tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35237410327246439642024-03-17T11:13:35.113-05:00BELÉN FERNÁNDEZUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger915125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-32336708682851229152024-03-17T11:13:00.000-05:002024-03-17T11:13:03.766-05:00The criminal hypocrisy of Hernandez’s drug conviction in a US court<p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/17/the-criminal-hypocrisy-of-hernandezs-drug-conviction-in-a-us-court" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: medium;">Al Jazeera English</span></a></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">On Friday, March 8, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/22/divine-justice-how-hondurans-are-reacting-to-an-ex-presidents-us-trial" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;" target="_blank">was convicted</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">on three counts of drug trafficking and weapons conspiracy in a Manhattan federal court. Extradited to the United States shortly after completing his second presidential term in 2022, the 55-year-old Hernández is up against a mandatory minimum sentence of 40 years in jail.</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Following the conviction, US Attorney General Merrick Garland <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/juan-orlando-hernandez-former-president-honduras-convicted-manhattan-federal-court" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">accused</a> Hernández of having run Honduras as a “narco-state where violent drug traffickers were allowed to operate with virtual impunity”. The US Department of Justice, Garland righteously bleated, has now shown its commitment to “disrupting the entire ecosystem of drug trafficking networks that harm the American people, no matter how far or how high we must go”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And yet given the United States’ fundamental role in nurturing and sustaining this very ecosystem in the first place, the guilty verdict can safely be filed under the “Can’t Make This Up” category of imperial hypocrisy. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/17/the-criminal-hypocrisy-of-hernandezs-drug-conviction-in-a-us-court" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.</i></a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-87353968792298848422024-03-05T07:05:00.001-06:002024-03-05T07:05:48.274-06:00‘Birthright’ in a time of genocide<p> <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/5/birthright-in-a-time-of-genocide" target="_blank">Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In January, the Birthright Israel programme resumed operations following a brief suspension of activity. The hiatus was triggered by the October 7 <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/21/hamas-says-october-7-attack-was-a-necessary-step-admits-to-some-faults" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Hamas attack</a> and the ensuing Israeli-perpetrated genocide in the Gaza Strip, which has thus far killed well over 30,000 Palestinians.</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Since 1999, Birthright has treated some 850,000 Jewish young adults from around the world to 10-day, all-expenses-paid trips to Israel, jointly funded by the Israeli government and private donors. Participants ride around on buses, see the sights, enjoy “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/2/2/the-birthright-project-relocation-and-procreation" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">hormonal encounters</a>” with Israeli soldiers, and otherwise bond with stolen Palestinian land.</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Rather than being a coincidental byproduct of the whole experience, hormones in fact serve a calculated purpose in Birthright expeditions. Consider a 2013 Haaretz <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2013-01-05/ty-article/what-happens-in-tiberias-stays-in-tiberias/0000017f-dc56-d3ff-a7ff-fdf6b5870000" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">article</a> on the frequency of romantic hookups and marriage resulting from Birthright trips, which quoted a 24-year-old Israeli soldier assigned to accompany one of the groups: “We come in uniform and they make a big deal out of us… [T]hese Jewish programmes are very well thought out. They really know what to do to get Americans emotional and excited.”</span></p><p class="p4" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And the more “emotional and excited” young American Jews get, to be sure, the better for the Zionist project, given the key role of the United States in abetting the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Of the more than 400 Birthright trippers who descended upon Israel in January 2024 – a drop in the bucket compared with the 23,000 individuals the programme had <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/birthright-to-resume-free-trips-to-israel-for-first-time-since-october-7-hamas-attack/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">reportedly</a> envisioned sending this year – the majority were from the United States. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/5/birthright-in-a-time-of-genocide" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i>.</a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-58519171407223256732024-02-26T16:36:00.000-06:002024-02-26T16:36:56.014-06:00Suicide vs genocide: Rest in power, Aaron Bushnell<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/2/26/suicide-vs-genocide-rest-in-power-aaron-bushnell" target="_blank">Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On Sunday, February 25, 25-year-old active duty member of the United States Air Force <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/26/us-airman-sets-self-on-fire-in-protest-over-israels-genocide-in-gaza" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Aaron Bushnell</a> set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in the US capital of Washington, DC, in a one-airman revolt against the US-backed slaughter currently being perpetrated by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Over the past</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/26/israels-war-on-gaza-list-of-key-events-day-143" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">143 days</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">, Israel has killed nearly 30,000 Palestinians in the besieged coastal enclave. In video footage recorded prior to and during his self-immolation, Bushnell states that he will “no longer be complicit in genocide” and that he is “about to engage in an extreme act of protest – but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonisers is not extreme at all”.</span></span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">To be sure, Palestinians have long been accustomed to, well, burning to death at the hands of Israeli weaponry, ever since the state of Israel undertook to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/15/nakba-mapping-palestinian-villages-destroyed-by-israel-in-1948" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">lethally invent itself</a> on Palestinian land in 1948. The Israeli military’s use of skin-incinerating white phosphorus munitions in more recent years has no doubt contributed to the whole Palestinian “experience”.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">After pertinently observing that US complicity in the genocide of Palestinians is “what our ruling class has decided will be normal”, Bushnell plants himself directly in front of the Israeli embassy gate – in full US military fatigues – and proceeds to douse himself with flammable liquid. As he rapidly burns to death, he repeatedly shouts: “Free Palestine”, while security personnel order him to get “on the ground”. One particularly helpful individual points a gun at the blaze.<b> READ MORE AT <i><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/2/26/suicide-vs-genocide-rest-in-power-aaron-bushnell" target="_blank">AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.</a></i></b></span><b><i> </i></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-42074039278879970792024-02-22T11:13:00.003-06:002024-02-22T11:13:43.757-06:00The trials of Julian Assange: A death sentence for democracy<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/2/22/the-trials-of-julian-assange-a-death-sentence-for-democracy" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In June 2022, when Russia’s foreign ministry announced that it was considering “stringent measures” against United States media outlets in response to US restrictions on Russian media, the US Department of State huffily complained that the Kremlin was “engaged in a full assault on media freedom, access to information, and the truth”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This sort of hypocrisy was nothing new; after all, the world’s self-appointed greatest democracy has long made it clear that basic rights and freedoms are things that only its enemies must abide by. The shameless double standard enables the US to do stuff like make a ruckus over Cuba’s political prisoners while simultaneously operating an <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/1/10/timeline-20-years-of-guantanamo-bay-prison" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">illegal US prison</a> on occupied Cuban territory – or call out China for an alleged “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/2/23/whos-afraid-of-a-chinese-balloon" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">spy balloon</a>” while simultaneously spying on China and everyone else on the planet.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And on Wednesday, February 21, as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange completed <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/2/21/julian-assange-live-news-wikileaks-founders-bid-to-avoid-us-extradition" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">one last legal attempt</a> to avoid extradition to the US, the country’s own “full assault on media freedom, access to information, and the truth” was once again on full display. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/2/22/the-trials-of-julian-assange-a-death-sentence-for-democracy" target="_blank"><b>READ MORE AT</b> <b><i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i></b>.</a></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">If extradited, the Australian-born Assange faces up to 175 years in prison on spying charges – which again is pretty rich coming from a nation with an extensive history of illegally spying on its own citizens. In reality, Assange’s only “crime” was to utilise WikiLeaks to expose the truth of US military crimes, as in the notorious “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2010/4/6/video-shows-us-attack-on-iraqis" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Collateral Murder</a>” video that was released in 2010.</span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-59155864728200807552024-02-17T08:14:00.004-06:002024-02-17T08:14:34.255-06:00Thomas Friedman: Dehumanisation par excellence amid a genocide<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/2/17/thomas-friedman-dehumanisation-par-excellence-amid-a-genocide" target="_blank">Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">There are few American journalists who so transparently embody the United States’ pompous and demeaning approach to Arab and Muslim lands and peoples as <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2011/11/7/thomas-friedman-the-imperial-messenger" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Thomas Friedman</a>, the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times since 1995.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Prior to tormenting humanity with his biweekly opinions (such as that McDonald’s is the key to world peace), Friedman served in the 1980s as the Times bureau chief in Beirut and then Jerusalem. His time in the Middle East permitted him to hone his Orientalist arrogance, which earned him the starring role in a 1989 essay by none other than Edward Said, who remarked on the “comic philistinism of Friedman’s ideas” and Friedman’s apparent conviction that “what scholars, poets, historians, fighters, and statesmen have done is not as important or as central as what Friedman himself thinks”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Of course, Friedman’s inauguration as a foreign affairs columnist gave him greater freedom to share what he, himself, thought. Over the years, these thoughts have included that Palestinians are “gripped by a collective madness”, that Afghanistan is the equivalent of a “special needs baby”, and that the nation of Iraq needed to “suck on this” in order to burst the “terrorism bubble” that had made itself known on 9/11 – an event Friedman nonetheless admitted Iraq had nothing to do with. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/2/17/thomas-friedman-dehumanisation-par-excellence-amid-a-genocide" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i></a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-47194484604017463192024-02-04T05:30:00.000-06:002024-02-05T05:30:36.172-06:00Facebook at 20: From virtual community to censorship of reality<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/2/4/facebook-at-20-from-virtual-community-to-censorship-of-reality" target="_blank"> Al Jazerra English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">When I joined Facebook in 2007, three years after the platform launched, I used it solely as a means of staying in touch with friends I had acquired while <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/3/13/a-hitchhikers-guide-to" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">hitchhiking through Lebanon</a> in the aftermath of the summer 2006 Israeli assault, which had destroyed much of the country but not its famed hospitality.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Old acquaintances from middle school and high school were gradually added to my Facebook friends list, including my seventh-grade boyfriend and a few Zionists who were purged once I mastered the “unfriend” function. Then came writers, academics, and activists of compatible political persuasions. This, for a while, seemed to endow Facebook with the potential to serve as an inspirational forum and genuine virtual community.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Of course, human solidarity was never the aim of Facebook, and capitalism quickly reared its ugly head. After effectively luring a significant sector of humanity into digital addiction, the Facebook powers that be went about eviscerating the very concept of privacy as a basic human right. And as Facebook now celebrates its <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/4/facebook-turns-20-how-the-social-media-giant-grew-to-3-billion-users" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;" target="_blank">20th anniversary</a> on February 4, the panorama is bleak indeed. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/2/4/facebook-at-20-from-virtual-community-to-censorship-of-reality" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i>.</a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-8198290774936557112024-01-24T11:36:00.001-06:002024-01-24T11:36:36.383-06:00Letter from Panama’s ‘Little Hiroshima’<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/1/24/letter-from-panamas-little-hiroshima" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Once upon a time, the United States was good buddies with a fellow named Manuel Noriega, a longstanding CIA asset and the dictator of <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/8/28/panamas-doomsday-warning-is-not-about-holiday-shopping" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Panama</a> in the 1980s.</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then one day, Noriega outlived his usefulness as an imperial lackey and needed to be sent packing. And so with a straight face, the gringos accused him of the unpardonable offence of drug trafficking and undertook to overthrow him in 1989.</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This was funny; after all, since at least 1972 the US had known about – and intermittently benefitted from – Noriega’s links to the drug trade. Furthermore, the US president spearheading the dictator’s removal was none other than George H W Bush, the very same George H W Bush who as director of the CIA in 1976 had ensured Noriega’s preservation on the agency payroll.</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Anyway, boundless hypocrisy has always been America’s strong point. And it was once again on full display in the selection of the name for the unilateral US military operation to bring “democracy” to Panama by killing a bunch of Panamanian civilians, pulverising the impoverished Panama City neighbourhood of El Chorrillo to the extent that local ambulance drivers began to call it “Little Hiroshima”, and hauling Noriega off to Miami. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/1/24/letter-from-panamas-little-hiroshima" target="_blank">READ MORE AT A<i>L JAZEERA ENGLISH</i>.</a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-23402558659446214642024-01-15T17:29:00.002-06:002024-01-15T17:29:33.417-06:00Biden and the big border debacle<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/1/15/biden-and-the-big-border-debacle" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Shortly before Christmas, an extended Venezuelan family of 10 crossed into the United States from Mexico with a large contingent of other asylum seekers – part of a December “<a href="https://nypost.com/2023/12/19/news/record-12600-migrants-encountered-at-border-in-24hrs/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">migrant surge</a>” that propelled the panties of US politicians and media into a massive bunch.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On December 18 alone when US Customs and Border Protection tallied a record of more than 12,600 “migrant encounters” on the southern border, Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/southern-border-record-number-migrant-encounters-single-day-thousands-flood-into-texas" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">wailed</a>, “Thousands flood into Texas.”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I had made the acquaintance of the Venezuelan family in early November <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/22/dying-without-borders" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">in the city of Tapachula</a> in southern Mexico near the border with Guatemala and had met up with them again later in the month on the Mexican <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/29/walking-to-america" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">isthmus of Tehuantepec</a> as they continued trudging north to “surge” into the United States.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">After spending nearly a week navigating “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/10/5/photos-train-surfing-through-mexico-dreaming-of-a-new-life-in-the-us" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">La Bestia</a>” – Mexico’s infamous “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2010/12/24/mexicos-train-of-death" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">train of death</a>” – they tried to enter the Texas border city of Eagle Pass from the Mexican city of Piedras Negras but were halted by US authorities. According to the family, a standoff ensued that lasted several days and only ended when people in the group began fainting from lack of food and water. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/1/15/biden-and-the-big-border-debacle" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.</i></a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-46548264325114440432024-01-05T14:43:00.003-06:002024-01-05T14:43:40.509-06:00The (not so) surprising revelations of the Epstein list<p><b><a href="The (not so) surprising revelations of the Epstein list" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What do former United States presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump have in common with Hyatt Hotels executive chairman Thomas Pritzker and celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz?</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In addition to being white American men who have usurped a disproportionate share of the planet’s wealth, they were among the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/4/initial-tranche-of-nearly-950-epstein-court-documents-released" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">first names recently exposed</a> in previously sealed court documents identifying associates of paedophile financier and sex trafficker <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/2/names-linked-to-jeffrey-epstein-set-to-be-made-public-all-you-need-to-know" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Jeffrey Epstein</a>, who died by suicide in a US prison in 2019. . . . [and] Dershowitz has predictably <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/1/4/jeffrey-epstein-list-whose-names-are-on-the-newly-unsealed-documents" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">slammed</a> “radical feminists” for obsessing over the Epstein stuff rather than “condemning Hamas”. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/1/5/the-not-so-surprising-revelations-of-the-epstein-list?fbclid=IwAR0qsZkvm_KxZtKiOchamU8cGfHVcX4T0RtgAb0gfzSOzD_bkEr32Dh0mwc" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.</i></a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-10321706221192117192024-01-03T13:59:00.002-06:002024-01-03T13:59:27.390-06:00New year, ‘new Middle East’?<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/1/3/new-year-new-middle-east?fbclid=IwAR1pN1bSyRuNGSQ3dxNKKes-0y04vp2GvTlJBNfji-shrZclh1M0K0UnGeY" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In July 2006, in the middle of Israel’s <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/6/16/the-real-problem-with-israels-collective" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">war on Lebanon</a> that ultimately killed approximately 1,200 people – the overwhelming majority of them civilians – then-United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nobly <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2006/7/22/rice-sees-bombs-as-birth-pangs" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">cast the onslaught</a> as the “birth pangs of a new Middle East”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">While the metaphor was no doubt appropriately Orientalist, it did raise some questions since the objective of the birthing process is not usually to kill the baby. What role Rice and her boss, then-US president <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/5/22/george-w-bush-is-not-funny" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">George W Bush</a>, were meant to play in the metaphorical arrangement was also debatable, but “bloodthirsty obstetricians” was one potential option. This was particularly so, given the US decision to rush-ship bombs to the Israeli military to assist in the forging of the “new Middle East”. . . .</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Summer 2006, of course, belonged to a previous era of Israeli slaughter-fests, when killing 1,200 people in 34 days was still considered extraordinarily shocking. Also belonging to this era was, for example, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2010/1/19/what-the-gaza-war-meant-for-israel" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Operation Cast Lead</a> in the Gaza Strip, during which Israel killed some 1,400 people over 22 days in December 2008 and January 2009. In Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in 2014, the Israeli military killed 2,251 people in 50 days.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We have now apparently transitioned into an age of obscenely intensified birth pangs; Israel’s latest assault on the Gaza Strip murdered <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/12/20/israel-hamas-war-live-israel-kills-around-100-palestinians-in-one-day" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">more than 20,000 Palestinians</a> in the first two and a half months alone, and destruction in the besieged enclave is of a scale the human mind can barely process. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/1/3/new-year-new-middle-east?fbclid=IwAR1pN1bSyRuNGSQ3dxNKKes-0y04vp2GvTlJBNfji-shrZclh1M0K0UnGeY" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i>.</a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-83552268328309472502023-12-29T07:21:00.000-06:002023-12-29T07:21:29.294-06:00The real ‘Person of the Year’<p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/29/the-real-person-of-the-year" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: 20px;">I</span><span style="font-size: medium;">t’s the end of the year, and you know what that means: lots of hubbub about Time magazine’s annual “<a href="https://time.com/5047813/person-of-the-year-history/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Person of the Year</a>,” a tradition that began in 1928 as “Man of the Year” but that now honours a “man, woman, group or concept.”</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Given the ghastly course of 2023, it seems one obvious choice for “Person of the Year” would be the Palestinian doctors and medical personnel currently <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/11/11/we-are-minutes-away-from-death-gazas-al-shifa-hospital-under-attack" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">risking their lives</a> to save others from Israel’s genocidal endeavours in the Gaza Strip.</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Since October 7, the Israeli military has slaughtered more than 21,000 Palestinians in Gaza, among them <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/12/28/photos-gaza-children" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">at least 8,663 children</a>. According to <a href="https://twitter.com/HCWWatch/status/1737447341798432903/photo/1" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Healthcare Workers Watch – Palestine</a>, an independent monitoring initiative co-launched by <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/12/19/we-have-a-duty-us-based-doctor-says-ceasefire-an-ethical-imperative-in-gaza" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Texas doctor Osaid Alser</a>, no fewer than 340 healthcare workers were killed by the Israelis between October 7 and December 19, including 118 doctors and 104 nurses. . . .</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">[Taylor] Swift may indeed be the current protagonist of a superficial world rapidly combusting in self-absorbed banality, one wishes more credit were given to real-world heroes. And as 2023 comes to a close with no end to genocide in sight, give me the people of Gaza as “Person of the Year” any day. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/29/the-real-person-of-the-year" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.</i></a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-26483497563810401162023-12-23T10:38:00.002-06:002023-12-23T10:39:01.816-06:00The US is no country for old men<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/23/the-us-is-no-country-for-old-men" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Shortly prior to his <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/8/23/remember-that-i-love-you-most" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">death from prostate cancer in August</a> of this year at the age of 72, my father emerged from a state of muteness to recite, with a burst of energy, the 1927 poem, Sailing to Byzantium, by William Butler Yeats, which begins: “That is no country for old men.”</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">My mother, my uncle, and I were present for the impromptu performance, which took place in my father’s bed in Washington, DC, where he had commenced in-home hospice care after the chemotherapy treatments that had been forced upon him by profit-oriented doctors had accelerated his demise. . . .</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Counterproductive chemotherapy treatments were but one of the ways he had been milked for all he was worth, before being turned over as prey to the lucrative realm of funeral and cremation services.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">For example, for a one-month prescription of the prostate cancer drug Xtandi, a medication developed with none other than US taxpayer money, my father had been charged $14,579.01 – ie, more than many people in the United States earn in several months. For folks lacking the means to pursue healthcare and other basic needs, US capitalism can be deadly, too. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/23/the-us-is-no-country-for-old-men" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i>.</a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-36167991158801353642023-12-16T04:45:00.001-06:002023-12-17T04:53:11.905-06:00Israel is taking scorched earth policy to a new level<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/16/israel-is-taking-scorched-earth-policy-to-a-new-level" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In October, shortly after the start of the Israeli war on Gaza that has now killed nearly 20,000 Palestinians, Israel pledged to wipe Hamas “off the face of the earth” – a project that would require Israel’s military “to flatten the ground” in Gaza, as an Israeli security source told the Reuters news agency.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And flatten they did; one month into the war, the military had already dropped <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/11/9/israel-attacks-on-gaza-weapons-and-scale-of-destruction" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">the equivalent of two nuclear bombs</a> on the diminutive and densely populated Palestinian coastal enclave. Now, as Israel continues to pulverise an already thoroughly pulverised territory, it seems the Israelis may be taking the concept of scorched earth policy to a whole new level. . . .</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">[T]he Washington Post recently confirmed that the Israeli military fired US-supplied white phosphorus rounds at southern Lebanon in October despite the use of such weapons in civilian areas being “generally prohibited under international humanitarian law”. As per the Post’s writeup, south Lebanese residents affected by the attack “speculated that the phosphorus was meant to displace them from the village and to clear the way for future Israeli military activity in the area”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It certainly wouldn’t be the first time – in Lebanon or in the Gaza Strip, which has seen its fair share of illegal white phosphorus bombardments by Israel. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/16/israel-is-taking-scorched-earth-policy-to-a-new-level" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.</i></a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-11475095968865144672023-12-07T10:43:00.003-06:002023-12-07T10:43:39.553-06:00Hollywood’s Israel problem<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/7/hollywoods-israel-problem" target="_blank">Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It’s that time of year again: when Hollywood’s thought police undertake to ensure that American celebrity culture remains firmly in the service of the Zionist narrative.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">In one prominent case, actress Melissa Barrera – a star of the horror film franchise Scream – was</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-67494374" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;" target="_blank">recently fired</a><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">from her role in the next instalment of the series for posting on social media about Israel’s latest real-life horror show in the Gaza Strip.</span></span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Since October 7, the Israeli military has killed more than 16,000 Palestinians in Gaza, among them <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/12/4/no-end-to-suffering-of-gaza-children-as-israeli-attacks-rage-on" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">more than 6,000 children</a>. Barrera’s crimes included calling for a ceasefire and quoting Israeli historian Raz Segal, an Israeli professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Stockton University in New Jersey, who has <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/a-textbook-case-of-genocide" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;" target="_blank">argued</a> that Israel’s current behaviour constitutes a “textbook case of genocide”.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Spyglass Media Group production company was responsible for the firing, contending that Barrera’s social media posts on Palestine were anti-Semitic. After all, there is nothing more anti-Semitic than quoting an Israeli genocide scholar on the topic of genocide. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/7/hollywoods-israel-problem" target="_blank">READ MORE AT A<i>L JAZEERA ENGLISH</i>.</a></b></span><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/12/7/hollywoods-israel-problem" target="_blank"> </a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-43079228164451846232023-11-29T12:39:00.002-06:002023-12-01T12:43:57.709-06:00Walking to America<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/29/walking-to-america" target="_blank">Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The isthmus of Tehuantepec, the narrow strip of land that separates the Gulf of Mexico from the Pacific Ocean in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, is known for its spectacularly fierce winds, which have toppled many a cargo truck navigating its thoroughfares. The isthmus is currently also playing host to mass human movement, as refuge seekers from Central America to Africa and beyond navigate the landscape in the hopes of eventually reaching the United States, still some 2,500 kilometers (1,550 miles) to the north.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And for these thousands upon thousands of humans in precarious transit, overpowering winds are but one of myriad existential obstacles.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I recently spent a few days in the isthmian town of Juchitán and took a taxi out to the nearby village of Santo Domingo Ingenio, where I met up with a 10-member Venezuelan family <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/22/dying-without-borders" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">whose acquaintance I had made</a> in early November in the neighbouring state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala. Driving up the highway from Juchitán, the taxi lurched in the wind as we passed staggered groups of people heading in the opposite direction, some carrying babies or pushing strollers, others shielding their faces from the punishing sun overhead.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The family had joined up with the latest northbound migrant caravan to form in Mexico – although the caravan has since largely dissolved in accordance with divide-and-conquer tactics of the Mexican government and mafia outfits, which jointly profit from the United States’s criminalisation of migration. Lacking any money for food – much less to avail themselves of mafia-organised transport options or the inflated “migrant prices” unofficially implemented by Mexican bus companies – this family belongs to the class of refuge seekers that has basically been reduced to walking to America.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"> <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/29/walking-to-america" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i>.</a></b></span><span style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/29/walking-to-america" target="_blank"> </a></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-87777666763173195572023-11-22T22:00:00.000-06:002023-11-23T06:00:23.379-06:00Dying without borders<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/22/dying-without-borders" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On November 6 in the city of Tapachula in Mexico’s Chiapas state, just down the road from the border with Guatemala, a young woman lay face down on the pavement in front of one of the offices of COMAR, the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance. Generally speaking, “refugee assistance” means <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/1/9/the-three-amigos-and-a-us-war-on-asylum-seekers-in-mexico" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">stymying the northward movement</a> of desperate refugees at the behest of the United States.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I happened to be passing by the COMAR office on my way to the municipal cemetery of Tapachula, where earlier in the year I had <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/1/26/letter-from-a-mass-grave-in-mexico" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">visited a mass grave</a> containing the unidentified remains of refugees who had perished in the city. As the policeman stationed in front of the office was busy staring into space, I stopped to ask bystanders what had befallen the prostrate woman.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">“She suffers from high blood pressure,” was the response from Yessica, a Honduran woman holding a visibly ill infant in her arms as four other children ran in circles around her. Yessica had arrived in Tapachula 10 days earlier after travelling with her kids from the Honduran town of Tela through Guatemala, where, she said, they had been robbed of everything they had. They were now sleeping on the street trying to figure out how to proceed north in the face of “refugee assistance”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In explaining why she had fled Honduras, Yessica cited a motive commonly invoked by refugees from the country: its spectacular levels of violence, which became even more so following the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/6/28/the-honduran-meltdown-made-in-usa" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">2009 US-backed coup d’état</a> when homicides and femicides surged. Yessica had another uniquely dreadful reason for needing to get to the US, however, which was that her son was buried there. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/22/dying-without-borders" target="_blank"><b>READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i></b>.</a></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-64653581644097136882023-11-12T17:03:00.003-06:002023-11-13T05:07:30.489-06:00How America’s bloodthirsty journalism cheers on Israel’s war on Gaza<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/12/how-americas-bloodthirsty-journalism-cheers-on-israels-war-on-gaza" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In a recent <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2023/11/06/the-lead-protestors-call-for-ceasefire.cnn" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">segment</a> on how Hamas “frames the civilian casualties” of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, CNN’s Jake Tapper starts out by acknowledging that we “do know that innocent civilians in Gaza continue to be killed by Israeli strikes”. It is impossible to “not be affected by these horrific images that we’re seeing”, he states, as the humanitarian crisis in the enclave grows “increasingly dire”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What is the solution, then? In Tapper’s view, apparently, it is for Israel to continue killing innocent civilians and presiding over a humanitarian catastrophe, because it is all Hamas’s fault anyway.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Near the beginning of the segment, we are shown a clip of Queen Rania of Jordan responding to those who argue that a ceasefire will help Hamas – an argument she says amounts to “endorsing and justifying the death of thousands of civilians”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then it is back to Tapper, who calls Queen Rania’s remarks an “interesting turn of phrase” and goes on to wonder condescendingly whether it did not occur to Hamas, when the organisation undertook its operation on October 7, that Israel would “retaliate in a way that would cause innocent Palestinians in Gaza to die”. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/12/how-americas-bloodthirsty-journalism-cheers-on-israels-war-on-gaza" target="_blank"><b>READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i></b>.</a></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-1709722716230918492023-11-06T07:31:00.003-06:002023-11-06T07:31:35.746-06:00Israel’s psychological operation in Gaza<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/6/israels-psychological-operation-in-gaza" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In 2014, nine years prior to Israel’s <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/17/mapping-the-israel-palestine-war-major-events-on-the-ground" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">current annihilative efforts</a> in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army undertook what it dubbed “Operation Protective Edge” in the same territory. The 51-day campaign extinguished 2,251 Palestinian lives, among them 551 children.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Not long after the 2014 killing spree, a psychoanalyst acquaintance of mine in Barcelona sent me some photographs that he had acquired from a colleague in Gaza. The photos were of drawings by children in the town of Khuzaa in the southern Gaza governorate of Khan Yunis, close to the border with Israel.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">At first glance, many of the drawings appear to be your standard children’s artwork, featuring colourful houses, smiling stick figures, grass, clouds, sun and so forth. Stylistic similarities aside, however, the illustrations depict a troublingly distinct landscape – one in which missiles, tanks, bulldozers and jets have clearly come to occupy central positions in the respective universes of the young artists. . . .</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The children who drew those drawings are now teenagers – provided, that is, that they have survived the <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/10/31/israel-hamas-war-live-israeli-air-attacks-continue-across-gaza" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">latest ongoing round</a> of Israeli-induced carnage in Gaza, which has killed close to 10,000 people including more than 4,800 children. There is not a single safe place in the entire territory, as Israel proceeds to target homes, schools and hospitals alike with abandon. Israeli military officers have admitted to dispensing with pretences to “surgical” precision. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/6/israels-psychological-operation-in-gaza" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i>.</a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-86734886805663698082023-10-30T09:46:00.006-05:002023-10-30T09:46:56.578-05:00Israel is forcibly disappearing Gaza<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/30/israel-is-forcibly-disappearing-gaza" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On October 28, Israeli military spokesperson Daniel Hagari took to X – the platform formerly known as Twitter – with an “urgent message” for the residents of the Gaza Strip. For their “immediate safety”, Hagari said in a message entirely in English, residents of northern Gaza and Gaza City were urged to “temporarily relocate south”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The performance was grotesquely preposterous for a variety of reasons, not least of them that English is the official language of neither Israel nor Palestine – which suggests that the intended audience was not, in fact, the population whose “immediate safety” was supposedly of such concern to Hagari & Co.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Indeed, if safety were actually a concern, the Israeli army would not have slaughtered more than 8,000 Palestinians in three weeks, among them more than 3,000 children. Nor would Israel have continued to carpet-bomb both northern and southern Gaza following its previous warning to Palestinians in the north of the enclave to evacuate south. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/30/israel-is-forcibly-disappearing-gaza" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.</i></a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-88029950549727997242023-10-26T12:22:00.002-05:002023-10-26T12:22:47.156-05:00Guterres, Gaza and the consequences of countering ‘Israelspeak’<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/26/guterres-gaza-and-the-consequences-of-countering-israelspeak" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On top of its <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/12/israel-is-manufacturing-a-case-for-genocide" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">genocidal escapades</a> in the Gaza Strip, the state of Israel is now also having a hissy fit.</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The tantrum is primarily directed at United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who in <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/24/un-chief-says-clear-violations-of-international-humanitarian-law-in-gaza" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">recent remarks</a> before the UN Security Council in New York had the audacity to point out the bleeding obvious. “It is important to … recognise the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” Guterres said, in reference to the October 7 Hamas operation that Israel sees as justifying the slaughter of more than 7,000 Palestinians in less than three weeks.</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The Secretary-General continued: “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.” Had Guterres wanted to fill in the vacuum a little more, he could have mentioned the past 75 years of ethnic cleansing, dispossession and massacres suffered by Palestinians at the hands of Israel, which has now added <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/25/starvation-used-as-a-weapon-of-war-on-civilians-in-gaza-oxfam" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">forced starvation</a> to its deadly anti-Palestinian arsenal. <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/26/guterres-gaza-and-the-consequences-of-countering-israelspeak" target="_blank"><b>READ MORE AT</b> <b><i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i></b>.</a></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-43574719326020860432023-10-21T06:27:00.002-05:002023-10-21T06:34:03.487-05:00A PR stunt amid a massacre in Gaza<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/21/a-pr-stunt-amid-a-massacre-in-gaza" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Friday, October 20 was supposed to be a particularly humanitarian day for the “<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/16/the-myth-of-israels-most-moral" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">world’s most moral army</a>”, ie, the one that has slaughtered more than 4,000 humans in the Gaza Strip over the past two weeks, half of them children.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">According to United States President Joe Biden – who continues to wholeheartedly back the Israeli slaughter-fest in Gaza both morally and financially while pretending to care a tiny bit about the victims of the whole arrangement – Israel had agreed to allow some 20 humanitarian aid trucks to enter the besieged Palestinian enclave on Friday via the shuttered Rafah crossing from Egypt. Depending on how that went, the US president said, more aid trucks could then follow.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/18/israel-says-it-wont-block-humanitarian-aid-entering-gaza-from-egypt" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">statement</a> from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Wednesday affirmed that, “in light of President Biden’s demand, Israel will not thwart humanitarian supplies from Egypt as long as it is only food, water and medicine for the civilian population in the southern Gaza Strip”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Biden, it seems, was a tad more excited about the PR stunt than everyone’s favourite “moral army”. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/21/a-pr-stunt-amid-a-massacre-in-gaza" target="_blank">READ MORE AT A<i>L JAZEERA ENGLISH</i>.</a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-2126913924300523162023-10-15T11:28:00.002-05:002023-10-15T11:28:24.172-05:00Israel and the weaponisation of empathy<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/15/israel-and-the-weaponisation-of-empathy" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On October 9, two days into the current <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2023/10/11/israel-hamas-war-live-gaza-faces-growing-humanitarian-catastrophe" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Israel-Hamas war</a> – in which the Israeli army appears intent on semi-obliterating the Gaza Strip – the website of the New York-based magazine Women’s Health published some guidelines on “How To Cope With The Trauma Of Violent Images And Videos Of Hamas’ Attack on Israel”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">It is unsurprising, of course, that the potential for trauma has been detected solely as a reaction to Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel and not to, say, the past 75 years of Israeli violence and ethnic cleansing of Palestine – the cumulative depraved barbarity of which is what prompted Hamas’s actions in the first place.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">After all, Israel’s carefully crafted monopoly on victimisation and the attendant dehumanisation of Palestinians means that footage of the ongoing <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/8/12/israel-normalising-terror-one-dawn-at-a-time" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">Israeli terrorisation of Gaza</a> has never compelled US media outlets to prescribe “steps to protect your mental health”.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">And yet the Women’s Health intervention constitutes a novel sort of twist on the victimisation theme, in which even the vicarious trauma that is allegedly intermittently experienced by US audiences trumps the unmitigated trauma suffered by the people upon whom Israel wages perpetual war. <b>READ MORE AT <i><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/15/israel-and-the-weaponisation-of-empathy" target="_blank">AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.</a></i></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-79051039468842665742023-10-08T08:21:00.003-05:002023-10-08T08:21:48.246-05:00What’s behind the Washington, DC murder spike?<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/8/whats-behind-the-washington-dc-murder-spike" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The capital of the United States of America is threatening to reclaim its reputation as the nation’s murder capital, as well.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">According to <a href="https://mpdc.dc.gov/page/district-crime-data-glance" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;" target="_blank">preliminary data</a> for 2023 from Washington, DC’s Metropolitan Police Department, a total of 214 homicides had been committed in the metropolis as of September 29, constituting a 37 percent increase over last year. This is the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/09/26/dc-homicides-increase-crime-crisis/" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">first time in a quarter-century</a> that Washington’s homicide count has exceeded 200 before October.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Victims include 10-year-old Arianna Davis, who received a stray bullet to the head on Mother’s Day; 16-year-old Jamal Jones, shot near his high school on September 25; and 31-year-old father of four <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/7/afghan-interpreter-who-fled-the-taliban-killed-in-us-gun-violence" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;" target="_blank">Nasrat Ahmad Yar</a>, a Lyft driver shot on Capitol Hill in July.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Ahmad Yar had fled Afghanistan after serving as a translator for the US armed forces, only to end up a casualty of US gun violence in imperial headquarters itself – a morbid twist, no doubt, on the theme of “bringing the war home”. <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/10/8/whats-behind-the-washington-dc-murder-spike" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i>.</a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-57849722033418620332023-09-28T16:29:00.003-05:002023-09-28T16:29:23.879-05:00Corruption is as American as apple pie<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/9/28/corruption-is-as-american-as-apple-pie" target="_blank"> Al Jazeera English</a></b></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">On September 22, influential United States Senator Bob Menendez was <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/22/us-senator-bob-menendez-indicted-on-bribery-charges" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">indicted</a> on corruption charges along with his wife, Nadine. It is the second time Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has faced such charges.</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As per the <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-senator-robert-menendez-his-wife-and-three-new-jersey-businessmen-charged-bribery" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">indictment</a> from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, Menendez and his wife received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from three New Jersey businessmen in the form of gold, cash, a luxury vehicle and assorted other goodies. In exchange, the Democrat from New Jersey allegedly used his position of power to benefit the three businessmen as well as the government of Egypt, the home country of one of the men in question.</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As the old saying goes, power tends to corrupt.</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">According to US mythology, of course, corruption is entirely the business of other, less civilised nations – particularly enemies of the US – that lack the proper commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and all that nice and noble stuff.</span></p><p class="p1" style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">But here’s a news flash for those sectors of the domestic audience scandalised by the Menendez revelations: Corruption is about as American as apple pie. (And a related newsflash: Menendez or no Menendez, the US has spent decades flinging billions of dollars at Egypt’s repressive apparatus – which should constitute a scandal in itself.) <b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/9/28/corruption-is-as-american-as-apple-pie" target="_blank">READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH</i>.</a></b></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3523741032724643964.post-76174222433162998242023-09-19T04:17:00.003-05:002023-09-19T04:21:31.833-05:00A day in the life of the American dream<p><b><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/9/18/a-day-in-the-life-of-the-american-dream?fbclid=IwAR1d5iNtMunOepBF4bgIFRJEp48L6MCvYdN9jEJ72qpnZx8BqWar9IHTlN4" target="_blank">Al Jazeera</a></b></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The day after <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/8/23/remember-that-i-love-you-most" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0059a5;">my father died in August</a> in Washington, DC, I was taking out the trash in my parents’ apartment building when I was intercepted by a garrulous 60-year-old janitor from El Salvador – we’ll call him César – who in the very short time he had known my dad had reportedly clocked double-digit hours of conversation with him.</span></p><p style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; hyphens: auto; margin: 0.5rem 0px 30px; overflow-wrap: break-word;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Hearing that my dad had succumbed to prostate cancer after his doctors had pushed counterproductive but highly lucrative chemotherapy treatments on him, César offered his condolences and proceeded to tell me of his own latest run-in with the US healthcare system. This transpired after he had a heart attack in the street and bystanders called the cops on him, assuming he was drunk.</span></p><div style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"></div><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;">He eventually ended up at the hospital, where he was presented with an $80,000 bill in exchange for the luxury of not dying. While hospitalised, he received a phone call from his employer, who informed him that he was fired for having a heart attack rather than showing up to work.</span></span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Having resided in the US for 20 years as an undocumented worker, César would just as soon return to El Salvador, he said, but his adult son still clung to the notion of “el sueño americano”, or the American dream. He shrugged with a smile of resignation and launched into an energetic recounting of another misadventure in the so-called land of the free.</span><a href="s://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/9/18/a-day-in-the-life-of-the-american-dream?fbclid=IwAR1d5iNtMunOepBF4bgIFRJEp48L6MCvYdN9jEJ72qpnZx8BqWar9IHTlN4" target="_blank"> <b>READ MORE AT <i>AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.</i></b></a></span></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com