Southeast Asia
Philippines: protests against martial law
Protests are emerging in the Philippines against ultra-hardline President Rodrigo Duterte's declaration of martial law in the southern island of Mindanao.
Author: Bill Weinberg
Southern Cone
US guns to Brazilian narco-gangs
Amid fast-escalating nightmarish narco-violence in Brazil, police in Rio de Janeiro seized 60 assault rifles hidden in a freight shipment that had just arrived on a flight from Miami.
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Syria
Syria slides closer to Arab-Kurdish ethnic war
Clashes broke out between Syrian rebel factions and Kurdish fighters in Aleppo province, as Arabs and Kurds are further pitted against each other by Great Power manipulation.
Central America
Taiwan sacrificed to Central America geopolitics
Panama is the latest Central American nation to switch diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Bejing—under pressure of China's fast-growing economic presence on the isthmus.
Iraq
US using white phosphorus in Raqqa: reports
Several civilians were killed when US air-strikes reportedly targeted ISIS-held Raqqa with white phosphorus—banned by the Geneva Convention as a weapon of war.
Mexico
Mexico second most dangerous country on Earth?
A new study finding that Mexico is now the most dangerous country on Earth after war-torn Syria is rejected by the government, but even the military wants out of "drug war."
Southeast Asia
Duterte declares martial law in south Philippines
Duterte's declaration of martial law in Mindanao is ostensibly in response to an ISIS-linked terrorist group, but will give security forces a still freer hand in his murderous "war on drugs."
North America
Conspiranoids betray Reality Winner …of course
Some of the same voices that cheered on Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden are now dissing Reality Winner as an agent of the “Deep State.”
New York City
Oscar López Rivera, terrorism and semantics
The controversy over liberated political prisoner Oscar López Rivera’s participation in New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade opens a window on the political uses of the term “terrorist.”
Greater Middle East
Qatar crisis places US regional policing in pickle
Qatar's diplomatic isolation by the other Gulf states, accused of supporting terrorism in the region, heightens contradictions for the Pentagon's use of the critical al-Udeid Air Base.
Europe
Manchester, xenophobia and the left’s complicity
The yellow press and much of the "left" react identically to the Manchester terror: by blaming "regime change" in Libya and demonizing refugees from the Arab world.