In Mexico, enforced disappearance is a way of life

 Al Jazeera English

At the beginning of March, an expansive clandestine crematorium was discovered on a ranch in the western Mexican state of Jalisco, complete with burned human remains and 200 pairs of shoes. According to local officials, the apparent extermination site was likely operated by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which also reportedly used the ranch as a recruitment and training centre.

As Al Jazeera correspondent John Holman noted in a video dispatch following the discovery, the “strange thing” was that Mexican authorities had “seized the ranch five months ago, but reported none of the infrastructure” located there. Instead, it took a group of volunteers dedicated to the search for Mexico’s missing people to unearth the underground ovens. . . .

As per the official narrative, Mexico’s violence is entirely the fault of drug cartels, period. This rationalisation conveniently excises from the equation the Mexican state’s established track record of killing and disappearing – not to mention the lengthy history of collaboration between Mexican police and military personnel and cartel operatives. . . . 

[F]ormer Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador . . . once took it upon himself to accuse Mexicans involved in the search for the missing of a “delirium of necrophilia”. According to Mexico’s National Register of Missing and Disappeared Persons, a record 10,064 people disappeared during a single year of AMLO’s term – between May 2022 and May 2023 – which averaged out to 27.6 per day, or more than one person per hour. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Israel Kills Palestinian Journalist Hossam Shabat as US Media Look Away

 FAIR

The Israeli military killed Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old Palestinian journalist and correspondent for Al Jazeera and Drop Site News, on Monday, March 24. The deadly targeting of Shabat’s vehicle in the northern Gaza Strip was in fact Israel’s second journalist assassination for the day; hours earlier, Palestine Today reporter Mohammad Mansour was killed in an Israeli strike on his home in southern Gaza.

And yet it was all in a day’s work for Israel, which according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has now killed at least 170 Palestinian journalists and media workers since October 7, 2023, when Israel’s armed forces kicked off an all-out genocide in the besieged enclave. According to Gaza’s Government Media Office, the number of fatalities is actually 208.

No doubt many journalists would be expected to perish in an onslaught as indiscriminate and massive as Israel’s in Gaza, where in February the death toll for the past 16 months was raised to nearly 62,000 to account for the thousands of Palestinians presumed to be dead beneath the rubble. Shockingly, that’s one out of every 35 Gaza residents—but for Gaza journalists, the International Federation of Journalists estimates that Israel has killed one out of every ten. READ MORE AT FAIR.

Sanitizing Resumption of Genocide as ‘Pressure on Hamas’

FAIR

The New York Times produced an article on Friday, March 21, bearing the headline “Israel Tries to Pressure Hamas to Free More Hostages.” In the first paragraph, readers were informed that Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had undertaken to “turn up the pressure” by warning that Israel was “preparing to seize more territory in Gaza and intensify attacks by air, sea and land if the armed Palestinian group does not cooperate.”

This was no doubt a rather bland way of describing mass slaughter and illegal territorial conquest—not to mention a convenient distraction from the fact that Hamas is not the party that is currently guilty of a failure to cooperate. In the wee hours of Tuesday morning, Israel annihilated the ceasefire agreement that came into effect in January following 15 months of genocide by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip.

Over those months, Israel officially killed at least 48,577 Palestinians in Gaza; in February, the death toll was bumped up to almost 62,000, to account for missing persons presumed to be dead beneath the rubble.

The first phase of the ceasefire ended at the beginning of March, and was scheduled to give way to a second phase, in which a permanent cessation of hostilities would be negotiated, along with the exchange of remaining hostages. Rather than “cooperate,” however, Israel and its BFF, the United States, opted to move the goalposts and insist on an extension of phase one—since, at the end of the day, an actual end to the war is the last thing Israel or the US wants. READ MORE AT FAIR.

Statements of condemnation won’t stop the genocide in Gaza

 Al Jazeera English

It was only a matter of time before Israel decided to definitively annihilate its ceasefire agreement with Hamas and resume all-out genocide in the Gaza Strip. Overnight, the Israeli army launched a wave of attacks that have thus far killed at least 404 Palestinians and wounded 562.

These numbers will no doubt rise as more bodies are recovered from beneath the rubble, and as Israel continues what Maltese Prime Minister Robert Abela has denounced as a “barbarous” assault on the Palestinian enclave.

But barbarism, after all, is what Israel does best. And unfortunately, there’s no end in sight to barbarous behaviour – particularly when the most the international community can muster are spineless statements of condemnation. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Treacherous Passage: Can Trump shut down the Darién Gap?

 The Baffler

In January, shortly before Donald Trump resumed his post at the helm of the United States, incoming border czar Tom Homan informed NBC News that the new administration would be shutting down the Darién Gap—the notorious sixty-six-mile stretch of roadless territory and hostile jungle that straddles Panama and Colombia and constitutes the only land bridge between South and Central America. In 2023 alone, the Darién Gap saw more than 520,000 refugee seekers contend with its horrors as they pursued the hope of a better life in the United States, still over three thousand miles to the north. Countless migrants have died navigating the Gap’s formidable rivers, mountains, and armed assailants, and it is next to impossible to speak with anyone who has survived the crossing without receiving a tally of all the corpses they encountered along the way.

As Homan told NBC regarding the promised closure: “It needs to happen . . . Shutting down the Darién Gap is going to protect our national security. It’s going to save thousands of lives.” Never mind the fact that crackdowns on existing migration routes—and the criminalization of migration in general—have never exactly saved lives, instead forcing refugee seekers onto ever more perilous paths and leaving them more vulnerable to extortion by organized crime and security officials alike. The Sonoran Desert and the Mediterranean Sea come to mind, both of which locations have become mass migrant graveyards in their own right—all in the interest of maintaining a global order predicated on the have-nots remaining have-nots. READ MORE AT THE BAFFLER.

A tribute to Um Adnan

 Al Jazeera English

I first met Um Adnan in 2006 in the south Lebanese village of Chehabiyeh, which lies not far from the border with Israel and regularly suffers accordingly. I was travelling in Lebanon shortly after the end of that summer’s 34-day Israeli assault, which had killed some 1,200 people and littered swaths of the country with unexploded ordnance. . . .

Um Adnan had a smile for everyone, her stoic grace all the more notable given her life’s trajectory, which included surviving such episodes of mass slaughter as the Israeli invasion of 1982 that killed tens of thousands in Lebanon. . . .[She] embodied an everyday heroism that is denied in Orientalist discourse, which reduces the Arab/Muslim woman to a weak and oppressed figure. Never mind that, in Lebanon and Palestine, it is quite the opposite of weak to hold families together while contending with the ever-present existential Israeli threat. . . .

[Her] house has since been converted to rubble along with much of the rest of Chehabiyeh – the handiwork, of course, of the Israeli military, which launched its latest invasion of Lebanon in the autumn of last year. Her family was able to salvage nothing from the ruins, leaving only memories of the place where Um Adnan had loved and lost and emanated strength in the face of adversity, day in and day out.

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. And as Israel continues to do its best to make earthly existence hell for countless international women, I’m thinking a lot about Um Adnan. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

For Israel, ceasefire is a continuation of war by other means

 Al Jazeera English

. . . 19th century famed Prussian general and military strategist Carl von Clausewitz wrote that “war is the continuation of politics by other means”.

Two hundred years later, Israel has put a new spin on the phrase with its current ceasefire-that-isn’t in the Gaza Strip. Were he alive today, von Clausewitz might very well detect the opportunity to observe that, in the case of Israel, “ceasefire is a continuation of war by other means”.

Indeed, Israel’s comportment in the aftermath of the truce which began in January has demonstrated a profound lack of interest in actually ceasing hostilities. Not only does Israel continue to kill Palestinians on a regular basis, pushing the official death toll closer to 50,000; but it has also refused to abandon occupation of the Philadelphi Corridor on the border between Gaza and Egypt. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

On a pause from genocide, Israel turns its focus to ethnic cleansing

Al Jazeera English

On Sunday, February 23, Israel deployed tanks in the occupied West Bank for the first time in more than two decades. It was the latest in a series of bellicose stunts that escalated in January, in tandem with the implementation of the tenuous ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip.

Of course, the inherently long-term nature of Israel’s genocidal policy in Gaza means that any ceasefire is inevitably temporary. In the 15-month assault on the Palestinian enclave that began in October 2023, the Israeli military officially killed at least 48,365 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children – although the true death toll is undoubtedly far higher. Most of Gaza’s inhabitants were displaced by the Israeli onslaught, many of them more than once.

Now, The Times of Israel reports that more than 40,100 Palestinians in West Bank refugee camps like Jenin have “fled their homes” since January 21, which is “allegedly the largest displacement in the territory since the Six Day War in 1967”. And on Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz instructed the army to prepare for an “extended presence in the cleared camps for the next year, and not to allow the return of residents”.

Anyway, there’s nothing like ethnic cleansing to pave the way for annexation, the chief fantasy of the Israeli right wing. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Tren de Aragua: America’s new bogeyman

 Al Jazeera English

On his very first day back in office as president of the United States of America, Donald Trump signed an executive order naming the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a “foreign terrorist organisation”. Also named in the order were Mexican drug cartels and the predominantly Salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13). . . 

Of course, the usual suspects in the US media have taken the hype and run with it, churning out sensational reports on the “bloodthirsty” gang that, according to Trump’s personal hallucinations, has managed to take over entire US cities. The problem, however, is that no one has really been able to produce much evidence of the “terror” that Tren de Aragua is said to be unleashing; the New York City Police Department (NYPD), for example, has declared the gang to be largely focused on snatching mobile phones and robbing department stores. . . . 

[T]he point of Trump’s mass deportations and the existential hype over Tren de Aragua is not, ultimately, to punish criminals for wrongdoing; rather, it is to maintain a terror spectacle and thereby keep Americans good and ignorant of the fact that their own government might just be their worst enemy. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Coverage of Israeli and Palestinian Captives Demonstrates Dehumanization in Action

 FAIR

Three Israeli men held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip were freed on Saturday, February 8,  in exchange for 183 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. It was the latest round of captive releases stipulated by the January ceasefire deal that ostensibly paused Israel’s genocide in Gaza, launched in October 2023, the official Palestinian death toll of which has now reached nearly 62,000—although the true number of fatalities is likely quite a bit higher (FAIR.org, 2/5/25).

In all, 25 Israeli captives and the bodies of eight others were slated to be released over a six-week period, in exchange for more than 1,900 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel—the disproportionate ratio a reflection both of the vastly greater number of captives held by Israel and the superior value consistently assigned to Israeli life. . . .

. . . Saturday’s exchange offered a revealing view of the outsized role US corporate media play in the general dehumanization of the Palestinian people—an approach that conveniently coincides with the Middle East policy of the United States, which is predicated on the obsessive funneling of hundreds of billions of dollars in assistance and weaponry to Israel’s genocidal army. And now that President Donald Trump has decided that the US can take over Gaza by simply expelling its inhabitants, well, dehumanizing them may serve an even handier purpose. READ MORE AT FAIR.

Towards a Trump Tower in Gaza?

Al Jazeera English

When Donald Trump reassumed the presidency of the United States of America in January, eternal New York Times foreign affairs columnist and Orientalist extraordinaire Thomas Friedman took to the pages of the US newspaper of record with some advice: “President Trump, You Can Remake the Middle East if You Dare.”

And while punitive imperial makeovers have long been US policy in said region, Trump has now taken Friedman’s challenge and run with it to a whole new level, announcing on Tuesday that the US would “take over” and “own” the Gaza Strip, where Israel’s genocide has officially killed nearly 62,000 Palestinians since October 2023 – although the true death toll is undoubtedly far higher. Most of the enclave has been reduced to rubble.

No matter that Trump appears to be unclear as to where on the global map the Gaza Strip even is, as evidenced by his recent ludicrously misguided claim that the US was sending tens of thousands of dollars “to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas”.

Speaking at the White House after meeting with visiting genocidaire-in-chief, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump declared: “The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. We’ll own it.” READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

What Trump’s ‘deportation blitz’ looks like in Ciudad Juarez

 Al Jazeera English

On the first day of his repeat term as president of the United States, Donald Trump went about making good on his promises to make life hell for asylum seekers. Proclaiming a “national emergency” to pave the way for the deportation of millions, Trump also immediately cancelled the CBP One app that previously allowed undocumented people to apply for legal entry to the US by land from Mexico.

The cancellation reportedly leaves some 270,000 people from a wide array of nationalities stranded in Mexican territory, where many had been waiting almost a year in torturous limbo for CBP One appointments. This is to say nothing of the deadly odysseys that refuge seekers have long been forced to undertake prior to applying for said appointments – odysseys that have often entailed being continuously preyed upon by organised crime outfits and corrupt law enforcement officials alike, as well as navigating the notorious corpse-ridden Darien Gap between Panama and Colombia.

Predictably, Trump’s “deportation blitz” – as some outlets have dubbed it – has been a boon for the Mexican underworld and extortion-happy security personnel. When I arrived a week after Trump’s inauguration in Ciudad Juarez in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua, which lies just across the border from the city of El Paso, Texas, I was told by a Venezuelan asylum seeker that the price of being smuggled the short distance into the US had suddenly soared to $10,000 per person. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Friedman Is Back as Midwife to Help Trump Rebirth Middle East

FAIR

It is not often that I check the New York Times Opinion page to see what the paper’s three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning and mansion-dwelling foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman is up to. After all, I feel I’ve already exceeded my quota for masochism by wasting a full year of my life writing a book about the man, source of such ideas as that McDonald’s is the key to world peace, and that Iraqis needed to “Suck. On. This” as punishment for the 9/11 attacks—an event Friedman himself admitted Iraq had nothing to do with.

Employed in various posts at the United States’ newspaper of record since 1981—including as bureau chief in both Beirut and Jerusalem—Friedman has just entered his 30th year as foreign affairs columnist. His imperial imperiousness and pompous dedication to Orientalism came under fire from the get-go from none other than Edward Said . . . in a 1989 Village Voice intervention (10/17/89), titled “The Orientalist Express” . . .

I checked up on Friedman on January 21, the day after Donald Trump’s reinauguration. Sure enough, there was his very first column of 2025, headlined: “President Trump, You Can Remake the Middle East if You Dare.” In other words, it was the latest version of how much better everyone could be doing if they paid attention to the self-appointed secretary of humanity. READ MORE AT FAIR. 

Media Hype Set Up Tren de Aragua to Serve as Trump’s New Bogeyman

 FAIR

A CNN headline (6/10/24) last June menacingly warned readers about the United States’s latest dial-a-bogeyman, guaranteed to further whip up anti-immigrant vitriol in the country and justify ever more punitive border fortification: “This Is the Dangerous Venezuelan Gang Infiltrating the US That You Probably Know Nothing About But Should.”

The gang in question was Tren de Aragua, which formed in Tocorón prison in the Venezuelan state of Aragua, and spread to various South American countries before allegedly setting its sights on the US. Now the organization that you probably knew nothing about has achieved such a level of notoriety that President Donald Trump issued an executive order on his first day of returning to office, declaring the group (along with other regional drug cartels and gangs) to be a “foreign terrorist organization.”

 Although there is approximately zero evidence of a smoking gun on the old terror front, the corporate media are doing their best to bring fantasy to life. And as usual, it's the average refuge seeker who will suffer for it. READ MORE AT FAIR.

Mars, watch out — Trump’s coming for you too

 Al Jazeera English

It was a cold day yesterday in Washington, DC, when Donald Trump was sworn in for his second stint as president of the United States of America. On account of freezing temperatures, the inauguration ceremony was moved indoors to the Capitol Rotunda, and the weather became a primary focus of much pre-inauguration media commentary.

The Reuters news agency reported that this was “one of the coldest inauguration days the US has experienced in the past few decades”, while also providing other crucial ceremony updates such as that “Mike Tyson snacked on a banana in the overflow room”.

I, myself, watched the event on my computer in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, where it is precisely the opposite of cold and where I have spent the past several days battling the scorpion population that has taken up residence in my house. By the end of Trump’s swearing-in, however, I was undecided as to what was less pleasant: killing scorpions or watching the next episode of American dystopia unfold. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH

Trump versus the Gulf of Mexico

 Al Jazeera English

This month during a rambling news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate, United States President-elect Donald Trump announced his latest vision for revising the map of the world: “We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, which has a beautiful ring.”

He went on to reiterate approvingly: “That covers a lot of territory, the Gulf of America. What a beautiful name.”

The Gulf of Mexico, which runs along much of Mexico’s eastern coastline and abuts five southern US states, is a key international hub for shipping, fishing, oil drilling and other commercial activity. The body of water was christened as such more than four centuries ago before either the US or Mexico existed.

Of course, a unilateral renaming of the gulf by the US president would not require endorsement by Mexico or any other country. Additional cartographic adjustments recently floated by the incoming leader include seizing the Panama Canal, wresting away control of Greenland and annexing Canada. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.

Donald Trump and the great Panama Canal tantrum

Al Jazeera English

As he gears up to retake the presidency of the United States this month, Donald Trump has spontaneously begun threatening to retake the Panama Canal, as well.

Per the incoming president’s recent tantrums on social media, Panama is “ripping off” the US with “ridiculous” fees to use the interoceanic waterway and principal conduit for global commerce. As Trump sees it, the Central American country’s behaviour is especially objectionable “knowing the extraordinary generosity that has been bestowed to Panama by the US”.

Trump has also baselessly alleged that Chinese troops are currently operating the canal. In reality, of course, the Panama Canal was previously operated by none other than the United States, which built the canal at the beginning of the 20th century and only handed over control to Panama in 1999.

As for the “extraordinary generosity” allegedly extended to the country by the friendly local superpower, just recall the US military’s so-called “Operation Just Cause”, launched in December 1989, thanks to which the impoverished neighbourhood of El Chorrillo in the Panamanian capital of Panama City earned the moniker “Little Hiroshima”. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.