The double standards of a failed execution

 Al Jazeera English

Let’s pretend that the Islamic Republic of Iran had undertaken to execute a 50-year-old woman for a crime committed when she was an 18-year-old.

Let’s say the crime was murdering a fellow female student. Let’s also say that the woman slated for execution had suffered rape and sexual abuse since she was a toddler and had been diagnosed with mental illness, later admitting: “It took me numerous years to even realise the gravity of what I’d done.”

A fair amount of international uproar would presumably ensue, alleging Iran’s barbarity in choosing to kill a woman with such a troubled past. The United States would no doubt be at the helm of the criticism.

And yet no such uproar has transpired since Wednesday’s attempted execution in the US state of Tennessee of 50-year-old Christa Pike, to whom all of the above details pertain in reality. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Corporate Media Don’t Understand the Houthis—and Don’t Want You to, Either

FAIR

It’s that time of year again: The Houthis are making the news—and so is the Western corporate media narrative that surrounds them.

The Houthis—formally Ansar Allah, “Supporters of God”—are from the Zaydi Shia minority in Yemen, and have governed the most populous sections of the country, including the capital Sanaa, since the start of Yemen’s civil war in 2014.

Like many a “civil” war, the conflict has plenty of outside participants—most notably Saudi Arabia, which led a coalition of Arab states (with the backing of the United States) in an effort to bomb and starve Yemen away from Houthi control.

In 2022, a tenuous truce took hold between the Houthis and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, but the Saudi blockade of the country was never lifted.

This July, the Houthis declared their own naval blockade of Saudi Arabia, in response to the Saudi siege and resumed bombing of Yemen. In a rapid September offensive, the group completed its takeover of Yemen’s Red Sea Coast and the strategic Bab al-Mandeb strait, putting Saudi oil shipping operations in a decisive bind. The Houthis have also launched missiles at Saudi Arabia in response to Saudi attacks on the country.

The offensive has prompted a slew of media interventions to ostensibly explain to everyone who the Houthis are. The New York Times (9/23/26), for instance, ran the headline “Who Are the Houthis, and What Do They Want?”; the BBC (9/24/26) ran the very same title, minus the comma. READ MORE AT FAIR.

 

To the victor belong Venezuela’s spoils: Delcy Rodriguez’s UNGA about-face

 Al Jazeera English

Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez took to the stage yesterday at the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City to deliver a rather bland speech, in which she thanked United States President Donald Trump for resuming “diplomatic relations and cooperation” with Venezuela.

This was a different vibe, to be sure, than the one she opted for at the same venue in September 2019, when, as vice president under Nicolas Maduro, she accused the US of perpetrating “economic terrorism” that did not require the use of bombs “but rather through banks and insurance companies”.

Denouncing the global superpower’s militarisation of international relations and punishment of millions of innocent people “in order to apply regime change doctrines and steal other nations’ resources”, the Rodriguez of 2019 went on to cite Venezuelan economic losses to the tune of $130bn between 2015 and 2018 alone on account of US sanctions.

She additionally offered her opinion that the domination of the US political system by “plutocratic minorities” made the country unqualified to impose its model on other countries.

Seven years later, US plutocracy is going strong with Trump at the helm – the same Trump alongside whom a grinning Rodriguez appeared in a photograph taken in New York on Tuesday, less than nine months after he oversaw regime change in Venezuela by kidnapping Maduro.

The kidnapped president is now also in New York, albeit in jail, and is scheduled to stand trial in June 2027. This despite his attempts to remind everyone that, as a sitting head of state, his prosecution in a foreign court contravenes international law. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Flock cameras are the latest weapon of America's post-9/11 surveillance state

 Middle East Eye

In December 2021, nearly two years into the coronavirus pandemic, I flew from Mexico, which had become my de facto place of residence, to the United States, my country of birth and the place I had spent nearly two decades avoiding like the plague - the short explanation for which was that I found it incredibly creepy.

Arriving at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, I discovered that things had become even creepier than usual when, in the immigration line for US citizens, I was told to simply look at the camera rather than produce my passport.

A sign on the wall sponsored by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) featured a smiling grey-haired man and the assurance to air travellers that this was all in their best interest: "Our policies on privacy couldn't be more transparent. Biometric Facial Comparison. Faster meets more secure."

Of course, hardly anyone bats an eye anymore at such technology. Last year, the US government's Federal Register cited CBP's calculation that only about 0.13 percent of US citizens arriving in the country by air opted out of biometric processing. . . .

A quarter of a century after 9/11 set the stage for the present moment, it's safe to say that some bipartisan hullabaloo over Flock cameras is not enough to stop the surveillance state.

And as we hurtle down the camera-lined highway to doomsday, it's way too late to put on the brakes. READ MORE AT  MIDDLE EAST EYE.

9/11 at 25: Trump finds new targets for America's endless war on terror

 Middle East Eye

On 11 September 2001, I was driving to work on the freeway in Austin, Texas when I heard the news on the radio that planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

As I went about nearly crashing my own car while trying to phone my best friend in New York City, I remember thinking that we were going to be hearing a lot about this particular date for a long time to come.

Sure enough, a quarter of a century has now passed since 9/11, and the events of that day continue to shape daily existence in the US - as trite as it sounds to say it.

Those of us who are old enough may remember the pre-9/11 panorama, when it was still possible to go through airport security with your water bottle and shampoo and Muslims could go to mosque without being pursued by FBI informants.

And while the US was never exactly all it was cracked up to be in terms of democracy and respect for basic rights, 9/11 definitively obliterated the right to privacy and other civil liberties upon which the country was supposedly founded. READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

Is Trump making Latin America great again?

 Al Jazeera English

The calamitous war on Iran and continuing failure to rein in Israel have brought United States President Donald Trump collapsing approval ratings and growing public animosity at home. Yet there is one area of his foreign policy that is perhaps serving as a consolation: Latin America.

Over the past year and a half, a slew of right-wing leaders has taken power in the region through electoral victories for which Trump has more or less taken personal credit. These leaders appear eager to facilitate the resurgence of US power projection in what Trump has, with characteristic pompousness, called the “Donroe Doctrine”. This, to put it mildly, is not great news for the average Latin American.

One need only glance at the extensive history of US collaboration with right-wing Latin American regimes in the ostensible fight against leftist politics and “narco-terror” to assume that what is coming will entail a whole lot of civilian casualties.

In Colombia, for example, where far-right millionaire businessman and former criminal defence lawyer Abelardo de la Espriella was just sworn in, the US track record of funnelling heaps of money to a homicidal army joined at the hip with right-wing paramilitary outfits produced a good deal of bloodshed. And what do you know: De la Espriella amassed a portion of his lawyerly fortune defending paramilitary leaders.

In addition to having charmingly pledged to “disembowel” the left, de la Espriella is obsessed with jumpstarting fracking and pursuing other environmentally destructive projects. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Israel's 'pilot zones' turn Lebanese sovereignty on its head

MIDDLE EAST EYE

Imagine, for a moment, that Country A is conducting an illegal occupation of Country B and regularly slaughtering its inhabitants despite an alleged ceasefire agreement.

By any modicum of logic, a resolution to the situation would first require Country A to stop occupying and slaughtering people in Country B, right?

Wrong - at least if Country A happens to be Israel, which has never felt compelled to abide by international legal or moral standards. Israeli impunity is most egregiously on display in the Gaza Strip, where Israel's genocidal war has killed at least 73,375 Palestinians - or one out of every 33 people - in less than three years, with thousands more buried under the rubble.

Now, Lebanon has also been cast in a Country B role with the help of the so-called "Trilateral Framework" signed in June between the Lebanese government, Israel, and Israel's genocidal sponsors in the United States.

As per the fanciful hallucinations of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the agreement "establishes a clear and structured process to restore Lebanon's sovereignty, disarm Hezbollah and dismantle its terrorist infrastructure, and enable Israel to return to its borders once that threat to its citizens is removed". READ MORE AT MIDDLE EAST EYE.

Is Spain being punished?

Al Jazeera English

Earlier this week, at least 57 migrants died while trying to cross the border from Morocco into Ceuta, one of two Spanish enclaves located on the African mainland. In a span of just 24 hours, tens of thousands of people entered Ceuta in what Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez denounced as a “violation of territorial integrity”.

Many of the migrants interviewed in news reports claimed they had been encouraged to undertake the journey by social media posts. 

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, wasted no time in taking to X to whine that “Spain, which never misses an opportunity to lecture Israel, has declared a state of emergency in Ceuta following the crisis over its immigration policy.”

Indeed, the Sanchez government has been increasingly critical of Israel, labelling it a “genocidal state” and cancelling major arms deals accordingly. In 2024, Spain recognised the State of Palestine.

Now, in the aftermath of the Ceuta episode, Israel – a country where hypocrisy might as well be declared an official state policy – has jumped at the chance to call the Spaniards out for alleged hypocritical behaviour. In his X post, Danon went on to argue that “maybe before [Spain] continues lecturing us, it’s time it explained to the world why it still maintains colonial enclaves in Africa.”

Of course, you can’t get much more hypocritical than complaining about “colonial enclaves” when your own country is perpetrating not only a straight-up genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip but also a brutal colonial occupation that has given way to a de facto annexation of the West Bank. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Media Cheering a Deal That Puts Lebanon on the Chopping Block for Israel

 FAIR

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on June 26 triumphantly announced the “signing of the Trilateral Framework between Lebanon, Israel and the United States.” The document allegedly “builds a realistic path out of endless conflict between Israel and Lebanon—“the inheritors of ancient civilizations that date back to the time of the Bible.”

According to Rubio: “This agreement establishes a clear and structured process to restore Lebanon’s sovereignty, disarm Hezbollah and dismantle its terrorist infrastructure, and enable Israel to return to its borders once that threat to its citizens is removed.”

The framework also creates a cool-sounding “Military Coordination Group for Lebanon (MCG4L), facilitated by the United States.”

As should be immediately clear to anyone who has paid minimal attention to politics over the past 80 years, any US-brokered agreement between the two inheritors of ancient civilizations will automatically be designed to screw over Lebanon in favor of Israel—which has harbored designs on Lebanese territory from the get-go.

As Amnesty International noted, the agreement “betrays victims of war crimes in Lebanon” by essentially blocking their right to seek justice in international forums. It also signs off, Amnesty said, on the “prolonged and indefinite forced displacement of tens of thousands of residents of vast swathes of southern Lebanon occupied by Israeli forces.” READ MORE AT FAIR.

Inside the Darién Gap: A Capurganá Diary

Counter Punch

Plastered onto the side of the glassed-in immigration office at the dock in Necoclí – the northwestern Colombian city just across the Gulf of Urabá from the Darién Gap – is a poster warning of the hazards of northbound migration. Over recent years, more than 1.2 million people from a mind-boggling array of countries have risked their lives to cross the Gap, the 106-kilometer stretch of roadless territory and formidable jungle that spans Colombia and Panama and constitutes the only land bridge between South and Central America. Most of them hoped to reach the United States, the very country that makes much of the world unlivable in the first place while simultaneously criminalizing migration, thereby forcing the global have-nots down increasingly lethal routes. 

The protagonists of the poster are the Díaz family – mom, dad, and two young daughters – whose portrait appears superimposed over an image of a small boat packed with passengers. According to the poster, which is in Spanish, la familia Díaz had set out “in search of a better future,” boarding just such a boat as they made their way toward los Estados Unidos: “Two days later, a rescue team found their lifeless bodies, together with 59 other people who had also succumbed to the river’s fury.” 

When I last visited Necoclí in January, the sign had already lost its intended audience. Hardly any migrants transit the Darién Gap these days, a result of the decision by current gringo sociopath-in-chief Donald Trump to effectively shut down the US border with Mexico and dispense with the concept of asylum. In the first three months of 2026, for example, Panama recorded a total of 92 arrivals from Colombia via the jungle; in August 2023 alone, there were 81,946. I, however, certainly found myself thinking a lot about la familia Díaz over the two-hour course of a high-speed, spine-shattering boat ride from Necoclí to the village of Capurganá, which lies inside the Darién Gap and which along with the nearby village of Acandí served as the principal points of departure for migrants entering the jungle. 

This was my second visit to Capurganá, the first having taken place in January 2024, when I, too, entered the jungle as a “migrant.” READ MORE AT COUNTER PUNCH.