin speakers while stepping up efforts across the world to compete with China, from Latin America to Africa to the Indo-Pacific. The CIA has a dozen or so “mission centers,” issue-specific groups that bring together officers from across the agencies’ various directorates. In 2021, we set up a new mission center focused exclusively on China. The only single-country mission center, it provides a central mechanism for coordinating work on China, a job that extends today to every corner of the CIA. Burns also used the Foreign Affairs article to call for Washington to continue supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia. The CIA director referred to US military assistance to Ukraine as “a relatively modest investment with significant geopolitical returns for the United States and notable returns for American industry”. In other words, the spy chief was acknowledging that the Ukraine war has benefited the Military-Industrial Complex, enriching US arms corporations. The Biden administration has used similar “military Keynesian” talking points. Politico reported in October that the “White House has been quietly urging lawmakers in both parties to sell the [Ukraine] war efforts abroad as a potential economic boom at home”. Burns likewise argued that US support for Ukraine could intimidate China. “The United States’ willingness to inflict and absorb economic pain to counter Putin’s aggression—and its ability to rally its allies to do the same—powerfully contradicted Beijing’s belief that America was in terminal decline”, the CIA director wrote. “Continued material backing for Ukraine doesn’t come at the expense of Taiwan; it sends an important message of U.S. resolve that helps Taiwan”, he added. On the issue of the Ukraine war, William Burns has a disturbing track record. Before being appointed CIA director, he served for decades as a senior US diplomat. His career reflects the revolving door between the CIA and State Department. In the Barack Obama administration, Burns was deputy secretary of state, making him second-in-command of the State Department, reporting directly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Before that, in the George W. Bush administration, Burns served as US ambassador to Russia. At the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania in 2008, President Bush pledged that Ukraine and Georgia were going to join the US-led military alliance. This upset several top NATO allies, including Germany and France, who worried that the promise would exacerbate tensions with Russia. In his capacity as US ambassador to Russia, Burns responded to this controversy by penning a 2008 confidential State Department cable titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines” (“nyet” means “no” in Russian). In the document, which was made public by the whistle-blowing journalism organization WikiLeaks, Burns wrote: Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. Virtually everything Burns warned about potential conflict in Ukraine eventually came true, as the United States pushed Kiev into war with its neighbor Russia. This precedent makes the CIA director’s current threats against China over Taiwan even more striking.

Write an article about: CIA has trained Ukrainians to kill Russian-speakers since 2014 US-backed coup. 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.

CIA, Donbas, Russia, Ukraine

CIA paramilitaries have been active in Ukraine training elite special operations forces to kill Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists since soon after the 2014 US-sponsored coup. The US spy agency boasted that its influence “cannot be overestimated.” The Central Intelligence Agency has been active in Ukraine training elite special operations forces to kill Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists since 2014, when a US-sponsored coup d’etat overthrew the elected government in Kiev. Yahoo News revealed this in a March 16 report titled “Secret CIA training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian invasion.” The article details how “CIA paramilitaries” began traveling to Ukraine in 2014 to train and advise forces to fight against Russian-speaking Ukrainian militants in the eastern Donbas region. These Russian-speaking independence fighters rose up against Kiev after a 2014 US-backed coup toppled democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, who had maintained a policy of political neutrality, balancing Ukraine between the West and Russia. Washington instead installed a pro-NATO puppet regime that repressed the rights of the Russian-speaking minority in the east of the country. Yahoo News described the operation as a “covert CIA training program run from Ukraine’s eastern frontlines,” noting that it focused on developing Ukrainian special operations units, teaching them “irregular warfare” tactics. The US spy agency additionally sent “tactical specialists, like snipers, who also worked for the CIA Special Activities Center.” It likewise developed secure communications systems for the Ukrainian forces. An anonymous CIA officer involved in the operation said, “Our job is to have an exponential impact” on the Ukrainian forces. Another official told Yahoo News that the effects of the CIA program in Ukraine “cannot be overestimated,” and that the spy agency developed elite units that form “a strong nucleus” for Kiev’s military. This CIA operation was secret. But publicly, Washington was sending Ukraine large numbers of weapons, and the US military was openly training Ukrainian soldiers, Yahoo News noted, including by developing snipers and teaching fighters how to use Javelin anti-tank missiles and M141 Bunker Defeat Munitions. A post shared by JMTG-U (@jmtgukraine) After Russia invaded Ukraine this February 24, the United States and other NATO member states sent the country at least 17,000 anti-tank weapons, including Javelin missiles, along with 2,000 stinger anti-aircraft missiles. Some of these weapons have ended up in the hands of Ukrainian neo-Nazis from far-right extremist groups like Azov. Washington and its NATO military alliance have made it clear that they are fueling an insurgency inside Ukraine. After approving $350 million in weapons for Kiev in late February, the US government this March passed a staggering $13.6 billion aid package for Ukraine, which includes $6.5 billion in military support. Yahoo News also reported in January that the CIA had since 2015 been training Ukrainian paramilitaries inside the United States. A former CIA officer stated clearly, weeks before Russia invaded, that the “United States is training an insurgency,” adding that the spy agency was teaching Ukrainian militants “to kill Russians.” Yahoo News falsely portrayed the conflict that raged from 2014 to 2022 in the Donbas as a fight between Ukrainians and Russians. In reality, researchers at the Pentagon-backed RAND Corporation admitted that “even by Kyiv’s own estimates, the vast majority of rebel forces consist of locals—not soldiers of the regular Russian military.” A former CIA officer admitted the spy agency is training far-right Ukrainian nationalists to “kill Russians” and wage an “insurgency” against Moscowhttps://t.co/Awtotoylnz — Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) January 25, 2022

Write an article about: CIA director admits to waging ‘information war’ against Russia. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Avril Haines, Ben Sasse, China, CIA, Marco Rubio, NSA, Russia, Ukraine, William Burns

CIA Director William Burns admitted the US is waging an “information war” against Russia. In a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, he claimed “Putin is losing” that information war over Ukraine. The director of the US Central Intelligence Community has admitted to waging an “information war” against Russia. CIA chief William Burns acknowledged this in a Senate Intelligence Committee open-door hearing on supposed national security threats on March 10. Burns, who previously served as US ambassador to Russia, argued that President Vladimir “Putin is losing” this information war. “In all the years I spent as a career diplomat, I saw too many instances in which we lost information wars with the Russians,” Burns lamented. But “in this case, I think we have had a great deal of effect in disrupting their tactics and their calculations,” he added. “So this is one information war that I think Putin is losing.” Neoconservative Republican Senator Marco Rubio agreed, stating in the hearing, “I think there has been such a good job done at defeating them [the Russians] in the information space.” CIA Director William Burns admitted the US is waging an “information war” against Russia. In a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, he claimed “Putin is losing” that information war over Ukraine. Read more here: https://t.co/OFdsxTyhxw pic.twitter.com/uzHMnBZoxY — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 17, 2022 The CIA has since 2015 been training Ukrainian special forces and paramilitaries to “kill Russians,” according to a former official. The CIA trained many of these Ukrainian militants inside the United States, although the spy agency has also had operatives in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region advising anti-Russian fighters. A former CIA officer admitted the spy agency is training far-right Ukrainian nationalists to “kill Russians” and wage an “insurgency” against Moscowhttps://t.co/Awtotoylnz — Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) January 25, 2022 In the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Burns argued that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which began this February 24, has backfired and hurt the country. He also claimed, without citing any evidence, that Moscow may carry out “false-flag operations” in this war. The CIA director said his spy agency is focusing “more and more attention and resources on major power adversaries like China and Russia.” Burns warned that Beijing and Moscow have become close strategic partners, and he emphasized that the CIA has created a new mission center focused especially on China. In order to challenge China, Burns called “to deepen partnerships with the private sector” in order to develop new technologies. To help facilitate this, he noted that the CIA has created the position of a “chief technology officer” for the first time. This same Senate hearing also featured the US director of national intelligence, Avril Haines. She summarized the US intelligence community’s 2022 Annual Threat Assessment report. Haines dubbed the People’s Republic of China the top “threat” to Washington, saying Beijing “remains an unparalleled priority for the intelligence community.” In the list of so-called “threats” identified by the US intelligence community, China was followed by Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Responding to the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, Haines said US spy agencies are working to “hold Russia and Russian actors accountable for their actions.” She warned that Russia “may escalate the conflict, essentially doubling down to achieve Ukrainian disarmament and neutrality, to prevent it from further integrating with the United States and NATO.” The US intelligence chief boasted of the devastating impact that Western economic warfare has had on Russia. “The reaction to the invasion from countries around the world has been extraordinarily severe,” Haines said. “Western unity in imposing far-reaching sanctions and export controls as well as foreign commercial decisions are having cascading effects on the Russian economy.” Haines noted approvingly that the Russian currency, the ruble, is “in free fall” and has “lost about 40% of its value.” She added, “It is extraordinary to watch the stock markets, the fact that they’ve had to close down so much of their economic industry, and also the private sector impact has been extraordinary.” The director of the National Security Agency (NSA), Paul Nakasone, acknowledged that the agency has “worked very, very hard with Ukraine over the past several years,” especially since 2015. “We have had hunt forward teams from US Cyber Command in Kiev,” Nakasone said. “We worked very, very closely with a series of partners at NSA and the private sector.” Republican Senator Ben Sasse used the intelligence hearing to refer to Russian President Putin as a “jackass.”

Write an article about: Trump advisor John Bolton admits planning US coups in Venezuela and beyond. 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.

CNN, coup, Donald Trump, Jake Tapper, John Bolton, Mark Esper, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela

Neoconservative former US National Security Advisor John Bolton admitted he “helped plan coups d’etat” in Venezuela and “other places,” in a CNN interview. His memoir provides further insight into the US hybrid war on Venezuela. (Se puede leer esta nota en español aquí.) Neoconservative former US National Security Advisor John Bolton admitted on network TV that he was involved in organizing coups d’etat. Bolton is a hard-line right-wing hawk who was a leading architect of the Iraq War as a prominent diplomat in the George W. Bush administration. He has publicly called for the US military to bomb Iran and launch “pre-emptive” strikes on North Korea. From 2018 to 2019, Bolton served as President Donald Trump’s top national security official. In this role, Bolton oversaw a US-backed coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically elected socialist government. Donald Trump's National Security Advisor John Bolton admitted he “helped plan coups d’etat” in Venezuela and “other places.” Bolton is a neoconservative hawk who was an architect of the Iraq War in the George W. Bush administration. Read more here: https://t.co/C2wcCrNTVv pic.twitter.com/0se5N8CV0O — Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) July 13, 2022 In an interview with Bolton published on July 12, CNN anchor Jake Tapper accused Trump of attempting a coup inside the United States, and asked Bolton about a Congressional investigation into violent protests held by Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. “One doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup,” Tapper said. Bolton replied, “I disagree with that, as somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat – not here, but, you know, other places. It takes a lot of work.” Tapper later asked, “I do want to ask a follow up. When we were talking about what is capable, or what you need to do to be able to plan a coup, and you cited your expertise having planned coups.” “I’m not going to get into the specifics, but uh…”, Bolton answered. “Successful coups?” Tapper asked. “Well, I wrote about Venezuela in the book. And it turned out not to be successful – not that we had all that much to do with it,” Bolton said. “But I saw what it took for an opposition to try and overturn an illegally elected president, and they failed,” he added, implicitly admitting that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was elected. “The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is laughable,” Bolton quipped. “I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me, though,” Tapper responded. “I’m sure there is,” Bolton said with a laugh. In January 2019, the Donald Trump administration launched a coup attempt in Venezuela by appointing little-known right-wing opposition politician Juan Guaidó as supposed “interim president” of the country, despite the fact that he has never received a single vote in a presidential election. In an interview on Fox Business that same week, John Bolton admitted that the US government and North American corporations aimed to exploit Venezuela’s oil reserves, which are the largest on Earth. In January 2019 the Trump admin launched a coup attempt against Venezuela’s elected government. US National Security Advisor John Bolton admitted, “we’re looking at the oil assets” and “we’re in conversation with major American companies” Read more here: https://t.co/C2wcCrNTVv pic.twitter.com/rCabJNtKZM — Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) July 13, 2022 “We’re looking at the oil assets,” the US national security advisor stated bluntly. “That’s the single most important income stream to the government of Venezuela. We’re looking at what to do to that.” “We’re in conversation with major American companies now,” Bolton revealed. “I think we’re trying to get to the same end result here.” He added, “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.” Mere days after declaring that unelected coup leader Guaidó was supposed “interim president,” John Bolton threatened to send thousands of US troops to Colombia, hinting at an attack on Venezuela. Bolton then publicly demanded that Venezuela’s elected President Nicolás Maduro step down. In February 2019, Bolton called for the Venezuelan military to launch a coup against President Maduro. “To the Venezuelan military high command, now is the time to stand on the side of the Venezuelan people,” he tweeted. To the Venezuelan military high command, now is the time to stand on the side of the Venezuelan people. It is your right and responsibility to defend the constitution and democracy for Venezuela! https://t.co/SWpQ8lwHAe — John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) February 2, 2019 Threatening Venezuela in March, Bolton invoked the nearly 200-year colonialist Monroe Doctrine to justify US intervention in Latin America. “In this administration, we’re not afraid to use the word Monroe Doctrine. This [Venezuela] is a country in our hemisphere,” he said in another interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. Trump’s Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, a former vice president for weapons corporation Raytheon, revealed in a memoir he published in 2022 that the US government had frequently discussed military attacks on Venezuela. Trump wanted US military attacks on Venezuela, Defense Secretary Mark Esper details in book “Trump had been fixated on Venezuela since the early days of his administration, with an eye toward using military force to oust Maduro,” Esper wrote in the book, “A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times.” “Again and again, Trump would ask for military options,” and his National Security Council “team was even more enthusiastic about them,” he recalled. Esper disclosed that he, Guaidó, and fellow coup-plotters had discussed plans for the United States to train fighters in Colombia to later launch an attack on neighboring Venezuela. This is exactly what happened in May 2020, when the US government sponsored an attempted invasion of Venezuela, known as Operation Gideon. The former US Army special forces comando who oversaw this plot, Jordan Goudreau, said he was given the green light for the botched invasion after meeting with US government officials at a Miami golf resort owned by Trump. A Venezuelan army defector who helped plan a botched May 2020 invasion, Clíver Alcalá, said the coup-plotters were in touch with the CIA and other US government agencies They had Washington's approval to try to violently overthrow President Nicolás Madurohttps://t.co/GHYCrcZnm8 — Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) February 2, 2022 Trump fired John Bolton in September 2019, partially due to his failure in the Venezuela coup attempts. In 2020, Bolton published a 500-page tell-all memoir, titled “The Room Where It Happened.” He was offered a $2 million advance for the book, and promised millions more in royalties. The memoir turned Bolton into a media celebrity. He cashed in on the opportunity to criticize Trump for supposedly not being enough of a warmonger. “The Room Where It Happened” mentions Venezuela and Venezuelans more than 300 times, and has a 35-page chapter dedicated specifically to detailing his coup attempt, titled “Venezuela Libre” (Free Venezuela). Bolton did not hide his neocolonialist worldview in the book, once again invoking the nearly 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine. Fearmongering about Venezuela’s alliance with China, Russia, Iran, and Cuba, he declared, “America had opposed external threats in the Western Hemisphere since the Monroe Doctrine, and it was time to resurrect it.” Bolton wrote that Trump shared this colonialist mentality. He claimed the president said that Venezuela is “really part of the United States,” and that “it would be ‘cool’ to invade Venezuela,” according to White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly. “Trump still wanted a military option,” Bolton emphasized. This is consistent with what former Defense Secretary Mark Esper described in his book. The neoconservative national security advisor also boasted in the book that the Trump administration’s coup attempt against Venezuela had bipartisan backing from both Republicans and Democrats “on the Hill, where support on both sides of the aisle for our hard line in Venezuela was almost uniform.” “And the press coverage was uniformly favorable,” he added contently. Bolton pointed out the coincidental timing that, “Shortly after I became National Security Advisor, while Maduro was speaking at a military awards ceremony on August 4, he was attacked by two drones.” Maduro said his government has intelligence proving that Bolton had planned the assassination attempt. Showing his sadistic streak, Bolton wrote that the photos of Venezuela soldiers running away from the killer drones was “hilarious.” In a meeting after the drone assassination attempt, Bolton wrote that “Trump said to me emphatically, ‘Get it done,’ meaning get rid of the Maduro regime. ‘This is the fifth time I’ve asked for it,’ he continued.” The national security advisor noted that Trump’s secretary of state, former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, was strongly in agreement, stating “‘we should go to the wall’ to get Maduro out.” Bolton added, “Trump insisted he wanted military options for Venezuela and then keep it because ‘it’s really part of the United States.'” Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and National Security Advisor John Bolton in April 2019 Trump had made it clear that he was considering invading Venezuela as far back as August 2017, Bolton pointed out. In a press conference that August, Trump had stated, “We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option, if necessary.” In the memoir, Bolton admitted that that illegal unilateral sanctions the United States imposed on Venezuela were aimed at “driving the state-owned oil monopoly’s production as low as possible,” in an attempt “to crash Maduro’s regime.” “Trump stressed that he wanted the ‘strongest possible sanctions’ against Venezuela,” Bolton wrote. Trump also “wanted assurances regarding post-Maduro access to Venezuela’s oil resources, trying to ensure that China and Russia would not continue to benefit from their deals,” he added. Bolton stressed that Trump had great “interest in Venezuela’s oil fields,” and he recalled that the US president insisted “we should take the oil in Venezuela after ousting Maduro.” Similarly, Bolton recalled numerous stories that showed how Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs banker and hedge fund manager, was most concerned about the interests of US corporations. He wrote that Mnuchin frequently “talked to oil-company executives.” Mnuchin was concerned about remaining “US oil-and-gas assets in Venezuela,” and “worried that steps in the banking sector would hurt Visa and Mastercard.” Bolton also revealed he pressured the UK government to illegally freeze more than $1 billion of gold reserves that Venezuela held in the Bank of England. He celebrated sanctions as instruments of US financial warfare, declaring that “they’re about using America’s massive economic power to advance our national interests. They are most effective when applied massively, swiftly, and decisively, and enforced with all the power available.” Boasting of the sadistic sanctions he imposed on Venezuela, Bolton gleefully wrote, “we had Maduro by the windpipe and needed to constrict it.” Trump with National Security Advisor John Bolton and CIA Director Gina Haspel in January 2019 In an incredibly hypocritical moment of his book, Bolton accused the Venezuelan government, without any evidence, of supposedly trafficking drugs. But he simultaneously fondly recalled a meeting he had “in my office with Honduran President Juan Hernandez, who was similarly optimistic, in contrast to the situation in Nicaragua, on his border.” Honduras’ right-wing authoritarian leader Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) came to power after a US-backed military coup in 2009. JOH was a key US ally, and joined Washington in recognizing Guaidó. JOH was also a notorious drug dealer. In 2022, JOH was extradited to the United States, and the Justice Department said “Hernandez allegedly partnered with some of the largest cocaine traffickers in the world to transport tons of cocaine.” Bolton concluded the chapter lamenting that the various US-sponsored coup attempts in Venezuela failed. He also complained that Trump was not supportive enough. While Trump had pushed for extremely aggressive policies against Venezuela, he apparently did not much have faith in Guaidó, calling him “weak” and allegedly joking that he was the “Beto O’Rourke of Venezuela.”

Write an article about: US woos India’s far-right PM Modi to help wage new cold war on China. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

BJP, China, India, Joe Biden, Narendra Modi, Quad, RSS

The US government is trying to divide the BRICS bloc and recruit India for its new cold war on China. Biden doesn’t care that far-right Prime Minister Modi is closely linked to fascistic Hindu-supremacist groups that violently oppress minorities. India’s far-right Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a historic trip to the United States this June. President Joe Biden rolled out the proverbial red carpet for Modi, touting a “new era” to “strengthen our partnership for decades to come”, as the US seeks to recruit India for its new cold war on China. The two leaders released a joint statement implicitly criticizing China and Russia. Reuters made it clear that “Washington wants Delhi to be a strategic counterweight to China”, and that the two leaders signed “deals on defense and commerce aimed at countering China’s global influence”. Together, the United States and India – the world's oldest and largest democracies – are a combined force for global good. It's my pleasure to welcome Prime Minister Modi to the White House to strengthen our partnership for decades to come. pic.twitter.com/cj8d3Xzn8K — President Biden (@POTUS) June 22, 2023 Britain’s establishment newspaper The Guardian declared that there is a “bipartisan consensus” in the US that India’s far-right government is a “linchpin” in Washington’s efforts to weaken and destabilize Beijing. India is already a member of the US-led, anti-China military bloc the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), along with Japan and Australia. The Quad is often referred to as an “Indo-Pacific NATO” or “Asian NATO”, and is explicitly aimed at encircling China. Biden and Modi had a friendly meeting at the Quad leaders’ summit in Hiroshima this May. The Quad leaders’ summit in 2022 Inside India, Modi is notorious for his links to extremist Hindu-supremacist politics. In the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002, there was a massive pogrom in which hundreds of Muslims were killed. At the time, Modi was chief minister of the state. He oversaw the violence. During Modi’s tenure leading Gujarat, state-sponsored school textbooks glorified fascism, teaching children about “Hitler, the Supremo” and the “Internal Achievements of Nazism”. Modi is also a longtime member of the fascistic RSS paramilitary movement, whose early leaders praised Adolf Hitler and sought to model their religiously pure “Hindustan” off of the Third Reich, demonizing Muslims much in the same way as Nazi Germany demonized Jews. In his 1939 book We, or Our Nationhood Defined, RSS ideologue MS Golwalkar wrote, “To keep up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of Semitic races – the Jews. National pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by”. Modi’s far-right Hindu-nationalist party BJP is the political arm of the RSS. BJP lawmakers have given speeches openly calling for forcibly “re-converting” South Asian Muslims and Christians. They also routinely incite against Dalits and other low-caste Indians. In India today, left-wing activists are routinely attacked. Progressive media outlets that criticize the government’s neoliberal, anti-worker economic policies are raided. Their editors’ homes are ransacked by police. Despite his close links to violent extremist groups, Modi has enjoyed bipartisan support in Washington, among both Republicans and Democrats. On his trip to Washington this June, Modi delivered a speech before a joint session of Congress. Politicians from both sides of the aisle lavished him with standing ovations. While Biden welcomed fascist-linked Modi to Washington, he simultaneously smeared China’s President Xi Jinping as a “dictator”. Back when Barack Obama was president, the New York Times noted that the fellow Democrat also had a close “friendship” with Modi. Donald Trump’s relationship with Modi was even more intimate. The two far-right leaders symbolically held hands at a “Howdy, Modi” rally in Texas. In 2021, Trump’s former CIA Director turned Secretary of State Mike Pompeo boasted that Washington had tried to weaken the BRICS by supporting Modi (along with Brazil’s far-right leader, Jair Bolsonaro). “Remember BRICS? Well, thanks to Jair Bolsonaro and Narendra Modi, the B and the I both get that the C and the R are threats to their people”, Pompeo tweeted triumphantly. The US goal is very clear: recruit India to divide BRICS and isolate China and Russia. Remember BRICS? Well, thanks to @jairbolsonaro and @narendramodi the B and the I both get that the C and the R are threats to their people. pic.twitter.com/JwL8E0uJte — Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) January 19, 2021 Modi had nothing to do with the creation of BRICS. The bloc was founded in 2009 under his predecessor, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, from the opposition Indian National Congress party – the main rival of Modi’s far-right BJP. The strains have become increasingly obvious. Former Indian diplomat MK Bhadrakumar wrote this January that “India’s got the BRICS blues”. Modi’s far-right regime in “India feels uneasy that the centre of gravity in BRICS is poised to shift further to the left”, he explained. Bhadrakumar noted that Modi is an avid “acolyte of the US-led ‘rules-based order'” – that is to say, the US-led imperialist system. These efforts appear to be working, at least partially. In a bad sign for the process of Asian integration, India was supposed to host a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in July, but Modi cancelled the in-person meeting and downgraded it to a mere virtual call. The Indian press noted that this “decision came as a surprise to many as the leaders of all SCO countries were expected to attend the summit physically in New Delhi”. China, Russia, and Pakistan are fellow SCO members. Iran recently joined as well. By cancelling the in-person summit, Modi indicated that the SCO is not a significant priority – while his trip to Washington was clearly at the top of his agenda. That said, India is not totally subservient to the US. India does still maintain close economic relations with Russia, largely because Moscow sells it oil at a big discount, along with cheap fertilizers. Russia is likewise the biggest supplier of weapons to India’s military. Delhi’s historic friendship with Moscow goes back to the days of the Soviet Union, when the left-leaning Indian National Congress party rejected Washington’s first cold war and led the Non-Aligned Movement. Modi’s government has not entirely rejected the foreign policy of India’s Non-Aligned past. But he has moved Delhi closer to Washington, and has increasingly antagonized China. The US is already India’s largest trading partner. Washington is now pressuring companies to “friendshore” operations, moving from China to India. Some firms may do so, but thus far not many have. At the moment, “friendshoring” seems to mostly be a media buzzword. Replacing massive, multimillion-dollar factories is much easier said than done. China also has capital controls, meaning Western investors can’t simply pull all of their capital out of the country on a whim. Furthermore, the reality is that China’s workforce is very skilled, and thus very difficult to replace. India does offer a massive market; its population just overtook China’s, making it the most-populous country on Earth. But while India may now have more people, its economy is a mere fraction of China’s. China has the world’s largest economy, when measured at purchasing power parity (PPP). China’s GDP per capita (PPP) in 2021 was $19,338, whereas India’s was just $7,242, according to World Bank data. When he arrived in the US, Modi was immediately greeted by a Who’s Who of the ruling class. Not only political leaders, but also a motley crew of oligarchs like Apple CEO Tim Cook and US government-subsidized anti-government billionaire Elon Musk. Hedge fund manager Ray Dalio met with the Indian leader and wrote excitedly, “I am pleased to be able to help PM Modi as he is a man whose time has come when India’s time has also come. He and India are in an analogous position to Deng Xiaoping and China in the early 1980s”. I am pleased to be able to help PM Modi as he is a man whose time has come when India’s time has also come. He and India are in an analogous position to Deng Xiaoping and China in the early 1980s–i.e., at the brink of the fastest growth rates and biggest transformations in the… https://t.co/20Hcc6TtAJ — Ray Dalio (@RayDalio) June 22, 2023 This comparison is absurd. Modi and Deng could hardly be more different. And the conflict between China and India is nothing at all like the Sino-Soviet Split. Deng’s reforms came after China had a revolution and implemented comprehensive agrarian and land reform – something India desperately needs. China’s incredible development was only possible because of that foundational step, which allowed it to move into a new phase of massive industrialization, to develop the productive forces needed to provide the material basis for advancing socialism. India never had a revolution. Its land reform after independence was very uneven and incomplete – and many of the progressive Nehruvian gains have since been reversed over decades of neoliberalism. China has always implemented five-year plans. This partial planning has undergirded its marvelous economic growth. Modi has no coherent economic development plan. Thus far, he has only continued the failed neoliberal model. Some US corporations will probably increase “friendshoring” to India, but unless the country has a concerted, state-led industrial policy that uses strategic foreign investments, technology transfers, and joint ventures to develop its own local infant industries (with protectionist policies to save them from being devoured by Western competitors), Indian workers will simply end up being increasingly exploited by foreign capital, with few long-term gains. In fact, Modi’s signature program “Make in India” has been a total failure. Modi launched the initiative in 2014, immediately after coming to power. He boldly claimed that India would become a manufacturing superpower, vowing that manufacturing would rise to 25% of GDP and create 100 million new jobs. Instead, India lost 24 million manufacturing jobs and its share of GDP fell from 17% to 14%, as of 2021. India’s Bloomberg affiliate reported in 2021: “Make in India has failed to achieve any of its stated goals. Rather, every indicator has worsened, be it the share of manufacturing in the economy or the number of jobs generated in manufacturing”. “For all his rhetoric of reviving Indian manufacturing to compete with China, Modi has done much worse than his predecessor Manmohan Singh”, the website added. Moreover, Modi’s far-right BJP is the polar opposite of the Communist Party of China. It has no coherent economic development plan either. Instead, the BJP and its fascistic RSS movement are focused on promoting Hindutva and waging (an often violent) culture war on Muslims and Dalits. Finally, the US economy is in a weaker position today than it was then – and is facing severe decline. In 1980, the US made up just over 20% of the global economy (with GDP measured at PPP). At the same time, India’s economy was slightly larger than China’s, with 2.77% compared to 2.26%, according to IMF data. As of 2023, the tables have completely turned. China now represents 18.92% of the world economy, bigger than the US at 15.39%, and significantly larger than India at 7.47%. Comparing Modi to Deng totally misunderstands the vastly different material conditions in China, India, and the US, then and now. The reality is that, this time, Washington simply doesn’t have the power needed to repeat its Kissingerian “triangular diplomacy”. US hegemony is in terminal decline. India may at the end of the day recognize this, hedge its bets, and return to a more non-aligned foreign policy. But Washington is doing everything it can to prevent that.

Write an article about: Trump boasts he wanted to take Venezuela’s oil after overthrowing its 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.

coup, Donald Trump, Hugo Chávez, John Bolton, Juan Guaidó, Nicolás Maduro, oil, PDVSA, Republican Party, Syria, Venezuela

Former US President Donald Trump boasted at a Republican Party rally that he wanted to “take over” Venezuela, and “we would have gotten all that oil”. This confirms the sinister motives behind Washington’s 2019 coup attempt to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro and install Juan Guaidó. Former US President Donald Trump gave a speech in which he boasted that he wanted to “take over” Venezuela and exploit its large oil reserves. “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over; we would have gotten to all that oil; it would have been right next door”, Trump said. “But now we’re buying oil from Venezuela. So we’re making a dictator very rich. Can you believe this? Nobody can believe it”, he added. Trump made these remarks on June 10, at a speech for a convention organized by the North Carolina Republican Party. The US government initiated a coup attempt against Venezuela in 2019. The Trump administration appointed a little-known right-wing opposition politician, Juan Guaidó, as the supposed “interim president” of the South American nation, despite the fact that he had never participated in a presidential election. Venezuela has the world’s largest known oil reserves – although its crude is very heavy, and in order to be used it must be mixed with lighter crude or diluents, which the country is often incapable of importing due to illegal, unilateral US sanctions. As president, Trump made it clear that Washington seeks to control the natural resources of foreign countries. In a January 2020 interview on Fox News, Trump boasted that he was militarily occupying Syria’s crude-rich regions in order to “take the oil”: DONALD TRUMP: And then they say he left troops in Syria. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. I took over the oil. … Maybe we should take it. But we have the oil. Right now, the United States has the oil. So they say he left troops in Syria. No, I got rid of all of them, other than we’re protecting the oil. We have the oil. Here's irrefutable video evidence of Trump "fighting the deep state" ? "I left troops [in Syria] to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They're protecting the oil. I took over the oil… We have the oil. Right now, the U.S. has the oil" pic.twitter.com/IYaep53GP5 — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 31, 2023 Other members of the Donald Trump administration made similar comments. Trump’s neoconservative National Security Advisor John Bolton stated clearly at the beginning of the coup attempt in January 2019, in an interview on Fox News, that Washington and US corporations wanted to profit off of Venezuela’s oil: JOHN BOLTON: We’re looking at the oil assets. That’s the single most important income stream to the government of Venezuela. We’re looking at what to do to that. We want everybody to know. We’re looking at all this very seriously. We don’t want any American businesses or investors caught by surprise. They can see what President Trump did yesterday. We’re following through on it. … We’re in conversation with major American companies now, that are either in Venezuela or in the case of Citgo here in the United States. I think we’re trying to get to the same end result here. You know, Venezuela is one of the three countries I called the “Troika of Tyranny”. It’ll make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and  produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela. It would be good for the people of Venezuela. It would be good for the people of the United States. We both have a lot at stake here making this come out the right way. Trump's neoconservative National Security Advisor John Bolton made it clear from the beginning of the US coup attempt against Venezuela in January 2019 that US corporations wanted to exploit its massive oil reserves, which had been nationalized by President Hugo Chávez. Bolton… pic.twitter.com/gp7pkzweHT — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) June 13, 2023 Venezuela’s massive oil reserves were nationalized by former President Hugo Chávez, who launched the country’s leftist Bolivarian Revolution. Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA used the revenue from the oil sales in order to fund social programs, public housing, transportation, health care, and education. Academic studies have found that countries with large oil reserves are more likely to suffer wars and foreign military interventions. In April 2002, there was a briefly successful military coup which overthrew democratically elected President Chávez. But the leader was so popular that the people of Venezuela stormed the streets, overthrew the coup regime, and demanded that Chávez be reinstated as president. The George Bush administration was deeply involved in supporting this 2002 coup in Venezuela. Since then, Washington has sponsored several more coup attempts, including violent riots in 2014 and 2017, culminating in the 2019 designation of Juan Guaidó as supposed “interim president”. The fact that this was a coup attempt was admitted by Trump’s national security advisor himself. In a 2022 interview on CNN, Bolton boasted of how difficult it was to organize the coup attempt: JAKE TAPPER: One doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup. JOHN BOLTON: I disagree with that, as somebody who has helped plan coups d’etat – not here, but, you know, other places. It takes a lot of work. JAKE TAPPER: I do want to ask a follow up. When we were talking about what is capable, or what you need to do to be able to plan a coup, and you cited your expertise having planned coups. JOHN BOLTON: I’m not going to get into the specifics, but uh… JAKE TAPPER: Successful coups? JOHN BOLTON: Well, I wrote about Venezuela in the book. And it turned out not to be successful – not that we had all that much to do with it. But I saw what it took for an opposition to try and overturn an illegally elected president, and they failed. The notion that Donald Trump was half as competent as the Venezuelan opposition is laughable. But I think there’s another – JAKE TAPPER: I feel like there’s other stuff you’re not telling me, though. JOHN BOLTON: I think – I’m sure there is. Bolton’s 2020 memoir, “The Room Where It Happened”, mentions Venezuela and Venezuelans more than 300 times, and has a 35-page chapter recounting the coup attempt in the country, titled “Venezuela Libre” (Free Venezuela). Bolton wrote that President Trump had repeatedly asked for a military attack on Venezuela. Trump advisor John Bolton admits planning US coups in Venezuela and beyond This was further confirmed by Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who wrote in his 2022 memoir “A Sacred Oath” that “Trump had been fixated on Venezuela since the early days of his administration”. “Again and again, Trump would ask for military options” to overthrow Venezuela’s democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro, Esper recalled. Trump’s National Security Council meetings on Venezuela “always began with the consideration of military options, rather than on the other end of the spectrum—diplomacy”, Esper wrote. Trump wanted US military attacks on Venezuela, Defense Secretary Mark Esper details in book There in fact was an attempted invasion of Venezuela in May 2020, known as Operation Gideon. The figures involved in planning this botched invasion admitted they had the support of the Trump White House and were in contact with the CIA, other US government agencies, and Colombian intelligence services. CIA backed failed 2020 invasion of Venezuela, top coup-plotter says In response to Trump’s admission in June 2023 that he wanted to “take over” Venezuela and its oil, the country’s foreign minister, Yvan Gil, responded: “Trump confesses that his intention was to take over Venezuela’s oil. All the damage that the United States has done to our people, with the support of its lackeys, here has had one objective: to steal our resources! They were not able to, and they will not be able to. We will always overcome!” Venezuela’s vice minister for North America, Carlos Ron, declared, “What further evidence do we need? Here’s Trump confessing that his aim, all along, was to take over Venezuela’s oil. The Biden [administration] keeps his illegal sanctions policy still in place. Venezuela has and will continue to prevail!” What further evidence do we need? Here’s Trump confessing that his aim, all along, was to take over Venezuela’s oil. The Biden Administracion keeps his illegal sanctions policy still in place. Venezuela has and will continue to prevail! https://t.co/kLO3INnm57 — Carlos Ron (@CarlosJRonVE) June 11, 2023 Venezuela’s ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, stated, “Trump took the mask off of 60 satellite countries, the international propaganda, and all of those politicians and intellectuals who supported a puppet [Juan Guaidó] to govern Venezuela. The only aim has been to pillage the oil of the Venezuelan people. How shameful! This is the confession of a criminal”. The “60 satellite countries” that Moncada referenced were those that joined the United States in formally recognizing unelected coup leader Guaidó as supposed “interim president” of Venezuela. Venezuela’s former foreign minister, Jorge Arreaza, who served during the 2019 coup attempt, said Trump’s confession was legal evidence that the US was motivated to try to steal his country’s natural resources. “The international justice system must act”, Arreaza implored.

Write an article about: West sabotaged Ukraine peace deal with Russia, admit Zelensky official and Germany’s ex leader. 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.

Boris Johnson, Davyd Arakhamia, Naftali Bennett, Russia, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky

Russia wanted to sign a peace deal with Ukraine in March 2022, but NATO countries sabotaged it, according to Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the parliamentary faction leader of Zelensky’s political party, Davyd Arakhamia. The United States has played a key role in fueling the wars in both Israel-Palestine and Ukraine. The US government has sought to prevent peace in Gaza, vetoing resolutions in the UN Security Council that call for a ceasefire, while sending weapons to Israel to help it bomb densely populated civilian areas, contributing to the killing of more than 15,000 Palestinians, approximately 70% of whom are women and children. Since 2022, Washington has done exactly the same in Ukraine, torpedoing peace proposals that Russia had supported. This has been confirmed by numerous sources, including the former leader of Germany and a top Ukrainian official, as well as Israel’s ex prime minister. This October, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder explained in an interview how he had tried to negotiate peace between Ukraine and Russia in 2022. Ukraine’s overtly anti-Russian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda reported on his bombshell remarks. Moscow had a concrete peace plan laid out, according to Schröder. It was based on five points: “Ukraine’s rejection of NATO membership, two official languages in Ukraine, Donbas autonomy, security guarantees for Ukraine, and negotiations on the status of Crimea”, Ukrainska Pravda wrote. But the former German leader said the United States sabotaged the peace talks. “The only people who could resolve the war over Ukraine are the Americans”, Schröder emphasized. “During the peace talks in March 2022 in Istanbul with [Ukraine’s Defense Minister] Rustem Umierov, Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They had to coordinate everything they talked about with the Americans first”, he recalled. “However, nothing eventually happened. My impression is that nothing could happen because everything else was decided in Washington. It was fatal”, Schröder added. The former German head of state likewise warned that Russia will never accept NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia. “Regardless of who is in power, there is a belief in Russia that the West wants to expand further with NATO, namely into the post-Soviet area. Keywords: Georgia and Ukraine. No one at the head of Russia will allow this to happen. This danger analysis may be emotional, but it is real for Russia. The West must understand this and compromise accordingly; otherwise, peace will be tough to achieve”, Schröder stressed, in the comments quoted by Ukrainska Pravda. A top Ukrainian official and Germany's former leader have admitted that Russia wanted to sign a peace deal with Ukraine in March 2022, but NATO countries sabotaged it, instead preferring war. Link to full video below pic.twitter.com/WUVvBANiuN — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 3, 2023 The former German chancellor’s observations were further bolstered by the remarks of a top Ukrainian official. In November, Davyd Arakhamia sat down for an interview with Ukraine’s TV channel 1+1. Arakhamia is the parliamentary faction leader of the political party of Ukraine’s Western-backed President Volydmyr Zelensky. This interview was also reported on by Ukraine’s vehemently anti-Russian newspaper Ukrainska Pravda. Arakhamia represented Ukraine in the peace talks with Russia in Türkiye in March 2022. At those negotiations, Arakhamia admitted that Russia did indeed want peace, and neutrality “was the most important thing for them”. “They [the Russians] were prepared to end the war if we agreed to – as Finland once did – neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO”, the top Ukrainian official said, according to a translation by Ukrainska Pravda. “They really hoped almost to the last moment that they would force us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality”, he added. But Ukraine’s Western sponsors were adamantly opposed to the peace proposal. “When we returned from Istanbul, [British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson came to Kyiv and said that we would not sign anything with them at all, and let’s just fight”, Arakhamia recalled. These important testimonies from Germany’s former leader and a top Ukrainian official both echo an admission made by Israel’s former prime minister. Israel’s ex Prime Minister Naftali Bennett explained in a February 2023 interview how he had been a mediator between Ukraine and Russia the year before. “Anything I did was coordinated down to the last detail with the US, Germany, and France”, Bennett said. And “there was a legitimate decision by the West to keep striking Putin”. Referring to the NATO bloc’s response to the peace proposal, the interviewer asked, “So they blocked it?” Bennett replied, “Basically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they’re wrong”.

Write an article about: US sends Israel 100+ weapons shipments. Most Americans oppose it – but Biden ignores them.. 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.

Anwar Ibrahim, China, Donald Trump, Gaza, genocide, Hague, ICJ, International Court of Justice, Israel, Joe Biden, Malaysia, Michael Fakhri, Palestine, UN Security Council, United Nations, Wang Yi

The US has sent Israel more than 100 arms shipments since October 7, to bomb Gaza. Polls show 52% of North Americans oppose these weapons sales. Biden defies the Democratic Party’s base, while allying with Trump and the Republicans. Polling shows that a slight majority of people in the United States oppose sending weapons to Israel to help it wage its brutal war on Gaza. However, despite the fact that only a quarter of North Americans support arming Israel, the Joe Biden administration has sent the country more than 100 arms shipments since October 7, the Washington Post reported. The newspaper quoted a former senior Biden administration, who remarked, “That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support”. A poll published by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, DC found that 52% of North Americans want to end US weapons shipments to Israel. Nearly two-thirds (62%) of those who voted for Joe Biden oppose arms sales Israel. Among people who did not vote for president, 60% do not want to send weapons. The only political group that supported giving weapons to Israel was Donald Trump voters: 55%. A mere 27% of all North Americans want to continue selling arms to Israel. In other words, Biden and the Democratic Party leadership agree with Trump and the Republicans, and the DNC is defying its own base. This was confirmed by another poll in January, which was commissioned by The Economist magazine. It found that 49% of young people in the United States (those between ages 18 and 29) and 49% of Democrats say Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Overall, slightly over one-third (35%) of North Americans say Israel is committing genocide. On the other hand, 57% of Republicans do not think Israel was committing genocide (just 18% do think so). These surveys demonstrate that the only people represented by the US government’s staunchly pro-Israel policy are conservatives, Republicans, and Trump supporters. The top United Nations expert on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, stated publicly that Israel is intentionally starving Palestinian civilians and carrying out genocide. Meanwhile, Washington has voted against four UN Security Council resolutions that called for peace in Gaza, unilaterally using its veto power three times to kill ceasefire proposals. US kills 4th UN call for peace in Gaza, helping Israel violate Hague’s genocide ruling The UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Hague ruled in January that there is sufficient evidence to investigate Israel on charges of genocide. A US federal court likewise found that Israel’s scorched-earth war on Gaza “plausibly” amounts to genocide. The ICJ ordered Israel to stop killing Palestinians and to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza. The leading Western human rights organization, Amnesty International, warned that “Israel has failed to take even the bare minimum steps to comply” with the Hague’s ruling, adding that “Israel has continued to disregard its obligation as the occupying power to ensure the basic needs of Palestinians in Gaza are met”. Children in Gaza are starving to death under a suffocating Israeli blockade. The UN News agency warned that “more infants [in Gaza] may die from hunger”. The Associated Press reported in January that the “Israeli military campaign in Gaza, experts say, now sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history”. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi reiterated Beijing’s calls for an immediate ceasefire and stated at a press conference, “It is a tragedy for humankind and a disgrace for civilization that today, in the 21st century, this humanitarian disaster cannot be stopped”. Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was even more direct in his criticism of Western hypocrisy. “Why, for example, is the West so vociferous, vehement and unequivocal in the condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while remaining utterly silent on the relentless bloodletting inflicted on the innocent men, women and children of Gaza?” Anwar asked. “Unfortunately, the gut-wrenching tragedy that continues to unfold in the Gaza Strip has laid bare the self-serving nature of much valued, the much vaunted rules-based order”, the Malaysian leader added.

Write an article about: Atomic bombing of Japan was not necessary to end WWII. US gov’t documents admit it. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Dwight Eisenhower, Harry Truman, Hiroshima, history, Japan, Nagasaki, nuclear weapons, Oppenheimer, Soviet Union, USSR, World War II

US government documents admit the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not necessary to end WWII. Japan was on the verge of surrendering. The nuclear attack was the first strike in Washington’s Cold War on the Soviet Union. It is very common for Western governments and media outlets to tell the rest of the world to be afraid of North Korea and its nuclear weapons, or to fear the possibility that Iran could one day have nukes. But the reality is that there is only one country in human history that has used nuclear weapons against a civilian population – and not once, but twice: the United States. On the 6th and 9th of August, 1945, the US military dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Around 200,000 civilians were killed. Today, nearly 80 years later, many US government officials, journalists, and educators still claim that Washington had no choice but to nuke Japan, to force it to surrender and thus end World War Two. Some argue that this horrifying atrocity was in fact a noble act, that it saved even more lives that would have been lost in subsequent fighting. This narrative, although widespread, is utterly false. US government documents have admitted that Japan was already on the verge of surrendering in 1945, before the nuclear strikes. It was simply not necessary to use the atomic bomb. The US Department of War (which was renamed the Department of Defense later in the 1940s) conducted an investigation, known as the Strategic Bombing Survey, analyzing its air strikes in World War II. Published in 1946, the Strategic Bombing Survey stated very clearly, “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped”: … it seems clear that, even without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated. The nuclear strikes on Japan represented a political decision taken by the United States, aimed squarely at the Soviet Union; it was the first strike in the Cold War. In August 1945, the USSR was preparing to invade Japan to overthrow its ruling fascist regime, which had been allied with Nazi Germany – which the Soviet Red Army had also just defeated in the European theater of the war. Washington was concerned that, if the Soviets defeated Japanese fascism and liberated Tokyo like they had in Berlin, then Japan’s post-fascist government could become an ally of the Soviet Union and could adopt a socialist government. The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, therefore, were not so much aimed at the Japanese fascists as they were aimed at the Soviet communists. This expressly political decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan was in fact opposed by several top US military officials. As one of the most famous generals in US military history, Dwight Eisenhower led operations in the European theater of the war and oversaw the subsequent occupation of what was formerly Nazi Germany. Eisenhower later became president of the United States, following Harry Truman, the US leader who had nuked Japan. Eisenhower is renowned worldwide for his leadership in the fight against fascism in Europe. But what is little known is that he opposed the US nuclear attacks on Japan. After leaving the White House, Eisenhower published a memoir titled Mandate for Change. In this 1963 book, the former top general recalled an argument he had in July 1945 with then US Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Stimson had notified him that Washington was planning to nuke Japan, and Eisenhower criticized the decision, stating that he had “grave misgivings” and was convinced “that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary”. Eisenhower wrote: The incident took place in [July] 1945 when Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. … But the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of “face”. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reason I gave for my quick conclusions. These “completely unnecessary” nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed some 200,000 civilians. But they had a political goal, aimed at the Soviet Union. The political reasons behind the atomic bombing of Japan have been publicly acknowledged by the US Department of Energy’s Office of History, which runs a website with educational information about the Manhattan Project, the scientific initiative that developed the bomb. The US government website conceded that the Truman administration’s decision to nuke Japan was politically motivated, writing: After President Harry S. Truman received word of the success of the Trinity test, his need for the help of the Soviet Union in the war against Japan was greatly diminished. The Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, had promised to join the war against Japan by August 15th. Truman and his advisors now were not sure they wanted this help. If use of the atomic bomb made victory possible without an invasion, then accepting Soviet help would only invite them into the discussions regarding the postwar fate of Japan. … Other historians argue that Japan would have surrendered even without the use of the atomic bomb and that in fact Truman and his advisors used the bomb only in an effort to intimidate the Soviet Union. … Truman hoped to avoid having to “share” the administration of Japan with the Soviet Union. Mainstream historians have acknowledged this fact as well. Ward Wilson, a researcher at the establishment London-based think tank the British American Security Information Council, published an article in Washington’s elite Foreign Policy magazine in 2013 titled “The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan. Stalin Did”. “Although the bombs did force an immediate end to the war, Japan’s leaders had wanted to surrender anyway and likely would have done so before the American invasion planned for Nov. 1. Their use was, therefore, unnecessary”, he wrote. Wilson explained: If the Japanese were not concerned with city bombing in general or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in particular, what were they concerned with? The answer is simple: the Soviet Union. … Even the most hard-line leaders in Japan’s government knew that the war could not go on. The question was not whether to continue, but how to bring the war to a close under the best terms possible. … One way to gauge whether it was the bombing of Hiroshima or the invasion and declaration of war by the Soviet Union that caused Japan’s surrender is to compare the way in which these two events affected the strategic situation. After Hiroshima was bombed on Aug. 6, both options were still alive. … Bombing Hiroshima did not foreclose either of Japan’s strategic options. The impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria and Sakhalin Island was quite different, however. Once the Soviet Union had declared war, Stalin could no longer act as a mediator — he was now a belligerent. So the diplomatic option was wiped out by the Soviet move. The effect on the military situation was equally dramatic. … When the Russians invaded Manchuria, they sliced through what had once been an elite army and many Russian units only stopped when they ran out of gas. … The Soviet invasion invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically decisive — it foreclosed both of Japan’s options — while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not. … Attributing the end of the war to the atomic bomb served Japan’s interests in multiple ways. But it also served U.S. interests. If the Bomb won the war, then the perception of U.S. military power would be enhanced, U.S. diplomatic influence in Asia and around the world would increase. … If, on the other hand, the Soviet entry into the war was what caused Japan to surrender, then the Soviets could claim that they were able to do in four days what the United States was unable to do in four years, and the perception of Soviet military power and Soviet diplomatic influence would be enhanced. And once the Cold War was underway, asserting that the Soviet entry had been the decisive factor would have been tantamount to giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Thus, before World War II was even over, the United States launched a Cold War against its ostensible “ally”, the Soviet Union – and against the potential spread of socialism anywhere around the world. US spy agencies began recruiting former fascists and Nazi collaborators. US officials freed Class A Japanese war criminals from prison, some of whom went on to lead the government in Tokyo. Many of these figures were involved in founding the right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has essentially run Japan as a one-party state since 1955 (excluding a mere five years of opposition rule). A textbook example of this was Nobusuke Kishi, a notorious war criminal who ran the Japanese empire’s Manchukuo puppet regime and oversaw genocidal atrocities in collaboration with the Nazis. He was briefly imprisoned, but later pardoned by US authorities and, with Washington’s support, rose to become prime minister of Japan in the 1950s. Kishi’s fascist-linked family still commands significant control over Japanese politics. His grandson, Shinzo Abe, was the longest-serving prime minister in the East Asian nation’s history. US-backed fascism in Japan: How Shinzo Abe whitewashed genocidal imperial crimes Today, it remains important to correct widespread myths about this history, because they have a profound impact on popular culture. In July 2023, Hollywood released a blockbuster film, “Oppenheimer”, by award-winning director Christopher Nolan. The movie was a huge commercial success, but was also criticized for its politics. The film humanized the eponymous physicist who directed the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos laboratory, J. Robert Oppenheimer, commonly known as the “father of the atomic bomb”. Later in life, Oppenheimer came to regret the role he played in developing the weapon, and he campaigned against nuclear proliferation. Ironically, Oppenheimer also became a victim of the US government’s McCarthyism, and was persecuted for his links to left-wing groups. But while the movie was celebrated for depicting Oppenheimer’s complex internal struggles, it was accused of whitewashing the brutality of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese civilians who lost their lives in these totally unnecessary attacks were eerily absent from the film. By incessantly repeating the falsehood that nuking 200,000 people was the only way to get Japan to surrender, US officials have normalized this erasure of the civilian victims of its unnecessary, politically motivated war crimes.

Write an article about: CIA director admits media myth ‘Havana Syndrome’ is not foreign attack. 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.

CIA, Havana Syndrome, Robert Bartholomew, William Burns

CIA Director William Burns admitted that US spies and diplomats suffering from “Havana Syndrome” were not attacked by a foreign country like Russia, China, or Cuba, and there are normal medical explanations. Top Western corporate media outlets have spent years spreading a conspiracy theory called “Havana Syndrome,” claiming without any evidence that Russia, China, and/or Cuba were systematically attacking US spies and diplomats with futuristic microwave technology and directed-energy weapons. The CIA itself admitted in January 2022 that there was absolutely no proof of this, and its scientific experts concluded that Havana Syndrome is not caused by attacks by foreign adversaries. They found normal medical explanations for the condition’s very vague symptoms. CIA Director William Burns himself has now publicly acknowledged that Havana Syndrome is not a result of attacks, in comments first reported by Kawsachun News. In an interview with NBC News Correspondent Andrea Mitchell at the Aspen Security Forum on July 20, the CIA director rejected the myriad mainstream media articles that blamed Havana Syndrome on Russia, China, and/or Cuba. “We don’t assess that a foreign player or the Russians or anyone else is behind or is responsible for a sustained global campaign on the scale of what has been reported to harm U.S. personnel, with a weapon or some kind of external device,” Burns said. “In the majority of incidents – and we’ve, you know, investigated each one as thoroughly as we possibly can, and we’re still working on a number of them – that, you know, you could find reasonable alternative explanations, whether it was other environmental factors, or preexisting medical conditions, or other kind of medical explanations,” he added. Geopolitical Economy Report documented some of the blatantly false Havana Syndrome conspiracies spread by major corporate media outlets. CIA’s ‘Havana Syndrome’ conspiracy implodes: Here are media’s worst fake news stories In January, Geopolitical Economy Report interviewed Doctor Robert Bartholomew, a medical sociologist and leading expert on mass hysteria and social panics. In 2020, Bartholomew published a book titled “Havana Syndrome: Mass Psychogenic Illness and the Real Story Behind the Embassy Mystery and Hysteria,” which accurately predicted that the condition was psychological and was not caused by foreign attacks.

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

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

A geopolitical analysis of why the United States so strongly supports Israel: Economist Michael Hudson discusses with journalist Ben Norton. Why does the United States so strongly support Israel? Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton interviewed economist Michael Hudson to explore the reasons why Israel is such an important part of U.S. foreign policy and Washington’s attempt to dominate not only the region of the Middle East, but the entire world. Israel is an extension of U.S. geopolitical power in one of the most critically important regions of the world. In fact, it was current U.S. President Joe Biden, back in 1986, when he was a senator, who famously said that, if Israel didn’t exist, the United States would have to invent it: If we look at the Middle East, I think it’s about time we stop, those of us who support, as most of us do, Israel in this body, for apologizing for our support for Israel. There is no apology to be made. None. It is the best $3 billion investment we make. Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region; the United States would have to go out and invent an Israel. I am with my colleagues who are on the floor of the Foreign Relations Committee, and we worry at length about NATO; and we worry about the eastern flank of NATO, Greece and Turkey, and how important it is. They pale by comparison… They pale by comparison in terms of the benefit that accrues to the United States of America. It goes without saying that the so-called Middle East, or a better term is West Asia, has some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas, and the entire world’s economic infrastructure relies heavily on fossil fuels. The planet is gradually moving toward new energy sources, which is needed to fight climate change, but fossil fuels are still absolutely critical to the global economy. And Washington’s goal has been to make sure that it can maintain steady prices in global oil and gas markets. But this is about something much bigger than just oil and gas. The U.S. military’s stated policy since the 1990s, since the end of the Cold War and the overthrow of the Soviet Union, is to try to maintain control over every region of the world. This was stated clearly in 1992 in the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine. The U.S. National Security Council wrote: [The United States’] goal is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies. These regions include Europe, East Asia, the Middle East/Persian Gulf, and Latin America. Consolidated, nondemocratic control of the resources of such a critical region could generate a significant threat to our security. Then, in 2004, the U.S. government published its National Military Strategy, in which Washington stressed that its goal was “Full Spectrum Dominance – the ability to control any situation or defeat any adversary across the range of military operations”. Historically, when it came to West Asia, the U.S. relied on a so-called “twin pillar” strategy. The west pillar was Saudi Arabia, and the east pillar was Iran. Until the 1979 revolution, Iran was governed by a shah, a dictatorial monarch who was backed by the United States and served U.S. interests in the region. However, following the 1979 revolution, the U.S. lost one of the pillars of its twin pillar strategy, and Israel became increasingly important for the United States to maintain control over this crucially strategic region. Many of the world’s top oil and gas producers are located in West Asia. Furthermore, some of the most important trading routes on Earth go through this region. It would be difficult to overstate how important Egypt’s Suez Canal is. It connects trade transiting from West Asia going into Europe, from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean. Around 30% of all of the world’s shipping containers pass through the Suez Canal. That represents around 12% of the total global trade of all goods. Then, directly south of the Suez Canal, where the Red Sea enters the Arabian Sea, there is a crucial geostrategic choke point known as the Bab al-Mandab Strait, off the coast of Yemen. There, more than 6 million barrels of oil pass through every single day. Historically, the United States has tried to dominate this region in order to maintain control of energy supplies and ensure these global trade routes that the globalized capitalist system is built on. As U.S. influence in the region has weakened in an increasingly multipolar world, Israel has become even more important for the United States to try to exercise hegemony in the region. One can see this clearly in the discussions over oil prices in OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, which has essentially been expanded to OPEC+ to include Russia. Today, Saudi Arabia and Washington’s archenemy, Russia, play a key role in determining global oil prices. Historically, Saudi Arabia was a loyal U.S. proxy, but Riyadh has increasingly pursued a more non-aligned foreign policy. And a very big reason for that is that China is now the biggest trading partner of many of the countries in the region. For a decade, China has been the largest importer of oil and gas from the Persian Gulf, whereas U.S. oil imports peaked in 2005. Due to massive expansion of production and the shale boom in the 2010s, the United States established itself as one of the top three oil producers on Earth, reducing its need for crude from Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, through its global infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China is moving the center of world trade back to Asia. And the “road” in BRI is a reference to the New Silk Road. Can you guess which region is crucial in the New Silk Road and the BRI? Of course, it’s the Middle East – or, again, a better name is West Asia, and that term actually much better explains the geostrategic importance of this region, because it connects Asia to Europe. This explains why the United States has been so desperate to try to challenge the Belt and Road with its own attempts to build new trade routes. In particular, the U.S. seeks to make a trade route going from India into the Persian Gulf, and then up through Israel. So in all of these projects, Israel plays an important role, as an extension of U.S. imperial power in one of the most important regions of the world. That is why Biden said back in 1986 that if Israel didn’t exist, the U.S. would have to invent it. That is also why Biden repeated this in a White House meeting with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog on October 27, 2022: We’re also going to discuss the ironclad commitment – and this is, I’ll say this 5000 times in my career – the ironclad commitment the United States has to Israel, based on our principles, our ideas, our values; they’re the same values. And I have often said, Mr. President [Herzog], if there were not an Israel, we would have to invent one. And even as recently as October 18, 2023, Biden again repeated the same thing in a speech he made in Israel: “I have long said, if Israel didn’t exist, we’d have to invent it”. In that speech in 2023, Biden traveled to Israel in order to support the country as it was carrying out a brutal bombing campaign in Gaza, and ethnically cleansing Palestinians as part of what legal experts around the world have referred to as a “textbook case of genocide”. Top United Nations experts have warned that the Palestinian people are in danger of genocide by Israel. And the United States has steadfastly been supporting Israel, because, as Joe Biden said, Israel is an extension of U.S. imperial power in West Asia, and if it didn’t exist, Washington would have to invent it. Below follows a transcript of the interview that Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton conducted with economist Michael Hudson, author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire. BEN NORTON: Michael, thanks for joining me today. We are speaking on November 9, and the latest death toll in the war in Gaza is that Israel has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians. The United Nations has referred to Gaza as a “graveyard for children”. More than 4,000 children have been killed. About 40% of the casualties are children. And the United States has continued to support Israel, not only diplomatically and politically, not only by, for instance, vetoing resolutions in the U.N. Security Council that call for a ceasefire, but furthermore, the U.S. has been sending billions of dollars to Israel. Not only the $3.8 billion that the U.S. always gives to Israel every year in military aid, but additionally, tens of billions of dollars more. So I am wondering if you could provide your analysis of why you think the U.S. is investing so many resources in supporting Israel while it is clearly committing war crimes. MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, certainly it is supporting Israel, but it’s not supporting Israel because this is an altruistic act. To the United States, Israel is its landed aircraft carrier in the Near East. Israel is the takeoff point for America to control the Near East. And from the very time there was talk of creating an Israel, it was always that Israel was going to be an outpost, first of England, then of Russia, then of the United States in the Near East. And I can give you an anecdote. Netanyahu’s main national security advisor for the last few years has been Uzi Arad. I worked at the Hudson Institute for about five years, 1972 to ‘76. And I worked very closely with Uzi there. Uzi and I made two trips to Korea and Japan to talk about international finance. So we had a good chance to get to know each other. And on one trip, we stopped over from New York to San Francisco. And in San Francisco, there was a party or a gathering for people to meet us. And one of the U.S. generals came over and slapped Uzi on the back and said, you’re our landed aircraft carrier over there. We love you. Well, I could see Uzi feeling, tightening up and getting very embarrassed and didn’t really have anything to say. But the United States has always viewed Israel as just our foreign military base, not Israel. So of course, it wants to secure this military base. But when England first passed the act saying there should be in Israel the Balfour Declaration, it was because Britain wanted to control the Near East and its oil supplies. When Israel was formed in the United Nations, the first country to recognize it was Stalin and Russia, who thought that Russians were going to have a major influence over Israel. And then after that, of course, when Truman came in, the military immediately saw that America was replacing England as the chief of the Near East. And that was even after the fight, the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953. So from the United States, it’s not Israel’s wagging the American tail, just the opposite. You mentioned that America is supporting Israel. I don’t think America is supporting Israel at all, nor do most Israelis, nor do most Democrats. America is supporting Netanyahu. It’s supporting Likud, not Israel. The majority of Israelis, certainly the non-religious Israelis, the core population of Israel since its founding, is opposing Likud and its policies. And so what really is happening is that to the United States, Netanyahu is the Israeli version of Zelensky in the Ukraine. And the advantage of having such an unpleasant, opportunist, and corrupt person as Netanyahu, who is under indictment for his bribery and corruption, is precisely that all of the attention now of the whole world that is so appalled by the attacks going on in Gaza, they’re not blaming the United States. They’re blaming Israel. They’re blaming Netanyahu and Israel for it, when it’s the United States that has been sending plane load after plane load of bombs, of guns. There are 22,000 machine guns, automatic guns, that are banned for sale in the United States that America is sending for the settlers to use on the West Bank. So there’s a pretense of good cop, bad cop. You have Mr. Blinken telling Netanyahu, when you bomb hospitals, make sure you do it according to the rules of war. And when you kill 100,000 Gaza children, make sure it’s all legal and in the war. And when you talk about ethnic cleansing and driving a population out, make sure that it’s all done legal. Well, of course, it’s not the rules of war, and there are war crimes being committed, but the United States is pretending to tell Netanyahu and the Israeli government, use smaller bombs. Be more gentle when you bomb the children in the hospital, when actually this is all for show. The United States is trying to say, well, we’re only there to give help to an ally. The whole world has noticed that the U.S. now has two aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean, right off the Near Eastern shore, and it has an atomic submarine near the Persian Gulf. Why are they there? President Biden and Congress say we are not going to have American troops fighting Hamas in Gaza. We’re not going to get involved. Well, if the troops are not going to get involved, why are they there? Well, we know what the American planes are doing. Yesterday, they bombed yet another airport and a fuel depot in Syria. They’re bombing Syria. And it’s very clear that they’re there not to protect Israel, but to fight Iran. Again and again, every American newspaper, when it talks about Hamas, it says Hamas is acting on behalf of Iran. When it talks about Hezbollah, and is there going to be an intervention from Lebanon against northern Israel, they say Hezbollah are the Iranian puppets. Any time they talk about any Near Eastern leader, it’s really that all these leaders are puppets of Iran, just like in Ukraine and Central Europe, they talk about Hungary and other countries as all being puppets of Putin in Russia. Their focus, really – America isn’t trying to fight to protect Ukraine. It’s fighting for the last Ukrainian to be exhausted in what they’d hoped would be depleting Russia’s military. Well, it hasn’t worked. Well, the same thing in Israel. If the United States is pushing Israel and Netanyahu to escalate, escalate, escalate, to do something that at a point is going to lead Nasrallah to finally say, okay, we can’t take it anymore. We’re coming in and helping rescue the Gazians and especially rescue the West Bank, where just as much fighting is taking place. We’re going to come in. And that’s when the United States will then feel free to move not only against Lebanon, but all the way via Syria, Iraq, to Iran. What we’re seeing in Gaza and the West Bank today is only the catalyst, the trigger for the fact that the neocons say we are never going to have a better chance than we have right now to conquer Iran. So this is the point for the showdown, that if America is to control Near Eastern oil, and by controlling Near Eastern oil, by bringing it under the US control, it can control the energy imports of much of the world. And therefore, this gives American diplomats the power to cut off oil and gas and to sanction any country that tries to go multipolar, any country that tries to resist US unipolar control. BEN NORTON: Yeah, Michael, I think you’re really hitting such an important point, which is how this is one of the most geostrategic regions of the world, especially when it comes to hydrocarbons. The entire global economy is still very heavily reliant on oil and gas, and especially considering the US is not part of OPEC, and especially now considering that OPEC has really expanded essentially to OPEC+ and now includes Russia. That means that Saudi Arabia and Russia essentially can help control global oil prices. And we’ve seen this really, in fact, in the United States in the past few years with the rise of consumer price inflation. We saw that the Biden administration was concerned about gas prices, in particular in the lead up to the midterm elections. And the Biden administration has been releasing a lot of oil from the strategic oil reserves of the United States. And we can also see these kinds of statements in particular when we go back and look at the Bush administration. There are numerous people involved in the Bush administration and the so-called “War on Terror” who openly talked about how important it was for Washington to dominate this region. And I’m really thinking of, in 2007, when the top US general and NATO commander Wesley Clark famously disclosed that the Bush administration had made plans to overthrow seven countries in five years. And those were countries in North Africa and West Asia. Specifically, he revealed in an interview with journalist Amy Goodman on Democracy Now that Washington’s plans were to overthrow the governments of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran: WESLEY CLARK: About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me. And one of the generals called me and he said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second”. I said, “Well, you’re too busy”. He said, “No, no”. He says, “We’ve made the decision; we’re going to war with Iraq”. This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq, why?” He said, “I don’t know”. He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do”. So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no”. He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They’ve just made the decision to go to war with Iraq”. He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments”. And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail”. So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that”. He said, he reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece of paper, and he said, “I just got this down from upstairs”, meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office today, and he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off Iran”. I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir”. I said, “Well, don’t show it to me”. And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” And he said, “Sorry, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!” AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry, what did you say his name was? (laughs) WESLEY CLARK: I’m not going to give you his name. (laughs) AMY GOODMAN: So go through the countries again. WESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and then back to Iran. BEN NORTON: And since then, we of course saw the U.S. war on Iraq. We of course saw the proxy war in Syria that still goes on in many ways. The U.S. is occupying one-third of Syrian territory, including the oil rich areas. And Trump himself, President Donald Trump, boasted in a 2020 interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that he was leaving U.S. troops in Syria to take the oil: DONALD TRUMP: And then they say, “He left troops in Syria”. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. LAURA INGRAHAM: We’re not taking the oil. We’re not taking it. DONALD TRUMP: Well, maybe we will, maybe we won’t. LAURA INGRAHAM: They’re protecting the facilities. DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know, maybe we should take it. But we have the oil. Right now, the United States has the oil. So they say, “He left troops in Syria”. No, I got rid of all of them, other than we’re protecting the oil; we have the oil. BEN NORTON: We also saw the U.S. impose sanctions on Lebanon, which contributed to hyperinflation and the destruction of the Lebanese economy. And that was largely because Hezbollah is part of the government, and the U.S. has been pressuring the Lebanese government to create a new government without Hezbollah. We also saw, of course, that NATO destroyed the Libyan state in 2011. Somalia also has a failed state. And Sudan was divided in no small part thanks to the U.S. and Israel supporting South Sudan’s separatist movement on ethno-religious lines, using religious sectarianism. So if you look at the list of countries that Wesley Clark named in 2006, the seven countries in five years, again, that was Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finally Iran; the only country that really has been able to maintain state stability, that has not been completely devastated by the United States, is Iran. Of course, it took longer than five years, but the U.S. was pretty successful. And of course Israel has played an important role in this U.S. goal to destabilize those governments in the region. MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, let’s look and see how this was done. Remember after America was attacked on 9/11, there was a meeting at the White House, and everybody knew that the pilots were Saudi Arabians, and they knew that some of the pilots had been staying at the Saudi embassy in Los Angeles, I think, in the United States. But after 9/11, there was a cabinet meeting, and Rumsfeld said to the people there, look and find any link you can get to Iraq, forget Saudi Arabia, no problem, Iraq is the key. And he directed them to find it, and 9/11 became the excuse for attacking not Saudi Arabia, but Iraq, and going right on with it. Well, you needed a similar crisis in Libya. They said in Libya, there was some, I think, fundamentalists in the suburbs of one of the [cities], not the capital city, that were causing problems. And so you have to “protect” the innocent people from [Muammar Gadhafi], and you go in and grab all of their gold reserves, all of their money, and you take over the oil on behalf of France’s oil monopoly. Well, this is the role of the fighting in Gaza today. Netanyahu’s fight against Gaza is being used as the excuse for America moving its warships there, its submarines, and bombing, along with Israel, the Syrian airport so that the Syrians are not able to move weapons or any kind of military support either to Lebanon, to the west, or Iran, to the east. So it’s obvious that all of what we’re seeing is somehow to soften up public opinion for the fact that, well, just like we had to invade Iraq because of 9/11, we have to now finally fight and take out the oil refineries of Iran and their scientific institutes and any laboratories where they may be doing atomic research. And Iran realizes this. Last week, the Iranian press TV said that their defense minister says that if there’s any attack on Iran, whether by Israel or by anyone else, the U.S. and its foreign bases are going to be hit hard. Iran, Russia, China have all looked at the Gaza situation not as if it’s an Israeli action, but as if it’s the U.S. action. They all see exactly that it’s all about Iran, and the American press only says when it talks about Gaza or Hamas or Hezbollah or any other group, it’s always the Iranian tool so-and-so. They’re demonizing Iran in the same way that the neocons have demonized Russia to prepare for America declaring an undeclared war against Iran. And they may even declare war. Last night, on [November] 8, the Republicans had their presidential debate without Trump, and Nikki Haley said, you know, we’ve got to fight Iran, we’ve got to conquer it. And DeSantis of Florida said, yes, kill them all. He didn’t say who the them was. Was it Hamas? Was it everybody who lives in Gaza? Was it all of the Arabs in the Middle East? And we’re really seeing something very much like the Crusades here. It’s a real fight for who is going to control energy, because, again, the key, if you can control the world’s flow of energy, you can do to the whole world what the United States did to Germany last year by blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines. You can grind its industry to a halt, its chemical industry, its steelmaking industry, any of its energy-intensive industries, if countries do not agree to U.S. unipolar control. That’s why it wants to control these areas. Well, the wildcard here is Saudi Arabia. Well, in two days, I think you’re going to have the Iranian president visit Saudi Arabia, and we’re going to see what’s going to happen. But Saudi Arabia finds that while its role is key, Saudi Arabia could simply say we’re not going to export more oil until America pulls out of the Near East. But then all of Saudi Arabia’s monetary savings are invested in the U.S. The United States is holding the world hostage, not only by controlling its oil and gas and energy, but by controlling its finance. It’s like you have your money in a mafia bank or in Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency mutual fund. They can do whatever they want with it. So I think what would happen is it’s very unlikely that Saudi Arabia is ostensibly going to visibly break with the United States because the U.S. would hold it hostage. But I think what it would do would be what has been talked about ever since the 1960s, when similar problems came with Iran. And Iran’s ace in the hole has always been the ability to sink a ship in the Hormuz Strait, where the oil goes through a very narrow little strait, where if you sink a tanker there or a warship, it’s going to block all of the sea trade with Saudi Arabia. And that would certainly, number one, take Saudi Arabia off the hook for saying, we can’t help it. Of course, we’d love to export oil, but we can’t because the shipping lanes are all blocked because you, America, attacked Iran and they defended themselves by sinking the ship. So you can’t send your aircraft carriers and submarines to attack Iran. That’s very understandable. But the United States is causing a world crisis. Well, obviously, the United States knows that that’s going to happen because it’s been discussed literally for 50 years. Since I was at the Hudson Institute working on national security, it was being discussed what to do when Iran sinks the ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Well, the United States figures, okay, oil prices are going to go up. And if Iran fights back in this way, we then will have the power to do to the world what we did to Germany in 2022 when we cut off its oil. But in this case, we don’t take the blame. We’ll say, oh, we didn’t block the Saudi and Arab oil trade. It was that Iran that blocked it, and that’s why we’re going to bomb Iran, assuming that they can. So that, I think, is the contingency plan. And just as America had a contingency plan just like that, waiting for an opportunity, like 9-11, they needed a trigger, and Netanyahu has provided the trigger. And that’s why the United States has been backing Netanyahu. And of course, Iran says, well, we have the ability to really wipe out Israel. And in Congress, General Miley and the others have all said, well, we know that Iran could wipe out Israel. That’s why we have to attack Iran. But in attacking Iran, you send its missiles off to Israel, and again, Israel will end up being the Near Eastern equivalent of Ukraine. And that sort of is the plan, and I think a lot of Israelis see this, and they’re the ones who are worried and are opposing Netanyahu and trying to prevent him from triggering a whole set of military exchanges that Israel won’t be able to resist. And even though Iran, I’m sure they can bomb some places in Iran, but now that you have Russia, China, all supporting Iran through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, you’re having the lines being drawn very, very clearly. So it seems that this scenario is inevitable because Mearsheimer pointed out that it’s impossible to have a negotiated solution or settlement between Israel and Palestine. He said you can’t have a two-state solution because the Palestinian state is going to be like an Indian reservation in America, all sort of cut apart and isolated, not really a state. And you can’t have a single state because a single state is a theocratic state. It’s like, again, it’s like the United States in the Wild West in the 19th century. And I think the way to put it in perspective is to realize that what we’re seeing today in the attempt to split the world is very much like, excuse me, very much like what happened in the 12th and 13th century with the Crusades. BEN NORTON: Yeah, Michael, you raise a lot of very important points there. And I know you want to talk further about the Crusades and the historical analogy. And I think you made a really good point about the US empire standing in as the new Crusaders. But before you move away from the more contemporary political discussion, I wanted to highlight two very important points that you stressed. One is not only the hydrocarbon reserves in the Middle East, which are so important for the world economy and in the US attempt to maintain control over oil and gas supplies and in particular energy costs. There’s also an election coming up in 2024, and the US is concerned about gas prices and inflation. And of course, energy inputs are a key factor in inflation. But furthermore, this region is strategic because of trade routes. Of course, the Suez Canal, according to looking at data here from the World Economic Forum, 30% of the world’s shipping container volume transits through the Suez Canal and 12% of all global trade consists of goods that pass through the Suez Canal. And we saw this in 2021 when there was this big media scandal when a US ship got stuck in the Suez Canal. And this, of course, also came at the time when the world was coming out of the pandemic and there were all these supply chain shocks. So we can see how sensitive the global economy is to even small issues in the global supply chain. And when you talk about shipping routes, we’re not only talking about the Suez Canal, we’re also talking about in the Red Sea toward the south. You also have the Bab al-Mandab. This is a very important strait off of the coast of Yemen. And in the war in Yemen, starting in 2014 and 2015, a lot of the fighting back by the U.S. in this war was in the south, off of the Bab al-Mandab, because this is such an important strait where every single day millions of barrels of oil flow through this strait. And this also reminded me, Michael, you were talking about the historical context. And if you go back to 1956, Israel invaded Egypt. And why was that? Israel invaded Egypt because Egypt’s leftist president, Nasser, nationalized the Suez Canal. And at that moment, what was very interesting is that the U.K. and France were strongly supporting Israel in this war against Egypt because they were concerned also about Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez. At that moment, the U.S. wasn’t as deeply pro-Israel as it later became. Of course, in 1967, in the Six-Day War, Israel attacked the neighboring Arab states and occupied part of Egypt, the Sinai, and then also what became Gaza. Israel occupied the Golan Heights of Syria, which remain illegally occupied Syrian territory today. And Israel occupied the West Bank, what we call the West Bank today. But another important detail about that is, after the 1967 war, Israel increasingly became much more of a U.S. ally. Whereas the first generation of Israeli leaders were much more, many of them were European, whereas the later generations of Israelis have been really American. I mean, someone like Netanyahu, he is an American. Netanyahu was raised in the United States. He went to high school in Philadelphia. He went to high school with Reggie Jackson, by the way. He spent his most formative years in the U.S. He went to college at MIT. He then worked in Boston, and he worked with many Republicans that he became friends with, like Mitt Romney, like Donald Trump. And then when he went back to Israel, he was sent to the U.S. to be a diplomat in the United States. So the new generation of Israeli leaders is much more American, essentially. And another detail you mentioned about Iran is so important, because, up until the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Iran of the Shah, the U.S.-backed monarchy, was such an important ally in the region. And in fact, Saudi Arabia and Iran were famously referred to as the twin pillars. Saudi Arabia was the west pillar and Iran was the east pillar. The U.S. used to try to dominate this region, of course, with the support of Israel as well. Well, with the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the U.S. lost that crucial east pillar, which meant that Israel became even more important from the perspective of the U.S. imperialism to maintain control over this region. So I just wanted to mention those details of the strategic importance of the trade routes, like the Bab al-Mandab Strait, like the Suez Canal, and also the fact that the Iranian Revolution fundamentally shifted U.S. policy in the region and made Israel even more important from the perspective of U.S. imperialism. And now we’re in a moment where, as you mentioned, the U.S. is even losing control over Saudi Arabia. So it’s losing both of its pillars, which is, again, why Washington is so desperate in propping up Israel, despite the fact that the entire region is completely against these settler-colonialist policies and these ethnic cleansing policies that Israel is carrying out right now, as the entire world is watching. MICHAEL HUDSON: Well, to U.S. diplomats, what you call the support of Israel is really the support of the U.S.’ ability to militarily control the rest of the Near East. It’s all about oil. America is not giving all this money to Israel because it loves Israel, but because Israel is the military base from which the United States can attack Syria, Iraq, and Iran and Lebanon. So it’s a military base. And of course, it can frame this in terms of pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish policy, but this is only for the public relations view of the State Department. If American strategy is based on energy in the Near East, then Israel is only a means to this end. It’s not the end itself. And that’s why the United States needed to have an aggressive Israeli government. You can look at Netanyahu as being, in a way, a U.S. puppet, very much like Zelensky. Their positions are identical in their reliance on the United States against the majority of their own people. So you keep talking about America’s support of Israel. It’s not supporting Israel at all. It rejects the majority of Israelis. It supports the Israeli military, not the Israeli society or the culture, have nothing to do with Judaism at all. This is pure military politics, and that’s how I’ve always heard it discussed among the military and national security people. So you want to be careful not to be taken in by the cover story. There’s one other means of control, I think, that we should mention, and that is, you’ve had in the last month or so all sorts of statements by the United States that as soon as Russia conquers the Ukraine and solidifies its control, it’s going to bring up claims against war crimes, crimes against humanity, against Russia. America is trying to use the crooked court system. The International Criminal Court is a branch of the Pentagon in the State Department, and it’s the kangaroo court. The idea is that somehow the kangaroo court can give America judgments against Putin as they’ve declared him to be arrested anywhere he goes of people who respect the kangaroo court, and they can have all sorts of sanctions against Russian property elsewhere. Well, look at how on earth are they going to justify these claims of war crimes against Russia if in the view of what’s happening between Israel and Gaza right now, and in fact, the arms and the bombs that are being used against Gaza are U.S. bombs, U.S. arms. The U.S. is fueling it all. How on earth can the United States not accuse itself of war crimes on the basis of what it’s trying to accuse Russia of? Part of the splitting of the world that you’re going to see, whether or not the United States can actually bomb Iran, is going to be a whole setup of parallel courts and an isolation, not only of the United States, but as Europe is coming in. Basically, there’s a fight for who is going to control the world right now, and that’s why I mentioned the Crusades. I want to say I’ve been writing a history of the evolution of financial policy. I’ve done two volumes already, one on the Bronze Age Near East, …and forgive them their debts, and the other on classical antiquity, The Collapse of Antiquity. I’m now working on the third volume, which covers the Crusades to World War I. It’s really all about an attempt by Rome, that had hardly any economic power at all, to take over all of the five Christian bishoprics that were made. Constantinople was really the new Rome. That was the head of Orthodox Christianity. The emperor of Constantinople was really the emperor over the whole Christian world. It was followed by Antioch, Alexandria, and finally Jerusalem. The Crusades really began, before they attacked the Near East it began in the 11th century. And Rome was finally being attacked by the Norman armies that were coming in and grabbing parts of France and had moved into Italy. So the papacy made a deal with the Norman warlords, and it said, “We will give you the divine right to rule, we will recognize you as the Christian king, and we will excommunicate all of your enemies, but you have to pledge feudal fealty, loyalty to us, and you have to let us appoint your bishops and control the churches, which control most of your land, and you have to pay us tribute”. The papacy all during the 10th century was controlled by a small group of aristocratic families around Rome that treated the papacy just as they treat the local political mayor of a city or the local administrators. The church was just sort of run by a family. It had nothing to do with Christian religion at all. It was just, this is the church property, and one of our relatives, we’re always going to have as the pope. Well, the popes didn’t have any troops in the late 11th century, and so they got the troops by making a deal with the Normans, and they decided, okay, we’re going to have an ideal, we’re going to mount the Crusades, and we’re going to rescue Jerusalem from the “infidels”, the Muslims. Well, the problem is that Jerusalem didn’t need a rescue, because all throughout the medieval world, throughout Islam, no matter what the religion of the governing classes was, there was a religious tolerance, and that continued for hundreds of years under the Ottoman Empire. There was only one group that was intolerant, and that was the Romans, that said, “We have to control all of Christianity, in order to prevent these aristocratic Italian families from taking over again”. And so they mounted the Crusades, nominally against Jerusalem, but they ended up sacking Constantinople, and two centuries later, by 1291, the Christians lost in Acre. The whole Crusade against the Near East failed. I think you can see the parallel that I’m going to be drawing. So most of the Crusades were not fought against Islam, because Islam was too strong. The Crusades were fought against other Christians. And the fight of Roman Christianity was against the original Christianity for itself, as it existed over the last 10 centuries. Well, you’re having something like that today. Just as Rome appointed the Normans as feudal rulers, William the Conqueror in Sicily, the U.S. appoints Zelensky, supports Netanyahu, supports client oligarchs in Russia, supports Latin American dictators. So you have a U.S. view of the world that is not only unipolar, but in order to have unipolar U.S. control of the world, the U.S. has to be in charge of treating any foreign state, any foreign president as a feudal serf, basically, that they owe feudal loyalty to the United States’ sponsors. And just as you had the Inquisition formed in the 12th century, really, to enforce this obedience to Rome as opposed to independent southern France, and independent Italy, and Arab science in Spain, you have today the U.S. using the National Endowment for Democracy, and all of the organizations controlled by Victoria Nuland with her cookies, to support things. Well, you’re having the whole strategy of the Roman takeover, how it was going to take over other countries, how it was going to prevent other countries from becoming independent of Rome, is almost sentence for sentence what you get in American national security reports, how to control other countries. And that’s really the fight that we’re seeing there. And against that, you’re finding the fight of other countries, the global majority. But in this case, whereas Constantinople was looted in 1204 and sort of destroyed by the Fourth Crusade, Russia, and China, and Iran and the other countries have not been looted. The only thing that the United States can do right now is it’s setting up this military plan to attack Iran. What is the role going to be of, for instance, India? The attack on Iran and on oil is at the same time an attack on the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative, the whole attempt to control transportation, not only oil, but transportation by the global majority for each other’s mutual growth, mutual gain, mutual trade. And the United States is trying to have an alternative plan for all of this that would run from India, essentially largely through Israel, and making a cut right across Gaza, which is one of the big problems that are being discussed now, to the Israeli control of Gaza, which would control its offshore oil and gas. So you’re having the wild cards in the U.S. plan, India, Saudi Arabia, what will it do, and Turkey, because Turkey also has an interest in this oil and gas. And if the Islamic countries decide that they’re really under attack, and this attack by the Christian West against Islam is really a fight to the death, then Turkey will join with Saudi Arabia and with all of the other countries, the Shiites, and the Sunnis, and the Alawites will join together and say, what we have in common is the Islamic religion. That is really going to be essentially the extension of America’s fight against China and Russia. So what we’re seeing, I’m going to try to summarize now, what we’re really seeing is having fought Russia to the last Ukrainian, and threatening to fight Iran to the last Israeli. The United States is trying to send arms to Taiwan to say, wouldn’t you like to fight to the last Taiwanese against China? And that’s really the U.S. strategy all over the world. It’s trying to fuel other countries to fight wars for its own control. That’s how Rome used the Norman armies to conquer southern Italy, England, and Yugoslavia. Israel, and what is in the news over the whole attacks in Gaza, is only the opening stage, the trigger for this war, just as the shooting in Sarajevo started World War I in Serbia started everything. BEN NORTON: Well, you raised so many interesting points, Michael, and I think your analysis is very fresh and unique and very insightful. I wish we had more time to go into some of these topics, but we’ve already been speaking for about an hour. So I think we’re going to wrap up here. But I do want to thank you, Michael, for joining us. And of course, we’ll be back very soon for more analysis. For people who are interested, I actually have interviewed Michael. I did an interview recently on classical antiquity, and Rome and Greece. And he has also written about the history of debt up through the creation of Christianity in his book And Forgive Them Their Debts. And now he is working on this political, economic, materialist history of the Crusades. MICHAEL HUDSON: I didn’t realize when I began the book in the 1980s, drafting it, I didn’t realize how critical the Roman papacy was, and how similar it was to the State Department, and CIA, and the blob today in its plans for world conquest. BEN NORTON: Well, I’m sure in the future we will have many opportunities to discuss that research. Of course, for people who want to get more of Michael’s very important analysis, you should check out the show that he co-hosts here with friend of the show, Radhika Desai, and that is Geopolitical Economy Hour. If you go to our website, geopoliticaleconomy.com, or if you go to our YouTube channel, you can find a playlist with all of the different episodes of Geopolitical Economy Hour. So thanks again, Michael, and we’ll definitely have you back very soon. MICHAEL HUDSON: It’s good to be here. Thank you.

Write an article about: Chinese balloon was not spying, US gov’t admits months after manufactured crisis. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

balloons, China, Jens Stoltenberg, Mike Gallagher, NATO, Pentagon

The Pentagon admitted that a Chinese balloon that crossed into US territory in February was not spying; it was likely blown off course by wind. But Washington and the media milked this manufactured scandal for new cold war propaganda. The US government has admitted that severe accusations it made against China were just a lot of hot air. The highest-ranking official in the US military has clarified that a Chinese balloon that crossed into US territory in February 2023 was not spying; it was likely blown off course by wind. CBS News published an interview this September with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, who stated, “The intelligence community, their assessment – and it’s a high-confidence assessment – [is] that there was no intelligence collection by that balloon”. Milley conceded that the large rubber object was probably pushed off track by powerful wind. This report, released seven months after the incident, has confirmed exactly what the Chinese government stated at the time: its balloon was not spying on the United States, and only accidentally entered its airspace. The US government has still insisted that the Chinese balloon had technology that could have potentially been used to gather information – although it has not clarified if that technology was focused specifically on collecting data on weather patterns, which is what Beijing said it was doing. Regardless, in another massive blow to Washington’s narrative, CBS News acknowledged in its report that, “After the Navy raised the wreckage from the bottom of the Atlantic, technical experts discovered the balloon’s sensors had never been activated while over the Continental United States“. So even if the Chinese balloon had the technological capacity to spy on the United States, as Washington claims, the sensor was never turned on. This is not the first time a senior US official has admitted that the Chinese balloon was not spying. In June, Pentagon press secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder made very similar comments. “We’re aware that [the balloon] had intelligence collection capabilities, but it was our — and it has been our — assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States”, the Defense Department spokesman said, in remarks quoted by ABC News. These statements confirm that Geopolitical Economy Report was accurate in its analysis in February, which synthesized existing evidence at the time and concluded that the Chinese balloon had likely been blown off course by unexpected weather. US admits weather pushed Chinese balloon off course, US shot down hobbyists’ $12 balloon in $2M missile attack Despite these bombshells proving the entire scandal to be manufactured, Washington and the US media turned this weather accident into a diplomatic crisis, milking the incident to demonize China and depict it as a grave “threat”. The nationwide freakout was reminiscent of crude propaganda from the first cold war, when the US government produced “Duck and Cover” films instructing students to hide under their desks in the case of a sudden Soviet nuclear strike, or when Hollywood churned out blockbuster movies imploring North Americans to suspect their neighbors of being dastardly Russian communist spies. Today, the United States is waging a new, second cold war. Moscow is still a target, but this time Washington’s main adversary is Beijing. As CNN put it bluntly in February, “the Chinese balloon crisis could be a defining moment in the new Cold War”. During the manufactured scandal, the US State Department claimed the “high altitude balloon’s equipment was clearly for intelligence surveillance”, and was “capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations”. The Pentagon referred to the rubber object as a “maneuverable Chinese surveillance balloon” that “violated U.S. airspace and international law, which is unacceptable”. The White House accused Beijing of operating a “global” espionage program, stating, “We know that these [Chinese] surveillance balloons have crossed over dozens of countries on multiple continents around the world, including some of our closest allies and partners”. Hawkish US politicians, like Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher, the chair of the House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, declared that the large rubber object “is a threat right here at home. It is a threat to American sovereignty, and it is a threat to the Midwest”. Fox News brought on air neoconservative activists from think tanks funded by the weapons industry, who argued that Beijing was using the balloon to spy on the US to “prepare the battlefield” for war. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg even claimed the rubber object was a threat to other Western governments. While standing next to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Stoltenberg insisted, “The balloon over the United States confirms a pattern of Chinese behavior where we see that China has invested heavily in new capabilities, including different types of surveillance and intelligence platforms… We need to be aware of the constant risk of Chinese intelligence and step up what we do to protect ourselves and react in a prudent and responsible way”.

Write an article about: Debt ceiling hypocrisy: US boosts military budget while restricting food stamps for poor. 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.

Argentina, Dick Cheney, dollar, food stamps, imperialism, Japan, Joe Biden, Kevin McCarthy, military, neoliberalism, SNAP, welfare

US politicians from both parties agree: the deficit doesn’t matter. In their bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling, Biden and Republicans are boosting military spending to $886 billion while making it harder for poor people to receive food stamps and welfare. The US government reached its debt limit of $31.4 trillion in early 2023. This unleashed a deluge of debate as to whether or not the Treasury was going to default, and how a deeply divided Congress could come to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. The constant chatter in the mainstream corporate media overlooked the real controversy, however. The reality is that practically no one in Washington truly cares about the US national debt. In fact, in a bipartisan deal negotiated in late May to raise the debt ceiling, Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy agreed not to cut but rather to increase the already massive military budget from roughly $800 billion to $886 billion. At the same time, the Biden-McCarthy deal makes it more difficult for poor people in the United States to get access to food stamps and welfare. The US debt ceiling is a manufactured problem. It is a political football that is used every few years to justify cutting government funding for the very few social programs that do exist. US public debt is denominated in dollars. It is money that the government could print and pay off. Doing so would certainly fuel inflation. (And given the status of the dollar as the global reserve currency, that inflation would be exported to other countries as well.) But the US government has a precedent for doing so. The US central bank, the Federal Reserve, effectively printed $8 trillion from 2008 until 2022, over 14 years of quantitative easing, to inflate an enormous asset bubble that made the rich even richer. Unlike the United States, however, many foreign countries, especially those in the Global South, cannot simply print money to pay off their debts. Their monetary sovereignty is heavily restricted. The government debt of many Global South nations is denominated in foreign currencies, primarily the US dollar. Yet they can’t print US dollars; only Washington can do so. This has left countries like Argentina trapped in odious debt, denominated largely in US dollars, that is essentially unpayable, fueling an inflation crisis – and giving rise to fascistic, far-right demagogues. Many countries hold national debt denominated in dollars because the greenback is the global reserve currency. So the United States can maintain a gargantuan trade deficit with the world, sucking in the surplus produced by foreign workers, racking up trillions in debt, but its money doesn’t significantly devalue because there is so much international demand for it. And wealthy elites across the planet hold much of their wealth in dollar-denominated assets – like the Treasury securities that make up the national debt. This is the exorbitant privilege of the US dollar. It is clear that virtually no one in Washington actually believes that the debt ceiling is important, because the vast majority of the members of both hegemonic political parties happily vote every year to keep increasing the military budget – which is on the path to reach $1 trillion by 2030. Back in the 2000s, when Republican George W. Bush was president, his neoconservative Vice President Dick Cheney boasted that “deficits don’t matter”. Cheney approvingly cited the previous Republican president from the 1980s, lecturing Bush’s Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill: “You know, Paul, [Ronald] Reagan proved deficits don’t matter“. The Bush administration further proved this by spending trillions of dollars to wage the so-called “war on terror”. Washington invaded Afghanistan, then invaded Iraq, while expanding the US military’s footprint all around the world. Where did the trillions of dollars needed to wage those wars come from? The government just spent it. It didn’t care about the debt ceiling, because Washington can create dollars – something no other country in the world can do. The deal between President Biden and House Speaker McCarthy reflects the same logic shared by Cheney. Debt ceiling bill reflects the bipartisan consensus in Washington: cut social spending to further enrich military contractors pic.twitter.com/l1RSjXBxDf — Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) June 1, 2023 While Republicans on the floor of the Congress demanded that Washington impose austerity measures, they eagerly joined Democrats in increasing the military budget from around $800 billion in 2023 to $886 billion in 2024. (Many major media outlets reported that the agreement boosted US military spending to $885 billion, but the precise number is $886.3 billion.) Bloomberg reported clearly on this hypocrisy: Republican lawmakers who oppose the debt-ceiling bill argue it doesn’t do enough to cut spending or reduce the deficit. Yet when defense is concerned, many argue the government ought to be spending more, not less. Under the deal passed by the House on Wednesday evening [May 31] and sent to the Senate, defense spending would get the 3.3% increase the president proposed for the coming year — even as other programs are cut. … The administration’s $886.3 billion national security budget request for fiscal 2024 provides the biggest-ever defense spending increase and also one of the largest peacetime budgets when adjusted for inflation. The US would be spending more on defense than the next 10 nations combined. However, even these staggering official figures are an underestimate. The Congressional Budget Office divides US discretionary spending between “defense” and “nondefense”. In 2023, “defense” expenditure was reported as roughly $800 billion, with “nondefense” as $936 billion. But those figures are misleading, because the so-called nondefense spending included $131 billion of benefits for military veterans. So if you subtract veterans’ benefits from nondefense and add it to defense, military expenditure was at least $931 billion, or 54.5% of 2023 discretionary spending. This is just the official discretionary spending on paper. In reality, the US military frequently spends much more. The Pentagon has failed every single audit it has ever tried, and there are tens of trillions of dollars of spending that is completely unaccounted for. The point is that the approximately $800 billion military budget in 2023 was already an underestimate, which suggests that the new $886.3 billion that Biden and McCarthy agreed on for 2024 is likely a lowball as well. Meanwhile, US military spending is off the charts, when compared to other countries. In 2022, US military expenditure made up 39% of global spending. Washington spent 10 times more on its military than Russia, and three times more than China (despite the fact that China has four times the US population). US military spending in 2022 was actually estimated at $877 billion (significantly higher than the official discretionary budget). That was larger than the next 10 biggest military spenders combined. So Washington spent more on its military than China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Germany, France, South Korea, Japan, and Ukraine, all together. And many of those countries are US allies. US military spending was higher than the next 10 countries combined in 2022. Five years ago, it was higher than only the next nine. How much safer do y’all feelhttps://t.co/VIq8pwChRI pic.twitter.com/FX47O8Uego — Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) April 29, 2023 In short, this bipartisan agreement in which the Democratic president and the Republican speaker of the House agreed to increase military spending to (a minimum of) $886 billion makes it very clear that both corporate parties in the United States recognize that the national debt is not a real problem. They agree with Dick Cheney: “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter”. While increasing the military budget, the Biden-McCarthy deal simultaneously makes it more difficult for poor people in the United States to receive food stamps and welfare. The agreement states that people aged 54 and under have to work at least 80 hours a month in order to receive food stamps. This deal could potentially push hundreds of thousands of people in the United States off of receiving food stamps and welfare. This is despite the fact that these social support programs have already been significantly slashed. Former President Bill Clinton campaigned on the promise that he would “end welfare as we know it”, and he basically did so. Donald Trump also tried to significantly cut food stamps. (Although a court blocked his plan.) Hunger is a serious problem in the United States. A 2020 report by the Brookings Institution found that more than 16% of households with children did not have enough food. That was one out of six children. The food stamp program is officially known as SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. According to data from the Department of Agriculture, four-fifths (81%) of US households that receive SNAP have either a child, an elderly individual, or an individual with a disability. In 2022, one-fifth of children in the US lived in families that received food stamps. As of February 2023, 42.5 million people in the US received food stamps. That is 13% of the US population: more than one out of every 10 people. This is a vitally important social program, because poverty remains a very significant problem in the United States. This is painfully visible with the growing homelessness in major cities. Meanwhile, inequality is increasing; billionaires and millionaires keep getting wealthier; the rich get richer and the poor are getting poorer. As president, Donald Trump oversaw $1.5 trillion in tax cuts. A 2019 study found that these resulted in billionaires paying a lower tax rate than the bottom half of US households. “In 2018 the richest 400 families in the US paid an average effective tax rate of 23% while the bottom half of American households paid a rate of 24.2%”, The Guardian reported. The newspaper added, “Taxes on the rich have been falling for decades. In 1960 the 400 richest families paid as much as 56% in taxes, by 1980 the rate had fallen to 40%”. When he ran for office in 2016, Trump had outlandishly claimed he would pay off the US national debt within eight years. Instead, the national debt rose by nearly $7.8 trillion during Trump’s four years in office. “The growth in the annual deficit under Trump ranks as the third-biggest increase, relative to the size of the economy, of any U.S. presidential administration”, ProPublica reported. It is very easy to explain why there is such a massive national debt in the United States: The rich pay fewer and fewer taxes (while the tax burden actually is increasing on poor and working people); and the US government has spent trillions of dollars waging wars around the world, maintaining 800 foreign military bases and launching 251 foreign military interventions just since 1991, according to data from the Congressional Research Service. Moreover, for more than a decade, the US Federal Reserve ran what was effectively a free money program for the rich, printing some $8 trillion to pump up one of the largest asset bubbles in human history, inflating the prices of stocks, bonds, and real estate. These assets are owned by rich people, not the poor. It was trillions of dollars going into the pockets of the richest people in the United States – and into those of elites in other parts of the world. This was the most massive act of welfare in human history. Welfare for the rich. Following the 2008 financial crash, in 14 years of quantitative easing, the Fed “printed” (digitally, at least) trillions of dollars to buy up treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, including toxic assets that practically no one wanted to invest in. Who were the beneficiaries? The rich. Because in the United States, the wealthiest 10% of people own nearly 90% of stocks. The insult to injury is that, while Washington was pouring money into this substantial welfare for the rich, it was cutting the paltry welfare for the poor. The last detail that is ignored in mainstream media discussion of the US debt ceiling is the role of the dollar as the global reserve currency. Many economists from the school of modern monetary theory (MMT) have noted that the debt ceiling is an arbitrary, manufactured scandal, because it is debt that the US government owes in dollars. If the government wanted, it could simply print that money to pay off the debt. It would create inflation, but it would be possible. But few MMT proponents acknowledge the fact that this is only really possible in the United States because of its unique status as the issuer of the global reserve currency, and its role at the center of the imperialist world system. One of the very few economists who has explained this is Michael Hudson. His book Super Imperialism shows how the international financial system was essentially designed to give the United States a free lunch. Most governments around the world, especially in the Global South, cannot simply print money in order to pay off their debt, because much of it is denominated in a foreign currency, commonly dollars. For many countries in the Global South, when the government needs finance, it will sell eurobonds – government debt denominated in a foreign currency. (Despite the name, a eurobond has nothing to do with the euro.) When these Global South nations – like, say, Ghana, Zambia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, or Argentina – sell eurobonds denominated in US dollars, their economies have to actually produce value in order to get access to those dollars to pay off their debt. When they import crucial commodities like oil and gas, capital goods like machine parts and vehicles, or other technologies, they need dollars to pay for them (lest they risk a local currency devaluation). The US economy does not have to produce anything of value. Washington can simply print the dollars needed to pay off its debts or import foreign goods and services. This is precisely how the United States has maintained the world’s largest current account deficit for decades. This means that the US government consistently imports way more than it exports, and at a level that no other country on Earth can come close to. Countries by their current account balance, averaged from years 1980 to 2008 (red is a deficit, green is a surplus) In addition to its massive trade deficit with the rest of the world, there is a massive inflow of investments into securities in the United States, leading to a capital account surplus. (The inverse of the current account is the capital account.) Argentina also frequently has a current account deficit. It largely exports cheap, low value-added agricultural goods, while importing energy, high value-added capital goods, and technologies. This has led to a severe devaluation of Argentina’s currency, the peso. Triple-digit inflation is eroding away the life savings and living standards of Argentine workers. The US current account deficit is much larger than Argentina’s, but Washington’s debt is denominated in dollars, which it can print; Buenos Aires’ debt is also mostly denominated in dollars, which it cannot print. Argentina is unable to pay the massive debt it owes in dollars, largely to Western vulture funds like BlackRock and to the US-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF), and its central bank is thus constantly bleeding foreign exchange reserves in an attempt to service debt payments, pushing the peso into freefall. That is a fundamental difference between the US and Argentina. When most countries have a consistent current account deficit, their national currencies are devalued. They have to sell their currency in foreign exchange markets in order to get access to the foreign currencies they use to buy the excess imports. Because of the hegemony of the US dollar, because of the design of the US-centered imperialist world system, that means they usually have to get access to dollars. So the Argentine peso has significantly weakened in relation to the US dollar. When countries with chronic current account deficits see their currencies devalued, it decreases the living standards and purchasing power of workers, often making it prohibitively expensive to buy imported products like phones or computers. But what this also does, simultaneously, is make exports in those countries more competitive, because it is now cheaper for those goods to be bought by foreign clients. Theoretically, at least on paper, this process could thus lead the deficit country to move toward a more balanced current account over time, with a better balance of payments with other countries. However, in the United States, the dollar does not significantly devalue, despite the massive current account deficit, because of its status as the global reserve currency: Washington’s exorbitant privilege. Outside of Argentina, very few people want pesos. Unless you’re buying goods or services from Argentina, the currency is not useful. And even much of the invoicing for Argentina’s international trade is done in dollars. (Although that is changing as Buenos Aires and Beijing seek to de-dollarize their commercial exchange.) Very few people outside of Argentina are investing in Argentine assets denominated in the peso. They’re using US dollars. However, because of the exorbitant privilege of the dollar, the US can keep importing, and importing, and importing, absorbing the surplus of the world, sucking in the drain of the surplus value produced by foreign workers. As for the massive flow of dollars out into the rest of the world, they are frequently invested in assets in the United States, like securities on Wall Street, or in real estate, or Treasury bonds – that is to say, the national debt! This is the “exorbitant privilege” that France’s Finance Minister and future President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing famously complained about in the 1960s. The US economy doesn’t need to produce $100 worth of value, through the labor of its workers, in order to buy $100 worth of products. The US government can print that money. (And it is basically free, because most of that “printing” is digital; it’s not even physical cash; it’s numbers on a computer screen on the balance sheets of the Federal Reserve and the US Treasury.) So if the US needs to rectify its balance of payments and fund imports, the Treasury can sell bonds denominated in its own currency. On the other hand, workers in other countries, especially those in the Global South, have to produce constant surplus; they have to break their backs working in order to produce $100 worth of value to get 100 dollars. A sizeable part of those 100 dollars then often flow immediately back out of the country to pay interest on the debt owed to vulture funds on Wall Street, to asset management firms like BlackRock, which are investing the capital of rich oligarchs and gobbling up assets around the world. So yes, the MMT theorists are correct; the US government can print dollar to pay off its national debt. Some creative economists have proposed that the Treasury could even mint a $1 trillion platinum coin, so Congress won’t have to raise the debt ceiling in the future. That is technically possible. However, most governments around the world cannot do this. As for the small handful of other countries that, like the United States, have relatively stable economies but large national debts, what makes them different is they mostly have current account surpluses. Japan, for instance, has a gargantuan national debt of over 260% of GDP (roughly double the US debt-to-GDP ratio of 130%). However, unlike the US, Japan has a chronic current account surplus. It is a manufacturing powerhouse. Moreover, like the US, Japan’s debt is largely denominated in its own currency, the yen, which Tokyo can print. In fact, Japan’s central bank owned a staggering 52% of government bonds as of the end of 2022. This is national debt owed by one part of the government to another part of the government. Even further, more than 90% of Japan’s debt was held domestically, with just 8% owed to foreigners, as of the end of 2021. Japan is also a key part of the US-led imperialist system. This is what gives Japan the economic and political ability to maintain this debt relationship and to denominate its bonds in yen, in a way that many countries cannot do. This is particularly true for countries in the Global South that are targeted by the United States for regime change, war, sanctions, and economic blockades. These nations are heavily restricted in their options for getting access to finance, which is needed to build infrastructure and develop the economy. Very few investors are going to buy the debt of a country under US sanctions, of a nation facing the prospects of external destabilization and war – which would mean they probably wouldn’t get paid back for their investment. The point of all of this is that the relative “unimportance” of the US national debt, as acknowledged by Dick Cheney and many MMT theorists alike, is largely a product of its position at the center of the imperialist world-system of global accumulation. If you are a poor country in the Global South, yes, you can print more and more of your currency to pay for social programs, but if that is not matched by corresponding economic activity and growth, if there is not a demand for your currency for importing the products that your economy produces, and especially if your country is dependent on importing commodities and capital goods, it is likely going to lead to significant inflation, which could devastate your economy. The final factor to emphasize is the sheer, blunt force of the US military, with its nearly trillion-dollar annual budget and 800 foreign bases. If Washington simply decided to default one day, and refused to pay its foreign debts, no foreign power could invade the US and force it to do so. The same cannot be said for most other countries, especially small ones with few resources in the periphery of the imperialist world system.

Write an article about: Peru coup: CIA agent turned US ambassador met with defense minister day before president overthrown. 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.

CIA, coup, Lisa Kenna, Mike Pompeo, Pedro Castillo, Peru

The US ambassador in Peru, Lisa Kenna, worked for the CIA for 9 years, as well as the Pentagon. One day before the coup against elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo, Kenna met with Peru’s defense minister, who then ordered the military to turn against Castillo. (Se puede leer este informe en español aquí.) The US ambassador in Peru, a veteran CIA agent named Lisa Kenna, met with the country’s defense minister just one day before democratically elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo was overthrown in a coup d’etat and imprisoned without trial. Peru’s defense minister, a retired brigadier general, ordered the military to turn against Castillo. The coup set off mass protests all across Peru. The unelected regime has unleashed brutal violence, and police have killed numerous demonstrators. Meanwhile, the US government has staunchly supported Peru’s unelected coup regime, which declared a nation-wide “state of emergency” and deployed the military to the streets in an attempt to crush the protests. Esto no es la Guerra de las Galaxias es Chorrillos, Lima pic.twitter.com/KFluRVJFAu — HezSocial (@ZLaicos) December 15, 2022 Most governments in Latin America have criticized or even refused to recognize Peru’s unelected coup regime, including Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, and various Caribbean nations. The CIA has organized many coups against democratically elected left-wing leaders in Latin America, from Guatemala’s President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 to Chile’s President Salvador Allende in 1973. When the Donald Trump administrated nominated Lisa Kenna to be ambassador to Peru in 2020, the State Department released a “certificate of competency” that revealed that, “Before joining the Foreign Service, she served for nine years as a Central Intelligence Agency officer.” This important fact is curiously absent from most of Kenna’s bios, including her page on the US embassy’s official website. Under Trump, Kenna also served as executive secretary of the State Department and was “senior aide” to Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who previously headed the CIA. In regard to his work for the notorious spy agency, Pompeo admitted in 2019, “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses.” At a Congressional nomination hearing in 2020, Kenna admitted that, as executive secretary, she saw “nearly all” of the memos that were sent to Pompeo, adding, “I am aware of the vast majority of” calls made to and by him. Kenna also previously worked for the Defense Department and served State Department roles in Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Swaziland, and Pakistan. When President Joe Biden entered in January 2021, he kept Kenna as ambassador in Peru. The current US Ambassador in Peru. pic.twitter.com/iUAbnR6Hzp — Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) December 13, 2022 On December 6, 2022, Kenna met with Gustavo Bobbio Rosas, a retired brigadier general from the Peruvian military who had officially been appointed as defense minister the day before. (A local media outlet reported that the meeting was on December 5, but that appears to have been an error.) Peru’s Ministry of Defense published a photo of their friendly chat. At the time of this meeting, it was known in Peru that the notoriously corrupt, oligarch-controlled congress was preparing for a new vote to overthrow democratically elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo. Ahora ? | Ministro de Defensa, Gustavo Bobbio, se reúne con la embajadora de @USEMBASSYPERU, Lisa Kenna, para abordar temas de interés bilateral. ???? pic.twitter.com/9p7JuKNx75 — Mindef Perú (@MindefPeru) December 6, 2022 Article 113 of Peru’s constitution allows the unicameral congress to remove presidents simply by voting to declare that they have a “moral incapacity,” in a process known as “vacancy.” Peru’s congress is well known for its extreme corruption. In the infamous “Mamanivideos” scandal, congress members from the far-right Fuerza Popular party were filmed bribing other congress members to vote against impeaching previous right-wing President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski. Fuerza Popular is run by the family members of Alberto Fujimori, the far-right dictator who ruled Peru with an iron fist from 1990 until 2000. With the support of the US government, Fujimori committed genocide, sterilizing approximately 300,000 Indigenous people, while killing, torturing, and disappearing large numbers of leftist dissidents. The Mamanivideos scandal showed that it is quite easy for Peru’s rich oligarchs to buy votes in congress to overthrow democratically elected presidents. And as soon as Castillo entered office on July 28, 2021, the congress tried to do exactly this. Just one day after the US ambassador met with Peru’s defense minister, on December 7, 2022, the right-wing-dominated congress launched a parliamentary coup against Castillo, using article 113. This was the third coup attempt in just over a year by Peru’s congress, which in September 2022 had a mere 7% approval rating. Hoping to stop the coup, Castillo responded by trying to dissolve the congress. This is allowed in cases of obstructionism by article 134 of Peru’s constitution. Defense Minister Bobbio immediately denounced the president’s actions. He published a video resigning from his position (that he had only held for three days). Pronunciamiento| Presento mi renuncia de manera irrevocable a mi cargo de Ministro de Defensa. pic.twitter.com/efFC0cwZ34 — Gustavo Bobbio Rosas (@GustavoBobbio_) December 7, 2022 In the video, Bobbio told Peru’s armed forces not to support President Castillo and to oppose his attempt to dissolve the coup-plotting congress. Bobbio claimed Castillo was launching a “coup attempt,” but in reality Bobbio was instructing the Peruvian military to support a coup against the democratically elected president, on behalf of a notoriously corrupt oligarch-controlled congress that had almost no support from the population. While Bobbio ordered the military to rebel against the president, the US government promptly attacked Castillo. Former CIA agent and current Ambassador Kenna tweeted, “The United States categorically rejects any extra-constitutional act by President Castillo to prevent the congress from fulfilling its mandate.” Los Estados Unidos insta enfáticamente al presidente Castillo a revertir su intento de cerrar el Congreso y permitir que las instituciones democráticas de Perú funcionen según la Constitución. Alentamos al público peruano a mantener la calma durante este tiempo incierto. — Lisa Kenna (@USAmbPeru) December 7, 2022 Kenna failed to mention article 134 of Peru’s constitution, which states: The President of the Republic is authorized to dissolve the Congress if it has censured or denied its confidence to two Councils of Ministers [the official name of Peru’s cabinet]. The dissolution decree contains the call for elections for a new Congress. When Castillo moved to dissolve the congress, he cited article 134 and he made it clear that it was only going to be a “temporary” closure. The president said new congressional elections would be held as soon as possible. Kenna ignored all of this context. Instead, the ambassador declared, “The United States emphatically urges President Castillo to reverse his attempt to close the congress and allow the democratic institutions of Peru to function according to the constitution.” By this, the CIA veteran meant that Castillo should simply allow the anti-democratic, oligarch-controlled congress to launch a coup against him. The US embassy in Peru subsequently published an official statement echoing exactly what Kenna had said. This was Washington’s green light for Peru’s corrupt, right-wing-dominated congress to overthrow President Castillo, and for the state security services to arrest him, without trial. pic.twitter.com/cyDlKaxiC8 — Embajada EEUU Perú (@USEMBASSYPERU) December 7, 2022 Mere hours after Castillo was imprisoned, the oligarch-controlled congress appointed his vice president, Dina Boluarte, as leader of the country. Boluarte promised on the floor of the congress that she would create “a political truce to install a government of national unity” – that is, a pact with the right wing. Boluarte had been expelled in January 2022 from the leftist Perú Libre party that Castillo had campaigned with. She proudly declared that she “had never embraced the ideology” of the socialist political party. The day after the coup, on December 8, the State Department gave its rubber stamp to Boluarte’s unelected regime. “The United States welcomes President Boluarte and hopes to work with her administration to achieve a more democratic, prosperous, and secure region,” stated Brian A. Nichols, the US assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs. “We support her call for a government of national unity and we applaud Peruvians while they unite in their support of democracy,” the top State Department official added. EE. UU. da la bienvenida a la presidenta Boluarte y espera trabajar con su administración para lograr una región más democrática, próspera y segura. Apoyamos su llamado a un gobierno de unidad nacional y aplaudimos a los peruanos mientras se unen en apoyo de su democracia. -BAN — Brian A. Nichols (@WHAAsstSecty) December 8, 2022 In the mean time, the Peruvian people were filling the streets, condemning the coup against their elected president. Peru’s police responded with violence, harshly cracking down, killing several protesters. On December 14, the coup regime imposed a national “state of emergency” for 30 days, and said it might also declare a curfew. At the same time, the coup regime also said it plans to sentence Castillo to 18 months in “preventative prison,” without a proper trial that resembles anything remotely like due process. Just one day before the coup regime made these authoritarian announcements, former CIA agent and current US Ambassador met with Peru’s unelected leader, Dina Boluarte, and reiterated Washington’s wholehearted support. La presidenta @DinaErcilia Boluarte recibió a la embajadora de @USEMBASSYPERU, Lisa Kenna, quien reiteró el pleno respaldo de su país a la institucionalidad democrática en el Perú y a las acciones del gobierno constitucional para estabilizar la situación social. ???? pic.twitter.com/30EqAa75lx — Presidencia del Perú ?? (@presidenciaperu) December 13, 2022 Kenna praised the right-wing “unity government” that Boluarte pledged to form, adding, “We hope to strengthen our bilateral relationship.” Me reuní con la presidenta Boluarte para reiterarle el compromiso de los EE.UU. con la defensa de la democracia y el respeto a las instituciones. Junto con la @presidenciaperu y el gobierno de unidad que se comprometió a formar, esperamos fortalecer nuestra relación bilateral. — Lisa Kenna (@USAmbPeru) December 13, 2022 Brian Nichols, the top State Department official on Latin America, added with a touch of deep irony, “We support the Peruvian people and their constitutional democracy.” He urged protesters to “reject violence.” On the same day, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, and Colombia released a joint diplomatic statement with a completely contrary message, supporting elected President Castillo, saying he was the victim of “anti-democratic harassment.” Apoyamos al pueblo peruano y a su democracia constitucional. Alentamos a los Peruanos a juntarse pacificamente en apoyo a las reformas que Perú necesita y a rechazar la violencia. Trabajaremos con @presidenciaperu para avanzar estas metas. -BAN https://t.co/AnrrDnxUzi — Brian A. Nichols (@WHAAsstSecty) December 13, 2022 In a press briefing on December 13, the State department was asked about the protests in Peru. State Department spokesman Ned Price – who, like Lisa Kenna, was also a CIA agent – emphasized Washington’s steadfast support for Peru’s coup regime. “We do commend Peruvian institutions and civil authorities for safeguarding democratic stability,” he said, as Peru’s repressive police killed protesters. Just witnessed a protestor shot in head by police outside our hotel in #lima. Not sure he survived. Police response becoming more violent tonight #DinaBoluarte #sosperu #PedroCastillo #ProtestasContraElCongreso #protestasenlima #Peru #ahora pic.twitter.com/8HJe3cTxvC — M M (@MMinperu) December 13, 2022 Instead of condemning the rampant police brutality, the US State Department blamed the protesters themselves. Price stated, “we are troubled by scattered reports of violent demonstrations and by reports of attacks on the press and private property, including businesses.” “When it comes to Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, we of course do recognize her as such. We will continue to work with Peru’s democratic institutions, and we look forward to working closely with President Boluarte and all branches of the government in Peru,” the former CIA agent stressed. State Department on Peru ?? (Tuesday's daily presser): – Commends Peru's institutions and authorities "for safeguarding democratic stability" – "troubled by (..) violent demonstrations" and "reports of attacks on the press and private property" – recognizes Dina Boluarte pic.twitter.com/AVj3F1cOds — Camila (@camilapress) December 15, 2022 In addition to serving as a CIA agent for nine years and current US ambassador to Peru, Lisa Kenna worked as a: At a Congressional nomination hearing on July 23, 2020, Kenna boasted of her US-supremacist worldview, stating, “The longer I have been in public service, the more I am convinced that America is the world’s most exceptional nation.” She also vowed, “I will maintain the United States’ vital relationship with Peru which has long been one of our closest partners in the region. Recently, Mission Peru has performed heroically to sustain our strong partnership and serve our fellow Americans in these challenging times.” At the time of the hearing, Peru had a right-wing government, led by President Martín Vizcarra. Kenna praised Peru’s conservative government, “as founder of the Lima Group,” for backing the United States in its right-wing coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro, claiming, “The U.S. and Peru are also growing our shared support for a peaceful return to democracy in Venezuela.” She also pledged in the hearing that, as US ambassador to Peru: “I commit to meet with democratically oriented opposition figures”; “We also commit to meet with independent, local press in Peru”; and “I am committed to meeting with human rights, civil society, and other non governmental organizations in the United States and in Peru.” Clarification: This article originally reported that the meeting between the US ambassador and Peruvian defense minister was on December 5, two days before the coup, based on an article in a local newspaper, but that media outlet appears to have been mistaken, and the actual meeting was on December 6, the day before the coup.

Write an article about: Biden dice que Latinoamérica es el ‘patio delantero’ de EEUU, Trump dice ‘patio trasero’ – Escoge tu sabor de neocolonialismo. 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.

América Latina, colonialismo, Doctrina Monroe, Joe Biden, Latinoamérica

¿Cuál es la diferencia entre republicanos y demócratas? Trump dice “patio trasero” y Biden dice “patio delantero”. De otro modo, comparten el 95% de las mismas políticas imperialistas y capitalistas. (You can read this article in English here.) La gente en América Latina a menudo me pregunta cuál es la diferencia entre republicanos y demócratas. Para las personas fuera de Estados Unidos, los dos partidos hegemónicos parecen tan similares que es difícil diferenciarlos. La realidad, por supuesto, es que el Partido Republicano y el Partido Demócrata son prácticamente idénticos. Cuando miramos más allá de todas las batallas superficiales de la Guerra Cultural que libran para distraer al público estadounidense, podemos ver claramente que los dos partidos de la clase dominante comparten el 95% de las mismas políticas — y están financiados por los mismos oligarcas capitalistas y corporaciones explotadoras, para servir sus intereses económicos obedientemente. La administración de Joe Biden ha hecho que esto sea innegable. El presidente demócrata hizo campaña con promesas de revertir las desastrosas políticas del republicano Trump, sólo para continuar con la gran mayoría de ellas. En una conferencia de prensa el 19 de enero, el actual presidente demócrata reveló accidentalmente cuál es la verdadera diferencia entre él y el ex mandatario republicano: Trump piensa que América Latina es el patio trasero del imperio estadounidense, mientras que Biden insiste en que es el “patio delantero” de Washington. Puede ver los comentarios de Biden en la transcripción oficial publicada en la página oficial de la Casa Blanca: “Solíamos hablar, cuando yo era un niño en la universidad, sobre el ‘patio trasero de Estados Unidos'”, dijo en la rueda de prensa. “No es el patio trasero de Estados Unidos. Todo al sur de la frontera mexicana es el patio delantero de Estados Unidos”. U.S. maintains its Monroe Doctrine as Biden assures that Latin America is "America's front yard" pic.twitter.com/VhNxIVdV4Z — Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) January 20, 2022 Así que ahora, cuando la gente en Latinoamérica me pide que describa las diferencias entre republicanos y demócratas, tengo la respuesta perfecta: los republicanos piensan que eres su patio trasero, mientras que los demócratas piensan que eres su patio delantero. Elige tu sabor favorito de neocolonialismo. Biden ha estado en el poder por exactamente un año a partir de hoy, el 20 de enero. Y no ha logrado nada significativo. (Su retirada de Afganistán merece una mención honorífica, pero se ve eclipsada en gran medida por las políticas belicosas de Biden contra el resto del mundo, sin mencionar las devastadoras sanciones que su administración ha impuesto a Afganistán, que están matando de hambre a millones de civiles.) Lejos de romper con Trump, Biden ha redoblado las peores políticas del ex presidente de extrema derecha: Mientras tanto, dentro de Estados Unidos, el propio Partido Demócrata de Biden ha bloqueado todos los intentos de aprobar una legislación importante. El gobierno de EEUU es tan antidemocrático, tan comprometido con el capital, que se ha convertido en un desastre disfuncional. Su fachada “democrática” se ha derretido, y todo lo que queda es un régimen autoritario controlado por oligarcas multimillonarios, una dictadura de la clase capitalista de manual. Lo único que puede hacer el imperio estadounidense es hacer lo que siempre ha hecho: intensificar su agresión imperial en el extranjero, derramar dinero sin cesar en las fauces abiertas del Complejo Militar-Industrial, tratar de domar el apetito voraz del culto a la muerte del capitalismo — y usar la guerra en el extranjero para distraer la atención de la muerte masiva, la desigualdad vertiginosa, la pobreza creciente, la crisis de gente sin hogar, la brutalidad policial y el encarcelamiento masivo dentro de Estados Unidos.

Write an article about: US troops are occupying Syria’s oil fields. Congress refuses to withdraw them. 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.

Bernie Sanders, Congress, Elizabeth Warren, Rand Paul, Senate, Syria

The US military has illegally occupied Syrian sovereign territory since 2014, preventing Damascus from accessing its own oil and wheat fields. The Senate voted 13-84, rejecting a resolution to withdraw US troops. The US military has occupied Syrian sovereign territory since 2014, preventing Damascus from accessing its own oil and wheat fields. A top Pentagon official has acknowledged that Washington’s strategy is to starve Syria’s central government of revenue it needs to rebuild, after a decade of war fueled by foreign powers devastated the country. Former US President Donald Trump boasted in 2020: “They say, ‘He left troops in Syria’. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. I took over the oil”. The United States has at least 900 troops in Syria. Syria’s internationally recognized government has repeatedly called for them to leave, meaning the US military presence is illegal according to international law. This issue has come up in Congress several times in recent years. On December 7, the Senate voted 13-84, rejecting a resolution to withdraw the US troops. The joint resolution, S.J.Res.51, “direct[ed] the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in Syria that have not been authorized by Congress”. Of the 100 members of the Senate, which is roughly evenly split between both parties, seven Democrats voted for the resolution, along with one left-wing independent who caucuses with the Democrats (Bernie Sanders) and five Republicans. The senators who voted to withdraw US troops from Syria were the following: Democrats (7) Independent (1) Republicans (5) The US Senate vote on whether or not to withdraw troops from Syria, on December 7, 2023 The resolution had been introduced by Rand Paul, a libertarian-leaning Republican senator from Kentucky. The proposed legislation noted that US military forces have been active in Syria since September 22, 2014. Since 2016, the resolution disclosed, US troops in Syria have attacked the Syrian government and its allies, including Iranian and Russian fighters, at least 11 times. Both the Donald Trump and Joe Biden administrations repeatedly launched airstrikes in Syria against government and allied forces. In March 2023, a senior United Nations official, Farhan Haq, inspired controversy when he falsely claimed “there’s no US armed forces inside of Syria”. (Chinese reporter Edward Xu corrected Haq’s lie, while calling out the UN’s hypocrisy on Ukraine.) UN lies about US military occupation of Syria, reporter calls out Ukraine hypocrisy The US corporate media was once quite open about this fact. Back in 2018, neoconservative Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin bragged, “In Syria, we ‘took the oil’”. He emphasized that “the United States and its partners control almost all of the oil” in the country. Then President Trump had claimed at the time that he wanted to withdraw US troops from Syria, but Rogin complained that, “if the United States leaves, that oil will likely fall into the hands of Iran”. Trump listened to hawkish critics like Rogin and decided to backtrack, instead leaving the US troops – who remain there today. NPR stated clearly in 2020, “U.S. forces in northeastern Syria have a relatively new mission: securing oil fields not only from ISIS, but also from Syrian government and Russian forces”. Trump sat down for an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that same year. The US president explained: TRUMP: They say, ‘He left troops in Syria’. You know what I did? I left troops to take the oil. I took the oil. The only troops I have are taking the oil. They’re protecting the oil. I took over the oil. INGRAHAM: We’re taking, we’re not taking– TRUMP: Maybe we will, maybe we won’t. INGRAHAM: They’re protecting their facility. TRUMP: I don’t know, maybe we should take it. But we have the oil. Right now, the United States has the oil. So, they say, ‘He left troops in Syria’. No, I got rid of all of them, other than we’re protecting the oil. We have the oil. In 2019, a neoconservative US government official overseeing Syria policy, Dana Stroul, boasted that “one-third of Syrian territory was owned via the US military, with its local partner the Syrian Democratic Forces”, or SDF. The Kurdish-majority SDF have acted as a US proxy, using oil revenue to fund their separatist operations, destabilizing Syria’s central government. As Geopolitical Economy Report editor Ben Norton wrote at the time, Stroul emphasized that this Syrian land “owned” by Washington was “resource-rich” and constituted the “economic powerhouse of Syria, so where the hydrocarbons are… as well as the agricultural powerhouse”, with many wheat fields. When Biden entered office in 2021, his administration appointed Stroul as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, the top Pentagon official crafting US policy for West Asia. The top Pentagon Middle East policy official, neocon Dana Stroul, confirmed Biden is keeping troops to illegally occupy sovereign Syrian territory Stroul once boasted that the US military "owns" 1/3rd of Syria, including its oil-rich "economic powerhouse"pic.twitter.com/NIEJ9elxhs https://t.co/01kZ22dhJ4 — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) August 15, 2021 The United States had roughly 40,000 troops stationed in West Asia (known popularly as the Middle East), as of October 2023. In addition to the 900 in Syria, the US has 2500 troops deployed to Iraq, where their presence also violates the country’s sovereignty and international law. U.S. troops and military contractors have been targeted in attacks by Iranian-backed militia groups since Hamas' attack against Israeli civilians and soldiers. The attacks could reverse efforts in recent years to reduce U.S. presence in the Middle East. https://t.co/a7nOI8fOmL pic.twitter.com/rEMyumnOa9 — Axios (@axios) October 31, 2023 On January 3, 2020, US President Trump ordered a drone strike that assassinated top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, along with a major Iraqi commander, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. In response to Trump’s blatant act of war on its soil, Iraq’s democratically elected parliament voted in January 2020 to expel the US troops occupying the country. Trump ignored the Iraqi parliament’s vote, instead threatening to impose sanctions on Baghdad. Biden, a Democrat, has continued his Republican predecessor’s policy, prolonging the military occupation of both Iraq and Syria, in flagrant violation of the nations’ sovereignty. NEW: U.S. forces have been attacked 4 times by Iranian-proxy forces since yesterday's air strikes, 3 times last night and once this morning- all in Syria. No injuries or damage to bases have been reported. This marks 52 attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since Oct 17. pic.twitter.com/zDJ7Z8VapK — Liz Friden (@Liz_Friden) November 13, 2023 The war in Gaza that broke out in October has also spilled over to other countries in the region. In addition to indiscriminately killing Palestinian civilians, including thousands of children, in one of the most brutal bombing campaigns in history, Israel has also attacked Lebanon, and even bombed infrastructure in Syria, such as airports in Damascus and Aleppo. This has led resistance forces in Syria and Iraq to launch attacks on the US troops illegally occupying their countries. The Biden administration responded with air strikes against these fighters. According to the Pentagon, US troops in the region were attacked at least 52 times from October 17 to November 13.

Write an article about: EEUU secuestró y encarceló al diplomático venezolano Alex Saab por comprar alimentos. 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.

Alex Saab, CLAP, Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela

El diplomático venezolano Alex Saab esencialmente fue secuestrado por Estados Unidos porque estaba comprando comida para el programa de alimentos del gobierno, los CLAP, para apoyar al pueblo de Venezuela. (You can read this article in English here.) Traducido por Michelle Ellner “No es un delito cumplir una misión diplomática. No es un delito eludir sanciones que perjudican a todo un país. No puede ser ilegal ayudar a un pueblo”. Camilla Fabri Saab hizo estas vehementes declaraciones al explicar la situación en la que se encuentra la detención ilegal y la extradición -el secuestro, en esencia- de su marido, el diplomático venezolano Alex Saab. Saab es prácticamente desconocido en Estados Unidos, donde actualmente permanece en una prisión de Miami, pero ha sido vital para la capacidad de Venezuela de sobrevivir a la brutal guerra económica emprendida por Estados Unidos. Saab es un preso político cuyo caso tiene paralelismos con el de Julian Assange. Ambos han sido objeto de alcance extraterritorial por parte de las autoridades estadounidenses, ya que ninguno de los dos es ciudadano estadounidense y sus presuntos delitos tuvieron lugar fuera del país. Assange está en la cárcel por decir la verdad. Saab está en la cárcel por ayudar a alimentar a los venezolanos. Saab se enfrenta a un cargo de conspiración para cometer lavado de dinero por su participación en el programa de vivienda de Venezuela y fue sancionado por la administración Trump en 2019 por su trabajo con el CLAP de Venezuela, un programa que envía alimentos y otros artículos de primera necesidad a las familias venezolanas. Referido rutinariamente en los medios de comunicación como un empresario colombiano, Saab goza de doble nacionalidad venezolana y colombiana además de ser diplomático. Fue nombrado enviado especial de Venezuela en abril de 2018, más de dos años antes de su detención. Según la Convención de Viena y la Ley de Relaciones Diplomáticas de Estados Unidos, un diplomático no puede ser detenido por una potencia extranjera. Esto incluye a los diplomáticos que están en tránsito entre los países emisores y receptores, Venezuela e Irán, en el caso de Saab. Alex Saab volaba de Venezuela a Irán cuando su avión se detuvo para repostar en Cabo Verde, un país insular situado en la costa occidental de África. Fue detenido sin orden judicial y retenido en Cabo Verde durante casi 500 días mientras se desarrollaba en los tribunales una prolongada batalla sobre su extradición a Estados Unidos. Fue golpeado, le fue negada la atención médica y se le mantuvo aislado. Cabo Verde hizo caso omiso a una sentencia de un tribunal regional que ordenaba su liberación, así como a una decisión del Comité de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas que suspendía su extradición. Ni su familia ni sus abogados fueron informados de su extradición hasta después de que se produjo. En resumen, Saab fue secuestrado dos veces: una cuando su avión estaba repostando y otra cuando fue trasladado a Estados Unidos. Estados Unidos argumenta que la extradición fue legal y que cualquier violación de la Convención de Viena fue cometida por Cabo Verde. David Rivkin, uno de los abogados de Saab, dice que el hecho de que “Cabo Verde haya violado absolutamente su obligación legal no proporciona ninguna excusa a Estados Unidos”. Rivkin describe el caso contra Saab como “sin precedentes”, dada la  amplia y protectora visión que Estados Unidos ha mantenido habitualmente sobre la inmunidad diplomática. Saab tiene una comparecencia en abril ante el Tribunal de Apelación del Undécimo Circuito sobre esta misma cuestión. “Estados Unidos no puede tener un mundo en el que terceros países puedan molestar a los diplomáticos estadounidenses, y si se establece una norma que dice que los diplomáticos de terceros países pueden ser molestados por Estados Unidos, es inevitable que ocurra lo mismo con los diplomáticos estadounidenses. Este enjuiciamiento no tiene ninguna base legal y no redunda en los intereses a largo plazo del propio Estados Unidos”, explica Rivkin. Más allá de la cuestión crucial de la inmunidad diplomática, los cargos y el caso contra Saab son claramente políticos. Durante años, Estados Unidos ha perseguido a figuras clave en Venezuela, incluso poniendo recompensas sobre el presidente Maduro y otros, como parte de sus intentos de derrocar al gobierno. Estos intentos, que incluyen librar una guerra económica bárbara e ilegal que ha diezmado la economía de Venezuela, han provocado un aumento de la migración y han causado la muerte de decenas de miles de venezolanos. Camila Saab califica con razón las sanciones de Estados Unidos como un “acto de guerra contra toda la población venezolana”. Su marido desempeñó un papel clave en la mitigación de las terribles consecuencias de las sanciones. Se involucró por primera vez con Venezuela al conseguir contratos para la Gran Misión Vivienda, un programa social del gobierno que ha construido 3,9 millones de viviendas para los venezolanos de clase trabajadora desde 2011, la mayoría bajo las sanciones impuestas al país. Luego Saab obtuvo contratos para el programa venezolano CLAP, a través del cual 7 millones de familias venezolanas reciben cajas de alimentos y bienes esenciales cada mes. Las sanciones no sólo dificultan la vida de los venezolanos, sino que hacen que sea un reto hacer negocios con Venezuela. Los bancos se niegan a realizar transacciones (incluso cuando son perfectamente legales). Las compañías de seguros suben los precios o se retiran por completo. Las compañías navieras suben las tarifas. Los vendedores exigen dinero en efectivo y no operan a crédito. En lugar de retirarse de Venezuela, como hicieron muchos empresarios, Saab decidió seguir con el pueblo venezolano y pasó del sector privado al público, convirtiéndose en diplomático encargado de encontrar “soluciones prácticas” al “bloqueo económico y financiero” impuesto a Venezuela desde 2015, lo cual incluía la negociación de acuerdos comerciales con Irán. La relación económica con Irán ha sido fundamental para ayudar a la recuperación de la industria petrolera de Venezuela y, por extensión, de su economía. Saab desempeñó un papel fundamental en los acuerdos comerciales entre Irán y Venezuela para todo tipo de productos, desde gasolina y repuestos hasta alimentos y medicinas. Según Forbes, Saab era un blanco de Estados Unidos porque tenía “los medios y los conocimientos técnicos para ayudar a mantener discretamente toda una economía en movimiento bajo los ojos de un mundo vigilante”. Saab ha negado las acusaciones en su contra y señala una investigación suiza que se abandonó luego de tres años por falta de pruebas. “Los méritos de las acusaciones son débiles a primera vista. Implican actividades que no tuvieron lugar en Estados Unidos y su conexión con Estados Unidos es muy tenue”, dice el abogado David Rivkin. Su detención en Cabo Verde, a instancias del gobierno estadounidense, se produjo apenas unos meses después de que Trump anunciara una campaña de “máxima presión” sobre Venezuela. Su extradición a Estados Unidos descarriló el diálogo entre el gobierno y la oposición venezolana. Estados Unidos planea ahora “presionar” a Saab “para que arroje luz sobre la red económica de Venezuela tras las sanciones”, según Forbes. Después de soportar ser torturado en Cabo Verde, la palabra presión se queda corta. “Desde el día que él voló a Irán, nos han perseguido a todos. Nos han acosado en los medios de comunicación, nos han demonizado, no nos han dejado verle”, dijo Camilla Saab, describiendo lo que ha sufrido su familia. Alex Saab, sobreviviente de cáncer, no ha podido tomar sus medicamentos diarios desde su detención. Ha perdido 65 libras. Sus padres murieron de COVID-19 mientras él estaba encarcelado en Cabo Verde. Su familia ha sufrido también. Sus hijos adultos fueron sancionados por la administración Trump. Su hija menor nunca lo ha conocido. Sin embargo, en todas sus comunicaciones, Saab mantiene su lealtad al pueblo venezolano. Al perseguirlo, Camila Saab cree que Estados Unidos está enviando un mensaje: “Intentan intimidar, pero el pueblo venezolano resiste y sigue en su lucha por la soberanía. Estados Unidos no es la policía del mundo. Liberen a Alex Saab”.

Write an article about: US blew up Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russia to Germany, journalist Seymour Hersh reports. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

CIA, George Friedman, Germany, Joe Biden, Mike Pompeo, NATO, Ned Price, Nord Stream, Norway, Russia, Seymour Hersh, Stratfor, US Navy, Victoria Nuland, Zbigniew Brzezinski

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported the US government destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines that delivered Russian gas to Germany. The Biden administration approved the CIA operation, which used explosives and Navy divers, with help from NATO member Norway. Renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has reported that the US government destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines that delivered Russian gas to Germany. The pipelines were blown up with explosives in a covert operation that was planned by the CIA and carried out by divers from the US Navy, Hersh reported. NATO member Norway also played a key role, using its Navy and Secret Service to assist in the attack. The remotely triggered explosives were placed on the Nord Stream pipelines in June 2022, during NATO military exercises in the Baltic Sea. They were subsequently blown up on September 26. The operation was reportedly approved by US President Joe Biden and overseen by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland. Hersh’s report is based on an internal “source with direct knowledge of the operational planning”. The source admitted that the sabotage of the pipelines constituted “an act of war”. Seymour Hersh is one of the most highly respected journalists in the world. He won the Pulitzer Prize, the top award in Western journalism, for his reporting on US war crimes in Vietnam. He has spent decades building up sources inside the US government. Hersh has also earned accolades for exposing US atrocities and cover-ups targeting Iraq, Iran, and Syria. The Biden White House and CIA both vehemently denied Hersh’s report on the Nord Stream pipelines, claiming it is false. According to US law, the White House and CIA can lie to the public about the existence of covert operations. In his own reporting on joint CIA-NATO sabotage operations inside Russian territory, prominent journalist and US military veteran Jack Murphy noted, “Under Title 50 of the U.S. Code which authorizes covert actions, the CIA can lawfully deny the existence of these operations to everyone except the so-called ‘Gang of Eight’” – a reference to top level US Congressional officials. Hersh explained in his report that the Biden administration decided to carry out the Nord Stream sabotage operation using the CIA and Navy divers, not US Special Operations forces, to avoid the legal obligation to notify the Gang of Eight. The Pulitzer prize-winning journalist published the bombshell article at his personal account on the blogging website Substack on February 8. In an accompanying piece, Hersh explained that he decided to use Substack because he has faced a long history of censorship from the mainstream corporate media outlets he has worked with, which litter his reports “with Pentagon denials” and act in “their publishers’ economic interests”. After Nord Stream was sabotaged, many US media outlets absurdly accused Russia of destroying its own pipelines. Hersh pointed out that these reports were not organic; they were “spurred on by calculated leaks from the White House”. While the US press fueled these outlandish conspiracy theories, the German media reported that the CIA had warned Berlin weeks before about possible attacks on gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea. Reuters also revealed that a reconnaissance jet from the US Navy flew near the Nord Stream wreckage just hours after the explosion. According to Hersh, the Biden administration’s meetings planning to destroy Nord Stream began in December 2021 – more than two months before Russia invaded Ukraine. The CIA developed the sabotage strategy by early 2022, before Russia sent in its troops on February 24, 2022. As Geopolitical Economy Report previously noted, President Biden personally threatened on February 7, 2022 that, “If Russia invades” Ukraine, “then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it”. Under Secretary of State Nuland made similar comments in a press conference on January 27, 2022, stating, “With regard to Nord Stream 2, we continue to have very strong and clear conversations with our German allies, and I want to be clear with you today: If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” CIA analyst turned State Department spokesman Ned Price used the exact same prepared phrase a day before, telling NPR, “I want to be very clear: if Russia invades Ukraine one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward”. A month before Russia invaded, the neoconservative 3rd in command of the State Dep't, Victoria Nuland (main architect of the 2014 coup in Ukraine), threatened: “I want to be clear with you today: If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward” pic.twitter.com/nuX1ChSC51 — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 8, 2022 According to Hersh, the sabotage operation was carried out by divers from the US Navy’s Diving and Salvage Center, which is located in Florida’s Panama City. They put explosives on all four pipelines that make up Nord Stream. The Nord Stream system consists of two main pipelines, each of which has two smaller pipelines, known as Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. The attack destroyed three of the four. Immediately after the attack, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken gloated, “Ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity. It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy… That’s very significant, and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come”. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines: "It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy" "We've significantly increased our [gas] production… We’re now the leading supplier of LNG to Europe" pic.twitter.com/vS9SgDUd2i — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 8, 2022 According to Seymour Hersh’s report, the “Norwegians were key” in the attack on Nord Stream. The US used NATO member Norway as its base of operations. Hersh noted that “the U.S. military has vastly expanded its presence inside Norway” in recent years, using the Scandinavian nation to spy on Russia. Every year, in June, NATO holds military exercises in the Baltic Sea known as Baltic Operations 22, or BALTOPS 22. During these exercises, off the coast of Denmark’s Bornholm Island, NATO divers practiced placing mines, tracking them, and destroying them. After the trap had been placed on Nord Stream in June, the Norwegian navy followed US orders and dropped a sonar buoy to set off the C4 explosives on September 26, Hersh wrote. Norway even surrendered its sovereignty to the US military in 2022, passing the Supplementary Defense Cooperation Agreement (SDCA), which makes Washington the legal authority in northern parts of the country, preventing the local government from prosecuting US soldiers. Current NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was himself Norway’s former prime minister. Hersh observed that Stoltenberg is an aggressive war hawk who has collaborated with US intelligence agencies, and his source referred to the NATO chief as “the glove that fits the American hand”. Hersh added: “The Norwegians may have had other interests as well. The destruction of Nord Stream—if the Americans could pull it off—would allow Norway to sell vastly more of its own natural gas to Europe”. What Hersh did not mention in his article is another striking detail: Just hours after Nord Stream was sabotaged, NATO members Norway, Denmark, and Poland announced the official opening of a new natural gas pipeline, the Baltic Pipe. The Baltic Pipe was built with funding from the European Union, and was meant expressly as an alternative to Nord Stream. Since the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up, Norway has replaced Russia as Europe’s largest supplier of pipeline gas. Norwegian gas shipments to Germany in particular have reached record highs. In 2021, Norway had provided Germany with less then 20% of its gas supply. By 2022, that figure had shot up to 33%. Meanwhile, the United States has also become the world’s largest liquified natural gas (LNG) exporter (tied with Qatar). European imports made up the “lion’s share” of US LNG exports in 2022, quickly replacing Asia as the new top market. In its move away from cheap Russian pipeline gas, Europe imported record amounts of much more expensive LNG in 2022, enriching fossil fuel corporations and importers. In a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Russia on January 26, 2023, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland declared with pride, “I am, and I think the administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea”. 3rd in command of the US State Dept, Ukraine coup architect Victoria Nuland, told Republican Senator Ted Cruz this January 26: “I am and I think the administration is very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea” pic.twitter.com/pfLpzZlldY — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 9, 2023 Nuland was responding to questions from Republican Senator Ted Cruz. Like Cruz, Nuland is a hard-line neoconservative. Nuland was a key figure in the violent US-backed coup in 2014 that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected, geopolitically neutral government and installed a pro-Western regime. Another high-profile neoconservative politician in Europe, Radek Sikorski, the former foreign minister and defense minister of Poland, expressed his gratitude to Washington one day after the attack on Nord Stream. “Thank you, USA,” Sikorski tweeted, sharing a photo of the wreckage in the Baltic Sea, as the pipelines leaked environmentally destructive gas into the atmosphere. Before Nord Stream was physically attacked, the United States had waged economic warfare against the pipelines. The US government had sanctioned companies involved in the project, and even repeatedly threatened to impose sanctions on German firms. Due to US pressure, Nord Stream 2 was never officially opened, even after it was completed in September 2021, following years of construction and billions of dollars of investment from various European companies. In 2020, Donald Trump’s CIA Director turned Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pledged that the US government would “do everything we can” to stop Nord Stream 2. He said the pipeline was “dangerous” and a “threat”, boasting, “We’re the toughest administration ever on Russia”. After US Secretary of State Blinken called the attacks on Nord Stream a "tremendous opportunity" (3 times), Canada's Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly echoed: "We have increased our production" and "exported to the US for it to be sent to Europe" She advertised a new LNG facility pic.twitter.com/Mi5lcbppid — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 8, 2022 Nord Stream 1, which was opened in 2011, under the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, provided Germany with a cheap, plentiful source of natural gas. This concerned the United States, which has long worried that German economic integration with Russia would challenge Washington’s hegemony. US imperial strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and oversaw the CIA proxy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s, warned of the danger of a German-Russian alliance in his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard”. A “Russo-German or a Russo-French flirtation” would come at “the detriment of Europe’s transatlantic connection with America”, Brzezinski wrote, emphasizing that preventing “the emergence of a dominant and antagonistic Eurasian power remains central to America’s capacity to exercise global primacy”. As the website UnHerd noted, another prominent US imperial strategist, George Friedman, wrote in 2010 that “the mere possibility that [Russia] might collaborate with Europe and particularly Germany opens up the most significant threat in the decade, a long-term threat that needs to be nipped in the bud”. Friedman served as chair of Stratfor, a private intelligence company that is so closely linked to US spy agencies that it is popularly known as the “shadow CIA”. In a 2015 speech, Friedman stated clearly: “The primordial interest of the United States, over which, for a century, we have fought wars — the First, Second, and Cold War — has been the relationship between Germany and Russia, because united they are the only force that could threaten us, and to make sure that that doesn’t happen”. US imperial strategist and ex chair of "shadow CIA" Stratfor, George Friedman, said in 2015: "The primordial interest of the U.S., over which for a century we have fought wars — the First, Second, and Cold War — has been [to sabotage] the relationship between Germany and Russia" pic.twitter.com/Huhaje2HOE — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 11, 2023

Write an article about: Wikileaks: US supported Khmer Rouge to weaken Soviet-allied Vietnamese communists. 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.

Cambodia, Khmer Rouge, Soviet Union, USSR, WikiLeaks

Classified 1978 diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks show the US government supported the Khmer Rouge, in order to maintain “stability” in Cambodia and weaken the Vietnamese communists, which were allied with the Soviet Union. Formerly classified 1978 diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks show that the US government supported the Khmer Rouge, in order to maintain “stability” in Cambodia and weaken the Vietnamese communists, which were allied with the Soviet Union. The State Department sent a cable to six US embassies in Asia on 11 October 1978 stating, “We believe a national Cambodia must exist even though we believe the Pol Pot regime is the world’s worst violator of human rights.” The Phnom Penh Post reported: Yet while the US government was aware of the horrific actions of the Pol Pot regime, with a July 21 cable from the US Embassy in Laos estimating 2 million people had died at its hands, it refused overtures from the country’s previous leadership to challenge the Pol Pot government’s right to represent Cambodia at the United Nations. A 16 December US State Department cable to the UN stated, “If the Pol Pot regime was toppled, this could result in indefinite guerrilla warfare in Cambodia.” The US government insisted that, in spite of the roughly 1 to 2 million people killed by the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot maintained “stability” in Cambodia, and that was most important. Renowned muckraking journalist John Pilger, who witnessed firsthand the brutality of Pol Pot’s regime, has detailed how the US and UK helped give rise to the Khmer Rouge in the first place. Pilger explained in detail in 2000: Declassified United States government documents leave little doubt that the secret and illegal bombing of then neutral Cambodia by President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger between 1969 and 1973 caused such widespread death and devastation that it was critical in Pol Pot’s drive for power. “They are using damage caused by B52 strikes as the main theme of their propaganda,” the CIA director of operations reported on 2 May 1973. “This approach has resulted in the successful recruitment of young men. Residents say the propaganda campaign has been effective with refugees in areas that have been subject to B52 strikes.” In dropping the equivalent of five Hiroshimas on a peasant society, Nixon and Kissinger killed an estimated half a million people. Year Zero began, in effect, with them; the bombing was a catalyst for the rise of a small sectarian group, the Khmer Rouge, whose combination of Maoism and medievalism had no popular base. After two and a half years in power, the Khmer Rouge was overthrown by the Vietnamese on Christmas Day, 1978. In the months and years that followed, the US and China and their allies, notably the Thatcher government, backed Pol Pot in exile in Thailand. He was the enemy of their enemy: Vietnam, whose liberation of Cambodia could never be recognised because it had come from the wrong side of the cold war. For the Americans, now backing Beijing against Moscow, there was also a score to be settled for their humiliation on the rooftops of Saigon. To this end, the United Nations was abused by the powerful. Although the Khmer Rouge government (“Democratic Kampuchea”) had ceased to exist in January 1979, its representatives were allowed to continue occupying Cambodia’s seat at the UN; indeed, the US, China and Britain insisted on it. Meanwhile, a Security Council embargo on Cambodia compounded the suffering of a traumatised nation, while the Khmer Rouge in exile got almost everything it wanted. In 1981, President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said: “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot.” The US, he added, “winked publicly” as China sent arms to the Khmer Rouge. In fact, the US had been secretly funding Pol Pot in exile since January 1980. The extent of this support – $85m from 1980 to 1986 – was revealed in correspondence to a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. On the Thai border with Cambodia, the CIA and other intelligence agencies set up the Kampuchea Emergency Group, which ensured that humanitarian aid went to Khmer Rouge enclaves in the refugee camps and across the border. Two American aid workers, Linda Mason and Roger Brown, later wrote: “The US government insisted that the Khmer Rouge be fed . . . the US preferred that the Khmer Rouge operation benefit from the credibility of an internationally known relief operation.” Under American pressure, the World Food Programme handed over $12m in food to the Thai army to pass on to the Khmer Rouge; “20,000 to 40,000 Pol Pot guerillas benefited,” wrote Richard Holbrooke, the then US assistant secretary of state. I witnessed this. Travelling with a UN convoy of 40 trucks, I drove to a Khmer Rouge operations base at Phnom Chat. The base commander was the infamous Nam Phann, known to relief workers as “The Butcher” and Pol Pot’s Himmler. After the supplies had been unloaded, literally at his feet, he said: “Thank you very much, and we wish for more.” In November of that year, 1980, direct contact was made between the White House and the Khmer Rouge when Dr Ray Cline, a former deputy director of the CIA, made a secret visit to a Khmer Rouge operational headquarters. Cline was then a foreign policy adviser on President-elect Reagan’s transitional team. By 1981, a number of governments had become decidedly uneasy about the charade of the UN’s continuing recognition of the defunct Pol Pot regime. Something had to be done. The following year, the US and China invented the Coalition of the Democratic Government of Kampuchea, which was neither a coalition nor democratic, nor a government, nor in Kampuchea (Cambodia). It was what the CIA calls “a master illusion”. Prince Norodom Sihanouk was appointed its head; otherwise little changed. The two “non-communist” members, the Sihanoukists, led by the Prince’s son, Norodom Ranariddh, and the Khmer People’s National Liberation Front, were dominated, diplomatically and militarily, by the Khmer Rouge. One of Pol Pot’s closet cronies, Thaoun Prasith, ran the office at the UN in New York. In Bangkok, the Americans provided the “coalition” with battle plans, uniforms, money and satellite intelligence; arms came direct from China and from the west, via Singapore. The non-communist fig leaf allowed Congress – spurred on by a cold-war zealot Stephen Solarz, a powerful committee chairman – to approve $24m in aid to the “resistance”. Until 1989, the British role in Cambodia remained secret. The first reports appeared in the Sunday Telegraph, written by Simon O’Dwyer-Russell, a diplomatic and defence correspondent with close professional and family contacts with the SAS. He revealed that the SAS was training the Pol Pot-led force. Soon afterwards, Jane’s Defence Weekly reported that the British training for the “non-communist” members of the “coalition” had been going on “at secret bases in Thailand for more than four years”. The instructors were from the SAS, “all serving military personnel, all veterans of the Falklands conflict, led by a captain”. The Cambodian training became an exclusively British operation after the “Irangate” arms-for-hostages scandal broke in Washington in 1986. “If Congress had found out that Americans were mixed up in clandestine training in Indo-China, let alone with Pol Pot,” a Ministry of Defence source told O’Dwyer-Russell, “the balloon would have gone right up. It was one of those classic Thatcher-Reagan arrangements.” Moreover, Margaret Thatcher had let slip, to the consternation of the Foreign Office, that “the more reasonable ones in the Khmer Rouge will have to play some part in a future government”. In 1991, I interviewed a member of “R” (reserve) Squadron of the SAS, who had served on the border. “We trained the KR in a lot of technical stuff – a lot about mines,” he said. “We used mines that came originally from Royal Ordnance in Britain, which we got by way of Egypt with marking changed . . . We even gave them psychological training. At first, they wanted to go into the villages and just chop people up. We told them how to go easy . . .” The Foreign Office response was to lie. “Britain does not give military aid in any form to the Cambodian factions,” stated a parliamentary reply. The then prime minister, Thatcher, wrote to Neil Kinnock: “I confirm that there is no British government involvement of any kind in training, equipping or co-operating with Khmer Rouge forces or those allied to them.” On 25 June 1991, after two years of denials, the government finally admitted that the SAS had been secretly training the “resistance” since 1983. A report by Asia Watch filled in the detail: the SAS had taught “the use of improvised explosive devices, booby traps and the manufacture and use of time-delay devices”. The author of the report, Rae McGrath (who shared a joint Nobel Peace Prize for the international campaign on landmines), wrote in the Guardian that “the SAS training was a criminally irresponsible and cynical policy”. When a UN “peacekeeping force” finally arrived in Cambodia in 1992, the Faustian pact was never clearer. Declared merely a “warring faction”, the Khmer Rouge was welcomed back to Phnom Penh by UN officials, if not the people. The western politician who claimed credit for the “peace process”, Gareth Evans (then Australia’s foreign minister), set the tone by calling for an “even-handed” approach to the Khmer Rouge and questioning whether calling it genocidal was “a specific stumbling block”. Khieu Samphan, Pol Pot’s prime minister during the years of genocide, took the salute of UN troops with their commander, the Australian general John Sanderson, at his side. Eric Falt, the UN spokesman in Cambodia, told me: “The peace process was aimed at allowing [the Khmer Rouge] to gain respectability.” The consequence of the UN’s involvement was the unofficial ceding of at least a quarter of Cambodia to the Khmer Rouge (according to UN military maps), the continuation of a low-level civil war and the election of a government impossibly divided between “two prime ministers”: Hun Sen and Norodom Ranariddh. The Hun Sen government has since won a second election outright. Authoritarian and at times brutal, yet by Cambodian standards extraordinarily stable, the government led by a former Khmer Rouge dissident, Hun Sen, who fled to Vietnam in the 1970s, has since done deals with leading figures of the Pol Pot era, notably the breakaway faction of Ieng Sary, while denying others immunity from prosecution. Once the Phnom Penh government and the UN can agree on its form, an international war crimes tribunal seems likely to go ahead. The Americans want the Cambodians to play virtually no part; their understandable concern is that not only the Khmer Rouge will be indicted. The Cambodian lawyer defending Ta Mok, the Khmer Rouge military leader captured last year, has said: “All the foreigners involved have to be called to court, and there will be no exceptions . . . Madeleine Albright, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George Bush . . . we are going to invite them to tell the world why they supported the Khmer Rouge.” The 1978 documents released by WikiLeaks also indicate that the Chinese government joined the United States in supporting the Khmer Rouge. At the time, a decade after the Sino-Soviet split, Beijing was an ally of Washington; the two were united in their intense antipathy toward the Soviet Union, which they both targeted for overthrow. The Phnom Penh Post reported that “Chinese support for Cambodia was driven by fear of Vietnamese expansionism in the region,” and the Vietnamese were important allies of the Soviets. The newspaper added that China had gone so far as to claim that the “reports of mass killings in Cambodia were untrue.” Those who follow Middle Eastern politics may notice that the US policy toward the Khmer Rouge sounds a lot like the US policy in West Asia today, echoing Washington’s support for hyper-repressive theocratic Gulf monarchies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar and NATO’s backing of Khmer Rouge-style Salafi-jihadist death squads in Syria, Libya, and Yemen.

Write an article about: Trump wanted US military attacks on Venezuela, Defense Secretary Mark Esper details in book. 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.

Alex Saab, Donald Trump, Iran, Mark Esper, Mauricio Claver-Carone, National Security Council, Nicolás Maduro, Robert O'Brien, Russia, Venezuela, William Barr

Donald Trump’s former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper published a book revealing that top US officials frequently discussed military strikes on Venezuela, attacks by special operations forces, training and arming insurgents to launch an invasion, and cyberwarfare. Former US Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper published a memoir detailing how the Donald Trump administration repeatedly discussed military attacks on Venezuela. Esper revealed that President “Trump had been fixated on Venezuela since the early days of his administration,” writing that, “Again and again, Trump would ask for military options” to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro. Top US officials pressed hard “for military action,” Esper said, and National Security Council meetings on Venezuela “always began with the consideration of military options, rather than on the other end of the spectrum—diplomacy,” Esper wrote. In addition to direct military strikes on Venezuela, senior US officials proposed attacking with special operations forces, training and arming insurgents to launch an invasion, using cyberwarfare, intercepting ships, and imposing a naval blockade, the defense secretary disclosed. He accused the Trump administration of “capricious use of the armed forces,” arguing, “All this did was militarize our foreign policy.” Esper, a former vice president for weapons corporation Raytheon, devoted a 30-page chapter to Venezuela in a book he released this May, titled “A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times.” Esper clearly wrote the book in a way that portrays himself and the Pentagon in the most positive light, and therefore sought to minimize his role in the disastrous and ultimately unsuccessful US coup attempts against Venezuela. But he did acknowledge some of the very aggressive actions taken by the Trump administration. Some parts of the memoir were however redacted by the Defense Department, including information about the US hybrid war operations targeting Venezuela. “Trump had been fixated on Venezuela since the early days of his administration, with an eye toward using military force to oust Maduro,” Mark Esper wrote in the book. In January 2019, the Trump administration initiated a coup attempt by declaring that little-known right-wing politician Juan Guaidó was supposed “interim president” of Venezuela. (Guaidó has never participated in a presidential election.) Esper revealed that it was due to State Department pressure that “dozens of other countries recognized Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela.” The State Department also pushed the Organization of American States (OAS) to back the unelected coup leader. The former defense secretary acknowledged in his memoir that Guaidó attempted a violent coup d’etat on April 30, 2019, using “a group of Venezuelan military officials and civilian personnel in an uprising to remove Maduro.” But he conceded that the putsch “failed due to insufficient support from senior military officers.” “The failure of Guaidó and his fellow plotters marked the end of a critical phase in the Trump administration’s attempts to rid the Venezuelan people of Maduro,” Esper lamented. He added, however, that “getting rid of Maduro still seemed to be a bucket list item for Trump,” and, “Again and again, Trump would ask for military options.” Explaining why Trump was so committed to overthrowing Venezuela’s government, the former secretary of defense argued that the US president wanted to control the country’s oil, just as he had publicly justified the continued military occupation of Syria to “keep the oil.” “Trump simply seemed to view these things as opportunities to make money, which didn’t surprise me, given his business background and view of wealth as a metric of success,” Esper wrote. The secretary of defense supported the coup attempt in Venezuela, but was wary of the military option. “I also wanted to see Maduro ousted. However, we had to do it the right way, the smart way,” he said. Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó at Donald Trump’s state of the union address in February 2020 In February 2020, Trump invited Guaidó as a special guest to his state of the union address, in which the unelected Venezuelan coup leader was given a standing ovation by virtually all members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike. When Guaidó met with Trump in the White House, they were joined by Mark Esper. The defense secretary recalled asking Guaidó, “Would your people really be willing to organize, train, and fight?” Guaidó said, “Yes, they would.” After the Oval Office meeting, Esper disclosed, he, Guaidó, and fellow coup-plotters discussed plans for the United States to train fighters in Colombia to later launch an attack on neighboring Venezuela. They raised the possibility of “a smaller, special operation targeted directly at Maduro,” he recounted. Esper wrote: “One of Guaidó’s colleagues looked at me from across the table and said something like, ‘We have some plans you [the U.S. government] know we are working on, they’re just not ready yet.’ There was some quick reference to Florida too.” Three months later, in May 2020, dozens of right-wing insurgents attempted an invasion of Venezuela, known as Operation Gideon. They were led by two former US Army special operations comandos. A Venezuelan army defector who helped plan a botched May 2020 invasion, Clíver Alcalá, said the coup-plotters were in touch with the CIA and other US government agencies They had Washington's approval to try to violently overthrow President Nicolás Madurohttps://t.co/GHYCrcZnm8 — Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) February 2, 2022 The invasion was organized by a Florida-based mercenary firm, Silvercorp USA, which is run by another ex Green Beret named Jordan Goudreau. Goudreau said in a breach-of-contract lawsuit that he had met with US government officials at a Miami county golf resort owned by Trump, and that they assured him of Washington’s support for the operation. Lawyers for a Venezuelan army defector who helped to plan the botched invasion, Cliver Alcalá, likewise emphasized that the coup-plotters were in contact with the CIA, National Security Council (NSC), and Department of the Treasury. In his book, Esper personally denied knowledge of this operation. But he wrote, “I often wondered if this was the plan referred to by Guaidó’s team at the White House back in February and, if so, to what degree was the NSC aware and involved.” (From left to right) US National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, Vice President Mike Pence, President Donald Trump, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark A. Milley, and Deputy Director for Special Operations Marcus Evans Mark Esper’s memoir “A Sacred Oath” clearly aims to shield the Defense Department from criticism, instead putting much of the blame for Washington’s failed coup attempts in Venezuela on Trump’s National Security Council. The NSC held meetings “to discuss military options for Venezuela,” and the “NSC team was even more enthusiastic about them” than Trump was, Esper recalled. The NSC’s senior director for western hemisphere affairs, Mauricio Claver-Carone, “was pressing the hardest for military action,” in “outright advocacy for aggressive action.” Trump’s neoconservative National Security Advisor John Bolton, an architect of the Iraq War who oversaw the coup attempt in Venezuela, disclosed in his 2020 book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” that he had personally appointed Claver-Carone. “Every one of these NSC meetings, it seemed, always began with the consideration of military options, rather than on the other end of the spectrum—diplomacy,” Esper wrote. The defense secretary said he cautioned against direct military attacks, given the possibility of escalation and potential deaths of US soldiers. At the same time, however, Esper did avidly back the coup attempt in Venezuela. He also showed an imperialist attitude, asserting in his book, “In my view, we had to maintain our primacy in the Western Hemisphere.” Despite Esper’s hawkishness, he was apparently not belligerent enough for the neoconservatives surrounding him. “The president felt the Pentagon wasn’t doing enough on this issue —he had been saying it for over three years, others told me,” Esper said. The defense secretary pushed back, listing the many actions the US military was taking to threaten Venezuela. These included Naval “operations off the coast of Venezuela” and “Air Force B-52 bomber training flights” that were “partnering with allied air forces in the region as a show of force.” Trump with his new National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien in September 2019 The US hybrid war on Venezuela was largely overseen by Trump’s ultra-hawkish National Security Advisor John Bolton, a deeply ideological neoconservative. Another key figure involved in the coup plotting was Trump’s special envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, a convicted war criminal who helped lead the Ronald Reagan administration’s Contra terrorist war on Nicaragua in the 1980s. In his book, “The Room Where It Happened,” Bolton described Abrams affectionately as a close “old friend.” But in September 2019, Trump fired Bolton, and replaced him with another bellicose veteran of the George W. Bush administration, Robert C. O’Brien. Esper recalled in his memoir that “O’Brien and his team were pushing hard for some type of military action against Cuba and Venezuela to cut off Caracas’s access to goods and cash.” In June 2020, Trump and top US national security officials held another Venezuela-related meeting, in which “the NSC proposed again that we pursue a military operation.” National Security Advisor “O’Brien went straight for the jugular, proposing a military strike on… a seaport in northeastern Venezuela, where a large complex for loading and unloading petroleum products on and off ships is located,” Esper wrote. (The name of the port was redacted by the Pentagon.) O’Brien wanted to “further disrupt their energy supplies and provoke more unrest,” Esper explained, with “either an air strike or the use of Navy SEALs.” We “were now discussing a military assault on Venezuela,” the defense secretary recalled. Esper said he opposed any proposals for military attacks, partially because they “could escalate into a conflict and likely rally the Venezuelan people behind Maduro.” Given these fears, Esper wrote, “We pivoted to less direct options, such as cyber operations, or [REDACTED] activities supported by the United States but conducted by the opposition.” Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, “thought we should look at irregular warfare options, such as the U.S. training and arming of Venezuelan expatriates,” he recounted. (More information about this was redacted by the Defense Department.) “The United States had a long history with these types of operations. It was an idea worth developing,” Esper wrote. The defense secretary added, “Milley and I had discussed this several times before.” The Trump administration’s goal “was to shut off Venezuela’s oil revenue,” Mark Esper explained. Illegal US sanctions escalated into a full embargo in August 2019. The United Nations’ top expert on sanctions, Alena Douhan, would later go on a fact-finding mission to Venezuela, in February 2021. She found that “unilateral sanctions increasingly imposed by the United States, the European Union and other countries have exacerbated the [economic crisis].” The Venezuelan “government’s revenue was reported to shrink by 99% with the country currently living on 1% of its pre-sanctions income,” wrote Douhan, in her capacity as UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights. But despite this brutal economic embargo, Venezuela’s oil sector did not completely collapse. Part of this was because of support from allies. Esper noted in his memoir that the Trump administration was furious when Iran began providing support to Venezuela. In 2020, Tehran started sending oil tankers to Caracas, delivering lighter crude and diluents that Venezuela needed to process and refine its heavy crude. “There was good cause for concern about this deepening collaboration between them, and with Russia and China as well, especially when it involved a country in our hemisphere,” Esper wrote. “For Trump personally, this was like waving red flags in front of an enraged bull,” he added. Esper complained about this growing alliance between Venezuela and Iran, calling it “troubling.” He noted that, back in 2007, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared an “axis of unity” against US imperialism – although Esper was careful to write “imperialism” in scare quotes. “We needed to keep the pressure on, and find new ways to advance our policy aims,” Esper concluded. He wrote that “NSC staff pushed the idea of a blockade” – a physical blockade by the US military. Esper said he opposed the policy, noting that “blockades are considered an act of war under international law.” So the NSC raised the possibility of “interdicting ships that are carrying Venezuelan oil,” suggesting “that the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard identify these ships, stop them, and seize them.” US officials claimed that Iran, Russia, and China were allegedly using these ships to sell weapons to Venezuela. In this June 2020 meeting with Trump, the top US officials “agreed to develop kinetic and nonkinetic options, both overt and [REDACTED], that could disrupt Venezuela’s oil and arms shipments.” This culminated in August 2020, when the US government intercepted four tankers and illegally seized 1.1 million barrels of fuel being sent to Venezuela, allegedly by Iran. This operation was essentially an act of international piracy. Esper praised the criminal action as “a great initiative by Justice and State.” In addition to intercepting foreign ships, Esper noted that the Trump administration heated up the hybrid war on Venezuela by accusing the Maduro government, without any evidence, of “narco-terrorism” and drug trafficking. According to Esper, this idea was proposed by Trump’s Attorney General William Barr, a former CIA agent and longtime member of far-right theocratic sect Opus Dei. Esper endorsed this strategy, writing, “Thank goodness we were now talking about enhanced drug interdiction efforts in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, off the coast of California, instead of something far more dubious. This made a whole lot more sense to me.” Trump’s Attorney General William Barr charging the Venezuelan government with “narco-terrorism” and drug trafficking in March 2020 In his book “A Sacred Oath,” former Defense Secretary Mark Esper also discussed the US government-backed kidnapping of Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab. In June 2020, Saab was arrested by Cape Verde, at the order of the United States. In clear violation of international law and diplomatic immunity, the Trump administration demanded the extradition of Saab. This eventually succeeded under the Joe Biden administration in October 2021. Esper admitted that “Saab was reportedly on a special mission to negotiate a deal with Iran for Venezuela to receive more fuel, food, and medical supplies.” “Saab was a very important player,” Esper wrote. “It was important to get custody of him.” The former defense secretary recalled that the State and Justice Departments had asked the Pentagon to deploy special operations forces to Cape Verde to make sure that Saab was extradited to the United States. Without presenting any concrete evidence, some US officials claimed that Russia and Iran were preparing covert ops to try to free Saab and take him out of Cape Verde. Esper acknowledged that “there was no proof” of this, stating clearly, “I never thought the threat was real in the first place.” But he agreed to commit teams from US Africa Command (AFRICOM) and the Coast Guard to support Cape Verde and make sure that Saab’s extradition went through. Trump and the State Department were not content. They wanted more, requesting that the US Navy send a warship to patrol around Cape Verde. Esper responded, “I don’t support the proposed action. They first have to show me some evidence that Russia, Iran, or Venezuela is planning to grab Saab.” “The president fired me a few weeks later,” the former secretary of defense wrote. “With me out of the way, the Venezuela hawks pressed my successor for a warship, which he quickly approved. Not long after that, the USS San Jacinto deployed from Norfolk, Virginia, en route to Cape Verde to keep an eye—somehow—on Saab while supposedly deterring outside intervention.” Esper noted that it cost $52,000 per day to keep this US Navy warship in Cape Verde.

Write an article about: US blocks Gaza peace proposal at UN for 3rd time, holding world hostage. 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.

Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Security Council, United Nations

The US government has paralyzed the United Nations, voting against the rest of the world and preventing peace in Gaza by vetoing three different resolutions in the Security Council. Meanwhile, Washington continues giving weapons to Israel. The United States has used its veto power in the United Nations Security Council three times in less than two months to kill resolutions calling for peace in Gaza. Meanwhile, Washington is sending billions of dollars worth of weapons to Israel, directly assisting the country as it commits war crimes against Palestinian civilians. On December 8, the Security Council voted on a resolution that called for an “immediate humanitarian ceasefire” and the unconditional release of all hostages. The United States was the only country on the 15-member council that voted against the measure. #BREAKING United States vetoes Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, and immediate and unconditional release of all hostages VOTEIn Favour: 13Against: 1 (US)Abstain: 1 (UK) pic.twitter.com/hY0YcJ1JKF — UN News (@UN_News_Centre) December 8, 2023 This resolution had been introduced by the United Arab Emirates, and had the support of more than 90 UN member states. The 13 Security Council members that voted for the measure were Albania, Brazil, China, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Russia, Switzerland, and the UAE. Close US ally the United Kingdom was the only country to abstain in the vote. UN Security Council vote (on December 8) calling for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza: FOR (13)????????Albania????????Brazil????????China????????Ecuador????????France????????Gabon????????Ghana????????Japan????????Malta????????Mozambique????????Russia????????Switzerland????????UAE(????????Backed by 90+ UN member states and Secretary-General… https://t.co/b0FM7mhLEn — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 9, 2023 The United States helped to design the United Nations after World War II, concentrating power in the Security Council and giving permanent seats with veto power to the victors: the US, UK, France, USSR (now Russia), and China. Many countries in the Global South have called to expand the Security Council and to eliminate the veto. China and Russia have repeatedly expressed support for expanding the council. But Washington has adamantly opposed the initiative. Global South leaders are particularly frustrated by the fact that the UK and France, each of which has a population of fewer than 70 million people, both have permanent seats on the Security Council, but not many of the most populous countries on Earth, such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Nigeria, or Brazil. Brazil’s left-wing President Lula da Silva stressed this November that the failure of the UN to bring peace to Palestine demonstrates that the system is “broken” and has a “lack of credibility”. “The UN needs change”, Lula said, calling to expand the Security Council and remove the veto. “The UN of 1945 does not work in 2023”, the Brazilian leader added. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has publicly called for a ceasefire in Gaza, but was rejected by Washington. Guterres took the extraordinary measure of invoking article 99 of the UN Charter, for the first time in five decades. Article 99 states, “The Secretary-General may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security”. The Associated Press noted, “Article 99 is extremely rarely used. The last time it was invoked was during fighting in 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh and its separation from Pakistan”. In the case of the Bangladeshi national liberation war of 1971, Pakistan’s right-wing military regime ethnically cleansed and committed genocide against Bengalis, with the support of the US government – specifically President Richard Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. The genocidal situation in Palestine is strikingly similar today. This November, top UN experts warned that “grave violations committed by Israel against Palestinians… point to a genocide in the making”. The UN experts wrote: [Israeli officials] illustrated evidence of increasing genocidal incitement, overt intent to “destroy the Palestinian people under occupation”, loud calls for a ‘second Nakba’ in Gaza and the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory, and the use of powerful weaponry with inherently indiscriminate impacts, resulting in a colossal death toll and destruction of life-sustaining infrastructure. The Wall Street Journal reported on December 1 that the “U.S. has provided Israel with large bunker buster bombs, among tens of thousands of other weapons and artillery shells”. In less than two months, Washington sent Israel approximately 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells. In fact, Gaza is now one of the most heavily bombed areas in history, according to a report in the Financial Times. Gaza is one of the most heavily bombed areas in history The United States voted against two similar resolutions in October. On October 16, the US and its allies the UK, France, and Japan voted against a measure introduced by Russia that called for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The Western powers killed a UN Security Council resolution that proposed a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza The resolution was proposed by Russia 5 countries voted for the ceasefire:???????? China???????? Gabon???????? Mozambique???????? Russia???????? UAE 4 voted against:???????? France???????? Japan???????? UK???????? US… pic.twitter.com/6UMfoRRqQH — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) October 17, 2023 Two days later, the US unilaterally vetoed a resolution introduced by Brazil that urged “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza. The UK abstained in that vote. Russia did too, but as a form of protest, arguing that the resolution was too weak, instead urging a ceasefire. US vetoes Security Council resolution that would have called for “humanitarian pauses” to deliver lifesaving aid to millions in Gaza Favor: 12 (Albania, Brazil, China, Ecuador, France, Gabon, Ghana, Japan, Malta, Mozambique, Switzerland,UAE)Against: 1 (US)Abstain: 2 Russia, UK pic.twitter.com/y4tiAbRMUQ — UN News (@UN_News_Centre) October 18, 2023 At the Security Council meeting on December 8, Russia’s UN representative, Dmitriy Polyanskiy, warned that the United States was “leaving scorched earth in its wake”. China’s ambassador, Zhang Jun, stated, “The task required of the Council is very clear and definitive – act immediately, achieve a ceasefire, protect civilians and avoid a human catastrophe on a larger scale”. “The task required of the Council is very clear and definitive – act immediately, achieve a ceasefire, protect civilians and avoid a human catastrophe on a larger scale” – Zhang Jun, Permanent Representative of China pic.twitter.com/VY9LEf2vKs — UN News (@UN_News_Centre) December 8, 2023 139 of the 193 members of the United Nations recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, but it is not officially a UN member state – because the United States has prevented it from becoming one. Palestine does however have observer status in the UN (along with the Vatican). The representative of the observer state of Palestine, Riyad Mansour, participated in the December 8 Security Council session. “Millions of Palestinian lives hang in the balance, every single one of them is sacred and worth saving”, he cautioned. By failing to approve a ceasefire, the Security Council is ensuring that Israeli “war criminals are given more time to perpetrate their crimes”, Mansour added. The Palestinian representative asked, “How can this be justified? How can anyone justify the slaughter of an entire people?”

Write an article about: CIA veteran hosting anti-China ‘Uyghur diaspora’ podcast funded by 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.

arts, China, CIA, culture, John Bair, National Endowment for Democracy, NED, The New Wild, Uyghurs

The “WEghur Stories” podcast claims to speak on behalf of “the Uyghur diaspora,” and uses intersectional feminist rhetoric to demonize China. But it’s co-created and hosted by an ex CIA agent, with funding from the US embassy in France. The US embassy in France is funding an anti-China podcast that purports to speak on behalf of the Uyghur Muslim community, but was in fact co-created and is co-hosted by a non-Uyghur CIA veteran. WEghur Stories describes itself as “the first podcast entirely about the Uyghur diaspora,” and says it is “working to create a conversation within and about the global Uyghur diaspora.” The co-creator, co-host, and producer of WEghur Stories, John Bair, describes himself on the podcast’s official website merely as an “American writer who specializes in helping other people tell their stories.” But Bair is much more than that; he is a CIA veteran who specializes in information warfare. It is not difficult to find ties between Bair and the notorious spy agency, which has organized anti-democratic coups d’etat around the world and has been complicit in targeted assassinations, torture, and drug trafficking. Bair is a member of the board of directors of a Washington, DC-based advocacy group called Foreign Policy for America (FP4A). The text of Bair’s biography on the FP4A website is completely different from his WEghur Stories bio, although both use the same photo. The FP4A page reveals that Bair “is an alumnus of the CIA, where he served as an intelligence analyst, chief of staff, and public communications officer.” It adds that Bair “works at the intersection of national security and communications.” The shady past of this co-host of a “Uyghur diaspora” podcast was first reported on Twitter by Arnaud Bertrand, a computer engineer and businessman who lives in Shanghai, China. Bertrand was also quick to notice that the show is funded by the US government. The bottom of the WEghur Stories website discloses that this “podcast is made possible with support of the Embassy of the United States of America, France.” The US embassy in Brussels has likewise paid Facebook to post ads promoting the podcast. Got a US Embassy ad about this on Facebook today pic.twitter.com/SUQEBR3mb4 — internet forum user ? (@gemorrelman) February 2, 2022 The US government has spent millions of dollars funding Uyghur secessionist groups in China’s western Xinjiang province, which is geostrategically located at the heart of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, a massive global infrastructure program that Washington has desperately tried to disrupt. Uyghur separatist organizations in the diaspora that admit to seeking the “fall of China” have also been bankrolled by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA cutout created by the Ronald Reagan administration. In an effort to demonize and destabilize China, the US government has accused China of supposedly committing “genocide” against the Uyghur minority – even while the State Department’s own lawyers concluded that “there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide,” Foreign Policy magazine reported. The US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a CIA cutout created by the Ronald Reagan administration. Here the NED openly admits what we have been reporting for years at @TheGrayzoneNews: This CIA cutout bankrolls anti-China Uyghur separatist groupshttps://t.co/PijIA7Jnkq https://t.co/MVfGgAG8Nx — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 11, 2020 The WEghur Stories podcast reflects how US government-sponsored groups and intelligence agencies are increasingly appropriating identity politics to advance Washington’s foreign-policy interests. One of the most cynical examples of this strategy is an episode titled “Being Uyghur Women,” which exploits liberal feministic rhetoric to push anti-China propaganda. This episode, which is co-hosted by Bair – the non-Uyghur white male CIA veteran – opens with a monologue on the importance of “empowering our women,” stating that “women should not be the entrusted and passive guardian of culture under the shadow of the male or state gaze.” The episode condemns the government in Beijing as a violent patriarchal regime, declaring that, “In China, gender equality by engaging women in the workforce has never been achieved in any meaningful way,” and that Chinese women suffer from “rampant discrimination.” Denouncing “the Chinese government’s brutality,” the episode proclaims, “We need to engage and critique patriarchy, stand tall against violence towards women and the queer community.” “We should allow ourselves to be angry to grieve, and fight the Chinese state’s violence against us,” the podcast insists. This rhetoric is very reminiscent of a recruitment advertisement the CIA published in 2021, in which an employee of the infamous spy agency proudly declared that she is an intersectional feminist. In the video, the CIA agent describes herself in a poetic monologue as “intersectional,” a “woman of color,” and “a cis-gender millennial whose been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.” “I refuse to internalize misguided patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be,” the CIA officer proclaimed. WEghur Stories is produced by a “multidisciplinary art lab” called The New Wild. Like the podcast, this company creates art that coincidentally coincides with US foreign-policy interests. Other projects produced by The New Wild include “Everybody Is Gone (Or, the Happiest Muslims in the World),” which the lab describes as “a large-scale art installation and performance whose process and outcomes are centered around offering reparative spaces to the Uyghur community, an ethnic Muslim minority group that is currently experiencing extreme oppression at the hands of the Chinese government.” CIA veteran Bair served as director of communications for “Everybody Is Gone,” and The New Wild openly admits that the project “seeks to draw widespread public attention to the crisis, facilitate collective action to end it, and counteract the Chinese government’s objectives by providing a platform and resources for Uyghur art and culture to be preserved, perpetuated, and celebrated.” In short, this art is a propaganda tool that explicitly aims to “counteract the Chinese government’s objectives” (and, by sheer coincidence, advances the US government’s objectives in the process). Another The New Wild production, called “Tear a Root from the Earth,” is a musical that tells the story of how the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s hurt an Afghan family. The book for the dramatic work was written by John Bair, the CIA veteran. The New Wild likewise produced a multimedia solo performance, “Letters From Home,” which focuses on “Cambodia suffering through the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge,” and “the hope inherent in immigration and the American dream.” WEghur Stories and similar productions show how art and media can be repurposed to serve as a political weapon – one that just so happens to advance US foreign-policy objectives.

Write an article about: Ukraine’s Zelensky sends love letter to US corporations, promising ‘big business’ for Wall Street. 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.

BlackRock, Chamber of Commerce, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Mykhailo Fedorov, National Association of State Chambers, neoliberalism, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, Wall Street

In a video address to a US corporate lobby group, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky thanked companies like BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Starlink, insisting “everyone can become a big business by” investing in Ukraine, where “we are defending freedom and property”. Ukraine’s Western-backed leader Volodymyr Zelensky sent a love letter to US companies, thanking “such giants of the international financial and investment world as BlackRock, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs” for buying up his country’s assets. “Everyone can become a big business by working with Ukraine”, he enticed, claiming that the reconstruction of his nation “will be the largest economic project of our time in Europe”. Zelensky likewise praised the Starlink company of billionaire Elon Musk for its technological support, and he called for more Western weapons shipments, including Patriot missiles and Abram tanks. The Ukrainian leader delivered these remarks in a January 23 video address to US corporate lobby group the National Association of State Chambers. “We are defending freedom and property”, Zelensky declared, portraying the proxy war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine as a battle for the soul of the Western-led capitalist order. In a speech to a US corporate lobby group, Ukraine's Zelensky thanked Black Rock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Elon Musk's Starlink, promising: “Everyone can become a big business by” buying up Ukrainian assets “We are defending freedom and property” More: https://t.co/fNZplLUr2n pic.twitter.com/XGZTBab9q9 — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 25, 2023 Zelensky’s government has imposed some of the world’s most aggressive anti-worker policies, passing legislation that “deprives around 73% of workers of their right to union protection and collective bargaining”, which even the US government-funded Solidarity Center of the AFL-CIO labor federation condemned as a “significant assault on worker rights in Ukraine“. Zelensky’s staunchly anti-worker, anti-union, and pro-corporate ideology came through clear in the neoliberal rhetoric of the speech he gave to the US chamber of commerce organization. He compared governing Ukraine to running a business, and thanked the corporate executives at the conference “for this opportunity to address those who create the globally important economic strength of America”. The Ukrainian president’s office published on its official website a transcript of the speech, titled “After the end of the war, American business can become a locomotive of global economic growth”. “Thanks to the leadership of the United States of America, which has consolidated the world in defense of freedom, we see how to win this battle”, Zelensky effused. The speech sounded less like the words of a stateman and more like an advertisement by a used car salesman – except he is not selling cars; he is selling his country to foreign mega-corporations. Zelensky boasted (emphasis added): We have already managed to attract attention and have cooperation with such giants of the international financial and investment world as Black Rock, J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs. Such American brands as Starlink or Westinghouse have already become part of our, Ukrainian, way. Your brilliant defense systems – such as HIMARS or Bradleys – are already uniting our history of freedom with your enterprises. We are waiting for Patriots. We are looking closely at Abrams. Thousands of such examples are possible! And everyone can become a big business by working with Ukraine. In all sectors – from weapons and defense to construction, from communications to agriculture, from transport to IT, from banks to medicine. I believe that freedom must always win. And, I invite you to work with us right now. In comments clearly seeking to appeal to US conservatives, Zelensky also used the speech to repeatedly condemn “the Iranian regime”, which he demonized as Russia’s “terrorist ally”. Zelensky was addressing the 2023 winter meeting of the National Association of State Chambers in Boca Raton, Florida. The Indiana Chamber of Commerce tweeted proudly, “Our President Kevin Brinegar is among state chamber leaders at the National Assocation of State Chambers winter meeting in Florida hearing from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He thanked U.S. business leaders for support and for promoting free enterprise”. Our President Kevin Brinegar is among state chamber leaders at the National Assocation of State Chambers winter meeting in Florida hearing from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He thanked U.S. business leaders for support and for promoting free enterprise. #ukraine https://t.co/8Ijea6H6mP — Indiana Chamber (@IndianaChamber) January 23, 2023 In September 2022, Zelensky symbolically rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange via video stream. The Ukrainian leader declared that his country was “open for business”, with more than $400 billion in “investment options”. At the same time, Zelensky published an editorial in the Wall Street Journal calling on Western corporations to “Invest in the Future of Ukraine”. Kiev’s economic ministry launched a program called Advantage Ukraine, which it boasted offers profitable “public private partnerships, privatization and private ventures”, with the help of a “USAID-supported project team of investment bankers and researchers”. The Ukrainian government cited corporate executives at Google, Alphabet, and Microsoft, who urged more Western companies to buy up the country’s assets. Ukraine’s Zelensky told Wall Street his country is "open" for corporations to exploit it with $400 billion in state selloffs Economist Michael Hudson says Ukraine's vicious anti-labor policies are reminiscent of Chile's fascist Pinochet regimehttps://t.co/QconroKORI — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) September 9, 2022 Geopolitical Economy Report has also reported on the Ukraine Reform Conference and Ukraine Recovery Conference, meetings in which Western governments and corporations have met with top Ukrainian officials to plan aggressive neoliberal shock therapy – like the kind that was imposed on the Russian Federation in the early 1990s, which led to 3.2 million excess deaths, according to UNICEF. In a meeting in Switzerland in July 2022, Western and Ukrainian government representatives published economic blueprints that called for Kiev to cut labor laws, “open markets”, drop tariffs, deregulate industries, and “sell state-owned enterprises to private investors”. Zelensky has used the emergency of the war to ram through harsh anti-labor legislation, suspending collective bargaining rights and essentially making it illegal for most workers to form a union. Economist Michael Hudson compared Zelensky’s extreme neoliberal policies to those of Chile’s far-right US-backed former dictator Augusto Pinochet. Western governments and corporations met in Switzerland to plan harsh neoliberal economic policies to impose on post-war Ukraine, calling to cut labor laws, “open markets,” deregulate industries, and “sell state-owned enterprises to private investors.”https://t.co/J0n8db8ZLr — Geopolitical Economy Report (@GeopoliticaEcon) July 29, 2022 In December 2022, Zelensky held a video conference with billionaire Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager. In a press release, the Ukrainian government made it clear that BlackRock is overseeing its reconstruction process. Zelensky’s office said BlackRock will “advise the Ukrainian government on how to structure the country’s reconstruction funds”, and is “coordinating the efforts of all potential investors and participants in the reconstruction of our country, channelling investment into the most relevant and impactful sectors of the Ukrainian economy”. This means that, under Western tutelage, Ukraine has essentially privatized and outsourced its economic policy to BlackRock, one of the world’s most powerful corporations. BlackRock, which manages more than $8 trillion in assets, is a robber baron’s oligopolistic dream. The “big three” US asset managers BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street are the largest shareholders in nearly 90% of S&P 500 companies. Ukraine’s vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, published a video in July 2022 that clearly illustrated Kiev’s neoliberal vision for the future. The Ukrainian government’s economic plan looked like a scene out of a libertarian science-fiction film, where everything is privatized and corporations are free to exploit anyone without any regulation. Ukraine 2030 — the freest and most digital country in the world. Without bureaucracy, but with strong tech industry. Cashless & paperless. This is the future we are building. pic.twitter.com/XWs4E1pPGJ — Mykhailo Fedorov (@FedorovMykhailo) July 14, 2022

Write an article about: US gov’t blatantly lies about NATO expansion to militarily encircle Russia. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

Antony Blinken, NATO, Russia, Ukraine

Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed the US-led military alliance “NATO never promised not to admit new members.” This is a lie contradicted by multiple Western government documents. The US government is trying to rewrite the past, acting as though no one else on the planet knows history. The Joe Biden administration has rejected Russia’s demand to stop expanding the NATO military alliance, which Washington leads. Secretary of State Antony Blinken falsely claimed that “NATO never promised not to admit new members” – a lie clearly contradicted by Washington’s own internal documents. Declassified records from the US, Soviet/Russian, German, British, and French governments show that Blinken’s predecessor, Secretary of State James Baker, promised the USSR back in 1990 that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward” after German reunification. This is an undeniable fact, a matter of public record, revealed in these documents published by the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, DC. The National Security Archive noted that Secretary of State Baker reassured Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev “not once, but three times” that NATO would expand “not one inch eastward,” in a February 9, 1990 meeting. Baker told the final Soviet leader that Washington agreed that, “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” But, ignoring this documented fact, the Biden administration has tried to erase history, while repurposing woke Tumblr rhetoric to push its “intersectional” imperialist agenda. Blinken accused Moscow of “gaslighting” about NATO’s intentions – while the US and its Western allies support neo-Nazis in Ukraine to try to militarily encircle Russia. In reality, Washington is the one gaslighting the world, falsely claiming that NATO never pledged not to expand, when everyone knows it did.

Write an article about: USA vs the world: Blockade on Cuba opposed by 97% of countries 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.

Cuba, Israel, sanctions, Ukraine, UN, United Nations

The world voted 187 to 2 at the United Nations General Assembly for an end to the illegal US embargo against Cuba. Only Israel supported Washington, while Ukraine abstained. US officials frequently talk about the “rules-based international order”, and label other countries as “rogue states” if Washington doesn’t like their policies. But a look at votes in the United Nations clearly shows that the United States consistently opposes the will of the entire international community. The world saw a striking example of this on November 2, when almost every country on Earth supported a UN General Assembly resolution that called to end the US embargo against Cuba. Only two countries voted against the measure: the United States and Israel. Just one country abstained: Ukraine. The world has for the most part voted the same way for 31 consecutive years. In 2022, the vote was 185 to two, with two abstentions. At that time, Brazil was ruled by far-right, pro-US leader Jair Bolsonaro, who abstained. But now that Brazil’s left-wing President Lula da Silva is back in power, he has joined with the rest of the international community in opposing illegal US sanctions. Entire world votes 185 to 2 against blockade of Cuba – US and Israel are rogue states at UN Washington has maintained a suffocating blockade against Cuba for more than 60 years. This has starved the country of an estimated $159 billion, or approximately 150% of Cuba’s entire GDP. The US embargo prevents Cuba from importing certain technologies, machine parts, medicines, and even foods, despite Washington’s misleading claim to have “humanitarian exemptions” – a rhetorical sleight of hand that in reality does not apply when foreign firms are afraid of secondary sanctions and therefore do not bother the risk of trading with Cuba. Illegal US sanctions make it exceedingly difficult for Cuba to get access to international financing, and cut off communication with many risk-averse foreign banks. The US blockade has directly contributed to many preventable deaths of Cubans, who have perished because their country was not able to import specific medicines, medical equipment, or machine parts that were needed to treat them. Washington’s goal behind this criminal blockade is very clear: “to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government”. In an internal State Department cable from 1960, the year after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro, top US diplomats regretfully conceded that “the majority of Cubans support Castro” and “there is no effective political opposition”. The US State Department therefore concluded: The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. If the above are accepted or cannot be successfully countered, it follows that every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes 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 published a report for UN member states in July 2023, which detailed how illegal US sanctions have devastated the country. In the year from March 1, 2022 to February 28, 2023, Cuba estimated that the US blockade caused losses of $4.87 billion, or around $13 million per day. This is a massive economic blow for a small island nation whose GDP is just over $100 billion. Cuba calculated that, “At current prices, the accumulated losses during the over 60 years of application of this policy amount to USD 159,084,300,000”, or roughly 150% of GDP. Moreover, Havana said GDP growth in 2022 would have likely been 9%, were it not for the illegal US embargo. “The blockade directly causes extreme harm through the combined effects of its various measures, pursuing its cruel, practical aim of depriving the country of the inflow of funds essential for the purchase of food, supplies, equipment, spare parts, technologies and software”, the report stated. “No other nation has been obliged to take on a social and development program under such conditions of prolonged systematic hostility on the part of the greatest power in human history”, the Cuban government wrote. “The blockade constitutes a massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of all Cubans. By reason of its express purpose and the political, legal and administrative structures on which it is based, it constitutes an act of genocide under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide”, Havana added. Cuba noted that more than 80% of its current population has no idea what life is like without the US blockade.

Write an article about: Xi blasts US ‘containment, encirclement’ of China, Foreign Ministry slams ‘hysterical neo-McCarthyism’. Use the themes and topics represented by the tags provided as guidance for the content. It's not necessary to include the exact tag words in the article, but the article should reflect the essence and context of these tags.

China, Cold War Two, Hua Chunying, new cold war, Qin Gang, Xi Jinping

President Xi Jinping denounced the US-led Western attempt to “contain, encircle, and suppress China”. Foreign Minister Qin Gang condemned Washington’s “hysterical neo-McCarthyism” and “malicious confrontation”, opposing the “cold war mentality”. Chinese President Xi Jinping has denounced the US-led Western attempt to “contain, encircle, and suppress China”. Foreign Minister Qin Gang likewise warned that the US government is pursuing a “hysterical neo-McCarthyism”, and that its “so-called ‘competition’ means to contain and suppress China in all respects and get the two countries locked in a zero-sum game”. Chinese political leaders are often very cautious and diplomatic with their language, and they frequently caution against the United States’ “cold war mentality”. These assertive comments show that Beijing is standing up for itself and pushing back as Washington wages an increasingly aggressive new cold war. “Western countries headed by the United States have contained, encircled and suppressed China in an all-round way, bringing unprecedentedly severe challenges to China’s development”, Xi said in a speech on March 7, reported by state media outlet Xinhua. Acknowledging the growing geopolitical tensions, Xi said China is “faced with high winds and choppy waters in the international environment”. He added that “the external environment for China’s development has changed drastically, with uncertainties and unexpected factors increasing remarkably”. The Wall Street Journal noted that “Xi’s comments marked an unusual departure for a leader who has generally refrained from directly criticizing the U.S. in public remarks—even as his decadelong leadership has demonstrated a pessimistic view of the bilateral relationship”. “Xi has typically been more measured and vague regarding the U.S. and other Western countries, referring to them as “certain” countries rather than naming them explicitly”, the newspaper added. This is him telling the Chinese people that China is under attack by the West as a whole, led by the US. Which is factually undeniable of course but him saying it out loud marks a real turning point. It probably means he's lost hope that a new cold war can be avoided. — Arnaud Bertrand (@RnaudBertrand) March 7, 2023 John Pang, a former Malaysian government official who frequently writes for Chinese media outlets, noted that, “Unlike western politicians, Chinese leaders err on the side of understatement and indirectness when discussing external threats, nor are they fond of using it to justify policy. I can’t recall his ever having put this so directly”. Despite these challenges, President Xi noted that his country has continued progressing: “China’s GDP registered an annual growth rate of 5.2 percent over the past five years. We won the critical battle against poverty as scheduled and finished building a moderately prosperous society in all respects”. Xi also reiterated his commitment to “common prosperity for all Chinese people“. In separate remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying said, “The US claim to ‘shape the strategic environment in which China operates’ actually reveals the real purpose of its Indo-Pacific Strategy, that is to encircle China”. She was referencing remarks made by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who announced this containment policy in a May 2022 speech. Hua affirmed, “Asia should be a stage for win-win cooperation rather than a chessboard for geopolitical contest. No Cold War should be reignited, and no Ukraine-style crisis should be repeated in Asia”. The US claim to “shape the strategic environment in which China operates” actually reveals the real purpose of its Indo-Pacific Strategy, that is to encircle China. — Hua Chunying 华春莹 (@SpokespersonCHN) March 7, 2023 China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Gang gave a press conference on March 7 in which he made similar remarks. He referenced the manufactured crisis in February, in which the US military shot down a Chinese balloon that its own experts admitted had likely been blown off course due to the weather. Qin said this balloon entering US airspace was “entirely an accident caused by force majeure”. He noted, “Even the United States did not believe it posed a physical threat”. “However, in violation of the spirit of international law and international customary practices, the United States acted with a presumption of guilt”, Qin added. “It overreacted, abused force, and dramatized the accident, creating a diplomatic crisis that could have been avoided”. US officials admitted the Chinese balloon they shot down on February 4 had likely been blown off course by unexpected weather. The US Air Force later spent $2 million using missiles to blow up a $12 hobbyist balloon.https://t.co/kY1r4Cb7Xx — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 21, 2023 Noting that Washington “regards China as its primary rival and biggest geopolitical challenge”, the foreign minister argued that “the US perception and views of China are seriously distorted”. He stated (emphasis added): The United States claims that it seeks to “out-compete” China but does not seek conflict. Yet in reality, its so-called “competition” means to contain and suppress China in all respects and get the two countries locked in a zero-sum game. The United States talks a lot about following rules. But imagine two athletes competing in an Olympic race. If one athlete, instead of focusing on giving one’s best, always tries to trip or even injure the other, that is not fair competition, but malicious confrontation and a foul! Its so-called “establishing guardrails” for China-US relations and “not seeking conflict” actually means that China should not respond in words or action when slandered or attacked. That is just impossible! If the United States does not hit the brake but continues to speed down the wrong path, no amount of guardrails can prevent derailing, and there will surely be conflict and confrontation. Who will bear the catastrophic consequences? Such competition is a reckless gamble with the stakes being the fundamental interests of the two peoples and even the future of humanity. Naturally China is firmly opposed to all this. If the United States has the ambition to make itself great again, it should also have a broad mind for the development of other countries. Containment and suppression will not make America great, and it will not stop the rejuvenation of China. The Chinese foreign minister was careful to distinguish the people of the United States from the government. “More and more people with vision and insight in the United States are deeply worried about the current state of China-US relations, and have been calling for a rational and pragmatic policy toward China”, he said. Qin previously served as China’s ambassador to the United States from 2021 to 2023. He affectionately recalled the time he spent working in the US and the friends he made. “The American people, just like the Chinese people, are friendly, kind and sincere, and want a better life and a better world”, he stressed. Qin concluded (emphasis added): I’m convinced that the China-US relationship should be determined by the common interests and shared responsibilities of the two countries and by the friendship between the Chinese and American peoples, rather than by US domestic politics or the hysterical neo-McCarthyism. China will continue to follow the principles put forth by President Xi Jinping, namely, mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, to pursue a sound and stable relationship with the United States. We hope the US government will listen to the calls of the two peoples, rid of its strategic anxiety of “threat inflation”, abandon the zero-sum Cold War mentality.

Write an article about: Veterano de la CIA pide guerra contra China y Rusia, amenazando con ataques nucleares. 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.

armas nucleares, China, CIA, nueva guerra fría, Rusia, segunda guerra fría

Un veterano de la CIA y el Pentágono, Matthew Kroenig, publicó un artículo en una revista elitista en el que pide una guerra de Estados Unidos contra China y Rusia, incluyendo la “amenaza de ataques nucleares no estratégicos”. (You can read this article in English here.) Un veterano de la CIA y el Pentágono que ahora ayuda a dirigir una de las organizaciones más poderosas de Washington, Matthew Kroenig, ha publicado un artículo en la influyente revista Foreign Policy en el que pide a Estados Unidos que se prepare para librar la guerra contra China y Rusia. Kroenig desempeñó importantes funciones estatales de seguridad nacional en las administraciones de los presidentes George W. Bush, Barack Obama y Donald Trump, y tiene una influencia significativa en los círculos de la política exterior de Washington. Kroenig insistió en que el ejército estadounidense debería “amenazar con ataques nucleares no estratégicos” contra China sobre Taiwán y contra Rusia sobre Europa. Refiriéndose al conflicto de Washington con Beijing y Moscú como una “nueva guerra fría”, también pidió aumentar aún más el presupuesto militar anual de EEUU, que ya es de $768 mil millones. Sostuvo que “Estados Unidos puede permitirse gastar más que Rusia y China al mismo tiempo”. El veterano de la CIA y el Pentágono enfatizó que Washington debe enfrentarse a ambas superpotencias euroasiáticas, simultáneamente, para mantener la hegemonía unipolar estadounidense, que reconoció está en declive. Kroenig hizo estos argumentos en un artículo de amplia circulación, publicado el 18 de febrero en la revista de élite Foreign Policy, bajo el título “Washington debe prepararse para la guerra con Rusia y China”. Matthew Kroenig actualmente se desempeña como subdirector del Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security (Centro Scowcroft para Estrategia y Seguridad) en el Atlantic Council (Consejo Atlántico), un instituto de investigación de la alianza militar de la OTAN, liderada por Estados Unidos. El Atlantic Council, que está financiado por el gobierno de EEUU, otros gobiernos occidentales, la OTAN y la industria armamentística, tiene una enorme influencia en Washington y ayuda a crear la política exterior de cada administración. Además de su trabajo para la CIA y el Departamento de Defensa en las administraciones de Bush, Obama y Trump, Kroenig fue asesor de seguridad nacional para las campañas presidenciales de los republicanos Mitt Romney, en 2012, y Marco Rubio, en 2016. También es miembro del elite Council on Foreign Relations (Consejo de Relaciones Exteriores), y profesor de gobierno y servicio exterior en la prestigiosa Universidad de Georgetown en Washington. En resumen, Kroenig es una figura muy influyente en los círculos de la política exterior de EEUU, con credenciales impecables, y sus puntos de vista extremadamente agresivos que piden una guerra simultánea contra China y Rusia reflejan las opiniones de muchos de sus colegas en Washington. Matthew Kroenig resumió la opinión de muchas élites de la política exterior de Washington de que Estados Unidos debe hacer la guerra para mantener su control hegemónico indiscutible sobre el planeta, escribiendo: Estados Unidos sigue siendo la principal potencia mundial con intereses globales, y no puede darse el lujo de elegir entre Europa y el Indo-Pacífico. En cambio, Washington y sus aliados deberían desarrollar una estrategia de defensa capaz de disuadir y, si es necesario, derrotar a Rusia y China al mismo tiempo. Una de las tácticas que Estados Unidos podría usar para mantener su hegemonía unipolar, argumentó Kroenig, es la amenaza de una guerra nuclear: Finalmente, si es necesario, Washington siempre podría tomar una página de su libro de jugadas de la Guerra Fría y confiar más en las armas nucleares para compensar las ventajas locales y convencionales de sus rivales. La presencia de armas nucleares tácticas estadounidenses en Europa ayudó a disuadir al enorme Ejército Rojo soviético durante décadas. De manera similar, Estados Unidos podría confiar en amenazar con ataques nucleares no estratégicos para disuadir y, como último recurso, frustrar una invasión anfibia china de Taiwán o una incursión de tanques rusos en Europa. Sin duda, existen riesgos asociados con la disuasión nuclear, pero las armas nucleares han desempeñado un papel fundamental en la estrategia de defensa de EEUU durante tres cuartos de siglo, y es probable que continúen haciéndolo en las próximas décadas. Advirtiendo que “Moscú y Beijing están forjando una asociación estratégica más estrecha, incluso en asuntos militares”, Kroenig insistió en que Estados Unidos debe aumentar drásticamente el gasto militar, para “superar a Rusia y China al mismo tiempo”: Primero, Washington debería aumentar el gasto en defensa. Al contrario de quienes afirman que los recursos limitados obligarán a tomar decisiones difíciles, Estados Unidos puede permitirse gastar más que Rusia y China al mismo tiempo. Estados Unidos posee el 24 por ciento del PIB mundial en comparación con un 19 por ciento combinado en China y Rusia. Este año, Estados Unidos gastará $778 mil millones en defensa en comparación con solo $310 mil millones en Rusia y China. Además, Estados Unidos podría llegar a duplicar el gasto en defensa (actualmente el 2,8 por ciento del PIB) y seguir estando por debajo del promedio de la Guerra Fría (cerca del 7 por ciento del PIB). De hecho, dado que esta nueva Guerra Fría es tan peligrosa como la anterior, es necesario un aumento significativo en el gasto de defensa, centrado en las tecnologías de defensa emergentes del siglo XXI. … En resumen, incluso si esta nueva competencia estratégica se convierte en una carrera armamentista de dos contra uno, es probable que Washington prevalezca. Hizo un llamado a los aliados de EEUU para que también aumenten significativamente su gasto militar y escribió: “Los aliados europeos deberían invertir en armaduras y artillería, mientras que los aliados asiáticos compran minas navales, misiles arpón y submarinos”. Kroenig señaló que se espera que la administración de Joe Biden publique pronto una nueva Estrategia de Defensa Nacional de EEUU, que esencialmente pedirá a Washington que se centre exclusivamente en contener a China, no a Rusia. Pero esta estrategia supuestamente se retrasó debido a la crisis en Ucrania. Algunos legisladores estadounidenses han pedido que se reduzcan las tensiones con Moscú y que se intente formar una alianza con Rusia contra China, pero Kroenig argumentó que esto “no es realista”. Esta no es la primera vez que Matthew Kroenig aboga por una guerra estadounidense. En 2012, publicó un artículo en Foreign Affairs, el diario oficial del poderoso Council on Foreign Relations, en el que pedía al ejército estadounidense que lanzara ataques contra Irán. En 2021, Kroenig habló en una conferencia contra Irán organizada por una secta infame que se llama el Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK). Muchos derechistas belicosos en Washington han apoyado este grupo extremista para tratar de lograr un cambio de gobierno en Teherán. Elogió al Consejo Nacional de Resistencia de Irán (NCRI), una fachada del MEK, por la pretendida inteligencia que ha publicado sobre el supuesto programa nuclear de Teherán. Ciertamente, Matthew Kroenig no es el único funcionario de la inteligencia estadounidense que pide la guerra contra China. En noviembre de 2021, otro veterano de la CIA, David Sauer, publicó un artículo de opinión en The Hill titulado “Estados Unidos debe prepararse para la guerra con China por Taiwán”. “Para disuadir a China, Estados Unidos debe aumentar rápidamente sus fuerzas en el Pacífico, continuar fortaleciendo las alianzas militares en la región para garantizar el acceso a las bases en tiempos de conflicto y acelerar las entregas de equipos militares comprados a Taiwán”, escribió Sauer.

Write an article about: Philosopher Judith Butler repeatedly donated to ‘top cop’ Kamala Harris. 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.

Black Lives Matter, California, David Graeber, Elizabeth Warren, FEC, Gloria Steinem, Judith Butler, Kamala Harris, Michael Walzer, Murray Bookchin, Noam Chomsky, police, SDF, Syria

Renowned philosopher Judith Butler repeatedly donated to political campaigns of self-declared “top cop” Kamala Harris, a center-right neoliberal who imprisoned poor people of color for minor offenses Renowned postmodern philosopher Judith Butler repeatedly donated to the political campaigns of proud self-declared “ top cop “ Kamala Harris, a center-right neoliberal who made her name as a notoriously harsh prosecutor who locked up large numbers of poor people of color for minor offenses. In all, Butler gave at least $1,050 in contributions to Harris’ Senate and presidential campaigns between March 2018 and February 2019: When Butler’s $300 contribution to Harris’ presidential campaign first began circulating on social media, skeptics insisted the donations must have come from a different person named Judith Butler. But I looked up the FEC filings, and see what employer is listed on the campaign contribution: UC Berkeley, where Butler is a professor of comparative literature and critical theory. Indisputable proof that these donations are coming from the celebrated postmodern philosopher. Philosopher Judith Butler’s campaign contribution to Kamala Harris, filed with the FEC Keep in mind Kamala Harris is someone who bent over backward to put poor people in jail. The New York Times affectionately described her in a puff piece as “a ‘Top Cop’ in the Era of Black Lives Matter.” Harris publicly made fun of criminal justice reform activists who want to “build more schools, less jails.” When protesters say, “‘Put money into education not prisons.’ There’s a fundamental problem with that approach,” she insisted. “There should be a broad consensus that there should be serious, and severe, and swift consequence to crime,” the “progressive prosecutor” maintained. During Harris’ reign as attorney general, from 2011 to 2016, California sent 1,974 people to prison for marijuana-related convictions. The Los Angeles Times reports that she sponsored “a 2010 law to make it a misdemeanor for parents whose young children miss more than 10% of school days a year without a valid excuse. Parents could be punished with a maximum $2,000 fine, up to a year in county jail or both.” (Harris then laughed when discussing this proposal to jail parents over truancy.) The only other contribution from Judith Butler registered by the FEC is a June 2019 donation of $100 to the presidential campaign of Elizabeth Warren, who endorsed Trump’s economic war on Venezuela and boldly declared that she is “capitalist to her bones.” Judith Butler’s 2019 campaign contribution to Elizabeth Warren, filed with the FEC And that’s not all: Judith Butler also signed an open letter in 2018 in the New York Review of Books, alongside some prominent leftist academics, calling for the United States to continue its military intervention in northeast Syria. The missive publicly requested that Washington “continue military support for the SDF” (Syrian Democratic Forces, who were created in a rebranding demanded by the US, to better wage war on the central government in Damascus). Joining Butler as signatories on the pro-intervention letter were Debbie Bookchin, the daughter of pro-imperialist anarchist hero Murray Bookchin (although unlike Bookchin, Butler does at least deserve credit for challenging the racist colonialist Zionist movement); along with fellow anarchist luminaries Noam Chomsky and David Graeber; erstwhile Obama aficionado Bill Fletcher; imperialism-denying scholars Michael Hardt and David Harvey; Iraq War-supporting social democrat Michael Walzer; and last but certainly not least, eminent feminist icon Gloria Steinem — a former CIA agent. Speaking of the CIA, Capitalism’s Invisible Army has promoted the growth of postmodernism for decades. Postmodernism has long served as a right-wing bludgeon to supplant Marxism in academia. Non- or anti-Marxist forms of “left-wing” ideology, as advocated by philosophers like Judith Butler (whose academic writing is legendary for its proletarian comprehensibility and crystalline clarity of thought), have been supported by powerful, and reactionary, institutions. And together they succeeded in replacing Marxism, which has been almost entirely eradicated in the gilded halls of neoliberal academe. For more on this history, read the research of scholar Gabriel Rockhill, who shows in articles like “The CIA Reads French Theory: On the Intellectual Labor of Dismantling the Cultural Left” how the CIA quite liked postmodern philosophers — Michel Foucault being another favorite of the spooks — because they were anti-communist, soft on imperialism, and fighting against Marxists. Rockhill writes: The intelligence agency understands culture and theory to be crucial weapons in the overall arsenal it deploys to perpetuate US interests around the world. The recently released [CIA] research paper from 1985, entitled “France: Defection of the Leftist Intellectuals,” examines—undoubtedly in order to manipulate—the French intelligentsia and its fundamental role in shaping the trends that generate political policy. Suggesting that there has been a relative ideological balance between the left and the right in the history of the French intellectual world, the report highlights the monopoly of the left in the immediate postwar era—to which, we know, the Agency was rabidly opposed—due to the Communists’ key role in resisting fascism and ultimately winning the war against it. Although the right had been massively discredited because of its direct contribution to the Nazi death camps, as well as its overall xenophobic, anti-egalitarian and fascist agenda (according to the CIA’s own description), the unnamed secret agents who drafted the study outline with palpable delight the return of the right since approximately the early 1970s. More specifically, the undercover cultural warriors applaud what they see as a double movement that has contributed to the intelligentsia shifting its critical focus away from the US and toward the USSR. On the left, there was a gradual intellectual disaffection with Stalinism and Marxism, a progressive withdrawal of radical intellectuals from public debate, and a theoretical move away from socialism and the socialist party. Further to the right, the ideological opportunists referred to as the New Philosophers and the New Right intellectuals launched a high-profile media smear campaign against Marxism. While other tentacles of the worldwide spy organization were involved in overthrowing democratically elected leaders, providing intelligence and funding to fascist dictators, and supporting right-wing death squads, the Parisian central intelligentsia squadron was collecting data on how the theoretical world’s drift to the right directly benefitted US foreign policy. The left-leaning intellectuals of the immediate postwar era had been openly critical of US imperialism. Jean-Paul Sartre’s media clout as an outspoken Marxist critic, and his notable role—as the founder of Libération—in blowing the cover of the CIA station officer in Paris and dozens of undercover operatives, was closely monitored by the Agency and considered a very serious problem. In contrast, the anti-Soviet and anti-Marxist atmosphere of the emerging neoliberal era diverted public scrutiny and provided excellent cover for the CIA’s dirty wars by making it “very difficult for anyone to mobilize significant opposition among intellectual elites to US policies in Central America, for example.”

Write an article about: US post-9/11 wars caused 4.5 million deaths, displaced 38-60 million people, study shows. 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.

Afghanistan, Brown University, drones, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, war, Yemen

Wars the US waged in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan following September 11, 2001 caused at least 4.5 million deaths and displaced 38 to 60 million people, with 7.6 million children starving today, according to studies by Brown University. (Se puede leer esta nota en español aquí.) The wars the United States waged and fueled in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan following September 11, 2001 caused at least 4.5 million deaths, according to a report by Brown University. Nearly a million of the people who lost their lives died in fighting, whereas some 3.6 to 3.7 million were indirect deaths, due to health and economic problems caused by the wars, such as diseases, malnutrition, and destruction of infrastructure. These were the conclusions of a study conducted by the Cost of Wars project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. The report also analyzed the effects of wars in Libya and Somalia, which were sponsored by Washington. The scholars estimated that, in the countries studied, there are still today 7.6 million children under age 5 who are suffering from acute malnutrition, meaning they are “not getting enough food, literally wasting to skin and bones, putting these children at greater risk of death”. In Afghanistan and Yemen, this includes nearly 50% of children; and, in Somalia, close to 60%. In a separate study in 2021, Brown University’s Cost of Wars project found that the United States’ post-9/11 wars displaced at least 38 million people – more than any conflict since 1900, excluding World War II. This 2021 report noted that “38 million is a very conservative estimate. The total displaced by the U.S. post-9/11 wars could be closer to 49–60 million, which would rival World War II displacement”. The May 2023 study, which estimated that US post-9/11 wars killed 4.5 to 4.6 million people, emphasized that large numbers of civilians are still perishing today, due of the lasting consequences of these violent conflicts. Although the US military withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021, “today Afghans are suffering and dying from war-related causes at higher rates than ever”, the report noted. In addition to the staggering death tolls, millions more civilians were wounded and suffered other incredible hardships due to these wars. “For instance, for every person who dies of a waterborne disease because war destroyed their access to safe drinking water and waste treatment facilities, there are many more who sicken”, the study highlighted. The 2023 report “highlights many longterm and underacknowledged consequences of war for human health, emphasizing that some groups, particularly women and children, suffer the brunt of these ongoing impacts”. People living in poverty and those from marginalized groups had higher rates of death and lower life expectancies. The document stressed how the “post-9/11 wars have caused widespread economic hardship for people in the war zones, and how poverty, in turn, has been accompanied by food insecurity and malnutrition, which have led to diseases and death, particularly amongst children under age five”. In virtually all wars, indirect deaths represent the majority of the lives lost. The Brown University researchers pointed out, for example, “In conflict areas, children are 20 times more likely to die of diarrheal disease than from the conflict itself”. Damage to infrastructure that happens during wars is likewise very deadly. “Hospitals, clinics, and medical supplies, water and sanitation systems, electricity, roads and traffic signals, infrastructure for farming and shipping goods, and much more are destroyed, damaged and disrupted, with lasting consequences for human health”, the report noted. Economic problems caused by these post-9/11 wars have been devastating. Two decades of US-NATO military occupation of Afghanistan left behind a borderline apocalyptic economic crisis. More than half of Afghanistan’s population is in extreme poverty, living on less than $1.90 per day. A staggering 95% of Afghans do not have enough food. In Yemen, more than 17.4 million people are food insecure, and 85,000 children under age 5 have likely died from starvation. Even in countries where large numbers of US troops weren’t deployed on the ground, Washington’s wars have destroyed the lives of countless civilians. US drone strikes in Yemen and Somalia “significantly impact people’s livelihood sources”, killing workers, destroying farms and businesses, and bankrupting families. “The severe impact of such economic setbacks on populations who depend on the land for their survival cannot be underestimated”, the report emphasized. Washington’s so-called counter-terrorism laws in Somalia have also “hampered humanitarian relief efforts, intensifying the effects of famine”, the researchers noted. Hundreds of thousands of children have died from famine in the East African nation. The Brown University studies are part of a growing body of scholarship documenting the death tolls of post-9/11 US wars. A 2015 report by the Nobel Prize-winning group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) concluded that 13 years of Washington’s so-called “War on Terror” caused a total of 1.3 million deaths, including 1 million in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan, and 80,000 in Pakistan. IPPNW cautioned that this 2015 figure was “only a conservative estimate. The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely”. Report: Over 1.2 million killed in US wars on Iraq and Afghanistan

Write an article about: NY Times admits Saudi bombing of Yemen could not continue without US support. 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.

New York Times, Saudi Arabia, Yemen

The New York Times editorial board acknowledged that Saudi Arabia could not wage war on Yemen without US backing: “the coalition would be grounded if Washington withheld its support”. The editorial board of The New York Times has acknowledged what journalists and activists have said for well over a year: The Saudi Arabia’s brutal bombing campaign, which has ravaged Yemen and created a humanitarian catastrophe, would be impossible were it not for US support. “Experts say the coalition would be grounded if Washington withheld its support,” the US newspaper of record wrote in “America Is Complicit in the Carnage in Yemen,” an editorial published on August 17. The United States is complicit in the Saudi carnage in Yemen. https://t.co/WRiWwpQ6fM pic.twitter.com/1AJKIwI7Sw — New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) August 17, 2016 This admission comes a bit late, considering the US-backed bombing began in March 2015 — and, since then, thousands of civilians have been killed; millions have been displaced; more than half of the country, at least 14 million people, are going hungry; and parts of major Yemeni cities have been pulverized. “The United States is complicit in this carnage,” the editorial board conceded. “It has enabled the coalition in many ways, including selling arms to the Saudis.” The Times continued: Although many experts believe the threat to be overstated, Mr. Obama agreed to support the Yemen intervention — without formal authorization from Congress — and sell the Saudis even more weapons in part to appease Riyadh’s anger over the Iran nuclear deal. All told, since taking office, Mr. Obama has sold the Saudis $110 billion in arms, including Apache helicopters and missiles. Mr. Obama has also supplied the coalition such indispensable assistance as intelligence, in-flight refueling of aircraft and help in identifying appropriate targets. Experts say the coalition would be grounded if Washington withheld its support. Instead, the State Department last week approved the potential sale of $1.15 billion more in tanks and other equipment to Saudi Arabia to replace items destroyed in the war. The editorial board also recognized a UN report that found the coalition responsible for 60 percent of the deaths and injuries to Yemeni children, along with reports by human rights groups that document war crimes committed by the coalition. Many of these basic facts — which independent journalists have reported on for months— have been absent from the Times’ coverage of the war.

Write an article about: CIA veteran calls for US war on China and Russia, threatening nuclear strikes, in elite Foreign Policy magazine. 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.

Atlantic Council, China, CIA, Cold War Two, Foreign Policy magazine, Iran, Matthew Kroenig, media, MEK, NATO, new cold war, Russia, Taiwan, Ukraine

A CIA and Pentagon veteran who helps run NATO’s powerful think tank the Atlantic Council, Matthew Kroenig, published an article in elite Foreign Policy magazine calling for US war on both China and Russia, including “threatening nonstrategic nuclear strikes” and a new arms race. He has also advocated military attacks on Iran. (Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.) A veteran of the CIA and Pentagon who now helps to run one of the most powerful think tanks in Washington, Matthew Kroenig, has published an article in highly influential Foreign Policy magazine calling for the United States to prepare to wage war on China and Russia. Kroenig served in important national security state roles in the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump administrations, and has significant sway in DC foreign-policy circles. Kroenig insisted that the US military should “threaten nonstrategic nuclear strikes” on China over Taiwan and Russia over Europe. Referring to Washington’s conflict with Beijing and Moscow as a “new cold war,” he also called for boosting the $768 billion annual US military budget even further, maintaining that “the United States can afford to outspend Russia and China at the same time.” The CIA and Pentagon veteran emphasized that Washington must take on both Eurasian superpowers, simultaneously, in order to maintain US unipolar hegemony, which he acknowledged is in decline. Kroenig made these arguments in a widely circulated February 18 article in the elite Foreign Policy magazine, titled “Washington Must Prepare for War With Both Russia and China.” Matthew Kroenig currently serves as deputy director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, the de facto think tank of the US-led NATO military alliance. The Atlantic Council, which is funded by the US government, other Western governments, NATO, and the weapons industry, has massive influence in Washington, helping to craft foreign policy for every administration. In addition to his work for the CIA and Defense Department in the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, Kroenig was a national security adviser for the presidential campaigns of Republicans Mitt Romney, in 2012, and Marco Rubio, in 2016. He is also a life member of the elite Council on Foreign Relations, and a tenured professor of government and foreign service at Washington’s prestigious Georgetown University. In short, Kroenig is a highly influential figure in US foreign-policy circles with impeccable credentials, and his extremely hawkish views calling for simultaneous US war on China and Russia reflect the opinions of many of his colleagues in Washington. Matthew Kroenig encapsulated the view of many Washington foreign-policy elites that the United States must wage war in order to maintain its unchallenged hegemonic control over the planet, writing: The United States remains the world’s leading power with global interests, and it cannot afford to choose between Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Instead, Washington and its allies should develop a defense strategy capable of deterring and, if necessary, defeating Russia and China at the same time. One of the tactics the United States could use to maintain its unipolar hegemony, Kroenig argued, is the threat of nuclear war: Finally, if necessary, Washington could always take a page from its Cold War playbook and rely more heavily on nuclear weapons to offset the local, conventional advantages of its rivals. The presence of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe helped deter the massive Soviet Red Army for decades. Similarly, the United States could rely on threatening nonstrategic nuclear strikes to deter and, as a last resort, thwart a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan or a Russian tank incursion into Europe. To be sure, there are risks associated with nuclear deterrence, but nuclear weapons have played a foundational role in U.S. defense strategy for three-quarters of a century—and will likely continue to do so for decades to come. Warning that “Moscow and Beijing are forging a closer strategic partnership, including on military matters,” Kroenig insisted that the United States must drastically increase military spending, to “outspend Russia and China at the same time”: First, Washington should increase defense spending. Contrary to those who claim that constrained resources will force tough choices, the United States can afford to outspend Russia and China at the same time. The United States possesses 24 percent of global GDP compared to a combined 19 percent in China and Russia. This year, the United States will spend $778 billion on defense compared to only $310 billion in Russia and China. Moreover, the United States could go so far as to double defense spending (currently 2.8 percent of GDP) and still remain below its Cold War average (close to 7 percent of GDP). Indeed, given that this new Cold War is every bit as dangerous as the last one, a meaningful increase in defense spending, focused on the 21st century’s emerging defense technologies, is in order. … In short, even if this new strategic competition becomes a two-versus-one arms race, Washington is likely to prevail. He called for US allies to significantly increase their military spending as well, writing, “European allies should invest in armor and artillery while Asian allies buy naval mines, harpoon missiles, and submarines.” Kroenig noted that the Joe Biden administration is soon expected to publish a new US National Defense Strategy, which will essentially call for Washington to focus exclusively on containing China, not Russia. But this strategy was allegedly delayed because of the Ukraine crisis. Some US policymakers have called for easing tensions with Moscow and trying to form an alliance with Russia against China, but Kroenig argued this is “not realistic.” This is by no means the first time Matthew Kroenig has advocated for a US war. In 2012, he published an article in Foreign Affairs, the official journal of the elite Council on Foreign Relations, calling for the US military to launch attacks on Iran. In 2021, Kroenig spoke at an anti-Iran conference organized by the extremist Mujahadeen-e-Khalq (MEK) cult, which many hawkish figures in Washington have supported to try to bring about regime change in Tehran. He praised MEK front the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) for supposed intelligence it has gathered on Tehran’s alleged nuclear program. Matthew Kroenig is certainly not the only US intelligence official calling for war on China. In November 2021, another CIA veteran, David Sauer, published an op-ed in The Hill titled “America must prepare for war with China over Taiwan.” “To deter China, the United States must rapidly build up its forces in the Pacific, continue to strengthen military alliances in the region to ensure access to bases in time of conflict, and accelerate deliveries of purchased military equipment to Taiwan,” Sauer wrote.

Write an article about: Silicon Valley Big Tech corporations are US military contractors. 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.

Amazon, DHS, Facebook, FBI, Google, Microsoft, Pentagon, Silicon Valley, Twitter

Silicon Valley Big Tech corporations like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter have thousands of contracts worth tens of billions of dollars with the US government, primarily with the Pentagon, but also with the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and other agencies. Big Tech corporations in Silicon Valley act essentially as outsourced arms of the United States government. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Facebook have thousands of contracts with the US military, spy agencies, and police, NBC News has reported. They are the computer technology version of the weapons corporations that are the Pentagon’s top contractors: Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman. From 2004 to 2021, Big Tech corporations Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter signed at least $44.7 billion in contracts with US government agencies, the vast majority with the Defense Department, VICE documented. Facebook has contracts with the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and has been paid to promote propaganda from US state media outlet Voice of America. Twitter also has a contract with DHS, and is paid to promote US state media propaganda. Journalist Yasha Levine detailed the close links between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon in his book “Surveillance Valley.” Many of these Big Tech corporations in fact emerged out of the US military-industrial complex.

Write an article about: Analyst suffered 20 years in US prison for helping Cuba, still condemns ‘suffocating’ blockade. 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.

Ana Belén Montes, blockade, Cuba, DIA, embargo, Puerto Rico

Former DIA analyst Ana Belén Montes was imprisoned for 20 years for sharing intelligence with Cuba that helped it prevent US attacks and sabotage. Upon being released, she condemned the “suffocating embargo” that makes Cubans “suffer.” A former intelligence analyst who was imprisoned by the United States government for 20 years for sharing information with Cuba that helped it prevent US attacks against it was freed this January. Upon leaving prison, she condemned the six-decade-long US blockade of Cuba and called for more attention to the hardships endured by the Puerto Rican people. “Who in the last 60 years has asked the Cuban people if they want the United States to impose a suffocating embargo on them that makes them suffer?” she asked. Ana Belén Montes had been an official at the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). She worked her way up the ranks of the organization, becoming its top Cuba analyst, before she was arrested in 2001. In 2002, Montes was sentenced to 25 years in prison. She was convicted of secretly giving sensitive intelligence to Cuba, helping its revolutionary government prevent US terror attacks and disrupt US sabotage operations. At her trial, Montes declared, “I obeyed my conscience rather than the law… giving the island [Cuba] classified information to help it defend itself.” “I believe our government’s policy towards Cuba is cruel and unfair, profoundly unneighborly, and I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it,” she said. The US Department of Defense, where Montes worked, had a history of planning terror attacks on Cuba. In Operation Northwood in 1962, top US military officials discussed launching false-flag attacks on civilian targets in both Cuba and Florida and falsely blaming them on communists, to try to justify a US military invasion of the island. Have you ever heard of Operation Northwood? It was a false flag operation concocted by the #US Joint Chiefs of Staff in March 1962, after the Chief of Operations of the ‘Cuba Project’, asked them for pretexts to justify #US military intervention in #Cuba. https://t.co/Gmg7LP1AzD pic.twitter.com/PPYpEj5P4m — Helen Yaffe (@HelenYaffe) November 5, 2021 Montes is a national hero in Cuba, and many around the world considered her to be a prisoner of conscience. On January 6, 2023, US authorities allowed Montes to leave prison, having served 20 or her 25 year-sentence. But she is not yet completely free; the US government is going to monitor Montes for the remaining five years, and all of her internet access will be closely followed. Soon after her release, Montes published a statement stating, “I encourage those who want to focus on me to, instead, focus on important issues, such as the serious problems that the Puerto Rican people face, or the United States economic embargo against Cuba.” “Who in the last 60 years has asked the Cuban people if they want the United States to impose a suffocating embargo on them that makes them suffer?” she added. The international community overwhelmingly opposes the illegal US blockade against Cuba, and every year for decades more than 95% of member states at the United Nations have voted to condemn it. The US State Department admitted in an internal cable in 1960 that its goal in imposing sanctions and eventually an embargo on Cuba was “to weaken the economic life of Cuba” and 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.” Montes is Puerto Rican, and upon being released she moved back to her homeland. There, she delivered these remarks (emphasis added): I am happier than ever to touch Boricuan soil again. After two quite exhausting decades, and with the need to go back to earning a living, I would like to dedicate myself to a quiet and private existence. Therefore, I will not participate in any media activities. I encourage those who want to focus on me to, instead, focus on important issues, such as the serious problems that the Puerto Rican people face, or the United States economic embargo against Cuba. Who in the last 60 years has asked the Cuban people if they want the United States to impose a suffocating embargo on them that makes them suffer? What also deserves attention is the urgent need for global cooperation that stops and reverses the destruction of our environment. I as a person am irrelevant. I am not important, while there exist grave problems in our world homeland that demand attention and a demonstration of brotherly love. Her lawyer, Linda Backiel, said that this would be Montes’ only public statement and that she would not grant interviews, asking for her privacy to be respected. Addressing the court at her trial in October 2002, Montes delivered a passionate speech (emphasis added): An Italian proverb perhaps best describes the fundamental truth I believe in: “All the world is one country.” In such a “world-country,” the principle of loving one’s neighbor as much as oneself seems, to me, to be the essential guide to harmonious relations between all of our “nation-neighborhoods.” This principle urges tolerance and understanding for the different ways of others. It asks that we treat other nations the way we wish to be treated – with respect and compassion. It is a principle that, tragically, I believe we have never applied to Cuba. Your honor, I engaged in the activity that brought me before you because I obeyed my conscience rather than the law. I believe our government’s policy towards Cuba is cruel and unfair, profoundly unneighborly, and I felt morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it. We have displayed intolerance and contempt towards Cuba for most of the last four decades. We have never respected Cuba’s right to make its own journey towards its own ideals of equality and justice. I do not understand why we must continue to dictate how the Cubans should select their leaders, who their leaders cannot be, and what laws are appropriate in their land. Why can’t we let Cuba pursue its own internal journey, as the United States has been doing for over two centuries? My way of responding to our Cuba policy may have been morally wrong. Perhaps Cuba’s right to exist free of political and economic coercion did not justify giving the island classified information to help it defend itself. I can only say that I did what I thought right to counter a grave injustice. My greatest desire is to see amicable relations emerge between the United States and Cuba. I hope my case in some way will encourage our government to abandon its hostility towards Cuba and to work with Havana in a spirit of tolerance, mutual respect, and understanding. Today we see more clearly than ever that intolerance and hatred – by individuals or governments – spread only pain and suffering. I hope for a U.S. policy that is based instead on neighborly love, a policy that recognizes that Cuba, like any nation, wants to be treated with dignity and not with contempt. Such a policy would bring our government back in harmony with the compassion and generosity of the American people. It would allow Cubans and Americans to learn from and share with each other. It would enable Cuba to drop its defensive measures and experiment more easily with changes. And it would permit the two neighbors to work together and with other nations to promote tolerance and cooperation in our one “world-country,” in our only “world-homeland.”

Write an article about: US gov’t knew NATO expansion to Ukraine would force Russia to intervene. 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.

CIA, Georgia, NATO, Russia, Ukraine, WikiLeaks, William Burns

Former US Ambassador to Russia William J. Burns, who is now CIA director, admitted in a classified 2008 embassy cable that NATO expansion to Ukraine crosses Moscow’s security “redlines” and “could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.” (Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.) Senior US government officials knew as far back as 2008 that the possibility of adding Ukraine to NATO was seen as a serious “military threat” by Russia, one that crosses Moscow’s security “redlines” and could force it to intervene. Yet Western leaders continued insisting that Ukraine would join the US-led military alliance, right up until Russia did indeed intervene in February 2022. At the annual NATO summit back in 2008, the George W. Bush administration publicly called for adding Russia’s neighbors Ukraine and Georgia to the military alliance. NATO’s secretary-general declared that the two countries would eventually become members. But privately, US diplomats knew that this move would be seen as an existential threat by Moscow, and could provoke Russian military intervention in Ukraine. The former US ambassador to Russia, William J. Burns, who is now director of the CIA, warned in a February 2008 embassy cable that Ukraine constituted a security “redline” for Moscow. The confidential State Department cable was titled “Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines” (“nyet” is Russian for “no”). Burns cautioned that the issue of NATO membership for Ukraine “could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene.” Burns wrote that Foreign Minister Sergey “Lavrov emphasized that Russia was convinced that [NATO] enlargement was not based on security reasons, but was a legacy of the Cold War.” The former US ambassador to Russia, and current CIA director, published a prescient analysis that would foreshadow Moscow’s actions in 2022: Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. Burns’ warnings came true just a few years later. This kind of internal violence did indeed break out in Ukraine, after a US-sponsored coup d’etat in 2014 overthrew a democratically elected government that had maintained a relatively neutral foreign policy, balanced between Russia and the West, and instead installed a staunchly pro-Western and anti-Russian regime. In response to the 2014 putsch, Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the eastern Donbas region rose up against the coup government in Kiev, which they denounced as an illegitimate Western puppet regime. Independence activists declared the creation of two new autonomous states, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. The Ukrainian government, with Western military support and weapons, has waged a brutal war against these breakaway republics in the Donbas ever since. Thousands of Ukrainians have been killed, and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced. Ukraine, which shares a massive 2,300-kilometer border with Russia, has been rocked by violence and instability since the 2014 US-backed coup – and this constant turmoil has had significant effects inside Russia, especially economically. This was precisely the civil war scenario that Burns had warned about in 2008. On February 21, 2022, Russia officially recognized Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states. Then on February 24, Moscow launched an invasion of Ukraine, which it said aimed to “demilitarize” and “denazify” the country. Russia’s goal is to force Ukraine to maintain political neutrality, preventing it from being a Western military outpost that could threaten Russia on its borders, potentially with nuclear weapons. While Western governments and media outlets portrayed the Russian invasion as the crazy decision of a supposed madman, internal US embassy cables showed that Washington knew as far back as 2008 that its push to expand NATO to Ukraine would result in this exactly this outcome: forcing Russia to intervene. The world only knows this thanks to the whistleblowing journalist outlet Wikileaks, which published the formerly classified State Department cable by William Burns, and publicized his prophetic warning on Twitter. 'Nyet Means Nyet: Russia's #NATO Enlargement Redlines' – #Ukraine Cable from 2008 written by #CIA director William J. Burns, then US ambassador to Moscow https://t.co/rOoxmuwIul pic.twitter.com/KGy0PU4Igg — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) February 25, 2022 At every stage leading up the Russian military intervention in Ukraine in February 2022, the United States and its NATO alliance refused to give substantial concessions to Moscow, sabotaging all serious attempts at a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Since it signed the Minsk II agreement in 2015, under the supervision of Germany and France, the Ukrainian government has been legally obligated to cease hostilities against the Donbas and create a decentralized system that ensures autonomy for Donetsk and Lugansk. But Ukraine adamantly refused to abide by Minsk II, and its Western sponsors did nothing to save the diplomatic agreement. So in December 2021, the Russian Federation sent the US and NATO a series of requests for security guarantees. Principal among these was the demand that the military alliance must not admit Ukraine and Georgia. Moscow said that NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia constituted a security “red line” – recalling the language Ambassador William Burns had used in his 2008 embassy cable. For Russia as a country, regardless of who is president and regardless of the political ideology of the Kremlin, the prospect of Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO poses an existential security threat, given that both nations, which were former republics of the Soviet Union, directly border Russia at geostrategic points. When Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in its 1941 Operation Barbarossa, it tore through and occupied Soviet Ukraine, to try to cut off Moscow’s access to the Black Sea and Caucasus, break off southern cities like Stalingrad, and ultimately surround the Russian heartland. In its December 2021 request, the Russian Federation insisted that the United States and NATO must respond to its demand for security guarantees with legally binding written statements. Moscow emphasized that any agreements had to be in writing precisely because NATO has a history of lying to it. Notes from a 1991 meeting prove that the US, UK, France, and Germany assured the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand east. It’s part of a growing body of evidence that the West broke its promise to Russia.https://t.co/JY3fcuOVPa — Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) February 21, 2022 In 1990, the US, Britain, and France repeatedly promised the Soviet Union that they would not expand NATO “one inch eastward” after the reunification of Germany. This is an undeniable historical fact, a matter of public record confirmed by numerous internal documents from Western governments. But NATO later broke that promise, and not once or twice but 14 times. All 14 new member states that it admitted were east of Germany, and many had previously been Soviet allies in Moscow’s former security alliance, the Warsaw Pact. A map of NATO expansion NATO has militarily encircled Russia more and more by the year. Estonia and Latvia, former republics of the Soviet Union, are already NATO member states directly on Russia’s borders. In fact Western militaries, including those of the United Kingdom and France, were using Estonia to run NATO military exercises just 100 kilometers from Russia’s border in late 2021 and early 2022, at the peak of the crisis in Ukraine. NATO troops have launched a series of war-games in Estonia, less than 2 hours drive from the Russian border. The “Winter camp” exercise includes troops from Britain and France, and involves armoured vehicles and live-fire drills pic.twitter.com/pEHCPYHNfV — Murad Gazdiev (@MuradGazdiev) January 29, 2022 The United States and NATO ultimately ignored Russia’s December 2021 request for security guarantees. Leaked copies of their written responses, which they had asked to keep private, show that they refused to grant Moscow any significant concessions, and both insisted that Ukraine could and even should one day join NATO. (NATO’s response was particularly aggressive and disrespectful.) In a speech at the Munich Security Conference on February 19, 2022, the Western military alliance’s hawkish secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, threatened that “if Kremlin’s aim is to have less NATO on Russia’s borders, it will only get more NATO.” The US-led NATO imperialist alliance provoked Russia right up til the end: On February 19, a few days before its intervention in Ukraine, warmongering NATO leader Jens Stoltenberg threatened, "if Kremlin’s aim is to have less NATO on Russia’s borders, it will only get more NATO" https://t.co/tiKDynhYqY pic.twitter.com/kd2n6kZmnL — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) February 25, 2022 Instead of respecting Russia’s security red lines, the United States and several European countries escalated the situation further by sending billions of dollars worth of more weapons to Ukraine. Pointing to a Russian troop deployment inside its own territory, near its border with Ukraine, Western governments deployed more soldiers to the region as well, driving up the tensions. Throughout the entire time, NATO depicted itself as an angelic, innocent “defensive” alliance. But Russia understands how high the stakes are, clearly seeing the consequences of NATO’s destructive wars on Yugoslavia – which destroyed and balkanized the country – Afghanistan, and Libya – which turned what had been the most prosperous country in Africa into a failed state with open-air slave markets. The 2022 crisis in Ukraine traces its roots back to the NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania in 2008, when the George W. Bush administration publicly called for adding Ukraine and Georgia to the US-led military alliance. There were internal divisions within NATO, and some members, namely Germany and France, were uncomfortable with the possibility. But NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer declared that Ukraine and Georgia eventually “will become member nations.” Ukraine’s president at the time was Viktor Yushchenko, a US-backed, pro-Western politician who supported NATO membership. But in the 2010 presidential election, the Ukrainian people voted for a new leader who promised a more balanced foreign policy, Viktor Yanukovych. Western media outlets often refer to Yanukovych as “pro-Russian,” but in reality he tried to keep Ukraine neutral, sometimes allying with the West and sometimes allying with Moscow. For Washington and Brussels, however, Yanukovych was too independent. So in 2014, the United States sponsored a coup d’etat to overthrow the democratically elected president. Far-right extremists and neo-Nazis played a key role as the violent muscle behind this putsch. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, senior US diplomats like hardline anti-Russian hawk Victoria Nuland were conspiring with friendly Ukrainian politicians to create a pro-Western puppet regime right on Russia’s borders. A leaked 2014 phone recording shows that Nuland and other US officials had handpicked the top officials who would run Ukraine’s government after the Washington-backed coup. The Joe Biden administration brought Nuland back in 2021, appointing her third-in-command of the State Department, where she helped to shape US policy toward Russia, pushing for an extremely aggressive strategy. Nuland is a key figure in Washington’s neoconservative foreign-policy circles. Before she helped run the Obama and Biden State Departments, Nuland was Vice President Dick Cheney’s principal deputy foreign policy adviser from 2003 to 2005, during the Iraq War. Nuland’s mentor Cheney has himself made it clear that the United States will never tolerate a strong and independent government in Moscow. Cheney sought to break up Russia itself after the overthrow of the Soviet Union. Back in 1992, the Pentagon drafted a new belligerent US defense strategy, overseen by a neoconservative ally of Nuland and Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz. It clearly stated that Washington’s “first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival… deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” The zero-sum game mentality behind this Wolfowitz Doctrine, which insists that the US empire must run the world without any opposition, and which refuses to countenance the possibility of Russia having its own security interests, still undergirds Washington’s foreign policy to this day. The US “maximum-pressure” strategy against Moscow that this imperial doctrine has inspired, under the watch of anti-Russia hawks like Nuland, helped provoke exactly what Ambassador William Burns warned about in 2008: a Russian military intervention in Ukraine.

Write an article about: Criminals welcome as US recruits foreign proxies to wage ‘irregular war’ on adversaries. 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.

CIA, Iran, News York Times, Nick Turse, Pentagon, Russia, SOCOM, special operations, Special Operations Command, Ukraine, Yahoo News, Zach Dorfman

The US military trains and arms foreign fighters as “proxies” to wage “irregular warfare” against adversaries, and the Pentagon does not vet them to see if they have committed atrocities, according to documents obtained by the New York Times. The United States military recruits foreign fighters to serve as “proxies” in order to wage “irregular warfare” against Washington’s adversaries, and the Pentagon does not vet them to see if they have a history of committing atrocities, according to declassified documents obtained by the New York Times. These “surrogate” fighters are armed and trained by the Pentagon’s Special Operations Command. They are key players in a growing number of secretive “shadow wars” that Washington is waging across the planet. US special operations commandoes were deployed to 154 countries, or roughly 80% of the nations on Earth, as of 2020. “U.S. Special Operations forces are not required to vet for past human rights violations by the foreign troops they arm and train as surrogates”, the New York Times reported on May 14. “American commandos pay, train and equip foreign partner forces and then dispatch them on kill-or-capture operations”, the newspaper noted. The Times disclosed two Pentagon programs in which “surrogate” forces are used: Section 127e, known as “127 Echo”, which gets $100 million per year to train “counterterrorism” proxies; and Section 1202, which is allotted $15 million per year to recruit proxies to wage “irregular warfare”. This unconventional warfare is “aimed at disrupting nation-state rivals via operations that fall short of full armed conflict — including sabotage, hacking and information campaigns like propaganda”, the newspaper wrote. U.S. Special Operations forces are not required to vet for past human rights violations by the foreign troops they arm and train as surrogates, newly disclosed documents show. https://t.co/9MIV0cvw74 — The New York Times (@nytimes) May 14, 2023 The proxies recruited by the US military are vetted, but only “to detect counterintelligence risks and potential threats to American forces”, not for any “violations of human rights — such as rape, torture or extrajudicial killings”, the Times clarified. The newspaper explained: Proxy forces are an increasingly important part of American foreign policy. Over the past decade, the United States has increasingly relied on supporting or deputizing local partner forces in places like Niger and Somalia, moving away from deploying large numbers of American ground troops as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even as that strategic shift is meant to reduce the risk of American casualties and blowback from being seen as occupiers, training and arming local forces creates other hazards. The Pentagon refused to tell the Times what countries these programs are active in. However, previous reports have noted that the US military ran its irregular warfare operation in Ukraine, where it trained forces for an eventual proxy war with Russia, years before Moscow’s 2022 invasion. By its very nature, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has been notoriously secretive about its activities around the world. Investigative journalist Nick Turse reported that US special operations forces were active in 154 countries in 2020, covering approximately 80 percent of the planet. In a 2021 story in The Intercept, Turse wrote: U.S. Special Operations Command has grown exponentially over the last 20 years. “Special operations-specific funding” topped out at $3.1 billion in 2001, compared with $13.1 billion now. Before 9/11, there were roughly 43,000 special operations forces. Today, there are 74,000 military personnel and civilians in the command. Two decades ago, an average of 2,900 commandos were deployed overseas in any given week. That number now stands at 4,500, according to SOCOM spokesperson Ken McGraw. As the command’s global reach has grown, so has the toll on America’s commandos. While special operations forces make up just 3 percent of American military personnel, they have absorbed more than 40 percent of the casualties, mainly in conflicts across the Greater Middle East. SOCOM’s irregular warfare campaign was previously acknowledged in reporting by Yahoo News. “In the final month of his presidency, Donald Trump signed off on key parts of an extensive secret Pentagon campaign to conduct sabotage, propaganda and other psychological and information operations in Iran”, wrote the media outlet’s national security correspondent Zach Dorfman, in a 2021 article on Washington’s “shadow war”. Dorfman said that Washington’s goal was “to undermine the Iranian people’s faith in their government as well as shake the regime’s sense of competence and stability”. Former top US officials described the operation as “irregular warfare”, and it included “a 200-page package of options, involv[ing] ‘things that would cause the Iranians to doubt their control over the country'”. Dorfman is very friendly with US spy agencies. At Yahoo News, he has also disclosed similar irregular warfare operations targeting Russia, but run by the Central Intelligence Agency. “The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel”, he revealed in a report published in January 2022 – a month before Russia invaded Ukraine. This CIA program training Ukrainian paramilitaries in the southern United States was initiated in 2015, Dorfman disclosed. In March 2022, a month after Moscow invaded, Yahoo News revealed that the CIA had another program training elite Ukrainian forces inside their country. That CIA initiative began in 2014. These operations were overseen by the CIA, however. What is unique about the New York Times’ May 2023 report is that it sheds light on similar programs in which the US military arms and trains proxy forces abroad.

Write an article about: CNN and MSNBC hire CIA/Pentagon officials as talking heads – and they push for more war. 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.

CIA, CNN, James Clapper, James Spider Marks, Jeremy Bash, John Kirby, Lisa Monaco, Michael Hayden, MSNBC, North Korea, Pentagon, Philip Mudd, Russia, Syria

Top TV networks CNN and MSNBC hired a slew of former CIA and Pentagon officials as analysts, who use the media to push for war and an even more hawkish US foreign policy. (This article was first published in The Real News.) Americans frequently boast of how free and independent their press ostensibly is. According to mainstream NGO Reporters Without Borders, media freedoms in the United States come in at a measly 43rd place globally. But even overlooking that fact, some of the liberties that do indeed exist are being whittled down. It is not just the government that is cracking down on press freedoms in the U.S. (although it certainly is). In recent years, leading corporate media networks have also, of their own accord, abrogated their independence by directly hiring former top government officials as analysts and commentators. The latest example of the revolving door between U.S. intelligence agencies and the corporate media came on February 1, when NBC News announced that John Brennan, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, had been hired as a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. Brennan joins a slew of other former senior U.S. intelligence officers who can now be seen across television. In April 2017, CNN added three new government officials to its ranks. Michael Hayden, the only person to have served as the director of both the CIA and the National Security Agency, was hired as a CNN national security analyst. Hayden is not exactly known for being a friend of journalists. As I previously reported for Salon, Hayden has likened Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Glenn Greenwald to the devil and disparaged other prominent investigative journalists, such as Seymour Hersh, Laura Poitras and Jane Mayer. He also joked about putting whistleblower Edward Snowden on the drone assassination program’s kill list. John Kirby, the former spokesperson for the State Department, was also hired as a military and diplomatic analyst for CNN. Kirby was previously a press secretary for the Pentagon and served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations. That is to say, he spent years playing the media on behalf of the U.S. Department of Defense, and subsequently became a prominent voice in the very media he had worked for so long. Moreover, Lisa Monaco, who was homeland security advisor under President Barack Obama, joined CNN’s ranks as a senior national security analyst. Upon her promotion to the president’s top counterterrorism advisor, Monaco had taken over the previous position of new MSNBC analyst Brennan, as CNN itself noted at the time. That’s not all. Later in 2017, CNN likewise hired James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence under Obama and previous head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, as a national security analyst. Lawmakers have called for Clapper to face perjury charges for lying under oath. During congressional testimony in 2013, the top spy chief was asked if the NSA was collecting any of the data of Americans; he insisted the agency was not doing so. Months later, Edward Snowden showed otherwise, with the help of journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras — all of whom have been excoriated by CNN national security analyst Hayden. These new hires joined CNN military and national security analyst James “Spider” Marks, a retired major general who previously led the U.S. Army Intelligence Center; along with longtime CNN counterterrorism analyst Philip Mudd, an intelligence agency veteran who helped lead counterterrorism operations at both the CIA and the FBI, and who sat on the White House National Security Council. Many of these U.S. government officials were frequent guests on corporate media networks before becoming regular paid contributors. Top CIA and FBI official Mudd boasts on his website, for instance, that “he has been featured by ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox, BBC, MSNBC, al-Jazeera, NPR, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.” The latest figure to cross through the revolving door from the U.S. intelligence community into the media, former CIA Director Brennan, is far from the only top government official MSNBC has added to its roster. NBC and its subsidiary hired as a national security analyst Jeremy Bash, who previously served as the chief of staff for both the Pentagon and the CIA. Bash is also the founder and managing director of the Washington, D.C.-based advisory firm Beacon Global Strategies, which, as I detailed in AlterNet, is populated by former government officials and is closely linked to UAE ambassador to the U.S. Yousef al-Otaiba, one of the most influential foreign diplomats. It will come as no surprise that the former government officials hired by corporate media networks have toed the U.S. government line in their analyses on air. All have openly demanded more aggressive U.S. actions against Russia in particular. As the media watchdog FAIR noted, Bash has all but called for war on Moscow. Hayden has warned, as CNN puts it, “that Russia is still trying to influence American minds.” Monaco has defended “the imposition of unprecedented sanctions” as necessary “consequences” for Moscow. Clapper has implied the Kremlin is pulling the strings over Trump. Kirby has fearmongered about Russian jets — while promoting uber-bellicose Senator John McCain. On Syria, they have been equally hawkish. After a Syrian military attack on the district of Khan Shaykhun, in al-Qaeda-controlled Idlib province, Bash took to NBC News to propose “airstrikes from U.S. military aircraft or cruise missile strikes from U.S. naval warships operating off the coast of Syria. The objective… would be to punish Assad.” In order to do this, Bash added, “We’d effectively have to push Russia aside, because they are there. And that’s not something I’m sure this White House is willing to do.” When Trump responded by attacking the Syrian government, launching 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles on its Shayrat airbase and destroying some 20 percent of the Syrian military’s operational planes, according to the Pentagon, Bash applauded. In an NBC News report, the former Pentagon and CIA official praised the strike for sending “an important message to Assad” and a “critical message” to other countries targeted by the U.S., such as Iran and North Korea. Former CIA and NSA director Hayden likewise penned an op-ed in The Hill extolling “the first real military action of the Trump era.” On CNN, Hayden saluted Trump for his “remarkable flip.” For some of these spy chiefs-cum-analysts, nevertheless, Trump’s missile strike on Syria was not quite aggressive enough. On CNN, Mudd lamented that the dramatic attack was not enough to deter Russia. On the same network, General Marks wishfully observed that the strike is not like Kentucky basketball, one and done; this is the start of a series of operations. We will continue to maintain a very strong intelligence presence on top of this target. And we’ll be able to roll more Tomahawks and we’ll be able to escalate and we’ll be able to do additional types of operations in order to achieve the results that we’re looking for, which is number one politically, I think we’ve done that and we’ve sent a very strong message. But to degrade and ultimately, eliminate his WMD, weapons of mass destruction capability and his ability, Assad’s ability to deliver. Similarly, these government officials turned reliably hawkish pundits have called for more threatening action against North Korea. Kirby has declared that “the credibility of the threat from North Korea is palpable.” Hayden has defended the Trump administration’s extremely belligerent posturing. Both Hayden and Bash have called for an aggressive approach on North Korea. Clapper has proposed more sanctions on the country as a way forward. CNN even created a hologram animation showing what war would look like with North Korea, starring General Marks. The embrace of former top U.S. officials as go-to employees and this willing abandonment of putative independence by the corporate media further underscores just how closely the press mirrors the government on issues of war, national security, and foreign policy. This approach combines the worst of both worlds: while Americans are told that their media apparatus is free because it is not state owned, the news broadcasts on their televisions are replete with pugnacious talking heads who have spent most of their lives working for the government, and its notoriously violent military and intelligence agencies.

Write an article about: CIA is training Ukrainian paramilitaries to ‘kill Russians’. 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.

CIA, Maidan, Russia, Ukraine

The CIA is training far-right Ukrainian nationalists to “kill Russians” and wage an “insurgency” against Moscow. The CIA has, since 2015, been training Ukrainian special forces and paramilitaries to “kill Russians.” The covert program started under US President Barack Obama and was subsequently expanded by both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. The CIA has also been in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region advising anti-Russian fighters. This is according to a January 13 report in Yahoo News, titled “CIA-trained Ukrainian paramilitaries may take central role if Russia invades.” “The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel,” reported Yahoo News’ national security correspondent Zach Dorfman. A former CIA official told the outlet, “The United States is training an insurgency.” The CIA’s goal is to teach Ukrainian fighters “to kill Russians,” he said. An excerpt from the Yahoo News report in which a former CIA officer says the “United States is training an insurgency” to “kill Russians” To understand Moscow’s perspective on what is happening in Ukraine, imagine this scenario: What would the United States do if Russia orchestrated a violent coup d’etat in Mexico – as Washington did in Russia’s neighbor Ukraine in 2014 – then Russian spy agencies spent years training Mexican gangs to kill North Americans, and sent them to the US border to fight an “insurgency”? That is what Washington is doing on the Russian border.

Write an article about: US funds ‘independent journalists’ in Cuba to spread propaganda, ex CIA spy admits. 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.

CIA, Cuba, disinformation, information war, La Prensa, National Endowment for Democracy, NED, Nicaragua, propaganda, Venezuela

Former CIA analyst Fulton Armstrong told The Guardian that, in Cuba, “a lot of the so-called independent journalists are indirectly funded by the US”. They spread anti-government disinformation with the support of the NED. (Se puede leer esta nota en español aquí.) A former top CIA spy has admitted that the United States funds anti-government propagandists in Cuba who portray themselves as “independent journalists”. Major British newspaper The Guardian spoke with CIA veteran Fulton Armstrong, whom it described as “the US intelligence community’s most senior analyst for Latin America from 2000 to 2004”. Armstrong stated that, in Cuba, “a lot of the so-called independent journalists are indirectly funded by the US”. The ex CIA analyst pointed out that, today, the Joe Biden administration bankrolls anti-government opposition forces in Cuba with at least $20 million in annual support for supposed “democracy promotion” activities. The Guardian acknowledged that the CIA has a history of spreading disinformation inside Cuba, as part of a US information war aimed at destabilizing the revolutionary government. The newspaper wrote: Financing media has long been part of Washington’s diplomatic toolkit. In the 1960s in Cuba, Radio Swan, a CIA covert action programme, attempted not only a propaganda offensive to undermine support for Fidel Castro, but doubled up as a communication link, sending coded messages to paramilitaries during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. A decade ago it emerged that the US government had paid contractors to create ZunZuneo, a social network built on texts, to organize “smart mobs” on the island. And during historic, largely spontaneous anti-government protests on the island in 2021, externally funded, externally directed bots made anti-government hashtags trend on Twitter. Still today, Washington funds another prominent Spanish-language, anti-Cuba disinformation outlet called Radio y Televisión Martí, which is part of the government’s propaganda arm the US Agency for Global Media (formerly known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors). Armstrong, the former CIA agent, explained to The Guardian the US destabilization strategy in financing opposition media outlets in foreign countries like Cuba: US programs are designed with a win-win strategy. We win if the opposition media gain a foothold, and we win if they provoke government repression. That thrusts the government into a dilemma – to let the organizing and funding go forward or to risk image and credibility by crushing it. In addition to spying for the CIA, Armstrong worked for the State Department’s US Interests Section in Cuba (a diplomatic office located inside Switzerland’s embassy in Havana). Armstrong served as the US “National Intelligence Officer for Latin America”, the intelligence community’s top analyst focused on the region. He also oversaw Latin America for the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The Guardian – which is itself closely linked to and collaborates with the UK’s intelligence services – portrayed the Cuban government as repressive for cracking down on foreign-funded disinformation agents. The British newspaper gloated over the large revenue streams that anti-government media outlets in Cuba have, writing, “Tiny state salaries have also been unable to compete with the private sector”. While The Guardian praised two right-wing Cuban opposition media outlets, called El Toque and El Estornudo, it admitted that both are bankrolled by the US government. El Toque disclosed to The Guardian that “it has received US federal funds ‘indirectly’ as part of a mix of money from corporations and foundations”. El Estornudo is financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a notorious instrument of US regime-change operations that has meddled in the internal politics of countries all around the world. A co-founder of the NED, Allen Weinstein, told the Washington Post in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA“. The NED reported that it gave El Estornudo $180,000 in 2021 – a huge sum of money in any Latin American country, but especially in Cuba, which has trouble getting access to dollars due to Washington’s illegal, six-decade blockade against it. In a 1977 report titled “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A.“, the New York Times admitted that the CIA had established a media outlet in the early 1960s called Free Cuba Radio, whose “propaganda broadcasts against the Government of Prime Minister Fidel Castro were carried over radio stations” in various cities inside the US and in the Caribbean. The prominent newspaper explained: One motive for establishing the Free Cuba radio network, a former C.I.A. official said he recalled, was to have periods of air time available in advance in case Radio Swan, meant to be the main communications link for the Bay of Pigs invasion, was destroyed by saboteurs. Radio Swan’s cover was thin enough to warrant such concern. The powerful station, whose broadcasts could be heard over much of the Western Hemisphere, was operated by a steamship company in New York that had not owned a steamship for some time. The United States has used the same tactics to try to destabilize the leftist governments in Venezuela and Nicaragua. The NED has spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding right-wing opposition media outlets and so-called “civil society organizations” in Venezuela. Many of these groups have been complicit in violence and participated in coup attempts against democratically elected Presidents Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. In Nicaragua in the 1980s, the CIA supported far-right death squads known as the Contras (short for “Counterrevolutionaries”), who burned down schools and hospitals and waged a campaign of terror to try to overthrow the socialist Sandinista government. A key part of the US hybrid war on Nicaragua in the 1980s, and still today, included the dissemination of disinformation through NED-funded newspapers like La Prensa, which is owned by the Central American nation’s most powerful right-wing oligarch family, the Chamorro dynasty. After the Sandinista Front returned to power in 2007, through democratic elections, the US again began pouring millions of dollars into opposition media outlets in Nicaragua. During a bloody coup attempt in 2018, US-funded Nicaraguan opposition media outlets spread extreme propaganda and fake news, openly inciting violence and encouraging people to murder President Daniel Ortega and hang his body in public. Right-wing Nicaraguan media outlets funded by the US government constantly spread blatant fake news to attack the Sandinistas https://t.co/hzafT2yLH0 — Geopolitical Economy Report (@GeopoliticEcon) August 8, 2022

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.

blockade, Cuba, Israel, sanctions, United Nations

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.

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.

Gaza, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, UN, United Nations, Venezuela

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.

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.

Jim Cramer, Lockheed Martin, military-industrial complex, Raytheon, Russia, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky

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.

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.

AmCham China, American Chamber of Commerce in China, Antony Blinken, Chamber of Commerce, China, Iran, Israel, Myron Brilliant, Nicholas Burns, Thomas Nides, Victoria Nuland

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”.

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.

censorship, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Nina Jankowicz, Russia, Ukraine

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.

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.

Alberto Fernández, Argentina, Donald Trump, Matt Gaetz, Republican Party, Russia, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping

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.

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.

colonialism, poverty, Puerto Rico

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:

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.

Blaine Luetkemeyer, Congress, Daniel McDowell, dollar, Marshall Billingslea, Michael Faulkender, Tyler Goodspeed, Young Kim

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. … 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. … 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.

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.

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

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

Write an article about: Economist Michael Hudson on new cold war, super imperialism, China, Russia, de-dollarization. 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.

China, de-dollarization, dollar, economics, Great Reset, IMF, Michael Hudson, Russia, World Bank

Economist Michael Hudson discusses US “Super Imperialism,” the new cold war on China and Russia, the Joe Biden administration, and dedollarization. In this extended interview, renowned economist Michael Hudson discusses his concept of US “Super Imperialism,” the new cold war on China and Russia, the Joe Biden administration, and dedollarization – the potential end to the dollar as the global reserve currency. Benjamin Norton 0:03 Hello, everyone, I’m Ben Norton. You’re watching Moderate Rebels. And there will be a podcast version of this after, for people who want to listen. We are joined today by the economist Michael Hudson, one of the most important economists in the world, honestly, in my view. And I don’t think he needs introduction. He has written many books, and has been an economic adviser for multiple governments, and has a long history on Wall Street and academia. And you can find his work at Michael-Hudson.com. Today, we’re going to talk about an issue that Michael Hudson has been writing about for decades, and something that you’re never really going to hear from other economists, especially mainstream neoliberal economists, and that’s what he calls super imperialism. The US government has of course its military apparatus, which we talk about a lot here at Moderate Rebels and The Grayzone, with the war in Iraq, the war in Syria, the war in Libya, but then there’s also the economic form that imperialism takes. And Michael Hudson wrote the book Super Imperialism that details exactly how this system works. So today, Michael Hudson, I want to start just talking about what super imperialism looks like today, in the new cold war. This is something that we talk a lot about. We saw that Joe Biden gave his first kind of major speech to Congress – we’re not supposed to call it a state of the union because it’s still his first year – but Biden gave a joint speech to Congress in which he declared that the United States is in competition with China to own, “to win the 21st century,” as he put it. And we’ve seen that the US government, under Biden, and of course before under Trump, has imposed several rounds of sanctions on Russia and on China. So Professor Hudson, let’s just start today talking about what you think the posture has been of the Biden administration, vis a vis Trump. We saw that the Mike Pompeo State Department essentially declared a kind of new cold war on China. Pompeo gave a speech at the Richard Nixon library in which he said that the famous Nixon visit to China was a mistake, and that we have to contain China and eventually overthrow the Communist Party of China. And some Democrats hoped that the Biden administration would kind of take a step back. But we’ve seen that the Antony Blinken State Department has continued many of these aggressive policies, accusing China of genocide. And we’ve seen that the Treasury Department just imposed several new rounds of sanctions on Russia. So what is your view on on the new cold war that’s going on right now? Michael Hudson 2:57 Well, I had originally wanted to call my book Monetary Imperialism. The publisher wanted to call it Super Imperialism, in 1972, because it was really the US moving towards a unipolar order, where it was not competing with other imperialisms; it wanted to absorb European colonialism, absorb European imperialism, and really be the single unipolar power. And of course that is what really has come about. The United States is trying to become the only dominant power in the world. And in today’s Financial Times [on May 5], one of the reporters said, it’s as if the United States wants to be the world’s absentee landlord, and rent collector. So we’re dealing with a monetary and a rentier phenomenon. And when Biden gave his speech last week, there was a very marked change, right in the middle of it. The very beginning was very calm, offering means of improvement for the American economy, and a set of proposals that were so wonderful that they don’t have the chance of being enacted. And that was simply to co-opt what calls itself the left wing of the Democratic Party, if that’s not an oxymoron. And then all of a sudden, his body language changed, his voice changed, and there was just an anger towards Russia and towards China, a visceral anger that brought back the whole 30 years of his tenure in Congress. And he was the leading cold war proponent, the leading proponent of the military, and of course now he wants to increase the military budget. So while on the one hand, he’s continuing the nationalistic trade policies of the Trump administration, he’s escalating the cold war against Russia and China, in the belief that somehow if he can impose sanctions and punish them economically, that will lead to a fall of the government. Well, you can see what he’s projecting here. It’s obvious that the United States economy is going to be in real trouble. Once the Covid crisis stops uniting the country in a feeling that we’re all in this together – and certainly in New York, where I live, in August, the freeze on real estate evictions, by renters, and foreclosures on mortgagees is going to end, and it’s expected there will be 50,000 New Yorkers thrown into the street. They’ve very kindly decided to postpone this until August, so at least they can sleep in the park, and don’t have to begin sleeping in the subways until maybe October. There’s no way that any Wall Street economist that I know can see if the economy is really going to recover. The stock market is going way up, thanks to a Federal Reserve policy of subsidizing bonds and stocks, with 83% owned by the 1% of the population. But the Federal Reserve is not backing any spending into the actual economy. Well that’s where the first part of President Biden’s speech came in. He was talking about building infrastructure and somehow reviving the economy. But it doesn’t look like he’s going to get much support from this from the Republicans, and he wants to be bipartisan. In other words, he says the Democratic Party, as always, won’t do anything that Republicans wouldn’t agree on. Because the Democrats are an arm of the Republican Party. Their role is to protect the Republican Party from left-wing criticism. So you can expect a wishy washy sort of slow decline with a few rapid spikes in decline as the Covid crisis ends. And you’re having almost a preparation for this by – I think Biden and the government people realize that the economy cannot regain its former industrial position, because it’s a rentier economy now. Money is not made by companies investing in industry and factories and means of production. When companies do make profits, they are largely monopoly rents, or resource rents, or other forms of rent extraction. And 90% of corporate income in the United States is spent on share buybacks and dividend payouts, not on investing in new production. So nobody’s really expecting new private investment to occur in the United States, that is private capital investment in means of production. So Biden says, well, if the private sector won’t do it, then the government can do it. But his idea of the government doing it is to give government money to private companies that will build industrialization. And he wants to essentially replicate the military-industrial complex into an enormous public-private partnership, to build very, very high-cost infrastructure that will make it almost impossible for Americans to have any trade competitiveness with other countries. Well if you’re going to create a high-cost rentier economy, that is post-industrialized like that, what do you do? You say it’s not our fault, foreigners are doing it to us; it’s all China’s fault – as if China had something to do with American de-industrialization. China’s trying to avoid the rentier policies, avoid the financialization, avoid the privatization that has made America so high cost and so ineffective. And the [US] government is trying to sort of blame it. But I think there is something else behind this fight against China and especially Russia. The Democratic leadership seems to have an almost emotional, passionate antagonism towards Russia that can’t be explained on objective grounds. But it’s obviously there. Their attempt to isolate Russia is as if somehow they can recapture the dream of the Yeltsin 1990s, the dream of somehow replacing Putin with a pliant alcoholic kleptocrat like Yeltsin who will resume the sale of Russia’s national resources and public utilities to Americans. There’s no way that’s going to happen. The actual effect of the sanctions on Russia and China has been to drive them together into a unit, into a critical mass. And ironically, America’s attempt to isolate other countries is turning into an attempt to isolate itself. The question in this is, what about Europe? In the last few days, there has been a lot of discussion about cutting Russia off from the SWIFT bank clearing system, and of other sanctions against Russia. Russia has already worked with China to develop their own alternative to the SWIFT banking clearing system. So Russian domestic payments are not going to be that disrupted, after a week or two that they say it’ll take the put the new system in. But what cutting Russia off in the SWIFT system does is block its trade and its community, its economic relations with Western Europe. The United States, I think, realizes that if it can’t get through, if it can exploit Third World countries, or Russia or China, at least it can make Europe permanently dependent, and drawn, and really under US control. So if you look at the sanctions against Russia and China as a way to split Europe and make Europe increasingly dependent on the United States, not only for gas, and energy, but also for vaccines. These are the two issues that have been in the news in the last few weeks. Blinken and other US officials said that Russia offering its Sputnik V vaccine to Europe is divisive, is an attempt to break up the world’s “rules-based order.” This is amazing, that Russia’s attempt to – now that Pfizer and the other American companies are not producing enough vaccine to provide to Africa, South America, and Asian countries, the United States is attacking Russia, and Cuba, and China for offering other vaccines and saying they’re trying, their attempt to save lives through the rest of the world is an attempt to divide and break up the American order. Because only the Americans can have the intellectual property monopoly, something that Blinken mentioned in his speech, and that President Biden mentioned. The intellectual property monopoly means that America gets to tell other countries, our firms have the right to say, “Your money or your life” to Third World countries. And that will be our means of, “Well, you can’t pay, well, why don’t you sell off some more of your infrastructure? Why don’t you sell off more of your oil or mineral resources to us?” So what we’re seeing is an intensification of economic warfare against almost all the other countries in the world, hoping that somehow this will divide and conquer them, instead of driving them all together. Max Blumenthal 13:24 Yeah, hi Professor Hudson, I totally agree with you about the Democrats, at least the political class and their perspective on Russia. And you have kind of two types that command the Democratic Party. You have these boomers who grew up hiding under their desks during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and were indoctrinated on anti-communism, then they went through the trauma of the ’60s, and saw McGovern lose, and moved to the center. And so they see Putin as a revival of the KGB and the evil Soviet Union that forced them under their desks in elementary school. And then you have the 30 and 40 somethings who see Russia as this exporter of white nationalism and the right wing, and they get this constant steady stream of propaganda from BuzzFeed and other sites about that – completely ignoring Ukraine. But this is just a marketing strategy to me. I mean, there’s something that you’ve spoken about written about in Super Imperialism and in recent talks that I think lurks behind what both the Trump and Biden administrations call “great power competition.” And that is, while this political class sees a national rivalry with Russia and uses it to unite its own constituency, a very fractious constituency, there is what you called the conflict of economic and social systems. And I fully understand this with respect to China. You see industry journals, even rail journals in the US talking about the fear of the Chinese rail system “not playing by the rules,” which means the free market, because they’re receiving state subsidies and kicking the ass of the American rail system, expanding infrastructure. But you have also included Russia into this counter-hegemonic system, which some would call state capitalist or socialized system, versus the financialized system – where that land, basically, that giant landmass, which the state in China, certainly, and you seem to be saying Russia, is socializing, is seen as an existential threat to the very essence of what the US has been constructed as, as an empire, where finance, industry, corporations have merged with the state. I think you understand where I’m going here. How can – maybe you can explain a little bit more about how this is actually, when we see Russiagate or this cold war rhetoric, it’s actually kind of a marketing device for the real conflict of economic and social systems. Michael Hudson 16:12 Well the real existential threat isn’t a trade rivalry; it’s not one of technology at all. The existential threat is to the idea of an economy based on completely a rentier system. In today’s world, the banks play the role that landlords played from the feudal epoch through the 19th century. And all the classical economics, the whole concept of free markets, from the physiocrats, with their laissez faire to Adam Smith, through John Stuart Mill, the whole of classical economics was to free industrial capitalism from the rentier class, from the landlords, and from banking and the monopolies that banks created in organizing trusts. So the US realizes that the economy has been transformed in the last 40 years, since the 1980s, since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, when Margaret Thatcher said, “There is no alternative.” Of course, there were many alternatives. But the United States says, if we can create, if we can turn the “rules-based order” of free markets and classical economics upside down, and say our rules-based order means no government power to regulate, no government progressive taxation, but a flat tax – like we convinced Russia to have, that they still have, by the way – if we can have a rules-based order that backs the rentier class – a hereditary, financial, wealthy 1% of the population – holding the rest of the economy in debt peonage, or reducing them to other forms of dependency in a patron-client relation, then we’ve restored essentially the feudal economy. But in order for us to do that, we have to make sure that there’s no alternative; we have to prevent any alternative. And China is an existential threat, because what it is doing – its policy, which is very largely ad hoc, and purely pragmatic – China’s policy is exactly the policy that made the United States the industrial power of the world in the 19th century. China, like the United States, built public utilities to provide public services at low, subsidized costs, so as to enable its private industry not to have to pay for the costs of education, for high rental costs and housing costs, and high monopoly rents. China is doing exactly what the United States did, and what the United States now says, no other country can do what we did; we’ve pulled up the ladder, and our wealthy rentier layer of the population that got rich, now, having gained control of the United States, and its politics, we want to control the whole world. And if there is another successful economy, whether it is China, or Russia, or Iran, or Venezuela – if there’s any other economy that retains a strong state power, strong regulatory power, progressive taxation, preventing a landlord class from somehow increasing housing costs, privatizing medical and health insurance, so instead of making it a public right – well, if we can prevent that from occurring anywhere, then people will really believe there is no alternative but to let our takeover that reverses the entire last two centuries of free market economics, and now the economy has to be free for the 1% to take over government enterprise, to privatize every part of government, including government itself, including the central banks especially, and including the health system, the educational system – all running either for profit or at a cost that has to be paid by credit creation, and essentially recreate the economy of the 13th century. Benjamin Norton 20:31 Yeah, Professor Hudson, the argument that you’re making here, which I have seen very few people make, is – I mean, I think it’s a correct argument – but it’s interesting because it contradicts this claim that we’ve seen from even a lot of people on the left, who argue that the new cold war, or in general just the conflict between Washington and Beijing, is not a clash of systems; rather, their argument is that China is yet another capitalist power, and it’s an inter-capitalist rivalry, similar to the rivalry that led to World War One, and that China and the US have very similar economic systems. But you’re arguing, in fact, the exact opposite. And I just want to read a really brief part of this column that you published at your website, Michael-Hudson.com; it’s called “America’s Neoliberal Financialization Policy vs. China’s Industrial Socialism.” And you have an interesting quote here from a US government advisor for the Reagan administration, Clyde Prestowitz, who wrote, kind of complaining, saying: China’s economy is incompatible with the main premises of the global economic system embodied today in the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and a long list of other free trade agreements. These pacts assume economies that are primarily market based with the role of the state circumscribed and micro-economic decisions largely left to private interests operating under a rule of law. This system never anticipated an economy like China’s in which state-owned enterprises account for one-third of production; the fusion of the civilian economy with the strategic-military economy is a government necessity; five year economic plans guide investment to targeted sectors; an eternally dominant political party names the CEOs of a third or more of major corporations and has established party cells in every significant company; the value of the currency is managed, corporate and personal data are minutely collected by the government to be used for economic and political control; and international trade is subject to being weaponized at any moment for strategic ends. Now in your column, you pointed out how this is actually a pretty funny comment coming from a US trade adviser, because some of those same things that the US is accusing China of – like namely weaponizing international trade, or fusing the civilian economy with the military economy – of course Washington embodies that really better than any other country in the world. But he is confirming the point that you argued is correct. His complaint was that China still has state-owned enterprises accounting for 1/3 of production, and that the Communist Party of China still guides the economy. And in old-school terms, going back to Lenin, they would say controls the commanding heights of the economy. So do you think that, when people on the left in the US and other countries argue that this is all just a rivalry, an inter-capitalist rivalry between the capitalist class in China and the capitalist class in United States, what do you think of that argument? Michael Hudson 23:45 Well I have spent a great deal of time in China, and I have professorships at a number of universities there. It certainly is fundamentally different from the United States. You may have noticed in the last month, China has moved against Jack Ma, who was developing his information technology system into a credit system. They knocked him down, stopped the issue of new shares, the IPO, and said only the government can keep finance and credit as a public utility. Now what Prestowitz calls state-owned enterprises used to be called public utilities in the United States. And in Europe, most public utilities were government owned, like the National Health System. In the United States, it broke away from that government direct ownership and management of many public utilities, but the electric utilities, the gas utilities, almost all public utilities providing natural monopoly services were regulated. Now they have been deregulated. In the last 40 years, you have almost no regulation at all. So China is, by keeping public utilities in the public domain, that means that these are not vehicles for rent extraction, that is for charging monopoly rents such as we pay in New York for cable services, such as Americans pay for the internet, such as Americans pay for public health, such as Americans pay for education. China provides free education. China provides, and Russia basically, free public health. Unfortunately, Russian public health means giving you an aspirin if you have a problem, but at least it is not privatized. So the United States is a rentier economy. And when left-wingers – or people who call themselves left-wingers, they’re really not left-wingers at all; they’re, I don’t know what, post-left – very few people who call themselves left-wingers distinguish between industrial capitalism and finance capitalism. Well, that’s the distinguishing feature of the last century. Ever since World War One, there has been a movement away from industrial capitalism, towards financialization of the economies, towards finance capitalism, based on a merger between the financial sector and the rent extraction sector, mainly the FIRE sector – finance, insurance, and real estate – and also the natural monopolies where the banks have taken the lead in organizing trusts and organizing monopolies. And so the basis of most bank credit in the United States is to provide the ownership of companies or monopoly rights. Now, China doesn’t make loans for these things. The People’s Bank of China is the central bank. And the central bank doesn’t create credit for corporate takeovers; it doesn’t create credit for speculation; it doesn’t provide an economy that enriches itself off economic rents and exploitation. But, obviously, there are many successful billionaires in China, many successful entrepreneurs, but these are largely industrial entrepreneurs who have actually created something. China managed to avoid the Russian Stalinist micromanagement that blocked any kind of market feedback, or any kind of spontaneous innovation. China let 100 flowers bloom; it let innovation take place. It let individuals get rich off innovation, as long as they conducted their business, and production, and wealth in the public interest, defined as uplifting the quality of labor and contributing to the economy’s long-term growth. Well finance capitalism, such as we have in the US, doesn’t live in the long run; its timeframe is short term, one quarter at most, three months. And the timeframe is, how can we increase the price of our stock so that we can sell out and jump out of the sinking boat, when the time comes. They are not concerned with making the economy richer; they’re not concerned with making their labor force happier, better paid, or with a better standard of living, or even getting long-term pensions, which have been replaced by defined contribution plans instead of defined benefit plans. It’s basically an exploitative system. And China’s whole management system, although it’s centrally managed, you need a strong state in order to prevent an independent rentier class, an independent financial class, from emerging and doing to modern economies what it did to the Byzantine Empire, and tried to do in the Bronze Age Near East: take over the government. China does not want a rentier class to do what they have done in the United States and make America into a centrally planned economy. We’re now more of a centrally planned economy than Nazi Germany was. But the centrally planned economy is in Wall Street, in the financial system, not the government. So when Biden and Blinken talk about a free market, they mean a market centrally planned by the financial sector, with the government and elected officials not having any role to play except to decide whether they want to vote for the Democratic or Republican sponsors and backers of the rentier interests. Max Blumenthal 30:01 How do you think the pandemic, and – well I guess I could say there is a class in Washington that believes that Covid-19 was deliberately cooked up in a lab in Wuhan, because financial capitalism has performed so poorly in this pandemic and has suffered such a setback, in contrast to China’s economy, which is the only major economy in the world to have grown. And they fostered this conspiracy theory, because they can’t really understand why that is. So maybe you can explain how the pandemic has accelerated the trends that you have been elucidating, and the contrast between financial and industrial capitalism? Michael Hudson 30:44 Well I’m shocked to hear you say that finance capitalism has performed badly. The 1% have made a trillion dollars since the Covid crisis began. The Covid crisis is the best money-making opportunity. This is a bonanza for finance capitalism; it’s wonderful, because they’re pulverizing economy, they’re picking up all the marbles. Max Blumenthal 31:06 I meant for people who are not reptilian shapeshifters. Michael Hudson 31:09 Ah, I know. You’ve gotta be careful about what’s working, you know… They have to somehow prepare the ground for the fact that things are not going to get better. Nobody knows whether they’re going to go back to offices or not; they probably won’t be able to go anywhere near the levels that they were before this fall, because the schools and the offices don’t have the ventilation systems to stop aerosol transmission. They don’t have fans; most of them don’t have windows. So the result is they’re expecting a crash in commercial property values in the major cities. I know New York landlords who are trying to sell out their buildings here, anticipating that well, things are not going to get back to normal, and they’re not being offered any money at all. Because all the buyers, the money, the new private capital funds that have all been created, with trillions of dollars in the last few months, are waiting for the crash to pick up office buildings, commercial real estate, foreclosed homes, foreclosed rental properties, all at pennies on the dollar – and to do essentially what Blackstone did after Obama’s 2008 crisis, of the 10,000 families he affected, and created a bonanza for his backers, who elected him, the banking sector. So they’re expecting another Obama-type disaster that will make finance capitalism even more successful in reducing the rest of the economy to a state of dependency. Max Blumenthal 32:58 Do you think that the lockdown policies has benefited this class that has earned trillions and trillions of dollars? Michael Hudson 33:08 Well what is the alternative? I think there had to be a lockdown. We have seen what happened in Asia and countries that did have a lockdown; they didn’t get sick. You had to have a lockdown not to get sick. The problem is not the lockdown. The problem is that other countries are not doing the evictions and the foreclosures that the Americans have. Things like this happened way back in the Bronze Age, which is what I’ve written a number of books on, in Babylonia – and I think we’ve spoken about this before. When there was a drought, or an economic crisis, or a disease, and debts couldn’t be paid, rents weren’t due, debts weren’t due. America could have avoided the whole problem that the lockdown had by saying, ok, nobody is able to go to work; it’s obvious they can’t make, most people can’t make enough money to pay the rent and the mortgage payments on their homes, or even get by, so we’re going to say this is a time out of time; we’re not going to enforce the enormous backlog of unpaid rent and unpaid debts that have occurred. Now, to some extent, the problem has been mitigated by first Trump and then Biden giving a more stingy CARES Act giveaway to families, that were able to use the $1400 and the $600 that they got, or $1200, basically to pay their landlords, and to pay the credit card companies, and to pay the banks. But once the Covid crisis is over, there’s not going to be any more bailout of people and they’re still going to have all of the arrears that they’ve been running up. And they’re going to be even more debt-strapped after this September than they were before the crisis. And what the crisis really did was just accelerate the polarizing trend that you have in the United States, between creditors and debtors, between property owners and renters, and between consumers and monopolists. These trends have been exacerbated. And it doesn’t look like the government is going to find an alternative because they say there isn’t any alternative; iff you don’t like it here, why don’t you go to China? Whereas Americans are not good enough in language to go en masse to China. Max Blumenthal 35:43 Yeah, I hope they – Michael Hudson 35:45 It used to be, they’d say, if you don’t like it, why don’t you go to Russia? Nobody says that anymore. But what are you going to do? Oh, well, OxyContin I guess is the alternative. Max Blumenthal 35:56 When I criticized Israel, they’d told me to go to Gaza. I was like, ok, if you’ll let me in, I mean, you control the borders. But on another related note. Last summer, Venezuela applied for an IMF loan. It was a small loan, something like $20 million, to allow it to buy medical supplies, because the pandemic had begun, and they were locking down their population. And of course the IMF said no. It wasn’t difficult to understand why. And we’ve seen this same rejection applied to Iran. However, in early 2015, I believe it was February, Joe Biden went to Kiev – it was his first trip to Kiev as the kind of imperial lord of the post-Maidan [coup] order – and he boasted that he had secured a gigantic IMF loan of billions of dollars for Ukraine. This is a country that already at that point was notorious for corruption, ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. And that loan money went straight to Swiss banks, through the pockets of the few, 10 or 11 sweaty oligarchs that controlled the country. So how do you explain this? You have written that “the IMF is basically a small room in the Pentagon’s basement.” So how do you explain this disparity in treatment between countries like Ukraine, which are absolutely incapable of paying back these loans, are so notoriously corrupt, and countries like Venezuela and Iran, which are obviously targets of US empire? Michael Hudson 37:47 Well my book Super Imperialism is all about how the IMF was created as an arm of US foreign policy. And it still is an arm. And there’s a mentality that the IMF has; it’s a pro-creditor mentality, and it’s dominated thoroughly by the United States, in a cold war modality. That’s why Russia and China are seeking to create their own international bank. And the even more vicious arm of American imperialism, probably the most deadly, is the World Bank, which is enormously destructive, throughout the former Soviet Union, in the Third World, by pushing micro-currency loans that are aimed at essentially making loans to women as heads of families, 70%, 80%, and then breaking up the family, foreclosing on them – essentially using microcredit loans as a way of evicting masses of families from their property, and turning it over to the client oligarchies in these countries. And in blocking countries from developing their own food self-sufficiency in grain, making them dependent on US grain exports, that has been a central aim of the World Bank ever since its inception, fighting against land reform. So the World Bank and the IMF have always been probably the most viciously pro-rentier, anti-progressive institutions in the world. And as such, they’re guided by essentially America’s deep state, as an arm of subjugating other countries, preventing their self-sufficiency. The idea is, if you can impoverish them, you will somehow lead to a regime change and put in a client oligarchy that will be willing to make their economy dependent on the United States. That’s a US foreign policy in a nutshell since 1945. Benjamin Norton 40:01 Yeah, Professor Hudson related to Venezuela, you were talking about the impact of sanctions, and there’s a de facto blockade of Venezuela – a Venezuelan economist, named Pasqualina Curcio, recently wrote an article in a Venezuelan media outlet in which she estimated that $350 billion of Venezuelan assets have been stolen or frozen from the Venezuelan public. And they’re currently held in foreign banks, in the she calls it transnational private sector. And she points out that this number – I don’t believe it’s adjusted for inflation – but this number, $350 billion, is equivalent to 25 times what was invested to rebuild Europe after World War Two. So this reminds me of a term that I think you pioneered or you popularized: grabitization. You talk about how, after the US plundered the former Soviet Union, Russia and the former Soviet republics, forcing neoliberal shock therapy, that it wasn’t just privatization, it was grabitization; it was grab as much as you can, as quickly as you can. It seems to me that that kind of model has been applied to Venezuela, with Juan Guaidó, the attempt to impose a fake interim government that was never elected. Do you think that that parallel of grabitization is is appropriate for Venezuela? Michael Hudson 41:36 Well you’ve seen it very clearly, when its gold reserves were seized by the Bank of England, which said, America is really the democratic center of the world, and as the democratic center, because we’re the democracy we get to say who is the president of any country in the world; and we have found a nasty little opportunist that you just mentioned, and we have decided he is the head of it, and we’re giving all of Venezuela’s gold supply to him, even though the the Venezuelan people didn’t elect them. Well Chileans didn’t elect Pinochet either. As the “democratic center of the world,” America gets to designate the heads of any given country, by military force when necessary. And so of course, the gold supply was simply grabbed by England – which again, is a small branch, totally dependent on the United States – and grabbed the gold; they grabbed all of Venezuela’s holdings, its oil company’s distribution network and gas stations in the United States. And the problem goes back – Venezuela was tied in a knot long before [Hugo] Chávez. And it’s when the United States backed a series of dictators, ever since [Marcos] Perez Jiménez in the 1950s, who essentially drew up international loan contracts, not only pledging sovereign debt to whoever the bondholders were, but collateralizing Venezuela’s debt with all of its oil reserves, and all of the holdings of its oil company, including the US affiliates of all this. And so Venezuela is still suffering from the era of colonialism that America is trying to blame on Chávez and his successors and on socialism, instead of on the American assassination teams and killer squads that put in the dictators that pledged all of Venezuela’s oil reserves to the foreign bondholders. Max Blumenthal 43:50 It was recently reported that Bill Gates – besides creating this global Earth surveillance system, and having contracts with the NYPD for mass surveillance, and then asking for privacy in his divorce – has because become the largest landowner in the United States, the largest landlord, the largest owner of agricultural land. He also presides over the vaccine distribution system or program that the US is employing, GAVI. His apparatchiks, and people who came through the Gates network populate the World Health Organization. He is donating millions and millions of dollars to mainstream US media organizations. He is regarded as sort of, almost a scientific expert. Whereas when Joe Rogan says something that might be seen as sensible about vaccination, Anthony Fauci comes out and condemns him as not a scientific expert. I don’t even believe Bill Gates has a college degree. But I just was wondering, because of the dominant position that Bill Gates enjoys over all of these multilateral, international institutions, as well as internally within US domestic politics, where do you think he fits into your analysis of super imperialism? Michael Hudson 45:17 Well certainly, the private sector is trying to merge with government to the largest extent possible. I think it’s very interesting, what is the real effect of Gates’s purchase of American land? What he’s doing is not developing agriculture; he’s poisoning the land that he’s on. He is promoting the use of pesticides and herbicides that are destroying the soil quality of the land. If he were an agent of the KGB, trying to destroy American agriculture, to make it dependent on Russia’s resurgence in agriculture, you couldn’t ask for a better foreign agent, because the policies he’s footing are so destructive of soil fertility, so destructive of the bee population, so destructive of the biological element of the soil. And in fact, Gates is making the same mistake with his foundation that Khrushchev made in Russian agriculture, when he began to develop Siberia, thinking that that would restore Russia’s self-sufficiency and grain to get free of America’s threats of the grain embargo. The development of Siberian land under Khrushchev worked very well for three years, and then it collapsed. Because they didn’t use crop rotation; they didn’t use natural fertilizers; they didn’t use any replenishment of the soil. And the policy that Gates is promoting in agriculture, instead of replenishing the soil is poisoning it. So if you wouldn’t want your worst enemy to be in charge of taking over American agricultural land, you wouldn’t want him to have any role in that whatsoever. The fact is, he’s really stupid. Once you get $100 billion, your IQ drops 30%. And so he’s suffered from that. You want to just sort of belong. You’re not the same person anymore. And once you inherit money, right there, your IQ goes down 20%. So now he’s operating with 50% of an IQ. So of course, when you have his money wield influence over international organizations, you have a “democracy” taking over. Benjamin Norton 47:45 How do you think that Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation fits in to super imperialism and your analysis of US control of the international financial system. Michael Hudson 47:54 He is volunteering to get the support of the deep state by following policies that win the approval of the deep state. And essentially, imperialism is a mentality, and it’s a technocratic mentality, with the idea that all of the fruits of technology should be a kind of monopoly rent accruing to the financial sector. And he has bought into that mentality. And whether you’re in the private sector or in the state, if you’re into the rentier mentality, you’re into the super imperialism mentality. Benjamin Norton 48:37 Well do you also agree with the argument, it seems like Gates has invested not just billions of dollars, but really his life into what seems like the privatization of the global public health system. I mean, the Gates Foundation is one of the principal funders of the World Health Organization. This is not a state; this is a foundation run by a single capitalist. Michael Hudson 49:00 Well he made his money in his computer systems by having a monopoly power, and what bigger monopoly can you have than a monopoly over health care? Saying, “your money or your life.” So of course, he puts his money as a natural extension of having his monopoly. It’s the same mentality of trying to create a privatized monopoly to prevent health care from being offered freely – to say, every public utility, from education, to health care, to transportation has to be offered at cost, and that cost will include a profit – and in fact, whatever the market will bear for economic rent, and dividends, and management fees, and consulting fees, until it all looks like the military-industrial complex applied to the hitherto public sector. Max Blumenthal 50:07 Well and also as you mentioned, the micro-loans, the privatization of public education through charter schools, the cash-free system that he and other global oligarchs like Pierre Omidyar are trying to implement in places like India, where they’re trying to get the rural poor out of the cash system and get them in debt, and then I guess move them off their land. And we have seen suicides and social catastrophe already as a result of the implementation of this system. And now Gates, his obsession with vaccination, and openly stating that he does not want to remove patents; he is obsessed, along with the US government that represents his interests and the interests of Big Pharma, with protecting intellectual property, potentially at the peril of global health. And then, Pfizer announced that it sees a massive profit potential in the vaccination of children as young as two years old, with these experimental mRNA vaccine, so the CDC goes ahead and licenses that or is planning to license that. So it’s pretty obvious what’s taking place. I think what’s a little bit more confounding – I mean, this is a little bit of a diversion, and it’s really my last question; I hope we can get into some Patreon questions, and Ben, if you have anything else – it’s a little bit more confounding, as you know, that there has been this trans-atlantic alliance that the US has marketed, but now it is threatening sanctions on the most powerful economy of Europe, Germany, for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. And the US has, it seems – and I want to get your view on this – successfully disrupted this massive EU-Chinese trade deal by weaponizing human rights allegations, talking about the treatment of the Uighurs in Xinjiang, or the supposedly poisoning of Sergei Skripal, the poisoning of Alexei Navalny. These have all been weaponized to try to interrupt these deals with what were seen as core post-war US allies. How is Europe going to respond to this? I mean, they seem to be pretty much buckling under US pressure. But how is the EU and Europe responding to this obvious attack on their independence? And how could this alter the contours of super imperialism? Michael Hudson 52:58 Well I want to comment on what you said earlier about Pfizer. Pfizer just announced $3.5 billion profit just for the first quarter. What they call intellectual property is what used to be called monopoly rent is unearned income. And the intellectual property in vaccines means not only that other countries are going to have to pay a monopoly rent to Pfizer and other monopoly rent pharmaceutical companies, but that America has to block other countries from accepting Russia’s vaccine. And it is said that Russia’s attempt to export its Sputnik V vaccine is an attempt to create “dissension” in Europe, “dissension” in the Third World countries. It is “dissension” if you don’t let half of your population die. It’s an insistence that other countries have to die in order to guarantee the profits to Pfizer, once it is able to put in place, four years from now, the enough facilities to prevent the rest of the other 50% of the population from dying. This is absolutely evil. And unfortunately, the German elections that you mentioned, are coming up this fall. And the Americans are putting enormous pressure to push an anti-Russian, pro-NATO puppet, I think largely from the Green Party – which is the anti-green, right-wing military party in Europe, unlike the United States – the Green Party is all for sanctions against Russia, and saying you have to treat any socialist in the same way that we’ve treated Julian Assange. I mean Julian Assange is an example of America’s commitment to intellectual freedom and to personal freedom. And the assassination teams that it has been sending out to Ecuador. other Latin American countries recently are more examples of this. Max Blumenthal 55:14 Can I just interrupt? Sorry Professor. One example that I think our listeners and viewers might not know about that really strikingly illustrates the trend that you’re elucidating here, is that two days before the Czech Republic, echoing the US, accused Russia of having blown up a munitions dump in 2014, and fingered as suspects Petrov and Boshirov, the same supposedly Russian FSB or GRU agents who supposedly poisoned Sergei Skripal as the culprits – this happened this this happened two days after the Czech Republic had announced that it would accept the Russian Sputnik V five vaccine. And on April 20, two Czech Republic announced that it would no longer accept the Sputnik V vaccine. It looked like such a bogus intelligence intrigue cooked up by the CIA to sabotage Sputnik V in Central Europe. And of course, the US-funded NATO troll farm known as Bellingcat had already been investigating this munitions dump issue. So that was pretty telling. So I think it’s exactly right, what you’re saying. I just wanted to illustrate it with that. Michael Hudson 56:32 Well comedians all over Europe for having a field day with that. I mean, here are the two alleged KGB agents. Max Blumenthal 56:41 Not here, haha. Michael Hudson 56:43 Haha, ok well, I have seen many comedy shows about this. And the fact that they would have the same two KGB agents who allegedly poisoned the Skripals using the same false names in the same passports in Czechoslovakia – you know, there has to be a black comedy about about all of that. But you’re right, it’s amazing, the accusation that helping save lives in other countries by offering them free or inexpensive vaccines will undercut the profits of American companies is a crime against humanity, and must be punished by sanctions. It shows you that I guess the United Nations is dead. Max Blumenthal 57:35 And just picking up on something else you said. You mentioned the German Green Party. This sort of represents everything that’s fraudulent about what we consider green politics. It’s a pro-NATO, pro-war, pro-surveillance state green party. And there is a – I don’t want to call it a conspiracy theory – a suspicion, based on the appointment of Armin Laschet to Germany’s CDU party, the Christian Democratic Union of Angela Merkel, which has been the dominant party in Germany, that he is too pro-Russian, he’s made some comments criticizing US conduct in Syria, that the US is sort of quietly backing the Green Party and then we see the Green Party surging. What do you make of that? And what do you make of the idea of the US sort of backing this pro-NATO form of green politics, or a NATO-oriented Green New Deal to reestablish, or to retrench global US financial control? Michael Hudson 58:48 This has been consistent and unbroken US policy since World War Two. After World War Two, the United States interfered with Italian politics to keep the Italian communists out of power; it interfered in Greece by wholesale assassinations, both by England and America, of Greek communists; it interfered in Yugoslavia. What it has done in Germany is the same as it has been doing throughout Latin America, and the Third World, and other countries for the last 75 years. So this should not be surprising at all. What is appalling is that the European press is not dealing more with this, and that the American press isn’t picking up the little bit that the European press is commenting on. So even the Financial Times is saying what you just said about the German politics in the Green Party. The major German papers are – I mean, I’ve had numerous interviews with the Christian Democratic Party newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and other groups there. It’s appalling that the Germans are almost like the English in believing that because they were defeated in World War Two, there’s still a reliance not only on the United States, but also the resentment by the East Germans over the Russian occupation of East Germany, and the appalling conditions there, that Germany still is as if it’s juxtaposing East Germany to the United States without realizing how much the world has changed in the last 30 years. Benjamin Norton 1:00:41 Well, Professor Hudson, we’re at an hour here, and I don’t want to keep you too long. So we’re gonna start wrapping up and we have some questions. But before that, I wanted to point out, just while we were talking about Pfizer – here in Latin America, there was a story going around that didn’t really get much coverage, if any, in English in the US, and that was that Pfizer, when Argentina was in negotiations with Pfizer, Pfizer was demanding control over glaciers and fresh water in Argentina, as well as fish reserves, in order for the vaccines. Which ironically, is what pushed Argentina to ally with Russia, more closely with Russia – traditionally they have not been very close allies – and now Russia is providing the Sputnik V vaccine as one of the main vaccines for Argentina. So this is another example of the point you’ve often made about how, the more that the US Empire pushes other countries, that actually in some ways backfires and pushes them into an alliance with China and Russia. But just just in the last few minutes here, over on our Patreon, we actually have 15 questions. So I’m not gonna be able to ask all of them, unfortunately. And what I can say, Professor Hudson, is maybe maybe you could try to answer some of them briefly. But I’m not going to ask you all of them, just because I don’t want to keep you for another hour here, but just for a few minutes. So we have a few questions here; I’ll kind of combine them. One of them is about Modern Monetary Theory, MMT. And another one is about Dr. Stephanie Kelton’s book The Deficit Myth. So I’m wondering if you just want to briefly address Modern Monetary Theory, Stephanie Kelton, his work, and what you think about it? And then I would add my own question to that briefly: How does Modern Monetary Theory fit into super imperialism? Because the point I would add is that you can only do Modern Monetary Theory-style spending if you have a sovereign currency, and if that sovereign currency is backed by a military, and you don’t have to do trade in the US dollar. So in many ways, it seems to me that Modern Monetary Theory is only really possible for the US because of super imperialism. Michael Hudson 1:03:05 Well, Stephanie, has been the major promoter of the now obvious idea that governments do not have to borrow from bondholders in order to finance their budget deficits; they can simply print the money, and the effect of printing the money is no more inflationary than borrowing from billionaires. If you borrow from a billionaire, money that they would not have spent, and spend it into the economy, the monetary effect is exactly the same as simply printing the money and creating it. And Stephanie used to be the number one promoter of Modern Monetary Theory until of course she was overtaken by Donald Trump, who said, we can cut taxes, run an enormous deficit, and as long as we give all of the deficit to the wealthiest 1%, by using $8 trillion to bid up stock and bond prices, and only $2 trillion into the economy, we can create all the money we have. And of course, he has a larger audience than Stephanie has. We’ve gone around the world giving speeches together, but I think the largest audience we had was maybe 40,000 in a sports stadium in Italy once, where people came to hear us talk about Modern Monetary Theory. But we didn’t have Donald Trump’s constituency. And he has shown that Modern Monetary Theory works. The difference is that the Republicans’, and now the Democratic, and the Federal Reserve’s idea of monetary theory is, of course the government can create all the money it wants, simply by printing it, but because the government has been privatized by the commercial banks and the financial sector. And so when we do create money, we’re going to create it to enrich the 1% not the 99%. Well of course Stephanie and me, and the rest of the University of Missouri at Kansas City staff, Randy Ray, and the others, we all wanted – our whole idea of printing money to finance deficits was to spend it into the economy, to create a full-employment economy, like Pavlina Tcherneva has been urging. Our idea was not to create money to give it to create a stock and bond bubble. And so somehow, the idea of MMT has been hijacked by the right-wingers and the Federal Reserve that are running away wild with it beyond anything we could have imagined. Benjamin Norton 1:05:34 Well really quickly, Professor Hudson, I think there is a lot of value to Modern Monetary Theory, and you just articulated that. But at the same time, I’ve seen this, this argument, and I’m curious about your thoughts that – you could say that, for instance, Venezuela tried Modern Monetary Theory, but because the currency was totally devalued by an economic war by the United States; it doesn’t have the same kind of financial, international economic power that the United States has, or that a currency like the euro would have. So of course a country like Greece can’t do MMT because Greece doesn’t have a sovereign currency. And a country like Venezuela can do MMT. It seems to me that only a major economic power that other countries might use their currency to trade in, like the United States, would be able to carry out these policies. Michael Hudson 1:06:25 The key is the balance of payments effect. No country can go broke if its debts are denominated in its own currency. Venezuela can print all the domestic currency it needs to pay its debts to keep the economy going. But it can’t print dollars. Only the United States government can create dollars, and in as much as Venezuela’s foreign debt is in dollars, that is beyond the ability of its government and treasury to print. Benjamin Norton 1:06:35 Well and Greece can’t print euros. Michael Hudson 1:06:58 That’s right. It can’t do that either. And when the United States structured the Eurozone, it made sure that no central government, no national government could create its own national currency, so they can’t run budget deficits to spend into the economy to help a recovery. The Eurozone has turned Europe into a dead zone, because it is unable to use Modern Monetary Theory, because the European Central Bank – the terms of the Eurozone agreements are that no government can run a deficit of more than 3%. Well obviously if the United States functioned under the Eurozone rules, we couldn’t have had the Trump policies; we couldn’t have had the policies that President Biden is suggesting. So the Eurozone has committed economic suicide by following a pro-creditor, deflationary policy on the logic that, if the government doesn’t create credit, there’s only one source of financing for the economy, and that source is private banks. So the Eurozone economic philosophy is designed to enrich private banks and their credit creation, not the government credit duration. And that’s the key of Modern Monetary Theory. Either credit is going to be created by private banks and interest for the things that private banks lend credit for, or it will be created by government, for the public interest and the kinds of things that governments run deficits for, if they’re good governments, to spend into the economy. Benjamin Norton 1:08:49 Professor Hudson, here’s another interesting question from over at Patreon. Have you followed this debate on the so-called “Great Reset,” which the World Economic Forum has talked about; it’s their plan. We’ve also seen the Five Eyes countries have used this phrase, “Build back better,” we’ve seen again and again. There’s clearly coordination; the United States has used, the Biden administration has used that term a lot, the Australian Government, etc. So basically the World Economic Forum and other kind of neoliberal institutions have been pushing this Great Reset idea. There was a video that kind of went viral that was later taken down where there were 10 visions for our future in 2030, and the first one was that, “You will own nothing, but you will be happy.” And another point of it was that, like everything will be delivered via drone. Max Blumenthal 1:09:44 And you’ll subsist off Bill Gates’ Impossible Burgers or whatever. Benjamin Norton 1:09:50 It seems to be very similar to like a kind of a new shock doctrine, but do you have any thoughts? Max Blumenthal 1:09:54 Well they call it a Fourth Industrial Revolution. Michael Hudson 1:09:58 It’s so bizarre. It’s almost a comedy. It’s like the old comics they used to have in grade school, “What’s wrong with this picture?”, and you’d see birds flying upside down and all sorts of dogs walking people. It’s just such nonsense. Can you say about it? It’s silly. But again, that’s what happens when when you get rich enough to join the World Economic Forum, your IQ drops 30%, and you lose your sense of judgment. Max Blumenthal 1:10:33 Well I think there is a logic behind it, when you think about it in terms of a Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is to unlock new financial potential to keep global capitalism going. And this is where a Green New Deal comes in. Michael Hudson 1:10:0 Sure, if I was a billionaire, I would be subject to wealth addiction, and I’d want to own all the property in the world. And so of course, I’d tell everybody else, you’ll be happy with no property. I’ll own it all, and my friends will own it all. Of course, you’ll be happier. Just let us take it. I mean, that’s the message. Benjamin Norton 1:11:08 I don’t know if you saw Jodi Dean has a new book, and her argument is that we’re seeing a kind of, not necessarily a new economic transformation, but a shift into what you could just call neo-feudalism. And that is actually a totally different system, a different mode of production; it’s no longer even really capitalism. The Great Reset is just their vision for techno-neo-feudalism. Michael Hudson 1:11:30 Yes, this is not Karl Polanyi’s Great Transformation. It’s feudal, yeah, I’ve been saying all along, it’s neo-feudalism. That’s what a rentier class is, a rentier economy. The difference is that the financial interests today and the monopolists play the role that the landlords played in the 19th century, before democratic reform ended the landlord class as such. And by doing that, paved the way for the resurgence of the financial class and the monopolists. Ben Norton 1:12:02 Well a question that is very interesting – we were talking in our discussion before the interview, and Professor Hudson said he doesn’t follow cryptocurrencies a lot. But I’m just curious because we got a question over at Patreon, Professor Hudson, what do you think about cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin? Also Dogecoin has become popular. And this is related to non-fungible tokens, NFTs. There has been an argument that all of this is just a new form of speculation for rich people who have nothing to invest in. And there’s another argument, especially for NFTs, which is that this is a new way to launder money. But I’m wondering what you think about cryptocurrencies and these new technologies. Michael Hudson 1:12:48 Well I think that, functionally speaking, cryptocurrencies are like Andy Warhol etchings; they have no intrinsic value, except the fact that other people want to buy them, and enough other people may them as trophies. As people get richer and richer, they want to buy trophies. Andy Warhol etchings and other bad art is one example of a trophy, and having money in a cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, is another kind of a trophy. I think its main function is either money laundering or tax evasion. And certainly the amount of energy that it uses to mine Bitcoins makes it impractical as any actual means of payment. So you have essentially cryptocurrency only as a means of storing your liquid money in an asset that you think other people will buy, so it’s all based on expectations, nothing intrinsic at all. It gives new meaning to the phrase fictitious capital. Ben Norton 1:13:53 So someone asked here, over at Patreon, do you think that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin could be a way to help get off the dollar, to de-dollarize? Michael Hudson 1:14:03 No, they have no effect at all. It’s just shunted aside. If everybody would put their money on Andy Warhol etchings, that wouldn’t have anything to do about the dollar; it wouldn’t affect – money put in Bitcoin doesn’t affect international trade, or international investment, or tourism, or any of the actual payments among countries. It’s completely separate; it’s like money held in a Caribbean offshore banking center. Max Blumenthal 1:14:33 Max Kaiser and the Velvet Underground are not going to be happy about this. Michael Hudson 1:14:41 I’m not sure. I’ve known Max for many years. He has an audience that wants to hear about cryptocurrency, but I don’t think he has any. Maybe things have changed, but I would be very surprised. He and I don’t I have real disagreements about that. But I don’t have his audience. We have different audiences. So we talk about different things. Max Blumenthal 1:15:09 Right, well, I think you’ve found some common ground with central banks. Benjamin Norton 1:15:15 I also do want to point out, just to our audience, for people who don’t know – among Michael’s audience are multiple governments who he has advised. I was actually gonna say earlier, it’s just funny to me that, in the US, economic experts, the so-called “experts,” are people like Larry Summers, the big privatizers, who have destroyed entire economies – in the case of the former Soviet Union, to subordinate Russia’s economy to US capital. But to me, it just says a lot that they’re considered so-called economic “experts,” whereas Professor Hudson has advised the Chinese government and other governments. So to me, it says a lot about who the real experts are, and especially when you look at the the financial voodoo and the snake-oil salesmen that make up Chicago Boy economics. Michael Hudson 1:16:10 Wait a minute, my first client was the US government. And it was after Super Imperialism, they hired me to in 1972 to explain Super Imperialism to them, and they gave the Hudson Institute a $75,000 contract, most of which went to my salary, in order to explain it all. So I certainly was viewed – Super Imperialism was done as part of my consulting with the US government, as was the sequel, Global Fracture. And then the Canadian government, Mexican government, and it all spread out from there. Benjamin Norton 1:16:47 Well, a few more questions before we wrap up here, Professor Hudson. This is a very interesting question: How do you think that China can deal with a problem like extremism, especially in regard to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, CPEC, in neighboring volatile countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan. Because we’ve seen that a key part of the Belt and Road Initiative has been to better integrate Central Asia and South Asia, some of these countries that do have a problem with extremism and secessionist movements. And that’s really at the heart of the New Silk Road. Michael Hudson 1:17:24 China is not as interfering as the United States is. It is trying to carefully avoid taking sides, for better or worse, in any of this. Pepe Escobar follows all of this pretty closely. It’s certainly not going to get militarily involved, as the United States does. Its main concern is that the United States foreign legion, essentially America’s major ally, is Saudi Arabia. America has an alternative to socialism, and the alternative is Wahhabi fanaticism. And it has worked for Saudi Arabia to use ISIS and other Wahhabi terrorist organizations to try to destabilize Russia from the south, which was Stalin’s great fear in World War Two, and to destabilize China from the Uighur section. So what China is trying to do is to prevent foreign-backed terrorism and sabotage in its own country, while trying to just make a modus vivendi with other countries that have problems and not to try to engage in the kind of regime change, much less military occupation, that is the centerpiece of American policy. Benjamin Norton 1:18:44 There’s another question here – we’ll probably just ask two more, two or three more here just to wrap up – but this could be an entire interview, so of course, we can keep it brief, and maybe we can have you back another time to talk about this. One of our patrons asked about “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” and said, from your experience working with the Chinese government and other education systems, do you see the political will from the Xi Jinping administration to keep toward on the socialist path? Or do you feel that China is having a new battle with capitalists and financialized forces within the system since Deng Xiaoping’s reforms? Michael Hudson 1:19:24 Well in the late 19th century, everyone viewed socialism as the more efficient evolution of industrial capitalism. So I don’t think it helps to say whether China is socialist or capitalist. The famous phrase from Deng went, “White cat, black cat, it doesn’t matter as long as it catches mice.” I think the Chinese are sort of in the process continually of reinventing their economy, of seeing what works and what doesn’t. I think they’re operating on a pragmatic, ad hoc basis, and that pragmatism doesn’t lead them to think, is this capitalist or socialist? They don’t think in terms of an abstract generality; they think very specifically, does this particular industry help develop China or not? Is it part of our overall long-term plan for 2025, 2030, and beyond? How does this fit into developing the economic structure of our economy to make it more practical? So I don’t think labels really help in this at all. They present themselves as a Marxist country, but Marx didn’t talk about the kind of problems that they’re handling now. And as one of my fellow professors at the Peiking University said, Marxism is the Chinese word for politics. And they’re political; they’re pragmatic; and you should think really in terms of what are they doing structurally, and not thinking, what label, especially what Western label, are we going to print or paste on what they’re doing? Labels don’t help; you actually have to get into the nitty gritty, looking at how they’re handling tax policy, how they’re handling land ownership and credit policy, how they’re handling the budget deficits of rural communities – these are the problems that they’re dealing with right now. Benjamin Norton 1:21:45 Yeah, there’s definitely on the left a very long history of holier-than-thou kind of No True Scotsman sentiment, so I think that’s very refreshing. Here’s another question, Professor Hudson: What do you think is the regional and international significance of the RCEP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership? That’s the trade trade agreement sign between countries in eastern and southeastern Asia in 2020. Michael Hudson 1:22:13 You can’t tell yet. There’s still a jockeying for position with its relationship to the United States, Europe, and other countries, so too early to tell. Benjamin Norton 1:22:27 Ok, here’s an interesting question, he said, Dr. Hudson, do you think land tax or the Singapore model is best for creating affordable housing for workers? And what can we do on local and state levels? Michael Hudson 1:22:45 The land tax is by far the best way of keeping housing prices down, because as countries get more prosperous, the value of the rented location is going to go up. As you develop educational systems, and parks, and public utilities, then you’re going to have the rental value of given sites and properties, houses and office buildings rise. Now, landlords don’t create this prosperity; they don’t create the public infrastructure that raises value. If you do not tax it away, then all of this rental value is going to be available to be pledged to banks, and the banks will lend enough money so that the mortgage interest is going to absorb all of the land rent. If you tax away the land rent, then this cannot be capitalized into higher value. And if you tax the land rent, number one, you don’t have to tax income, you don’t have to have a sales tax, you tax only the unearned economic rent. And the argument for that was all laid out by Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill, and Marx, and Thorstein Veblen, and other people in the 19th century. So obviously, if you want low-cost housing, you want to prevent the financialization of real estate. And that I can assure you is one of the central problems that China is dealing with right now. And it’s a problem that I have a book coming out on this, a series of my lectures in China dealing with this, that will be available in about three months. Benjamin Norton 1:24:28 Final question, and we’ll wrap up. Thank you so much for joining us, Professor Hudson. This is another one of those questions that could go on forever, but we can just keep it brief, because we’re almost at 90 minutes here. Can any country attempt to move away from the dollar? Or does the economy need to be of a certain size? And does the country have to have specific resources to do so? Michael Hudson 1:24:51 Any country can move away from the dollar as long as they they are part of a system that has a critical mass. So the great threat to the dollar hegemony is that China, Russia, Iran, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization countries are going to be a critical mass, that Venezuela, much of Latin America, Africa, and the rest of Asia can all join. So, yes, as long as you’re part of, as long as there’s a viable alternative with a critical mass – the fact is, if you rely on the dollar, you’re probably going to get screwed. Because with the dollar, as we discussed earlier in the show, the US can grab your bank account, at any point; they can grab your gold reserves at any point. Even Germany is now asking for its gold reserves to be flown black slowly, month by month. Max Blumenthal 1:25:47 They can grab you. They can literally grab you. Look at Alex Saab. Michael Hudson 1:25:54 Right, indeed. So yes, any anyone can – within a few years, you’ll have an alternative economic order to the dollar, so that things don’t have to be the way they are. There is an alternative; Margaret Thatcher was wrong. And so is Biden and Blinken. Benjamin Norton 1:26:15 Excellent, well, thank you so much, Professor Hudson, for joining us. I just want to plug that a new version of his book Super Imperialism will be coming out soon, in a few months. And hopefully, Professor Hudson, we can have you back to discuss that. I’m looking forward to it. I think it’ll be very important. And I think we’re living through really a historical watershed moment, with what you just referenced, that there is a new international financial system being built right now, as we speak, and so few people acknowledge that’s even happening. So thanks so much for your work, and thanks for speaking with us. Michael Hudson 1:26:50 It’s been a very enjoyable discussion. Thanks for having me. Max Blumenthal 1:26:53 Thanks a lot, Professor. Benjamin Norton 1:26:55 Great, and if anyone wants to support the work we do here at Moderate Rebels, you can go over to Patreon, patreon.com. And I would also highly recommend checking out Michael Hudson’s website; that is Michael-Hudson.com. I would definitely never call myself anywhere near an economics specialist; I focus much more on politics. So I always find that such a valuable resource. I’m constantly going to read it. Because what’s good is that Professor Hudson has not only his articles, but he also has transcripts of all of the interviews that he does. And we will have a full transcript of this interview that he’s going to post over at Michael-Hudson.com. Thanks so much for joining us. And we will see you all next time. If you want to submit questions like we did in this broadcast, go to patreon.com. And we’ll see you all next time. Thanks.

Write an article about: The United States has many political prisoners. Here’s a list. 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.

Alex Saab, Black Panthers, Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, Julian Assange, Leonard Peltier, Meng Wanzhou, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Mun Chol Myong, Mutulu Shakur, political prisoners, Simón Trinidad

The US government holds many political prisoners, including journalists; national security state whistleblowers; Black, Indigenous, and Latino revolutionaries; foreign diplomats; Muslims detained without trial; women who defended themselves from attacks; and environmental activists. The United States constantly accuses its adversaries of holding political prisoners, while insisting it has none of its own. But for its entire history, the US government has used incarceration of its political opponents as a tool to crush dissent and advance the interests of economic elites. Well-known cases are those entrapped or framed in US national security state sting operations, or imprisoned with extreme sentences for a minor offense because of their political activism, such as Black revolutionary George Jackson. Each period of struggle by the working class and oppressed peoples against ruling-class control results in some activists locked up for their revolutionary work. “Political prisoner” has often meant those revolutionaries jailed for fighting their national oppression, as is the case with a great number of Black Panthers. In contrast, a century ago, most political prisoners in the United States were Marxists, labor organizers, and anti-war activists, such as Joe Hill, Eugene Debs, and Big Bill Haywood. Today, the US national security state considers its most dangerous enemies those who expose its crimes at home and abroad. There are also many thousands of incarcerated people who never received a fair trial, or were innocent of the crimes they have been jailed for. A high percentage of them are non-white, peoples subject to second-class citizenship in the US. A number are executed, such as Troy Davis, or spend their whole lives in prison. While the United States represents just over 4% of the world’s population, it holds approximately 20% of its prisoners. Black North Americans are imprisoned five times the rate of whites. The following list of political prisoners currently detained by the US government categorizes them into seven groups: A number of whistleblowers in the United States have previously been imprisoned or are wanted. These have included: Among those imprisoned today are the following: Julian Assange is a renowned journalist and editor of WikiLeaks who was arrested in 2019 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had political asylum since 2012. In April 2022, a British judge ordered Assange extradited to the US to face up to 175 years in prison for publishing truthful information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US has indicted Assange under the Espionage Act, even though he published the same information as did the New York Times and Washington Post. Researcher Mark Weisbrot explained in 2017, “Julian Assange is a political prisoner. … His crime, and that of WikiLeaks, has been the practice of journalism, and particularly in defense of human rights and civil liberties. … Assange and WikiLeaks’ real offense was to expose the crimes of the most powerful people in the world.” Extraditing Assange, a journalist and Australian citizen, to the United States would have even more negative repercussions for our present remnants of free press and democratic rights. No case better embodies the old IWW banner for “class war prisoners”: “Remember! We’re in here for you, you’re out there for us.” Roger Waters and Noam Chomsky have also spoken about the importance of the Assange case. Daniel Hale has been imprisoned since 2019. He was sentenced to 45 months for releasing documents showing US military drone strikes in Afghanistan largely killed innocent people. Hale participated in the drone program while in the Air Force and NSA from 2009 to 2013, and later became an outspoken critic and a defender of whistle blowers. Hale is believed to have been the source material for The Drone Papers. The documentary National Bird documents whistleblowers in the US drone assassination program. For his truth-telling, Hale received the Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence and the Blueprint for Free Speech International Whistleblowing Prize. Chris Hedges has written about his case. Joshua Schulte, a former hacker employed by the CIA, was blamed for releasing two billion pages of secret CIA data, known as Vault 7, to WikiLeaks. Vault 7 programs were CIA techniques used to compromise Wifi networks, hack into Skype, defeat anti-virus software, hack Apple and Android smartphones in overseas spying operations, turn internet-connected televisions into listening devices, and commandeer the guidance systems in cars. Schulte has been imprisoned since 2018 and faces up to 80 years, in brutal conditions similar to those endured by Assange today. Ana Belén Montes was a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst who alerted Cuba of US plans of aggression. She was arrested in 2001, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage, and was held in solitary confinement in Fort Worth, Texas for most of her 21 years behind bars. Montes told the judge, “I consider that the policy of our government towards Cuba is cruel and unjust, deeply unfriendly; I considered myself morally obligated to help the Island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values ​​and our political system on it. We have displayed intolerance and contempt for Cuba for four decades. We have never respected Cuba’s right to define its own destiny, its own ideals of equality and justice. I do not understand how we continue to try to dictate. … how Cuba should select its leaders, who its leaders should not be and what laws are the most appropriate for that nation. Why don’t we let them decide how they want to conduct their internal affairs.” Mun Chol Myong is a North Korean was extradited and imprisoned in the United States on March 20, 2021. Mun was arrested in Malaysia in May 2019 after a Washington, DC judge issued a warrant for his arrest. His supposed “crime” of conspiracy and money laundering in fact consisted of supplying needed goods to the DPRK by circumventing US sanctions on the country. A top Justice Department official claimed foreigners who have never been in the US can be extradited to it for violating domestic laws. The US has enforced a blockade against North Korea since 1950, the start of the US war on Korea, designed to cripple its economic and social development. Alex Saab, a Venezuelan diplomat, was jailed on June 12, 2020 in Cabo Verde on orders of the United States. He was then seized by US agents and brought to a Miami prison on October 16, 2021. Saab was arrested while on a diplomatic mission to procure food and energy supplies to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, which was largely caused by the illegal US blockade of the nation. As a diplomat, Saab has immunity from detention based on the UN Vienna Convention of 1961. The UN Human Rights Commission and other international human rights defenders have denounced his extradition. The National Lawyers Guild calls for Saab’s immediate release. Simón Trinidad (Ricardo Palmera) was a long-time leader in mass movements for social change in Colombia, and is a top negotiator for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). In 2003, he was sent to Ecuador to make contact with UN official James Lemoyne, as part of efforts to revive peace talks with the Colombian government, and begin communication on the exchange of prisoners of war. He was captured in Ecuador in 2004 and then extradited to the US on charges of narco-trafficking and kidnapping, and subjected to four separate trials, due to repeated mistrials. Ultimately, he was sentenced to 60 years at the Florence “Supermax” prison in Colorado. Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer and deputy chair of the board of Chinese tech giant Huawei, was imprisoned in Canada in 2018 on a US extradition request, after Washington accused her company of misleading British bank HSBC over its business dealings in Iran, thereby violating its illegal unilateral sanctions. Meng was released in September 2021. Many Black political prisoners in the United States were targets of the police state’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in the 1960s and ’70s, when the FBI sought to destroy the movement for Black freedom. As journalist Glen Ford explained, “If you attempt to lead Black people on an independent political path, the US state will seek to neutralize you, imprison you, or kill you. If you exercise your right to defend yourself, and your people, from the oppressive arm of the state, they make you into an outlaw, and hunt you down.” The FBI said it goals in COINTELPRO were to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize,” adding that “no opportunity must be missed to exploit through counterintelligence techniques … for maximum effectiveness … and a final goal should be to prevent the long range growth of militant black organizations, especially among youth.” This police state operation against Black liberation resulted in at least 38 Black Panther Party members being killed, including Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, with hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges for their armed self-defense actions, several for more than 45 years. The website Members of the Black Panther Party Still Imprisoned registered the number incarcerated in 2014, although several have died since then. The films “The FBI’s War on Black America” and “Cointelpro 101” document the police state’s dirty work. Those currently imprisoned include: Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most prominent former Black Panther political prisoner. In 1981, COINTELPRO style, he was sentenced to death for the murder of a Philadelphia cop. Judge Albert Sabo, who ruled in his case and in his appeals, was heard by a court reporter to state “I’m going to help them fry the ni**er.” Black jurors were excluded. Witnesses were bribed and threatened to lie on the stand. Documents were hidden in the state prosecutor’s office. Mumia was an organizer and campaigner against police abuses in the Black community, and was the president of the Association of Black Journalists. During his imprisonment, now commuted to life, he has published several books. More information can be found in the films “Mumia Abu Jamal: A Case For Reasonable Doubt?” and “Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary” or the websites freemumia.com and bringmumiahome.com. Leonard Peltier was an activist in the American Indian Movement (AIM) whose goal was to organize indigenous communities to stand up for their rights. Sentenced to life as a result of a COINTELPRO operation, he has been imprisoned for 46 years for killing two FBI agents. Peltier participated in the AIM encampments on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where a 1975 shootout instigated by the FBI occurred. Some 64 Native Americans, most with ties to AIM, were murdered. Their deaths went uninvestigated by the FBI. Evidence exonerating Peltier in the FBI case was withheld by the FBI. In his appeals, the government admitted it had no evidence he killed the two FBI agents, suppressed evidence proving this, and fabricated other “evidence.” The other AIM members tried for the killings were exonerated in trial by reason of self-defense. One prosecutor admitted, “Your honor, we do not know who killed those agents. Further, we don’t know what participation, if any, Mr. Peltier had in it.” Amnesty International, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, the American Association of Jurists, and 54 Congresspeople, among many others, have called for his freedom. The film  “Incident at Ogala,” produced by Robert Redford, and the best-selling book “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI’s War on the American Indian Movement” made the case widely known. More information can be found at the websites whoisleonardpeltier.info and Peltier’s Prison Writings. Mutulu Shakur, of the Republic of New Afrika movement, participated in presentations to the UN on discrimination experienced by Black communities, and by 1970 a target of the FBI’s COINTELPRO infiltration. He helped free Assata Shakur from prison in 1979, and she now has a bounty on her head. In 1988 he was convicted of conspiracy related to a 1981 robbery where a guard and two police officers were killed, and sentenced to 60 years. At no time did the evidence show that Mutulu Shakur killed anyone. He was also convicted for aiding in the prison escape of Assata Shakur, who has asylum in Cuba. At two trials the evidence indicated others were responsible for the deaths (one became a government witness in return for a sentencing deal). The remaining defendants were acquitted for the murder allegations. More information can be found at mutulushakur.com and the Jericho Movement. Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) was chairman of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and a Black Panther leader. FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover himself named H. Rap Brown – along with Stokely Carmichael, Elijah Muhammad, and Maxwell Stanford – as targets of COINTELPRO. In a October 1971 standoff with police, he was shot and seized, and spent five years in Attica prison. From 1992 to 1997, the FBI closely surveilled Al-Amin, generating pages of 44,000 documents. In 2000, two sheriffs came to Al-Amin’s store with a warrant for failure to appear in court for a case later thrown out. Both were shot and one killed. Al-Amin was sentenced to life without parole, even though Otis Jackson confessed to the shootings. More information is available at whathappened2rap.com. Veronza Bowers was an organizer in the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s. He has been imprisoned for 49 years for the murder of a US park ranger, on the word of two government informers. There were no eye witnesses and no other independent evidence. See more at veronza.org and prisonersolidarity.com. Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (who died in prison in 2016) were leaders of the Black Panthers in Omaha, Nebraska in the 1960s, and targets of COINTELPRO. Both men were given life sentences on charges of killing a policeman. They were convicted on the testimony of a teenager who was beaten by the police and threatened with the electric chair if he did not incriminate Poindexter and Mondo. Amnesty International has identified them as “prisoners of conscience.” Poindexter has been imprisoned for 52 years. The book “FRAMED: J. Edgar Hoover, Cointelpro and the Omaha Two story” and the documentary “Ed Poindexter & Mondo We Langa” offer more information. Kamau Sadiki (Freddie Hilton), was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, and close to Assata Shakur. He has been imprisoned since 2002, for a 1971 murder of a police officer. Back in 1971, two witnesses failed to identify Kamau from a line-up, and there was no physical evidence that implicated Sadiki, so the case was closed. In 2002 Kamau was re-arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment for the killing – only after he refused to work with the government to induce Assata Shakur to leave Cuba for another country, where they could seize her. See more at freekamau.com. Joy Powell organized protests against police brutality and corruption, demanding accountability for its victims, which led her to be targeted by the Rochester Police Department. In 2006, Powell was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to 16 years for burglary and assault. No evidence or eyewitnesses linked her to the crime. Then in 2007, while imprisoned, Powell was falsely charged with murder, a cold case from 1992, and given another 25-year sentence, to begin upon the completion of her 16-year sentence. See freejoypowell.org, and the article “America is Still Locking People Up for Their Activism, Including Black Women.” Alvaro Luna Hernandez (Xinachtli) is a Texas activist for Chicano rights and against police brutality. He was continually targeted by the police, who in 1996 attempted to arrest him on a spurious robbery charge that was later dismissed. The police used violence to arrest him, and Hernandez was sentenced to 50 years in prison on trumped up charges of threatening a sheriff while resisting arrest. More information can be found at freealvaro.net and prisonersolidarity.com. Other political prisoners include Ruchell Cinque Magee, Fred “Muhammad” Burton, Ronald Reed, Kenny Zulu Whitmore. More information is available at the Prison Activist Resource Center, Jericho Movement, freedomarchives.org, spiritofmandela.org, and prisonersolidarity.com. The Coalition for Civil Freedoms published a report in 2021 titled The Terror Trap: The Impact of the War on Terror on Muslim Communities. It explains: more than half of all alleged terrorism cases involved the use of paid informants who were usually responsible for concocting the plots in collusion with the FBI. Sensationalistic media coverage of the most high-profile cases almost never made mention of the fact that these terrorist conspiracies were the work of FBI informants. … the FBI has built a network of more than 15,000 registered informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the bureau can then claim it is winning the War on Terror … the FBI engaged in a witch hunt, convicting hundreds of Muslims on pretext terrorism charges, even though the government knew that the defendants were not in communication with international terrorists, had not injured a single person or piece of property, and had no means to carry out a terrorist attack even if they wanted to. For the government to tell the truth about the convictions would have undercut their own prosecutions, and exposed hundreds of Muslim convictions for the sham they were. No matter how innocent the government knew the defendants to be, it apparently decided that they had to publicly treat the defendants as the worst of the worst, or lose the fear factor which they had used so effectively to enact harsher laws. The Newburgh Four, Libertyville Seven, and Romeo Langhorne are examples of this FBI entrapment. Here are more current political prisoners: Holy Land 5: Shukri Abu-Baker and Ghassan Elashi of the Holy Land Foundation were each sentenced in 2008 to 65 years in prison. Three others were sentenced to 13-20 years: Mufid Abdulqader, Mohammad El-Mezain (released and deported to Turkey in 2022) and Abdulrahman Odeh (released in 2020). All were imprisoned for giving more than $12 million to charitable groups in Palestine which funded hospitals and schools and fed the poor and orphans. The US government said these groups were controlled by Hamas, which it lists as a terrorist organization, even though it is the elected government of Gaza. Some of these charitable groups still received US funds through USAID as late as 2006. Testimony was given in the case by an Israeli government agent whose identity and evidence was kept secret from the defense. This marked the first time in US legal history that testimony has been allowed from an expert witness with no identity, therefore making them immune from perjury. The book “Injustice: The Story of the Holy Land Foundation Five” details the case. Aafia Siddiqui is a US-educated Pakistani neuroscientist who came to the US in 1990, then returned to Pakistan with her family in 2002. In 2003 she was kidnapped by US and Pakistani agents and held in Bagram Air Base through 2008. She was convicted of attempted murder of her US interrogators in Afghanistan in 2008 – though she was the person shot – and sentenced to 86 years in prison in Fort Worth, Texas. The weapon she allegedly fired in the interrogation room did not have her fingerprints, nor was there evidence the gun was fired. Four British Parliamentarians wrote to President Barack Obama that “there was an utter lack of concrete evidence tying Dr Siddiqui to the weapon she allegedly fired at a US officer,” and that she should be freed immediately. Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark described Aafia’s plight as the “worst case of individual injustice I have ever witnessed.” More information is available at aafia.org and aafiamovement.com. Since 2002, a total of 779 Muslim men and boys as young as 10 have been seized and held at Guantánamo, a military base in Cuban territory that is illegally occupied by the United States. Washington claimed the prisoners are outside US and international law, and thus do not have the rights of POWs. Nearly all of the prisoners were held without charge or trial. Many were tortured to produce a compliant “learned helplessness” – the goal of former US slave-breaking. Some detainees were even tortured to death. In 2003, 23 prisoners attempted suicide in a mass protest against their abuse. The torture was directed by two psychologists, James E Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. By any definition of political prisoner, most political prisoners in Cuba are at the US military-torture center at Guantanamo. Today there are still 36 prisoners, only 11 of whom have been charged with war crimes, while just two have been convicted – and by “military commissions,” which Amnesty International declared do not meet fair trial standards. Another 20 have been approved for release but remain locked up. Five detainees are “forever prisoners,” held without charge or trial, but not to be released. The websites closeguantanamo.org and witnessagainsttorture.com and films The Report and The Mauritanian provide more information. Nearly three in 10 women in the United States have endured male physical violence or stalking by a partner. Nearly one in five women are raped in their lifetime. Almost four women are killed a day by a male partner. Half of all women murdered are killed by men they know intimately, yet hundreds of women are in prison for killing their abuser in self-defense. The US legal system treats these as individual cases, not for what it is: the systematic patriarchal violence against women as an oppressed group. The website Survived and Punished and Defend Survivors provide more information about this problem. Marissa Alexander, a Black women from Florida, was sentenced to 20 years in 2013 for firing a warning shot inside her home to ward off her brutal husband, against whom she had an order of protection. Her affirmation that Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law applied to her because she was defending herself was rejected. The same year, George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin based on that same law. National protests finally freed her in 2017. Fran Thompson was an environmental activist in Nebraska. She has been in jail for 30 years for murder, sentenced to life without parole. She had defended herself, killing a man who was threatening to sexually assault her after he broke into her home. She was also targeted because of her environmental work, and was not allowed to plea self-defense. Thompson had taken on the prosecutor and local government during her activism, having organized against two big projects, an egg factory and a nuclear waste facility, which would have brought the county big profits. Maddesyn George has been imprisoned since July 2020. She was given a 6.5-year sentence for defending herself from sexual assault by a white man. She is a member of the Colville Confederated Tribes. Indigenous women experience murder rates 10 times higher than the national average. The majority of these murders are committed by non-Native people on Native-owned land. See: MMIW USA and Coalition to Stop Violence against Native Women. A number of environmental activists, animal rights supporters, and water protectors have challenged corporate abuses and have been jailed. During the original so-called Green Scare, in the 1990s to early 2000s, the US government sought to squash animal rights and environmental activism, acting in the interest of corporations that profit from damaging the earth. A more recent series of jailings have specifically targeted people protesting against pipeline construction. The following are political prisoners: Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, a member of Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front was arrested in 2018 for his participation in setting fire to a slaughterhouse. Between 1995 and 2001, a group of Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front supporters caused more than $45 million in damages in a series of arsons. Dibee is imprisoned awaiting sentencing. Marius Mason (formerly Marie Mason), a member of the Earth Liberation Front, was arrested in 2008 for an attack on a lab building at Michigan State University that was creating genetically modified organisms, with funding from mega-corporation Monsanto, the producer of Agent Orange. Mason was also sentenced for damage to commercial logging equipment. No one was harmed by these actions. Mason’s 22 year-sentence is the longest yet for any of the Green Scare cases of those committing crimes against property of corporations. Jessica Reznicek, of the Catholic Workers Movement, took action in 2016 to stop the environmentally destructive Dakota Access Pipeline by dismantling construction equipment and pipeline valves and setting fire to construction machinery. She would have been handed three years, but was sentenced to eight, with the added sentence for terrorism, even though no person was physically harmed. Reznicek’s actions against private property were “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government,” meaning a person who takes direct action against an energy company can be treated as an enemy of the state. Reznicek explained, “What we did do was fight a private corporation that has run rampant across our country seizing land and polluting our nation’s water supply.” This list belies the myth that the United States has no political prisoners. Political prisoners have no shared ideology. Standing for justice does not necessarily mean that one defends their political views; it means that one demands their freedom because they have been unjustly incarcerated. Many hundreds of thousands of people have been unjustly incarcerated in the United States, but in these cases, it is clear that they were detained because of their political beliefs and activism, and that by definition makes them political prisoners.

Write an article about: Weapons corporation sees ‘benefits’ from US wars on Russia, China, Yemen. 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.

China, military-industrial complex, Raytheon, Russia, Yemen

The CEO of top arms manufacturer Raytheon admitted in a phone call, “I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit” and “opportunities” from the US war drive with Russia over Ukraine, bombing of Yemen, and conflict in the South China Sea. The CEO of top weapons manufacturer Raytheon has told investors that potential US wars with Russia and China offer the corporation economic “benefits” and “opportunities.” These remarks come at a time when tensions are high between NATO and Russia over Ukraine, and while the United States is waging a new cold war to encircle and contain China. The comments also show how Raytheon and other Pentagon contractors have knowingly profited from the ongoing war on Yemen, which marks its seventh anniversary in March 2022. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have been attacking civilian areas in the poorest country in West Asia, using weapons provided by the US and Britain. The investment website The Motley Fool published a transcript of Raytheon’s fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call, held on January 25, featuring Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Greg Hayes. In the conversation, an analyst named Peter Arment asked Hayes the following: Hey, Greg, maybe just switching over to defense, could you maybe just give us a little bit of some of the things you’re expecting for maybe on the international side? Historically Raytheon has had a lot of international awards, what your expectations might be for a book-to-bill and if you’re seeing any kind of increased input from international countries just given the rising tension? Thanks. The Raytheon CEO responded saying, “I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit” and “opportunities” from the US war drive with Russia over Ukraine, bombing of Yemen, and conflict with Beijing in the South China Sea: Yeah, Peter. It’s a good question, and I think the answer is obviously, we are seeing, I would say, opportunities for international sales. We just have to look to last week where we saw the drone attack in the UAE, which have attacked some of their other facilities. And of course, the tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it. On January 21, Saudi Arabia used a Raytheon laser-guided bomb to attack a detention center in Yemen. At least 91 people were killed, and 236 more were injured. Saudi Arabia attacked a detention center in Yemen with a US-made laser-guided bomb from Raytheon, killing 91 people and injuring 236. President Joe Biden claimed he'd end US support for Saudi bombing of Yemen, but has not. Instead he sold it more weaponshttps://t.co/vMZyz5Ahsv — Multipolarista (@Multipolarista) January 30, 2022

Write an article about: As millions died in Covid pandemic, bankers made a killing. 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.

banks, Covid-19, economics, Fed, Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Michael Hudson, Morgan Stanley, pandemic, Wall Street

As the Covid-19 pandemic ripped through society, the US government abandoned its people—but made sure Wall Street banks enjoyed “their best period since the 2007-09 financial crisis.” Capitalists made $5 trillion More than 5.55 million people around the world have died from Covid-19. In the United States alone, at least 854,000 people have lost their lives. And the pandemic has destroyed the livelihoods of many more, bankrupting families, devastating communities. Meanwhile, billionaire oligarchs have made a killing. The 10 richest capitalists on Earth doubled their wealth during the pandemic, while the incomes of 99% of humanity decreased. And the Western financial press is practically rubbing it in our faces. Reuters published a shockingly blunt story boasting of how US banks have, well, made bank during the global health crisis. Titled “Wall Street banks eye ‘new normal’ for trading revenue,” the Reuters news wire was republished at the official website of the Nasdaq stock exchange. The article gloats, “A massive injection of cash into capital markets by the Federal Reserve led to unprecedented liquidity and trading activity through the pandemic as investors sought opportunities to cash in.” The report then chirps happily, “Banks with large trading desks such as Goldman Sachs GS.N, JPMorgan JPM.N and Morgan Stanley MS.N have been the biggest beneficiaries of market volatility, enabling traders to enjoy their best period since the 2007-09 financial crisis.” As millions around the world died in a global pandemic, big banks like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley were "the biggest beneficiaries of market volatility, enabling traders to **enjoy their best period since the 2007-09 financial crisis**" Capitalism is a death cult pic.twitter.com/6aJrq0xO6D — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 19, 2022 I discussed this “massive injection of cash into capital markets by the Federal Reserve” in an interview with economist Michael Hudson. The Fed quietly bailed out big banks in September 2019 with $4.5 trillion of emergency repo loans, which according to Hudson appear to have blatantly violated US law. This is in addition to the trillions more the US Treasury poured into the financial sector. The Reuters article continues, quoting Goldman Sachs’ chief executive officer, David M. Solomon, who told analysts, “None of us could have anticipated the environment that we’ve lived through over the last two years and particularly the environment this year, which was obviously a significant tailwind for our business.” Note how Goldman Sachs’ CEO wasn’t saying the bank couldn’t have anticipated the millions of deaths; rather, he was saying Wall Street couldn’t have anticipated enjoying its highest profits since the financial crash 14 years ago. Solomon wasn’t alone. JPMorgan Chase CFO Jeremy Barnum noted that 2020 and 2021, the peak of the pandemic, were “record years.” The Reuters report quoted an analyst at the investment banking and asset management firm JMP Securities, Devin Ryan, who said, “The bar from 2020 and 2021 is quite high.” The attitudes of the bankers cited in the piece make it clear: capitalism is a death cult. While millions of people died in a historic global pandemic, capitalist oligarchs orchestrated a massive upward transfer of wealth. “The world’s ten richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day— during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty,” Oxfam reported. Capitalist oligarchs made have made $5 trillion during the pandemic, “the biggest surge in billionaire wealth since records began,” Oxfam said. The humanitarian organization calculated that inequality contributes to the death of at least 21,000 people every day — one person every four seconds. While the right wing has hysterically warned of “Covid authoritarianism” and an impending “biomedical state” supposedly on the horizon, the reality is that the United States is already largely the libertarian dystopia that the Koch Brothers and their fellow capitalist oligarch brethren have dreamt of (and invested a whole lot of money in creating). The ruling ideology of the United States is every man for himself, dog eat dog. This is reflected so clearly in the US government’s response to the largest global health crisis in a century. This laissez-faire strategy has been bipartisan. Under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the US federal government has essentially done nothing substantive, leaving each state to decide its own fate. The Biden White House made that clear, telling people they’re on their own. And the US Department of Health and Human Services has told hospitals that, as of February 2, they no longer even have to report daily Covid-19 deaths to the federal government. 850,000 people in the US have died from Covid-19, and in a few months it's likely to surpass 1 million. So what is the US government's strategy to stop those deaths? Simple: tell hospitals they can stop reporting Covid deaths. Don't want to reach 1M? Just stop counting! Murica! https://t.co/qRltNp9Eih — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) January 15, 2022 Biden claimed he would reverse Trump’s inaction, but his administration has just sat by as 2,000 to 3,000 North Americans perish per day due to Covid-19. On January 18, 2022 alone, 2,990 people in the US died of the virus. The disastrous consequences of this libertarian approach are clear for the world to see: at least 854,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States, according to official statistics. This is a breathtaking level of human loss — surpassed only by the barbarism of Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right regime in Brazil, which has overseen 622,000 Covid-19 deaths in a population of 213 million. (If Brazil had implemented the same policies, or lack thereof, with the population of the United States, 335 million, it would have 978,000 Covid-19 deaths.) Meanwhile, in the mainland People’s Republic of China, with a population of 1.4 billion, there have been fewer than 5,000 deaths. In 2021, there were just two Covid-19 deaths in mainland China. Two. If the United States had the same population of China, we would be talking about 3.6 million dead from Covid-19. But then again, China’s biggest banks are state owned — and it is the Chinese government that controls the financial sector, not the banks that control the state, like they do in the United States. So it’s difficult for elites in China to make a killing like bankers do in the US “democracy.” To someone who lives under U.S. capitalism, a medical system that can successfully curb a pandemic like COVID-19 may seem like fantasy. What did the people, government, and Communist Party of China do to accomplish this incredible result?https://t.co/ohtnJyCygu — Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslweb) January 7, 2022

Write an article about: Mexico’s AMLO sent Biden letter blasting US ‘interventionism’ and funding of opposition groups. 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.

AMLO, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, CIA, Claudio X González, Ford Foundation, Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad, Mexico, NED, Nicaragua, USAID, Venezuela

Mexico’s President AMLO sent Joe Biden a letter condemning US “interventionism”, such as USAID funding of right-wing opposition groups that are trying to destabilize his elected government. Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador sent US leader Joe Biden a letter criticizing Washington for meddling in his country’s internal affairs. The document condemned funding that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has given to right-wing opposition groups that have organized protests against Mexico’s elected government, seeking to destabilize it. USAID is a notorious CIA cutout that has been used to finance opposition groups and regime-change attempts in countries that challenge Washington’s foreign-policy interests. López Obrador, who is popularly referred to by his initials AMLO, is Mexico’s first left-wing president in decades. AMLO came into office in December 2018 vowing to end the “long and dark neoliberal night”. He has nationalized the country’s lithium reserves and electrical grid, reversed the partial privatization of the oil industry, boosted social spending, and significantly increased the minimum wage. This incredible graph shows how much the real minimum wage (measured in purchasing power parity) has increased in Mexico under the left-wing government of President AMLO Note how the minimum wage was totally stagnant in two decades of neoliberal governments Credit: @mario_campa pic.twitter.com/ZlGxGvb5QF — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) December 25, 2022 On May 2, AMLO sent a letter to Biden. The Mexican president’s office made the document public on its official website. “For a while, the government of the United States, in particular the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has funded groups openly opposed to the legal and legitimate government that I represent, which is without a doubt an act of interventionism, violating international law and the respect that there should be between free and sovereign states”, AMLO wrote. “Moreover, a few days ago it was announced that said agency will increase the budget given to organizations opposed to our government, as appears published on the official website of the State Department”, he added. The Mexican president read out the letter in his morning press conference on May 3. His office’s official YouTube channel even made a special video with the clip. “I feel that it is very arrogant, very offensive, and I can’t remain quiet”, AMLO commented, in reference to the US meddling. Mexico’s President AMLO sent Joe Biden a letter condemning US “interventionism”, specifically citing USAID funding of right-wing opposition groups that are trying to destabilize AMLO's elected government. Full video here: https://t.co/LFwp7ZojCy pic.twitter.com/2JrCdI7zyx — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) May 9, 2023 USAID and other US government organizations, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), have funded numerous right-wing opposition groups in Mexico, particularly media outlets and so-called “civil society” organizations. A prominent example is Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity, or MCCI), a group founded by right-wing multimillionaire oligarch Claudio X. González, one of AMLO’s most fervent opponents. MCCI disclosed on its website that it is financed by USAID and NED, as well as the notorious CIA-linked Ford Foundation. This right-wing opposition leader in Mexico, rich businessman Claudio X. González, who leads a Pinochet-style neoliberal anti-AMLO alliance called Sí por México, is funded by the US government. His "NGO" "Mexicanos contra la corrupción" is funded by USAID & NED, both CIA cutouts https://t.co/iIJpNQoj4o pic.twitter.com/Job07hxtKf — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) April 3, 2021 The CIA used USAID “humanitarian aid” flights to send weapons to the far-right Contra death squads in Nicaragua in the 1980s. When the Sandinistas returned to power in 2007, through democratic elections, USAID spent billions of dollars funding right-wing opposition groups, which then played a key role in a violent coup attempt in 2018, which caused hundreds of deaths. USAID collaborates closely with the US military, and frequently uses “humanitarian” cover to advance the interests of the Pentagon. In a regime-change operation targeting Venezuela in 2019, USAID was used as a political weapon, working with the US Department of Defense to try to overthrow the leftist government of President Nicolás Maduro. The United Nations and International Red Cross condemned USAID’s role in the attempted putsch in Venezuela, clearly stating that the US government organization was not providing humanitarian aid. An internal USAID audit even admitted in 2021 that the operation had violated humanitarian principles. The NED has played an even more nefarious role in funding US meddling schemes and regime-change operations. In a 1991 report boasting of the “spyless coups” that Washington had sponsored in the former Soviet Union, the Washington Post described the US government’s NED as “the sugar daddy of overt operations”, crediting it for “dispensing money to anti-communist forces behind the Iron Curtain”. A co-founder of the NED, Allen Weinstein, told the Post, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”. US foundations like Ford and Rockefeller have historically played a similar role, working closely with the CIA to fund anti-communist groups, including violent ones. In her book The Cultural Cold War, journalist Frances Stonor Saunders showed how the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations “were conscious instruments of covert US foreign policy, with directors and officers who were closely connected to, or even members of American intelligence”. This extremely important book The Cultural Cold War documents how the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation have long been "conscious instruments of covert US foreign policy, with directors and officers who were closely connected to, or even members of American intelligence" pic.twitter.com/SxbBPSHhlM — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) July 13, 2020 In his May 3 press conference condemning Washington’s meddling, President López Obrador proposed that US-Mexico relations should be based on “cooperation and friendship”. “Together we should confront problems, like the migration issue, like drug trafficking, especially fentanyl”, he stressed. In Washington, however, far-right US politicians have called for the opposite. Prominent Republican Congress members have urged the US military to invade Mexico to attack drug cartels, even proposing legislation to justify an intervention. Hawkish US politicians have blamed Mexico and China for the opioid epidemic in the United States, while ignoring how large pharmaceutical corporations profited from creating the problem in the first place. AMLO has repeatedly condemned the US threats against his country. On March 18, he organized a massive rally in the heart of Mexico City, celebrating the anniversary of the expropriation of the country’s oil reserves and shouting, “We remind those hypocritical and irresponsible politicians that Mexico is an independent and free country, not a colony or a protectorate of the United States!” In a tweet on April 1, AMLO fumed: They threaten to invade; they sell high-powered weapons in their markets; they do nothing for their youth; they suffer – unfortunately – from the terrible and deadly fentanyl pandemic, but don’t address its causes. They don’t care about welfare, only money. Amenazan con invadir, venden armas de alto poder en sus tianguis, no hacen nada por sus jóvenes, padecen —lamentablemente— de la terrible y mortal pandemia del fentanilo, pero no atienden las causas. No les preocupa el bienestar, sólo el dinero, ni fortalecen valores morales,… — Andrés Manuel (@lopezobrador_) April 1, 2023 While hawks in Washington have scapegoated foreign nations like Mexico and China for the opioid crisis at home, they have largely ignored billionaire oligarchs like those of the Sackler family, who made enormous profits on selling highly addictive drugs such as OxyContin. In a blockbuster article in 2018, titled “Origins of an Epidemic: Purdue Pharma Knew Its Opioids Were Widely Abused“, the New York Times noted, “A confidential Justice Department report found the company was aware early on that OxyContin was being crushed and snorted for its powerful narcotic, but continued to promote it as less addictive”. The Times wrote: Purdue Pharma, the company that planted the seeds of the opioid epidemic through its aggressive marketing of OxyContin, has long claimed it was unaware of the powerful opioid painkiller’s growing abuse until years after it went on the market. But a copy of a confidential Justice Department report shows that federal prosecutors investigating the company found that Purdue Pharma knew about “significant” abuse of OxyContin in the first years after the drug’s introduction in 1996 and concealed that information. Company officials had received reports that the pills were being crushed and snorted; stolen from pharmacies; and that some doctors were being charged with selling prescriptions, according to dozens of previously undisclosed documents that offer a detailed look inside Purdue Pharma. But the drug maker continued “in the face of this knowledge” to market OxyContin as less prone to abuse and addiction than other prescription opioids, prosecutors wrote in 2006. Based on their findings after a four-year investigation, the prosecutors recommended that three top Purdue Pharma executives be indicted on felony charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States, that could have sent the men to prison if convicted. But top Justice Department officials in the George W. Bush administration did not support the move, said four lawyers who took part in those discussions or were briefed about them. Instead, the government settled the case in 2007.

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

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

The West opposed the rest of the planet in United Nations General Assembly votes that called for a new international economic order based on sovereign equality, sustainable development, and biological diversity. Most countries on Earth voted at the United Nations General Assembly to support a call for a new international economic order that is based on sovereign equality and cooperation, that rejects unilateral sanctions and advocates for debt relief for the Global South. The only countries that opposed this widely popular proposal were the West and its allies. The United States and its proxies were also the lone votes against common-sensical resolutions promoting sustainable development, biological diversity, and basic civil rights for Palestinians. Almost the entire world supported these proposals. Washington showed itself to be a rogue state on the international stage, voting against practically every resolution, even on uncontroversial issues where the rest of the planet is in agreement. Most of these resolutions were commonplace, are introduced every year, and have been voted on many times before, with similar results: the West vs. the rest. In 1974, formerly colonized nations in the Global South proposed a plan to dismantle the remaining economic structures of colonialism. They called it the New International Economic Order (NIEO), and said that it should be “based on the principles of equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest, cooperation and solidarity among all States.” The NIEO has been consistently voted on at the United Nations in the five decades since. And the West has persistently opposed it. On December 14, 2022, 123 countries voted in favor of the NIEO – 64% of the UN’s 193 member states. (The number would have been even higher, but several nations that have been illegally sanctioned by the US, such as Venezuela and Zimbabwe, had their UN voting rights temporarily suspended because they have been unable to pay their membership fees in dollars.) Just 50 nations voted against it, with one abstention, from NATO member Türkiye. The 50 countries opposed to the call for a fairer, more equitable economic system consisted of the United States, members of the European Union, Britain, Israel, Canada, Australia, South Korea, and Japan. This grouping has been referred to as the “Collective West.” The West is not a geographic construct; it is a political one. This is why Australia, which was created as a British settler colony, is located in the eastern hemisphere but is politically and culturally part of the West. The same is true for apartheid Israel, which like Australia was created as a British settler-colonial project and has since become a US proxy with a key geostrategic location in West Asia. Similarly, the two East Asian nations that are part of this Western bloc are military occupied by the United States, which has stationed tens of thousands of troops in Japan since the mid-1940s and in South Korea since the early 1950s. Reflecting on the December 14 vote, Chinese journalist Chen Weihua observed, “It’s US and EU against the rest of the world. Basically 900 million against the more than 7 billion from Asia, Africa to Latin America.” It’s US and EU against the rest of the world. Basically 900 million against the more than 7 billion from Asia, Africa to Latin America. — Chen Weihua （陈卫华） (@chenweihua) December 15, 2022 The UN General Assembly (UNGA) resolution “reaffirms the need to continue working towards a new international economic order based on the principles of equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest, cooperation and solidarity among all States.” It also “reiterates that States are strongly urged to refrain from promulgating and applying any unilateral economic, financial or trade measures not in accordance with international law and the Charter of the United Nations that impede the full achievement of economic and social development, particularly in developing countries.” The resolution calls for “mutually supporting world trade, monetary and financial systems” and “coordination of macroeconomic policies among countries to avoid negative spillover effects, especially in developing countries” It similarly urges debt relief for the Global South, stating that it “expresses concern over the increasing debt vulnerabilities of developing countries, the net negative capital flows from developing countries, the fluctuation of exchange rates and the tightening of global financial conditions, and in this regard stresses the need to explore the means and instruments needed to achieve debt sustainability and the measures necessary to reduce the indebtedness of developing countries.” The December 14 vote took place in the 53rd plenary meeting of the 77th session of the UNGA, featuring reports from the body’s Second Committee, which focuses on economic and financial affairs. The votes were very similar on related UNGA resolutions. They illustrated how the United States and its proxies act as rogue regimes, violating the will of the international community. A proposal on “international trade and development” had almost the exact same vote, with 122 in favor, 48 against, and one abstention (once again, Türkiye). In this resolution, “the Assembly urged the international community to adopt urgent and effective measures to eliminate the use of unilateral economic, financial or trade measures that are not authorized by relevant organs of the United Nations, and that are inconsistent with the principles of international law or the Charter of the United Nations or that contravene the basic principles of the multilateral trading system and that affect, in particular, but not exclusively, developing countries.” A related resolution emphasized the “role of the United Nations in promoting development in the context of globalization and interdependence.” In this vote, European countries abstained. The only votes against the resolution came from the United States and Israel. In the measure, “the Assembly noted with concern that the mobilization of sufficient financing remains a major challenge in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and that progress has not been shared evenly within and among countries, leading to further deepening of existing inequalities.” Even on other resolutions that were completely straightforward and common-sensical, the US voted against the entire world. The UNGA adopted a resolution calling to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity and reaffirming its contribution to sustainable development. 166 countries supported the resolution, while just three nations opposed it (the US, Israel, and Japan), with one abstention (South Korea). All 193 UN member states except for one, the USA, have ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity. Washington stands alone as the only capital on Earth that refuses to join the planet-saving agreement. The United States also opposed most of the world in a UN vote to recognized the “permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and of the Arab population in the occupied Syrian Golan over their natural resources.” This resolution passed with 159 countries in favor and 10 abstentions (Australia, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Guatemala, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Solomon Islands, South Sudan, Togo, and Tuvalu). A mere eight member states voted against recognizing these basic political and civil rights for Palestinians, including the US, Israel, Canada, Chad, and small island nations that typically vote as US proxies at the UN, including the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau (all former US colonies that have “free association” agreements with Washington and use the dollar as their currency), and Nauru (which uses the Australian dollar). This pattern was yet again visible in a resolution titled “Oil Slick on Lebanese Shores,” in which the UN lightly criticized Israel for illegally bombing Lebanon’s Jiyeh Power Station in 2006, unleashing a massive oil spill that still causes problems today. In addition to severely damaging the environment, the UN noted that this Israeli attack cost Lebanon at least $856.4 million. The language of the resolution was very mild, expressing “its deep concern about the adverse implications of the destruction by the Israeli Air Force of the oil storage tanks in the direct vicinity of the Lebanese Jiyeh electric power plant for the achievement of sustainable development in Lebanon.” 160 member states voted in favor of the resolution, including European countries. It was opposed only by the US, Israel, Canada, Australia, and Washington’s proxies in the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau. These votes on December 14 were by no means the only time the United States has exposed to the world its status as an unaccountable rogue regime. For the 30th year in a row, almost every country on Earth voted at the UN to condemn the illegal, 60-year US blockade of Cuba 185 to 2 USA and apartheid Israel voted against 2 abstained: Bolsonaro's far-right Brazil and NATO's client regime in Ukrainehttps://t.co/g7KFeiYeGP — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 3, 2022 In recent UN votes condemning the six-decade US blockade on Cuba and calling on Israel to get rid of its nuclear weapons, Washington and Tel Aviv spat in the face of the rest of the world. The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly, 152 to 5, to tell the Israeli apartheid regime to get rid of its nuclear weapons, which are illegal under international law https://t.co/YCQsbXWFZp — Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 1, 2022

Write an article about: US launched 251 military interventions since 1991, and 469 since 1798. 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.

Congress, imperialism, military-industrial complex

The US military launched 469 foreign interventions since 1798, including 251 since the end of the first cold war in 1991, according to official Congressional Research Service data. The United States launched at least 251 military interventions between 1991 and 2022. This is according to a report by the Congressional Research Service, a US government institution that compiles information on behalf of Congress. The report documented another 218 US military interventions from 1798 to 1990. That makes for a total of 469 US military interventions since 1798 that have been acknowledged by the Congress. This data was published on March 8, 2022 by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), in a document titled “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2022.” The list of countries targeted by the US military includes the vast majority of the nations on Earth, including almost every single country in Latin America and the Caribbean and most of the African continent. From the beginning of 1991 to the beginning of 2004, the US military launched 100 interventions, according to CRS. That number grew to 200 military interventions between 1991 and 2018. The report shows that, since the end of the first cold war in 1991, at the moment of US unipolar hegemony, the number of Washington’s military interventions abroad substantially increased. Of the total 469 documented foreign military interventions, the Congressional Research Service noted that the US government only formally declared war 11 times, in just five separate wars. The data exclude the independence war between US settlers and the British empire, any military deployments from 1776 to 1798, and the US Civil War. It is important to stress that all of these numbers are conservative estimates, because they do not include US special operations, covert actions, or domestic deployments. The CRS report clarified: The list does not include covert actions or numerous occurrences in which U.S. forces have been stationed abroad since World War II in occupation forces or for participation in mutual security organizations, base agreements, or routine military assistance or training operations. The report likewise excludes the deployment of the US military forces against Indigenous peoples, when they were systematically ethnically cleansed in the violent process of westward settler-colonial expansion. CRS acknowledged that it left out the “continual use of U.S. military units in the exploration, settlement, and pacification of the western part of the United States.” Credit: Military Intervention Project at Tufts University The Military Intervention Project at Tufts University’s Center for Strategic Studies has documented even more foreign meddling. “The US has undertaken over 500 international military interventions since 1776, with nearly 60% undertaken between 1950 and 2017,” the project wrote. “What’s more, over one-third of these missions occurred after 1999.” The Military Intervention Project added: “With the end of the Cold War era, we would expect the US to decrease its military interventions abroad, assuming lower threats and interests at stake. But these patterns reveal the opposite – the US has increased its military involvements abroad.” Credit: Military Intervention Project at Tufts University

Write an article about: CIA intimidated Britain to force ‘ally’ to cut ties with China’s Huawei. 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.

Britain, China, CIA, GCHQ, Huawei, podcast, UK, United Kingdom

The Donald Trump White House and CIA ran “black ops” to intimate Britain to cut ties with China’s tech giant Huawei, hurting the UK’s economic interests to advance Washington’s trade war on Beijing. The Donald Trump administration led an intimidation campaign to force the United Kingdom to cut all ties with China’s tech giant Huawei. British intelligence officials referred to the initiative as a CIA “black ops” mission aimed at undermining London’s independence. This operation succeeding in forcing Britain to ban Huawei, hurting the UK’s own economic interests and delaying its development of 5G technological infrastructure in order to advance Washington’s trade war on Beijing. These details were revealed in a report in major British newspaper The Times, titled “5G wars: the US plot to make Britain ditch Huawei.” In May 2019, the Trump White House sent a delegation to London on what The Times referred to as a “policy-disruption mission,” seeking to pressure the UK to completely remove Huawei from its 5G infrastructure. The British officials “were effectively shouted at by one of their guests for five hours,” the newspaper reported. The US representative who yelled at them was Matthew Pottinger, a former Marines intelligence officer parachuted who served as the director on Asia for Trump’s National Security Council. Pottinger, a diehard neoconservative and anti-China hawk, was “one of the most significant people in the entire US government,” according to Trump’s far-right chief strategist Steve Bannon. Pottinger oversaw the US trade war with China. The UK government assured its US counterparts that it had only decided to use Huawei’s equipment because it was “significantly cheaper” than the technology of European firms. Britain’s top intelligence agency GCHQ reviewed Huawei’s minimal role in 5G infrastructure development and concluded that it was not a threat, as it would have no access to sensitive networks and information. But Washington completely ignored London’s objections. GCHQ was confident it could work safely with the Chinese tech firm. An American official thought otherwise — and, in a Cabinet Office meeting, shouted about it for five hours https://t.co/UnwgF84yyk — The Times and The Sunday Times (@thetimes) August 21, 2022 A British intelligence officer quoted by The Times explained, “Pottinger just shouted and was entirely uninterested in the UK’s analysis. The message was, ‘We don’t want you to do this, you have no idea how evil China is.’ It was five hours of shouting.” UK National Security Advisor Kim Darroch told the newspaper that the US delegation “didn’t really have any compelling technical arguments that undermined the GCHQ case,” adding that “the US case was really political, not technical.” The CIA proceeded to run a “black ops” campaign to undermine Britain’s standing among its European neighbors. The Times reported: The CIA tried to discredit the UK’s position on Huawei in the eyes of its European allies. Officers from the agency’s Belgium station met their counterparts in the French, German, Italian and Norwegian intelligence services, among others, to express their concerns about the UK’s “misjudgment”. British intelligence officials were outraged by what they described as a “black ops” mission facilitated by the CIA — some even calling it a betrayal of friendship. Yet again, the special relationship between London and Washington had been strained and risked being permanently disrupted. The US pressure campaign was ultimately successful in forcing all members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network to ban Huawei. The newspaper wrote: US intelligence agencies and White House officials had repeatedly lobbied all members of the Five Eyes to ban Huawei on national security grounds. While New Zealand had followed Australia and banned the Chinese telecoms company in November 2018, Canada was still considering its options, and would not announce its intention to ban Huawei until May this year. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo — a director of the CIA during the early days of the Trump administration — had declared in a thinly veiled warning to Britain in February 2019 that countries using Huawei equipment were a risk to the US. Staff from his office were also reminding their counterparts in Britain that they were risking their place in the Five Eyes should the UK decide to approve Huawei.

Write an article about: US turns on Honduran narco-dictator Juan Orlando Hernández after long supporting him. 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.

Barack Obama, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Iraq, Joe Biden, JOH, Juan Orlando Hernández, Manuel Noriega, Panama, Rafael Trujillo, Saddam Hussein

Washington ordered the extradition of Honduran ex-President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) for drug trafficking, but the Obama-Biden and Trump administrations spent years supporting him as he stole elections, and he rose to power thanks to a 2009 US-backed coup. (Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.) The US government has turned on the right-wing former dictator of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, after it spent years supporting him. Hernández is the latest in a series of brutal authoritarians who were key US allies until they outlived their usefulness, from Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to the Dominican Republic’s Rafael Trujillo to Panama’s Manuel Noriega. This February, the United States requested the extradition of Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández on charges of trafficking cocaine and guns. Local authorities arrested him on February 15. Hernández, who is popularly known by his initials JOH, served two terms in office, from 2014 to 2022. It was widely known that JOH used drug money to fund his presidential campaigns, and blatantly stole the 2013 and 2017 elections in broad daylight. But while he was committing these crimes, Hernández enjoyed staunch support from the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations. In fact, JOH only came to power in the first place because a 2009 US-sponsored military coup removed Honduras’ democratically elected left-wing president, Manuel Zelaya. Washington overthrew Zelaya because he had been friendly to Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chávez, and he had integrated Honduras into anti-imperialist regional bloc the Bolivarian Alliance (ALBA). Following the 2009 coup, JOH’s right-wing National Party ruled the country with an iron fist. From 2010 to 2014, Hernández served as president of Congress. He was then catapulted to head of state through flagrant electoral fraud. The 2013 Honduran elections were plagued by massive, systemic irregularities. And it was clear to the world that JOH stole the election in 2017, but the US State Department still congratulated him on his “victory.” And the United States did more than just endorse JOH’s clearly fraudulent elections. Washington also approved billions of dollars of loans to his corrupt regime, which Hernández and his wealthy oligarchic backers promptly stole, trapping the country in unpayable odious debt. Why? Because under JOH, Honduras was Washington’s closest ally in Central America. The country is home to the largest US military installation in Latin America, the Soto Cano base. And, until his final few years, Hernández obediently served US foreign-policy interests, recognizing unelected coup leader Juan Guaidó as supposed “president” of Venezuela. US President Barack Obama discusses the refugee crisis with Honduran narco-dictator Juan Orlando Hernández in 2014 After the US-backed 2009 coup, violence and organized crime skyrocketed. Honduras turned into one of the most dangerous countries on the planet. As of 2021, Honduras still has the second-highest murder rate on Earth, surpassed only by its neighbor El Salvador. Under JOH, Honduras also became the poorest country in Latin America. Poverty rose to a staggering 74% of the population. This deadly combination of violence, organized crime, and poverty took a heavy toll on the Honduran people. It fueled large waves of migration north toward Mexico and the United States, unleashing a refugee crisis. This Washington-created refugees crisis in turn provoked domestic problems in the United States. Politicians from both major parties recognized that something had to change. US Vice President Joe Biden with Honduran narco-dictator Juan Orlando Hernández in 2016 By 2019, Juan Orlando Hernández became a further liability for Washington. His brother Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández was convicted in a New York federal court for trafficking nearly 200,000 kilograms of cocaine and machine guns into the United States. Tony Hernández had been a congressman in JOH’s National Party, and used drug money to fund the right-wing party and rig elections for his brother. The imprisonment of Tony Hernández, along with the increased US pressure on Honduras to halt northern migration, created a conflict between JOH and his sponsors in Washington. The once loyal US ally began to implement independent policies. Honduras started to vote against US interests in the Organization of American States (OAS). Looking for new allies, the JOH government even improved relations with its neighbor Nicaragua, whose leftist Sandinista government is Washington’s top target in Central America. By 2021, top US politicians and corporate media outlets tried to distance JOH from the US government by depicting him simply as a “Trump ally.” JOH certainly was a Trump ally, but he had long benefited from bipartisan support from Democrats as well. Participé como invitado especial en la reunión organizada por el Presidente de #EEUU Donald J. Trump para abordar el tema “Un llamado global para proteger la libertad religiosa”#HondurasEnLaONU pic.twitter.com/nAOftBG0wb — Juan Orlando H. (@JuanOrlandoH) September 23, 2019 The Obama administration enthusiastically supported the Honduran narco-dictator. In fact, as vice president under Obama, Joe Biden worked closely with JOH. Biden oversaw the Obama administration’s Central America policy, and Honduras was crucial in its plans. JOH praised Obama publicly for his neoliberal strategy to bring more corporate investment to the region, called the “Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle.” Felicito al Pte. Obama y V. Biden su decisión recibir la propuesta de nuestros países (Alianza p Prosperidad) y compartir esfuerzo conjunto. — Juan Orlando H. (@JuanOrlandoH) January 30, 2015 Biden repeatedly met with JOH, and the narco-dictator tweeted, “Thank you Vice President Joe Biden for supporting Honduras.” Gracias Vice Pte. @JoeBiden por respaldar a Honduras. pic.twitter.com/xY6Yo9HNOk — Juan Orlando H. (@JuanOrlandoH) June 17, 2015 When JOH’s right-wing National Party was overwhelmingly defeated by the left-wing Libre Party and its candidate Xiomara Castro in a November 2021 election – the first truly free and fair vote since the 2009 US-sponsored coup – Washington threw its former asset under the bus. After JOH left office on January 27, 2022, the Biden administration saw an opportunity to make an example out of a former ally, to try to cynically show the world it is supposedly dedicated to fighting corruption. This February, Washington officially turned on JOH, first revoking his visa and then ordering his extradition to the United States. Juan Orlando Hernández is the latest in a long line of repressive dictators that the United States supported and cultivated, only to later throw under the bus. His story echoes those of numerous right-wing Latin American autocrats, from the Dominican Republic to Panama. Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo oversaw one of the bloodiest regimes in the history of the region, killing, imprisoning, torturing, and disappearing tens of thousands of people, principally leftists and Haitians. Trujillo enjoyed staunch US support for decades. But by 1961 he had outlived his usefulness, and the CIA was involved in assassinating him. Closer to Honduras is the case of Panama’s former president Manuel Noriega, a former longtime CIA asset who was later overthrown in a murderous US invasion. Noriega once collaborated with the CIA to help Washington fund its war on leftist revolutionaries in Nicaragua and El Salvador. But he later became too independent from the United States. Noriega began to challenge Washington’s foreign-policy interests in the region, working with Libya and Cuba, and challenging US control over the geostrategic Panama Canal. So Washington turned on its former ally. The United States invaded Panama in 1989, killing at least hundreds of civilians, with some estimates saying thousands lost their lives. Over in West Asia, the history is very similar. Before he became public enemy number one in the 2003 invasion, or in the 1990 Gulf War, Iraq’s authoritarian leader Saddam Hussein was an erstwhile US ally. The CIA helped orchestrate the Iraqi Baathist coup that Saddam later rode to power. After the putsch, the CIA even gave the aspiring dictator’s allies a list of Iraqi communists to kill. They were promptly murdered. In the 1980s, the United States supported Saddam’s Iraq in its war on the new revolutionary government in neighboring Iran. The CIA even helped Saddam use chemical weapons on civilians. Some of the world’s most notorious drug dealers have also benefited from the backing of US spy agencies. Mexico’s infamous drug kingpin El Chapo Gúzman, the head of the feared Sinaloa Cartel, was reportedly protected by the CIA for years. Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar collaborated with the CIA, too. His son Juan Pablo Escobar said the US spy agency used the cocaine smuggled by the leader of the Medellin Cartel in order to fund its war on socialists in Central America.

Write an article about: US sanctions on Russia over Ukraine also target Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba. 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.

Cuba, Joe Biden, Juan Gonzalez, Nicaragua, Russia, sanctions, Ukraine, Venezuela

President Joe Biden’s top Latin America advisor, Juan S. Gonzalez, admitted that US sanctions against Russia aim to hurt Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba as well. The three socialist governments condemned NATO aggression for creating the crisis in Ukraine. (Se puede leer este artículo en español aquí.) President Joe Biden’s top Latin America advisor has admitted that US sanctions against Russia over Ukraine intentionally seek to hurt Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba as well. The United States imposed a series of harsh sanctions on Russia following Moscow’s recognition of the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region on February 21, and its subsequent military intervention in Ukraine on February 24. Juan S. González, Biden’s special assistant for Latin America and the US National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, made it clear that these coercive measures against Russia are also aimed at damaging the economies of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba. Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba have socialist governments that Washington has long tried to overthrow. All three currently suffer under unilateral US sanctions, which are illegal according to international law. Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton, an architect of the Iraq War, referred to these three Latin American nations as the so-called “Troika of Tyranny.” Biden’s advisor González did an exclusive interview with Voz de América, the Spanish-language arm of the US government’s propaganda outlet Voice of America, on February 25. Voz de América published his comments in a report titled “US sanctions on Russia will impact Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, White House estimates.” “The sanctions against Russia are so robust that they will have an impact on those governments that have economic affiliations with Russia, and that is by design,” González explained. “So Venezuela is going to start feeling that pressure. Nicaragua is going to feel that pressure, along with Cuba,” he added. Biden’s Latin America advisor noted that Washington has imposed sanctions on 13 top financial institutions in Russia, including some of the largest in the country. He proudly said that these coercive measures will, “by design,” harm other countries that do a lot of trade with the Eurasian power. González also used his interview with the US-funded Voz de América to reiterate Washington’s call for regime change against these three socialist governments in Latin America. His comments were reported by the independent Bolivia-based news website Kawsachun News. Biden advisor: U.S. sanctions against Russia are 'designed' to impact Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. pic.twitter.com/Zbqg3mgB2N — Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) February 26, 2022 Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba have stood with Russia against NATO expansion and Western military encirclement. President Nicolás Maduro said that Venezuela “laments the mockery and breaking of the Minsk agreements by NATO, promoted by the United States of America.” Maduro stressed that Washington and NATO bear responsibility for the conflict, and “have generated strong threats against the Russian Federation.” Venezuela rechaza el agravamiento de la crisis en Ucrania producto del quebrantamiento de los acuerdos de Minsk por parte de la OTAN. Llamamos a la búsqueda de soluciones pacíficas para dirimir las diferencias entre las partes. El diálogo y la no injerencia, son garantías de Paz. pic.twitter.com/Y7N1lwZfpi — Nicolás Maduro (@NicolasMaduro) February 24, 2022 Cuba blamed Washington for the crisis as well. Its Foreign Ministry stated, “The U.S. determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided.” Denouncing Western governments for sending weapons to Ukraine, Cuba declared, “History will hold the United States accountable for the consequences of an increasingly offensive military doctrine outside NATO’s borders, which threatens international peace, security and stability.” The U.S. determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided.1/5 Statement by the Revolutionary Government:?https://t.co/3iBcPD9j8x pic.twitter.com/MRgwRCWSMV — Bruno Rodríguez P (@BrunoRguezP) February 27, 2022 Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega condemned Washington for sponsoring a 2014  coup in Ukraine, and joined Russia in recognizing the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. The chairman of Russia’s State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, traveled to Nicaragua to meet with top officials from the Sandinista government, and thanked them for their support against NATO expansion and US threats. ???? #Nicaragua recibió a una delegación de alto nivel de #Rusia, encabezada por el Presidente de la Duma Estatal de la Cámara Baja, Vyacheslav Volodín. La visita tiene por objetivo fortalecer la cooperación y la solidaridad bilateral. pic.twitter.com/BMY1AjnviF — JP+ (@jpmasespanol) February 24, 2022

Write an article about: Iraq War architect Condoleezza Rice condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as war crime. 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.

Condoleezza Rice, Fox News, Iraq, Iraq War, media, Russia, Ukraine

Without a hint of irony, Iraq War architect Condoleezza Rice condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a war crime in an interview on Fox News. She was not asked about the million Iraqis killed in the illegal US war. Top current and former US government officials who helped orchestrate the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, which have killed more than 2 million people combined, have come out and vociferously condemned Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine. Condoleezza Rice, one of the key architects of the Iraq War, was invited on Fox News to denounce the Russian incursion as a war crime. Fox News did not once mention Rice’s role in overseeing the illegal 2003 US invasion and subsequent military occupation of Iraq, which led to more than 1 million deaths. Rice was a top foreign-policy official in the George W. Bush administration, serving as national security advisor in the first term, then secretary of state in the second. In the lead-up to the Iraq War, Rice falsely claimed that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction.” She infamously declared on CNN in January 2003, just weeks before the US invasion, that “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” The level of propaganda on Ukraine is jaw-dropping. Fox News invited on Iraq War architect Condoleezza Rice to condemn Russia's invasion as a war crime Fox didn't mention Rice's role in overseeing a criminal US war that killed 1 million Iraqis More here: https://t.co/81Tg4F7BzO pic.twitter.com/A34uLzVrTM — Benjamin Norton (@BenjaminNorton) March 2, 2022 In an interview on Fox News this February 27, Rice blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine. She praised Western governments for imposing brutal sanctions on Russia, which have already caused severe economic problems and made lives difficult for tens of millions of Russian civilians. Without a hint of irony, Rice nodded along as Fox News host Harris Faulkner said, “I have argued that when you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime.” “I think we are at just a real basic point there,” Faulkner added, as Rice nodded in agreement. The Iraq War architect responded, “It is certainly against every principle of international law and international order.” “And that is why throwing the book at them now, in terms of economic sanctions and punishments, is also a part of it,” Rice added. “And I think the world is there. Certainly NATO is there.” Fox News did not ask Rice if she thinks that her comments apply to the wars that she herself helped the US government wage.