Month: June 2026

Syria

US strikes Uyghur militants in Syria

A suspected US-led coalition strike on a site used by Uyghur militants in Syria’s Idlib province has renewed debate over the future of foreign fighters under the country’s post-Assad government. Sources told The New Arab on that an aircraft targeted a compound used by a faction formerly known as the Turkistan Islamic Party, in al-Zainiya area near Jisr al-Shughourin western Idlib. While no confirmed information has emerged regarding casualties from the strike, preliminary reports suggested that a leader of Hurras al-Din, a former al-Qaeda affiliate which formally dissolved in January, may have been killed. (Map: PCL)

DRONES OVER ROMANIA

Within the span of one week, Romania was struck twice by drones originating from the conflict in Ukraine: first by an aerial drone in the city of Galați on May 29, and then by a maritime drone that exploded in the Port of Constanța on June 5. The Galați strike marked the first time a Russian drone caused physical injury to Romanian civilians in a densely populated area. The two incidents, unprecedented in their proximity and severity, have reignited urgent debates about the legal and security implications of modern drone warfare spilling across international borders. International law scholar Mihai Coca-Constantinescu explores for JURIST.

Greater Middle East

Podcast: the Iran MoU in the Great Game

The “Memorandum of Understanding” signed by Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian is contingent on the cooperation of two entities not a party to it: Hezbollah and Israel—which continues to commit war crimes in Lebanon. The provisions on Iran’s nuclear program do not even recoup the progress won in Obama’s nuclear deal that Trump tore up in his first term. And Trump’s claim when hostilities began back in February to be acting on behalf of Iranians who rose up in mass protests against the regime are now completely betrayed in a “non-interference” pledge. In Episode 334 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to urge support for alternative voices that take a neither/nor position regarding MAGA-imperialism and the Islamic Republic, and again recalls the anarchist slogan: Neither your war nor your peace! (Image: Pixabay)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Resist digital hegemony!

Voices from within the academy are now raising the alarm about the decline of literacy under the relentless assault of totalized digital immersion—finally catching up to what CounterVortex blogger and ranter Bill Weinberg has been saying for years (although sneering denialism about the problem remains fashionable). Worldwide, the humanities are being abandoned in favor of STEM, while social media overtakes “legacy media” as a source of “news”—or (as is more often the case) sinister propaganda. In Episode 333 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill takes stock of this grave and still under-appreciated threat to the survival of democracy and humanity itself—and looks for signs of practical resistance. (Image: Earth First! Newswire)

Iran

Iran: deadly repression in Baluchistan

Iranian security forces violently dispersed protesters in Pashmouki village, Kerman province, within the greater Baluchistan region. Six ethnic Baloch residents, including three women, were detained, and several injured. The protest took place outside a chromite mine in the village, which has been a source of great contention. Iran’s government has been cracking down on unlicensed mines in the region, but residents say they gain no economic benefit from the licensed ones, while they are left to deal with the environmental impacts. Since the mass protests in Iran earlier this year, the Baluchistan region has been flooded with Revolutionary Guard troops. Two Baloch youths in the region were killed by Revolutionary Guards in unclear circumstances within days of the Pashmouki violence. (Map: PCL)

Greater Middle East

Trump urges Syria to intervene against Hezbollah

US President Donald Trump suggested at the G7 summit in France that Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa could wipe out Hezbollah if Israel was unable to do so without causing heavy civilian casualties. The comment came in spite of repeated statements from Damascus ruling out any military intervention in neighboring Lebanon. Syria’s Interior Ministry emphasized that “Lebanon is a sovereign state and not a backyard, as the former regime viewed it.” (Photo: Ahmad al-Sharaa meeting Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam in Damascus, May 9. Credit: SANA via Radio Free Syria)

Europe

Russian strike hits historic Kyiv cathedral

The Pechersk Lavra, one of the most important historical and religious sites in Ukraine, was hit in Moscow’s latest barrage of drone and missile attacks on Kyiv, in what President Volodymyr Zelensky called “one of Russia’s most serious crimes against Christian culture to date.” Images circulating on social media show flames rising above the UNESCO World Heritage site, which contains structures dating from between the 11th and 18th centuries, including the gold-domed Dormition Cathedral. The head of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, Metropolitan Epiphanius, confirmed that the roof of the cathedral caught fire in the attack, calling the strike another Russian crime “against humanity, against history, against Christianity.” Some 42,000 Kyiv residents spent that night in the capital’s metro stations to escape the aerial assault on the city. (Photo via Wikipedia)

Iran

Fighting breaks out in Iranian Kurdistan

The military wing of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) issued a statement saying that armed clashes broke out between its forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Marivan region of Iran’s Kordistan province. The East Kurdistan Defense Units (YRK) wrote that the IRGC initiated artillery and mortar attacks against their positions. The statement came as PJAK Presidential Council member Siyamend Moini was in Brussels to deliver a speech before a conference at the European Parliament entitled “Weaving a Democratic Iran Together.” In his comments, Moini called for international support for the “reconstruction of a free, democratic, and secular Iran that consistently defends women’s rights, the rights of peoples and minorities, and environmental protection.” (Image: Middle East Forum via Wikimedia Commons)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: The Space Trilogy revisited

CS Lewis is mainly seen as either a purveyor of goopy children’s literature or a Christian moralist fuddy-duddy. But Lewis’ Space Trilogy—fantastic literature for adults, or “philosophical science fiction”—also reveals him as a dystopian prophet in the tradition of Orwell. The first two books in the series, Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, are a critique of space imperialism that anticipated the Avatar movies. But the final one, That Hideous Strength, is particularly relevant for our historical moment, as it anticipated rule by fascist tech bros with hubristic visions of remaking (or abolishing) humanity. In Episode 332of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg makes the case that Lewis offered a vital critique of technocracy and “transhumanism” that is now urgently needed, as humanity stands at the cusp of his worst nightmares. (Image via Diary of an Autodidact)

South Asia

India prepares mass detention of Rohingya

Indian authorities have deported thousands of Bangladeshi citizens in the month since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won elections in the state of West Bengal. Shortly after taking power in West Bengal, BJP officials ordered the creation of detention centers both for undocumented Bangladeshis and Rohingya Muslims who are fleeing persecution in their native Burma and mistreatment in overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh. (Image: Sowmya Reddy)

AI: THE CASE FOR ABOLITION

Trump’s executive order purporting to establish a regulation regime for artificial intelligence actually serves the aim of a government partnership with the AI industry to advance the police state. Ironically, it is the AI company Anthropic that is calling for a moratorium on development of the technology until its threats are assessed. Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” raises critical points but still echoes the illusion that this technology, now threatening to develop its own powers of “recursive self-improvement,” can be effectively regulated. There are encouraging signs of worker pushback against replacement by AI, and an emerging anarchist critique of the technology. Of course the Trump regime is targeting critics for repression as “anti-tech extremists.” In a commentary for the UK anarchist journal Freedom, Bill Weinberg calls for total abolition of AI, citing unacceptable threats to humanity on ecological, epistemological and eschatological grounds.

Watching the Shadows

AI: the case for abolition

Trump’s executive order purporting to establish a regulation regime for artificial intelligence actually serves the aim of a government partnership with the AI industry to advance the police state. Ironically, it is AI company Anthropic that calls for a moratorium on development of the technology until its threats are assessed. Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence,” raises critical points but still echoes the illusion that this technology, now threatening to develop its own powers of “recursive self-improvement,” can be effectively regulated. There are encouraging signs of worker pushback against replacement by AI, and an emerging anarchist critique of the technology. Of course the Trump regime is targeting critics for repression as “anti-tech extremists.” In Episode 331 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg again calls for total abolition of AI, citing unacceptable threats to humanity on ecological, epistemological and eschatological grounds. (Image: Pixabay via Wikimedia Commons)