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.