CounterVortex

North America

California sues Trump admin over National Guard deployment

California filed suit against the Trump administration, asserting that its activation and deployment of the state National Guard to quell protests in Los Angeles is unconstitutional. The suit asks the US District Court for the Northern District of California to halt President Donald Trump’s “unlawful militarization” of Los Angeles. Calling Trump’s actions an abuse of power that needs to be ended, Gov. Gavin Newsom further described the administration’s actions as “an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.” (Photo: US Northern Command via Wikimedia Commons)

Syria

Syria: ISIS launches attacks on ‘apostate regime’

Presumed ISIS militants attacked a police station of the Kurdish autonomous administration at al-Sabha in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province. The attack with grenades and small arms was repulsed by the local police force without loss of life. But this was only the latest in a spate of new ISIS attacks in Syria. In a first attack on central government forces since the ouster the Assad dictatorship last December, ISIS boasted in a communique last week that its fighters had killed several soldiers of the “the apostate Syrian regime” at a road checkpoint in Talul al-Safa, in southern Suwayda province. One member of the Free Syrian Army faction was also killed in an ambush by ISIS militants on an FSA patrol in al-Tanf Deconfliction Zone, a US military outpost near the Jordan border. (Photo: SOHR via Kurdistan4)

Watching the Shadows

State Department imposes sanctions on ICC judges

The US Department of State imposed sanctions on on four individuals serving as judges on the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their involvement with the ICC’s investigations into the US and Israel. The sanctions were imposed pursuant to Executive Order No. 14,203, “Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court,” which President Donald Trump signed in February in response to the ICC’s warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defense minister Yoav Gallant. The stated purpose of the order was to underline the position that the US and Israel are not within the jurisdiction of the ICC under the Rome Statute, and therefore any investigation into the actions of the two countries is invalid. (Photo: OSeveno/WikiMedia)

Planet Watch

Podcast: in defense of dissident minorities

Amid the massive war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine and Israel in Gaza, there are dissident Russians and dissident Israelis who are courageously protesting, and resisting the consolidation of a pro-genocide consensus. Recent violent and deadly attacks on perceived Israeli or pro-Israel human targets in the US meanwhile point to the dangers of the notion of collective guilt. In Episode 281 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg urges that dissident minorities must not be dismissed as irrelevant, but encouraged and offered solidarity. (Photo via Novaya Gazeta)

Watching the Shadows

Trump issues new ‘travel ban’ proclamation

President Donald Trump issued a proclamation implementing a nearly full travel ban on nationals from a dozen countries, severely restricting potential entry into the United States. The proclamation is based on an executive order issued on Trump’s first day in office that laid the foundation for the administration to enact extensive immigration controls. Commentators have harshly criticized the ban, pointing out that it disproportionately affects Muslim-majority and African countries. Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnes Callamard lambasted Trump for the action, calling it “discriminatory, racist and downright cruel.” The restrictions bear a striking resemblance to Trump’s 2017 travel ban, which blocked travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries. (Photo: Minneapolis protest of 2018 Supreme Court decision upholding Trump’s first travel ban. Credit: Fibonacci Blue/Flickr)

Palestine

UNRWA urges Israel to lift Gaza aid blockade

Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief & Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) Philippe Lazzarini urged Israel to lift the aid blockade in Gaza, charging that under Israeli military control “aid distribution has become a death trap.” The UNRWA head asserted that aid distribution in Gaza can only be effectively achieved through the United Nations. He demanded that Israel allow the UN to manage a safe and at-scale delivery of aid in Gaza, calling this “the only way to avert mass starvation including among 1 million children.” (Photo: hosny salah from Pixabay)

Syria

Syrian Alawites flee to Lebanon, with little aid to meet them

Nearly 40,000 people have fled Syria’s sectarian violence for neighboring Lebanon over the past three months. With many fearful of returning anytime soon, their arrival adds a new layer to Lebanon’s protracted humanitarian crisis at a moment when aid groups are badly underfunded and overstretched. Most of the new arrivals are Alawites, a religious minority targeted in a wave of killings in March that saw forces aligned with the new Syrian government carry out retaliatory massacres in Alawite-majority areas. This came after groups loyal to the former regime of Bashar al-Assad attacked security forces. Assad is an Alawite and Syria’s coastal province of Latakia, where the attack too place, was his stronghold of support. (Photo: Aid boxes arrive at the Massoudiyeh mosque. Credit: Hanna Davis/TNH)

Europe

Operation Spiderweb: Russia responds with nuclear threats —of course

In a covert operation dubbed “Spiderweb,” the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) destroyed or damaged 41 Russian warplanes at four air-bases across the Russian Federation—Belaya (Irkutsk oblast, Siberia), Olenya (Murmansk oblast, in the Arctic), Dyagilevo (Ryazan oblast, near Moscow) and Ivanovo (in the eponymous oblast, also near Moscow). Kyiv claims it has disabled 34% of Russia’s strategic bomber fleet in the operation, carried out with over 100 drones launched from trucks hidden across Russian territory. While the Kremlin’s top officials, including President Vladimir Putin, have not commented on the Ukrainian operation at all, Russian pro-war propagandists are calling it “Russia’s Pearl Harbor,” and demanding vengeance. Prominent state TV personality Vladimir Solovyov said on his program that the Ukrainian operation is “grounds for a nuclear attack,” and called for retaliatory strikes on the Ukrainian president’s office in Kyiv and airfields in NATO members Poland and Romania allegedly used by Ukrainian aircraft. (Image via Kyiv Independent)

Africa

Resurgent jihadist violence in northeast Nigeria

The so-called Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) insurgent group has launched its most successful military campaign to date in northeast Nigeria’s Lake Chad Basin. Throughout May, ISWAP raided a series of supposedly impenetrable army bases, forcing the military’s withdrawal and the displacement of civilian communities—some of whom had been recently resettled by the Borno State government following its closure of IDP camps in state capital Maiduguri. This renewed campaign highlights the major challenge posed by Islamic State and Qaeda-linked extremist groups across West Africa: insurgents who are now better equipped, including with armored vehicles looted from the military, and utilizing new innovative tactics, such as near-simultaneous attacks on disparate sites. (Photo via TNH)

Europe

UN inquiry sees Russian ‘crimes against humanity’ in Ukraine —again

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine published a report declaring Russian drone attacks on civilians in Kherson oblast to be war crimes and crimes against humanity. The commission found that roughly 150 Ukrainian civilians have been killed over the past year as a result of the systematic Russian drone attacks. In addition to direct casualties from the attacks, the report cites cases of civilian deaths due to the inability of ambulances to reach victims following drone strikes. Video evidence supports the claim that Russian forces have targeted ambulances—both while assisting injured civilians, and while parked outside hospitals. (Map: PCL)

Palestine

Israel again expands West Bank settlements

The Israeli government announced the establishment of 22 new settlements in the illegally occupied West Bank—including the recognition and expansion of several already existing “wildcat” outposts, built without government permission. Defense Minister Israel Katz said that building the settlements was “a strategic move that prevents the establishment of a Palestinian state that would endanger Israel.” The announcement comes amid expanding Israeli military operations and settler violence on the West Bank, and open calls from Israeli officials—including cabinet members such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich—to annex the territory. (Photo: delayed gratification via New Jewish Resistance)

Europe

Russian activists arrested for letter-writing

Police in Yekaterinburg stormed an event hosted by Russian pro-democratic opposition party Yabloko (Apple), aimed at supporting political prisoners. Authorities detained 10 attendees, with charges against them now pending at the prosecutor’s office. The raid targeted the first of a planned series of “evenings of letters,” where attendees can carry out correspondence with imprisoned individuals. According to Yabloko, a total of 952 Russians are currently imprisoned because of their political beliefs or affiliations. (Photo: Yabloko)