Israel’s recognition of Somaliland has little to do with self-determination and far more to do with strategy, offering Israel a potential military foothold near Yemen, says JE ROSENBERG
THE TRUMP administration is ramping up pressure on Bolivia, where Evo Morales is standing for re-election as president in 2019, along with current Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera as his running mate.
To give just one example, Trump recently called on multilateral development banks and the IMF not to fund loans to Bolivia until it fully complies (in US eyes) with the international Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. President Morales has denounced these drastic measures as “intimidation” and “blackmail,” while Garcia Linera argued the moves did not recognise the government’s efforts to curb both trafficking and child labour, with the latter having reduced dramatically under Morales’s presidency.
Trump’s administration has regularly attacked Morales, continuing the US’s hostility to him even before he was first elected.
Far-right forces are rising across Latin America and the Caribbean, armed with a common agenda of anti-communism, the culture war, and neoliberal economics, writes VIJAY PRASHAD



