https://znetwork.org/author/belenfernandez/ Independent Left News, Analysis, Vision and Strategy Sun, 09 Nov 2025 14:22:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/cropped-Z_logo_512-32x32.png https://znetwork.org/author/belenfernandez/ 32 32 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/remembering-dick-cheney-polarizing-war-criminal/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/remembering-dick-cheney-polarizing-war-criminal/#respond Sun, 09 Nov 2025 14:22:23 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1291038 The corporate media in the United States have rarely met a servant of empire who isn’t eligible for hagiography in death, whether or not they presided over mass murder worldwide. In the case of Dick Cheney, who died on November 4, media outlets have summoned everything in their power to sugarcoat the blood-drenched career of the most powerful US [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/remembering-dick-cheney-polarizing-war-criminal/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/near-daily-israeli-assaults-on-lebanon-have-become-non-news-for-western-media/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/near-daily-israeli-assaults-on-lebanon-have-become-non-news-for-western-media/#respond Sat, 27 Sep 2025 16:18:55 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1289165 The Israeli military unleashed a large wave of air strikes on densely populated towns in South Lebanon on Thursday, September 18—although you’d never know it from the Western corporate media, who have increasingly lost interest in reporting on Israel’s unceasing war on its northern neighbor. This proceeds unabated in spite of a ceasefire, brokered by the United States [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/near-daily-israeli-assaults-on-lebanon-have-become-non-news-for-western-media/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-hidden-story-israeli-aid-is-part-of-genocide-plan/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-hidden-story-israeli-aid-is-part-of-genocide-plan/#respond Sat, 07 Jun 2025 11:02:31 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1284704 Israeli tanks opened fire last Sunday on a crowd of thousands of starving Palestinians at an aid distribution center in the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The victims had gathered in hopes of finding food for themselves and their families, following a nearly three-month total Israeli blockade of the territory. At least 31 people [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-hidden-story-israeli-aid-is-part-of-genocide-plan/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/as-israel-openly-declares-starvation-as-a-weapon-media-still-hesitate-to-blame-it-for-famine/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/as-israel-openly-declares-starvation-as-a-weapon-media-still-hesitate-to-blame-it-for-famine/#respond Sun, 27 Apr 2025 15:13:44 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1283020 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on March 2 that “Israel has decided to stop letting goods and supplies into Gaza,” where the ongoing Israeli genocide, with the loyal backing of the United States, has officially killed more than 51,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The announcement regarding the total halt of humanitarian aid amounted to yet another explicit declaration [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/as-israel-openly-declares-starvation-as-a-weapon-media-still-hesitate-to-blame-it-for-famine/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/media-find-ways-to-minimize-israels-murder-of-paramedics/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/media-find-ways-to-minimize-israels-murder-of-paramedics/#respond Sat, 12 Apr 2025 13:01:51 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1282351 Israeli soldiers on March 23 massacred 15 Palestinian medics and rescue workers near the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where Israel’s ongoing US-backed genocide has officially killed more than 50,000 Palestinians since October 2023. The slaughter took place before dawn, as a convoy of ambulances and a fire truck from the Palestinian Civil Defense service endeavored to respond [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/media-find-ways-to-minimize-israels-murder-of-paramedics/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/sanitizing-resumption-of-genocide-as-pressure-on-hamas/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/sanitizing-resumption-of-genocide-as-pressure-on-hamas/#respond Tue, 25 Mar 2025 16:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1281543 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 [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/sanitizing-resumption-of-genocide-as-pressure-on-hamas/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/coverage-of-israeli-and-palestinian-captives-demonstrates-dehumanization-in-action/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/coverage-of-israeli-and-palestinian-captives-demonstrates-dehumanization-in-action/#respond Sat, 15 Feb 2025 16:32:17 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1279797 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 [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/coverage-of-israeli-and-palestinian-captives-demonstrates-dehumanization-in-action/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/media-hype-set-up-tren-de-aragua-to-serve-as-trumps-new-bogeyman/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/media-hype-set-up-tren-de-aragua-to-serve-as-trumps-new-bogeyman/#respond Sun, 26 Jan 2025 17:16:12 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1278925 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 [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/media-hype-set-up-tren-de-aragua-to-serve-as-trumps-new-bogeyman/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/20-years-after-his-death-gary-webbs-truth-is-still-dangerous/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/20-years-after-his-death-gary-webbs-truth-is-still-dangerous/#respond Mon, 30 Dec 2024 15:05:27 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1277739 Twenty years ago this month, on December 10, 2004, former San Jose Mercury News investigative reporter Gary Webb died by apparent suicide, following a stretch of depression. The subject of the 2014 film Kill the Messenger, Webb had left the newspaper in 1997 after his career was systematically destroyed because he had done what journalists are supposed to do: speak [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/20-years-after-his-death-gary-webbs-truth-is-still-dangerous/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/darien-gap-the-where-of-migration-crisis-coverage-without-the-why/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/darien-gap-the-where-of-migration-crisis-coverage-without-the-why/#respond Sat, 23 Nov 2024 16:46:29 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1275837 In February, far-right political activist Laura Loomer—the self-defined “white advocate” and “proud Islamophobe” whom Donald Trump has praised as a “terrific” person and “very special”—descended on Panama to investigate the “invasion of America” allegedly taking place via the Darién Gap. The Darién Gap, mind you, is 5,000 kilometers away from the US border. The only land bridge [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/darien-gap-the-where-of-migration-crisis-coverage-without-the-why/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/prepping-readers-to-accept-mass-slaughter-in-lebanese-strongholds/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/prepping-readers-to-accept-mass-slaughter-in-lebanese-strongholds/#respond Sun, 10 Nov 2024 15:11:54 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1275094 Back in May 2015, the New York Times’ Isabel Kershner decided to moonlight as an Israeli military propagandist by penning an alleged exposé (5/12/15)—headlined “Israel Says Hezbollah Positions Put Lebanese at Risk”—in which she diligently conveyed all that Israel had to say about Hezbollah’s infrastructure in south Lebanon. The minuscule hamlet of Muhaybib, for example, was said to [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/prepping-readers-to-accept-mass-slaughter-in-lebanese-strongholds/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/in-midst-of-palestinian-genocide-late-hamas-leader-scolded-for-eradicating-israel/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/in-midst-of-palestinian-genocide-late-hamas-leader-scolded-for-eradicating-israel/#respond Sun, 27 Oct 2024 15:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1274376 The Israeli military killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Gaza Strip on October 17, and it didn’t take long for the usual media suspects to line up with their anti-eulogies. Reuters (10/18/24), for example, produced an obituary headlined “Yahya Sinwar: The Hamas Leader Committed to Eradicating Israel Is Dead”—a less than charming use of terminology [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/in-midst-of-palestinian-genocide-late-hamas-leader-scolded-for-eradicating-israel/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-pr-stunt-amid-a-massacre-in-gaza/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-pr-stunt-amid-a-massacre-in-gaza/#respond Sun, 22 Oct 2023 14:57:22 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1256141 Friday, October 20 was supposed to be a particularly humanitarian day for the “world’s most moral army”, ie, the one that has slaughtered more than 4,000 humans in the Gaza Strip over the past two weeks, half of them children. According to United States President Joe Biden – who continues to wholeheartedly back the Israeli [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-pr-stunt-amid-a-massacre-in-gaza/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/whats-behind-the-washington-dc-murder-spike/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/whats-behind-the-washington-dc-murder-spike/#respond Sun, 08 Oct 2023 15:43:59 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1255466 The capital of the United States of America is threatening to reclaim its reputation as the nation’s murder capital, as well. According to preliminary data 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 [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/whats-behind-the-washington-dc-murder-spike/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-day-in-the-life-of-the-american-dream/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-day-in-the-life-of-the-american-dream/#respond Tue, 19 Sep 2023 16:30:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1254345 Many who come to the US face a cruel reality of poverty and suffering; and yet the American dream delusion persists. The day after my father died in August 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 [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/a-day-in-the-life-of-the-american-dream/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-links-meloni-mussolini-and-mediterranean-refugee-deaths/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-links-meloni-mussolini-and-mediterranean-refugee-deaths/#respond Fri, 30 Jun 2023 14:57:13 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1248672 Sometime in the mid-1990s, a half-Italian cousin of mine who resided in a real, live castle outside Florence took a break from majestic existence to visit Texas, where my family and I were then living. I must have been about 14. My cousin was slightly younger, and had made the transatlantic crossing with a prized [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-links-meloni-mussolini-and-mediterranean-refugee-deaths/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-the-ciudad-juarez-fire-was-a-made-in-usa-inferno/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-the-ciudad-juarez-fire-was-a-made-in-usa-inferno/#respond Wed, 19 Apr 2023 15:22:51 +0000 On March 27, 40 men were killed in a fire at a migrant detention center in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas. The victims hailed from Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Venezuela. Like so many thousands of refuge seekers from around the world, they had been jailed in Mexico for [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/why-the-ciudad-juarez-fire-was-a-made-in-usa-inferno/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/us-war-on-asylum-seekers-has-led-to-mass-grave-in-mexico/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/us-war-on-asylum-seekers-has-led-to-mass-grave-in-mexico/#respond Sun, 29 Jan 2023 17:43:56 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1238224 The municipal cemetery of Tapachula in the Mexican state of Chiapas is a sprawling expanse overflowing with graves in colorful disrepair. Tombstones from centuries past crack and crumble, and the clutter is so extreme that, to reach certain parts of the graveyard, you must resign yourself to stepping on the dead. Some of the newer [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/us-war-on-asylum-seekers-has-led-to-mass-grave-in-mexico/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/world-cup-2022-capitalism-cant-kill-football-try-as-it-might/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/world-cup-2022-capitalism-cant-kill-football-try-as-it-might/#respond Sun, 20 Nov 2022 18:24:32 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1232376 A week or so before the kickoff of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, I was walking in the coastal city of Zihuatanejo in Mexico’s southern Guerrero state when I passed a group of children playing football with a plastic Coca-Cola bottle. They were as gleefully animated as any group of children playing football anywhere, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/world-cup-2022-capitalism-cant-kill-football-try-as-it-might/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/these-supreme-court-cases-could-kill-what-remains-of-us-democracy/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/these-supreme-court-cases-could-kill-what-remains-of-us-democracy/#respond Wed, 26 Oct 2022 15:16:58 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1223593 In recent years, the United States Supreme Court has dutifully laboured to erode the protections guaranteed under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, a civil rights era milestone that aimed to safeguard minority voters from racial discrimination. Now, six decades after the law’s passage, the country’s highest judicial body will decide whether to drop some of the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/these-supreme-court-cases-could-kill-what-remains-of-us-democracy/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-us-opioid-epidemic/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-us-opioid-epidemic/#respond Wed, 05 Jan 2022 09:01:19 +0000 https://zcomm.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1053278 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-us-opioid-epidemic/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-inconvenient-truth-about-the-migrant-caravan/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-inconvenient-truth-about-the-migrant-caravan/#comments Thu, 01 Nov 2018 09:00:56 +0000 https://zcomm.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1014345 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-inconvenient-truth-about-the-migrant-caravan/feed/ 3 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/honduras-and-israel-a-new-special-relationship/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/honduras-and-israel-a-new-special-relationship/#comments Wed, 14 Sep 2016 09:01:01 +0000 https://zcomm.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=990192 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/honduras-and-israel-a-new-special-relationship/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/israel-68-years-old-and-as-backward-as-it-gets/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/israel-68-years-old-and-as-backward-as-it-gets/#respond Thu, 19 May 2016 09:01:17 +0000 https://zcomm.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=986561 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/israel-68-years-old-and-as-backward-as-it-gets/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/983967/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/983967/#comments Sat, 20 Feb 2016 09:00:44 +0000 https://zcomm.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=983967 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/983967/feed/ 4 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/happy-birthday-guantanamo/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/happy-birthday-guantanamo/#respond Tue, 26 Jan 2016 09:00:07 +0000 https://zcomm.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=982698 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/happy-birthday-guantanamo/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/elections-in-spain-the-end-of-an-era/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/elections-in-spain-the-end-of-an-era/#comments Thu, 17 Dec 2015 09:01:50 +0000 https://zcomm.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=981507 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/elections-in-spain-the-end-of-an-era/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-cult-of-countering-violent-extremism/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-cult-of-countering-violent-extremism/#respond Mon, 07 Dec 2015 09:00:16 +0000 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-cult-of-countering-violent-extremism/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/catalonias-declaration-of-independence/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/catalonias-declaration-of-independence/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2015 09:01:50 +0000 https://zcomm.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=980404 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/catalonias-declaration-of-independence/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/beirut-and-paris-a-tale-of-two-terror-attacks/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/beirut-and-paris-a-tale-of-two-terror-attacks/#respond Mon, 16 Nov 2015 09:02:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/beirut-and-paris-a-tale-of-two-terror-attacks/feed/ 0