Articles by Belén Fernández

We found 28 results.


Weaponising Underwear: Genocide with a Semi-Pornographic Twist
Belen Fernandez | Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service, 15 Apr 2024

12 Apr 2024 – Let’s pretend for a moment that Hamas militants from Gaza were posing for social media with lingerie from Israeli women who fled their homes or were killed. Imagine the moral outrage that would ensue, entailing racist and self-righteous allegations of Arab perverseness, the barbaric sexism of Islam, and the tendencies of sexually repressed Muslims.

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Israel and the Weaponization of Empathy
Belen Fernandez | Al Jazeera - TRANSCEND Media Service, 23 Oct 2023

15 Oct 2023 – Selective empathy is not empathetic at all.

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Fear and Loathing: The US Travel Guide to the World
Belen Fernandez | Al Jazeera - TRANSCEND Media Service, 27 Jun 2022

21 Jun 2022 – The US state department really wants travelling Americans to be wary of the ‘dangerous’ world their country helped create.

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The Legal Psychedelics Industry: Capitalism on Drugs
Belen Fernandez | Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 May 2022

Capitalism is tripping over itself to get people tripping on legal psychedelics.

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Business as Usual in Munich: White Men Rule the World
Belen Fernandez  | Al Jazeera – TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Mar 2022

7 Mar 2022 – A photograph from a CEO lunch at this year’s Munich Security Conference yet again demonstrated who continues to run the world.

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From Havana with Love
Belen Fernandez | Al Jazeera - TRANSCEND Media Service, 14 Feb 2022

7 Feb 2022 – Sixty years of US embargo on Cuba have not starved the island into ‘democratisation’, the way Washington hoped.

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Your $1.7 Billion of Gold Is Now Ours, UK Tells Starving Venezuelans
Belen Fernandez | RT - TRANSCEND Media Service, 3 Jan 2022

26 Dec 2021 – In its prolonged freezing of Venezuelan assets, the UK continues to withhold 31 tons of its gold stored at the Bank of England, with a new Supreme Court ruling supporting the seizure.

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Stop Being Polite – Colin Powell Was a Killer
Belen Fernandez | Al Jazeera - TRANSCEND Media Service, 25 Oct 2021

20 Oct 2021 – Colin Powell has died, and the hagiographic obituaries are upon us. Throughout his career, Powell did a swell job of rallying and maintaining bipartisan support for imperial killing – and putting as ‘polite’ a face as possible on it.

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(Français) PEGASUS israélien: votre téléphone est-il un instrument de surveillance permanente?
Belen Fernandez | Investig'Action/Al Jazeera - TRANSCEND Media Service, 11 Oct 2021

7 Oct 2021 – Le scandale « Pegasus » est le dernier épisode en date du thriller de science-fiction dystopique, mais bien réel que nous vivons à l’heure actuelle.

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Clashes, Scuffles, Conflict – Western Media’s Euphemisms for Israel’s Brutal Violence in Sheikh Jarrah
Belen Fernandez | Middle East Eye - TRANSCEND Media Service, 17 May 2021

10 May 2021 – Let’s imagine some creative wartime reporting: “On April 26, 1937, the inhabitants of the Basque town of Guernica ‘clashed’ with German warplanes dropping high explosives and incendiary bombs. The town was pulverised in the course of the ‘scuffle’, and up to 1600 people perished”.

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Cuba Under Media Attack for Sending Doctors, Not Bombs, to Help COVID-19 Victims
Belen Fernandez | FAIR-Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting - TRANSCEND Media Service, 20 Apr 2020

14 Apr 2020 – As coronavirus ravages the world, Cuba has exhibited disproportionate heroism, deploying medical personnel to at least 14 countries thus far to battle the pandemic. It is a welcome bit of uplifting news in an otherwise mostly dismal international panorama. Lest anyone start feeling too inspired by the idea of humanity, however, sectors of the US corporate media are dutifully standing by to burst the bubble.

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How Capitalism Is Killing Us
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 7 Jan 2019

2 Jan 2019 – And how we may have passed the ‘point of no return”.

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The United States: Addicted to Special Forces
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 22 Jan 2018

In 2017, the US dispatched special operations to 149 countries. What were they doing there?

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The Earth versus Capitalism
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 24 Apr 2017

Unfortunately, as of Earth Day 2017, capitalism is winning the war it has been waging against the planet.

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Blackwater Founder Claims Private Security Is the Answer to Save Europe from Refugee Crisis
Belen Fernandez | Middle East Eye – TRANSCEND Media Service, 9 Jan 2017

Erik Prince, the former CEO of the firm responsible for opening fire on Iraqi civilians, has the militarised solution to Europe’s migrant problem.

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2016 and the Truth behind Fake News
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 2 Jan 2017

But as The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald recently pointed out, “The most important fact to realise about this new term” is that “those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it”. Indeed, the ongoing hullabaloo in US mainstream media over the notion that the Russians hacked the election in Trump’s favour via a sinister campaign of mass disinformation would itself appear to be a strong contender for the “fake news” category.

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Fidel Castro in Context
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 28 Nov 2016

26 Nov 2016 – As of the year 2006, Fidel Castro, Cuba’s revolutionary leader, who has died aged 90, had reportedly been the subject of no fewer than 638 assassination plots by the CIA. The revolutionary’s achievements in the face of US meddling made him a powerful symbol of resistance against hegemony.

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Christopher Columbus: The Myth That Keeps on Giving
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 10 Oct 2016

Why has a symbol of mass slaughter been unrepentantly idolised for more than half a millennium? On October 12, 1492, a geographically misguided voyager by the name of Christopher Columbus happened upon the so-called New World. Dismantling the myth of Columbus as hero would require some serious national introspection that would inevitably raise uncomfortable questions…

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Nice, Munich and the Terrorism of the West
Belen Fernandez – Middle East Eye, 1 Aug 2016

If you happen to exist in the vicinity of Arab/Muslim formations, you’re legitimate collateral damage – and you don’t stand a chance of being humanised post-mortem in the fashion of the Nice victims. Eighty-four lives lost in Nice is an atrocity of extreme proportions, no doubt. But what of the estimated half a million Iraqi children wiped out via US sanctions in the 1990s, before we even got down to serious business via the war on terror?

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Beirut and Paris: A Tale of Two Terror Attacks
Belén Fernández - TeleSur, 16 Nov 2015

14 Nov 2015 – As news arrived yesterday of terror attacks in Paris that ultimately left more than 120 people dead, U.S. President Barack Obama characterized the situation as “heartbreaking” and an assault “on all of humanity.” Presidential sympathy had been conspicuously absent the previous day when terror attacks in Beirut left 44 people dead and 239 others injured. Predictably, Western media and social media were much less vocal about the slaughter in Lebanon.

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The Honduran Meltdown: Made in USA
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 6 Jul 2015

Six years after the coup in Honduras, it’s time for another history lesson. The post-coup era has seen soaring homicide rates, with much of the violence committed by state security forces enjoying near-total impunity.

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‘Concerning Violence’: Fanon Lives On
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 8 Dec 2014

After all, violence is the prerogative of empire. ‘Concerning Violence’ is inspired by ‘The Wretched of the Earth,’ the 1961 book of Martinique-born psychiatrist and revolutionary Frantz Fanon, excerpts of which serve as the film’s narrative. A new documentary on colonial legacies in Africa raises questions about the colonialisms of today.

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Fun with Chronology: Misreporting the Israeli Assault on Gaza
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 6 Jan 2014

The media has a habit of using truncated timelines to excuse Israel’s assaults on Gaza. The New York Times’ rendering of recent violence on the border between Gaza and Israel is a shining example of the chronological sleights of hand that have come to characterise mainstream reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

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Israel’s Other Silent War
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 18 Nov 2013

State-sponsored racism and discrimination against African migrants continue amid international media silence. “When Israel rounds up and deports African refugees, it makes a mockery of the millions of Jews who died during World War II because no one would grant them shelter.” — David Sheen, Israeli-Canadian journalist.

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The Power of Cuba’s Free Healthcare
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 30 Jul 2012

The US’s notion of health care as a commodity is countered by the virtues of free health provision in Cuba. In 1995, Nelson Mandela declared with regard to Cuban international solidarity missions to Africa over past decades: “Cubans came to our region as doctors, teachers, soldiers, agricultural experts, but never as colonisers. They have shared the same trenches with us in the struggle against colonialism, underdevelopment and apartheid.”

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The Passion of Bradley Manning
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 30 Apr 2012

Many have questioned Manning’s sanity for allegedly releasing US military files, but who’s questioning military tactics?

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Private Security and ‘the Israelites of Latin America’
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 9 Jan 2012

An Israeli defence consultancy is assisting with dirty work in Colombia previously monopolised by the United States. A pet factoid wielded by self-appointed experts on the matter is that it is currently possible to travel by air from Caracas to Tehran with only one stop in Damascus. Lest policymakers and the general public fail to respond with adequate alarm to such news, the severity of the threat is underscored via invented links between Muslims in Latin America and every potentially unfavourable regional trend, resulting in a spectre of Islamo-narco-socialist crime cartels menacing the southern border of the US.

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Honduras’ Very Own War on Terror
Belen Fernandez – Al Jazeera, 11 Jul 2011

The state uses propaganda to justify eliminating civil rights because of the threat of ‘terrorism’. When in doubt, start a war on terror.

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