Have you ever seen a mainstream news report containing the phrase “the French regime”? How about “the British regime” or “the Australian regime”?
If these phrases look a bit odd, it’s because you’ve never seen them written down before. Ostensibly the word simply means “a form of government” or “a government in power”, but it’s generally understood that it’s got a kind of negative connotation to it just because of the way it tends to be used. In theory its meaning is closer to “a bad or authoritarian government”, and in practice by the western media it means “a government which disobeys the dictates of Washington”.
Just look at some recent examples of the way that word has been used in headlines by the mass media:
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