Efforts by the US to fight its own financial crisis may cut Latin American governments off from access to credit at a time when they need an estimated $250 billion for financing their 2009 budgets. The US has been issuing… Read moreLatin America: US deficit squeezes credit
Thousands of Colombians took to the streets July 6 to protest the mounting wave of assassinations of social leaders in the country. The protests and vigils were largely ignored by the country’s political leaders, who have come under international pressure for their failure to respond to the wholesale killing that has claimed the lives of 311 community leaders since 2016. Days after the mobilization, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights issued yet another call for the Colombian government to take urgent measures to call a halt to the ongoing attacks. Opposition leaders charge that the assassinations are a "systematic" campaign, and that authorities must break up resurgent paramilitary networks rather than just arresting individual sicarios (assassins). (Photo via Contagio Radio)
With the fall of Syria’s southern province of Daraa to Assad regime forces, only Idlib in the north remains as a last pocket of opposition control. The besieged rebel forces there are anticipating a final offensive by Assad and his Russian backers. But a complicating factor is that Turkey is occupying areas of Idlib, which means an offensive there threatens international escalation. Speaking to reporters before heading for a summit of emerging market countries in South Africa, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would speak there with Vladimir Putin about how to resolve “the issue of Idlib.” This points to a possible carve-up deal, in which the bulk of Syria falls under Assad with Russian protection, Idlib remains under rebel control with Turkish protection, and the northeastern Rojava region will remain a Kurdish autonomous zone under US protection. (Photo: Syria News)
Indigenous leaders at the climate summit in Poznan Dec. 9 protested that the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand blocked inclusion of indigenous rights provisions in the proposed protocol on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). Photo:… Read moreIndigenous leaders protest in Poznan
Via the Global Justice Ecology Project, Dec. 9: We, the undersigned representatives of indigenous peoples, local communities and non-governmental organizations monitoring the progress of negotiations in Poznan are outraged that the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand opposed the… Read moreIndigenous leaders protest Poznan climate summit
Islamist al-Shabaab insurgents seized two districts in central Somalia without violence Dec. 7, including the stronghold of a Sufi group that traditionally abjures violence. Residents in Galgadud region reported that fighters aboard armed trucks peacefully entered the provincial capital Dhusamareb…. Read moreSomalia: insurgency spreads, Sufis appeal for peace
Hundreds of Muslim men, women and children held a silent march in Mumbai, stopping at each location which had been targeted by the armed attacks of what is becoming known in India as 26-11. For the first time, liberal groups… Read moreIndia: Muslims march against terrorism
Inmates resisting the inspection of their cells clashed with guards searching for weapons and mobile phones at Afghanistan’s overcrowded Pul-i-Charki prison in Kabul Dec. 4. Eight prisoners were killed and 13 injured. The prisoners also burned mattresses, and gunfire was… Read moreEight dead in Afghan prison riot
Pakistani Taliban militants torched supplies destined for NATO forces in Afghanistan for a second day running Dec. 8, raiding a container terminal on the outskirts of Peshawar—just over a mile from the previous day’s attack, in which gunmen torched more… Read moreTaliban hit NATO supplies in Peshawar —again
Here’s a case study in what Iraq’s besieged secular left calls the “two poles of terrorism.” From the Washington Post, Dec. 6: WASHINGTON — Five Blackwater Worldwide security guards have been charged in a September 2007 shooting that left 17… Read moreBlackwater mercs indicted in Baghdad atrocity
In Episode 14 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes the national protest wave that brought down president Park Geun-Hye in South Korea last December, and asks why Americans can't similarly rise to the occassion and launch a mass militant movement to remove Donald Trump. Given this extreme emergency—the detention gulag now coming into place, with undocumented migrants the "test population" for domestic fascism—we should be mobilizing in our millions. Weinberg identifies two significant obstacles to unity: 1. The fundamental split in the left over the whole question of Russia and its electoral meddling; and 2. The phenomenon of party parasitism, with both the Democrats and sectarian-left factions seeking to exploit popular movements to advance their own power. He concludes by asking whether social media can empower us to sidestep the Dems and the alphabet-soup factions alike and work rapidly and efficiently to build a leaderless, broad-based, intransigent movement around the aim of removing Trump. Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon. (Photo of protest at Foley Square, Manhattan, by Syria Solidarity NYC)
The day after thousands of Peruvians filled the streets of Lima in a March Against Corruption, Duberli Rodriguez stepped down from his posts as head of the country's justice department, Poder Judicial, and president of the Supreme Court. Orlando Velasquez, president of the National Council of the Magistrature, also resigned. The justice minister, Salvador Heresi, had already been sacked by President Martín Vizcarra days earlier, amid a widening scandal concerning the perverting of the court system. The outrage was sparked when national media outlets aired a series of telephone recordings involving an extensive network of judges, businessmen and local authorities describing illegal deals. (Photo: Diario Uno)
