CounterVortex

Africa

Sudan: atrocity alert as RSF rings El Obeid

Warnings are mounting that Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) could carry out new mass atrocities as the paramilitary army prepares an assault on the government-held city of El Obeid in North Kordofan state. After the UN secretary-general and human rights chief sounded the alarm, the African Union and several governments also warned of the extreme danger facing civilians if the UAE-backed rebels capture the city. The warnings have drawn comparisons with El Fasher and the nearby Zam Zam displacement camp in Darfur, which saw general massacres after they fell to the RSF last year. Reports suggest the RSF has moved substantial reinforcements to its siege of El Obeid, while stepping up drone strikes on the city. A crossroads linking RSF-controlled Darfur with government-held Sudan, El Obeid was under RSF siege until the Sudanese Armed Forces broke the blockade last year, but it is now being encircled once again. (Map: PCL)

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)

North Africa

Tunisia: overturn convictions of anti-racism activists

Amnesty International urged Tunisian authorities to “immediately and unconditionally release” anti-racism activist Saadia Mosbah and five of her colleagues, and called on the Tunis appellate court to overturn their convictions. Mosbah and her colleagues are affiliated with the anti-racism and human rights organization Mnemty (“My Dream”), with Mosbah serving as president. In May 2024, Mosbah and several other activists, including her co-defendants, were arrested on charges of money laundering and “illicit enrichment.” In March, the Tunis Court of First Instance sentenced Mosbah to eight years in prison, while her colleagues were given terms of between one and three years. Rights organizations call the charges a miscarriage of justice, and assert that the investigative judge presiding in the case failed to provide any conclusive evidence that the activists had engaged in illegal financial activities. (Photo: Huda1977 via Wikimedia Commons)

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)

The Andes

Peru: UN protests military ‘impunity’ bill

UN human rights chief Volker Türk urged the government of Peru to refrain from adopting a draft law that grants military jurisdictions the authority to investigate and prosecute possible human rights violations. Türk stressed that human rights violations should be handled by independent and impartial courts, as required by international law and UN standards. Türk warned of potential for impunity and violations of internationally protected rights, such as the right to an effective remedy and the right to a fair trial. (Photo: Protontorniyo via Wikimedia Commons)

North America

HRW: Minnesota ICE raids violated human rights

Human Rights Watch (HRW) detailed abuses endured by communities in Minneapolis and St. Paul during the occupation of the Twin Cities area by immigration officers. According to HRW, officers terrorized residents, committed widespread human rights violations, and exposed “deeply abusive” tendencies within US immigration enforcement. (Photo: Chad Davis)

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)

Greater Middle East

Shaky US-Iran ceasefire; escalation in Lebanon

The United States and Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding that aims to end the war the US and Israel launched on Iran nearly four months ago. The 14-point agreement, signed by Donald Trump at a gathering hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in the Palace of Versailles—where the treaty to end World War I was signed in 1919—opens up the Strait of Hormuz for a 60-day ceasefire window, during which the two sides have vowed to negotiate a long-term resolution to the Iranian nuclear standoff. The US will also terminate all sanctions against Iran, provide $300 billion for post-war reconstruction, and unlock all frozen Iranian funds and assets. But despite—or possibly because of—the signing of the MoU, which calls for an end to fighting in Lebanon, the fighting there immediately flared again. A rash of Israeli air-strikes followed Hezbollah’s killing of four IDF soldiers in a southern Lebanese village, prompting furious statements from Israeli politicians such as extreme-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who said “all of Lebanon must burn.” (Image: Pixabay)

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)

Watching the Shadows

Rights groups call to end AI in warfare

More than 200 human rights groups and advocates issued a joint statement calling for an immediate halt to the use of artificial intelligence systems in military “kill chains,” warning that AI-accelerated warfare risks facilitating violations of international criminal, human rights and humanitarian law. The signatories said that claimed safeguards such as “human in the loop” mechanisms cannot prevent the lethal consequences of AI-accelerated targeting, but instead risk becoming a means of “rubber-stamping” killing at greatly accelerated speed and scale. (Image: Andrew West via Pixabay)

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)