From our Daily Report:

Palestine
Tibetan Uprising Day

Podcast: for Tibet-Palestine solidarity

The 65th anniversary of Tibetan Uprising Day immediately follows Tibetan protests against plans to flood ancestral lands for mega-hydro development to power the cities and industrial zones of China’s east—a clear parallel to the struggle of the Cree and Inuit indigenous peoples of the Canadian north to defend their territories from mega-hydro schemes to power the megalopoli of the US Northeast. The illegal Chinese occupation of Tibet since 1959 also has a clear parallel in the illegal Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories since 1967. Yet the Tibetan and Palestinian leadership have long been pitted against each other in the Great Power game. In a significant sign of hope, Students for a Free Tibet responded to the criminal bombardment of Gaza by issuing a statement in solidarity with the Palestinians, and some leading figures in the Tibetan exile community have drawn the connection between the two peoples’ struggles. Bill Weinberg explores in Episode 217 of the CounterVortex podcast. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Central Tibetan Administration)

Palestine
settlement

UN condemns increase in West Bank settlement

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker TĂĽrk released a statement condemning Israel’s latest expansion of settlements in the West Bank as well as the marked increase in “illegal” Israeli settlements over the last year, along with increasing extremist settler violence against Palestinians residing in the territory. TĂĽrk stated: “The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian State.” (Photo: delayed gratification via New Jewish Resistance)

Palestine
ICJ

Urgent additional ICJ measures requested for Gaza

South Africa filed an urgent request with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for additional provisional measures or adjustments to the court’s January and February rulings in the country’s case against Israel, charging that Israel is carrying out genocide in the Gaza Strip. South Africa said the request is necessitated by changes to the situation in Gaza that have arisen since it originally filed the case with the ICJ, such as imminent risk of famine, particularly in northern Gaza. South Africa said the request is meant “to ensure the safety and security of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza” and prevent Israel from “continuing egregious breaches” of the provisional measures the ICJ handed down in January. (Photo: ICJ)

Europe
Europe Farmers

Polish farmers clash with police

Polish farmers clashed with police during a mobilization on Warsaw, part of ongoing protests over increasing economic pressures on the agricultural industry. The demonstrations are part of broader farmer-led protests across Europe demanding relief from taxes and rising costs. Farmers are also protesting against new environmental regulations imposed under the EU Green Deal, which aims to combat global warming. Farmers are additionally unhappy with the waiver on custom duties for imports from Ukraine. Last month, Polish farmers launched a 30-day nationwide protest, while truckers blocked borders with Ukraine in conjunction with the farmers’ actions. (Photo: Silar via Wikimedia Commons. Sign reads: “I am a farmer, not an EU slave!!!”)

Watching the Shadows
facebook

Podcast: free speech, propaganda and the Facebook dilemma

This week’s Meta outage plunged millions around the world into panic. No sooner did Bill Weinberg get back on Facebook than its robots slapped restrictions on his account for supposedly promoting “dangerous organizations”—precisely in response to his protests against online stanning for extremist groups! Apart from subjection to such Orwellian diktats from Meta’s robotocracy, Facebook has tweaked its algorithm to sideline links to news articles and instead boost “reels” and “memes,” with high entertainment value but little informational content. This has tanked hits for news outlets and resulted in ominous layoffs across the news industry. In Episode 216 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill reiterates his call for a meme moratorium, as the only means of consumer resistance to Meta’s profiteering, anti-social agenda—but also asks what can be done about the more fundamental question of this corporate Borg’s assimilation of every sphere of human reality. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

Africa
Africa mining

Appeals court dismisses child labor case against Big Tech

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed a child labor case against technology companies and refused to hold them accountable for complicity in the use of children in cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Former cobalt miners and their representatives filed a lawsuit against Alphabet (Google), Apple, Dell Technologies, Tesla and Microsoft under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA). The TVPRA penalizes anyone who “knowingly benefits financially from participating in a venture that engaged in trafficking crimes.” They claimed that the companies were involved in a “venture” with their suppliers that engaged in forced labor of children to obtain the metal. The court rejected these claims and dismissed the lawsuit, upholding a lower court’s decision. (Photo via Africa Up Close)

Europe
ICC

ICC issues warrants for Russian military commanders

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for two high-ranking Russian military commanders, finding there were “reasonable grounds” to believe they committed war crimes in the context of Moscow’s ongoing war on Ukraine. According to a Court announcement, Sergei Kobylash, a lieutenant general in the Russian armed forces, and Viktor Sokolov, a navy admiral, are accused of having ordered attacks on “civilian objects” and of having caused excessive “incidental civilian harm,” in violation of Article 8 of the Rome Statute. (Photo: OSeveno/WikiMedia)

Central Asia
Jinsha

China arrests hundreds as Tibetans protest dam

Chinese authorities have made mass arrests in the ethnically Tibetan region of western Sichuan province amid protests against a giant hydro-electric dam project that would force villages to vacate and destroy ancient Buddhist monasteries. Up to 1,000 villagers and monks have been detained in Sichuan’s Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, and their current status remains unknown. The Kamtok dam is the sixth in a proposed series of 13 on the Dri Chu River, known as the Jinsha or Upper Yangtze in Chinese. They are being built as part of the West-East Electricity Transmission Project, to supply power to industrial cities in eastern China. (Map: Wikipedia)

Africa
MONUSCO

UN mission to DRC begins withdrawal

The UN has transferred control of its first base of operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the Congolese government. The move is a part of the UN’s plan to end its current peacekeeping operations within the DRC by the end of the year. The UN made the decision to withdraw at the request of the DRC government in December, despite ongoing instability in the country. Last year,  conflicts in the eastern DRC internally displaced more than 6.1 million people. (Photo: MONUSCO via Wikimedia Commons)

Greater Middle East
Ghaziyeh

Lebanon: displacement as Israel intensifies air-strikes

As Israel expands its air-strikes deeper into Lebanon, hitting parts of the country previously considered safe, those already forced to flee the conflict are struggling to get by without jobs or much aid, unsure where to go next if things get even worse. Cross-border tensions between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese political and militant group, have been growing since the outbreak of war in Gaza, with almost daily exchanges of fire. According to UN figures, the violence has forced more than 90,000 people to flee their homes inside Lebanon since early October. (Photo: Aftermath of Feb. 19 Israeli air-strikes in south Lebanon town of Ghaziyeh, where Israel said it targeted a Hezbollah weapons depot. Credit: Egab/TNH)

Africa
Chad

Political violence erupts in Chad

Violence erupted in Chad shortly after the country’s elections agency confirmed dates for a May presidential poll, which is supposed to restore democracy after three years of junta rule. The outbreak began with an armed attack on the headquarters of the National Security Agency, which the government blamed on followers of the Socialist Party Without Borders (PSF), the main opposition party in Chad. The PSF denied the charge. But the following day party leader Yaya Dillo—a vocal critic of ruler Gen. Mahamat Idriss DĂ©by—was killed alongside dozens of the others in a shoot-out with security forces at the PSF headquarters in the capital, N’Djamena. (Photo: Chadian gendarmerie in N’Djamena. Credit: Bagassi Koura/VOA via Wikimedia Commons)

Palestine
Jerusalem

Podcast: the electoral dilemma in apartheid Jerusalem

Amid the mounting horror in Gaza, Israel held municipal elections—which saw gains for the ultra-Zionist right, including in Jerusalem. But the city for the first time saw a Palestinian council candidate—Sondos Alhot, a pro-coexistence activist who ran with a new list called Kol Toshaveha (All Its Residents). Her candidacy, which came in defiance of a boycott called by the Palestinian leadership, nonetheless posed a challenge to the system of apartheid Israel has imposed in the Holy City. In Episode 215 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg explores what this electoral question may tell us about the prospects for an eventual just peace in historic Palestine. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: RJA1988 via Jurist)

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Featured Stories

EZLN

THE NEW ZAPATISTA AUTONOMY

Last week the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) released a declaration, setting out a new structure for the autonomous indigenous communities in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas. Uri Gordon of the British anarchist journal Freedom spoke to Bill Weinberg, a longtime radical journalist in New York City, for insight into this change and its significance. Weinberg’s book about the Zapatistas, Homage to Chiapas: The New Indigenous Struggles in Mexico, was published by Verso in 2000. He spent much time in Chiapas and elsewhere in Mexico during the 1990s, covering the indigenous movements there, prominently including the Zapatistas. In recent decades he has reported widely from South America and is now completing a book about indigenous struggles in the Andes, particularly Peru. He continues to follow the Zapatistas and Chiapas closely, and covers world autonomy movements on his website CounterVortex. In this interview, he explores new pressures in the encroachment of narco-paramilitaries on their territories as a factor prompting the Zapatistas’ current re-organization, and how it actually represents a further localization and decentralization of the movement.

Continue ReadingTHE NEW ZAPATISTA AUTONOMY 
Siberia Pipeline

GAS INTRIGUES, ECOLOGY AND THE UKRAINE WAR

Over the past decades, Russia has sought to expand natural gas exports, necessitating construction of pipelines to Europe and China. In addition to profits for the Russian state, fossil fuel exports are a valuable tool for Moscow’s geopolitical ambitions. Since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2014 and the full-scale invasion in 2022, the economic and political stakes have skyrocketed. Russia”s green movements had previously been able to mobilize effective campaigns, winning concessions on pipeline routes through natural areas. Since 2014, however, they have come under increasingly harsh scrutiny from the Russian government, with organizations branded “undesirable” or declared “foreign agents.” Control of pipelines routes through Ukraine itself are also a goad of the Russian war effort. Eugene Simonov and Jennifer Castner of the Ukraine War Environmental Consequences Work Group demonstrate how war fever and militarization threaten resources and ecology across the Russian Federation as well as in Ukraine.

Continue ReadingGAS INTRIGUES, ECOLOGY AND THE UKRAINE WAR 
Ukraine tribunal

UKRAINE’S DIFFICULT PATH TO JUSTICE

This August, Ukraine’s capital of Kyiv hosted a large international conference entitled “Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine: Justice to be Served.” The conference was aimed at reinvigorating global efforts to prosecute the crime of aggression against Ukraine—a crime which cannot be prosecuted under the current jurisdictional regime of the International Criminal Court. Many in Ukraine believe that justice can be served only when a fully-fledged international special tribunal for the crime of aggression is created. However, some of Ukraine’s most powerful allies endorse a “hybrid” tribunal, such as those created for Sierra Leone and Cambodia—which would rely in large part on Ukrainian national law and raise questions about the reach of jurisdiction. Despite optimistic expectations at the beginning of the year, disagreements between Ukraine and its allies have left some wondering: in the end, will justice indeed be served? International law scholars Mariia Lazareva of Ukraine’s Taras Shevchenko National University and Erik Kucherenko of Oxford provide an analysis for Jurist.

Continue ReadingUKRAINE’S DIFFICULT PATH TO JUSTICE 
Gaza attack

GAZA’S SHOCK ATTACK: UNVEILING THE CONTEXT

The shock attack from the Gaza Strip has terrified Israelis, and the government appears to be preparing a massive retaliation. But writing for Israel’s independent +972 Magazine, Haggai Matar insists that the current horror must bring home the overwhelming context. Contrary to what many Israelis are saying, this is not a “unilateral” or “unprovoked” attack. The dread Israelis feel now is a sliver of what Palestinians have experienced daily under the decades-long military regime in the West Bank, the siege and repeated assaults on Gaza. In recent months, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been marching for “democracy and equality” across the country, with many even saying they would refuse military service because of this government’s authoritarian turn. What those protestors and reserve soldiers need to understand—especially now, as many of them announce they will halt their protests to join the new war on Gaza—is that Palestinians have been struggling for those same demands for decades, facing an Israel that to them is already, and has always been, completely authoritarian.

Continue ReadingGAZA’S SHOCK ATTACK: UNVEILING THE CONTEXT 
Crimean Tatars

CRIMEA: UKRAINE’S OTHER NATIONAL LIBERATION STRUGGLE

Many would-be “peacemakers” on the political right as well as on the political left have “very helpfully” suggested that Ukraine should give up some territories, which they describe as “Russian-speaking,” in order to appease the aggressor. When these self-styled “peacemakers” lay out exactly how Ukraine should be unmade piece by piece, Crimea is always the first territory mentioned. Crimea is, we are told, the most “Russian speaking” region in Ukraine, and voted for union with Russia in 2014. In an analysis for CounterVortex, Kyiv-born writer and activist Yevgeny Lerner debunks both these claims. Not only was the 2014 referendum illegitimate, but the “Russian speaking” majority in the region was effected through generations of ethnic cleansing of its indigenous inhabitants: the Crimean Tatars. The struggle of the Crimean Tatar people for land recovery and territorial autonomy is now unified with the general struggle of Ukraine for national survival against Russian aggression.

Continue ReadingCRIMEA: UKRAINE’S OTHER NATIONAL LIBERATION STRUGGLE 
kharkiv

UKRAINE: DEBUNKING RUSSIA’S WAR PROPAGANDA

In a special analysis for CounterVortex, Bill Weinberg debunks Vladimir Putin’s “de-Nazification” propaganda for his invasion of Ukraine, a paramount example of the ultra-cynical phenomenon of paradoxical fascist pseudo-anti-fascism. The Ukrainian state that he demonizes as “Nazi” has been experiencing a democratic renewal since the Maidan Revolution, as Russia has descended into autocratic dictatorship. Putin’s stated justifications for the Ukraine war are either paranoid delusions or outright lies. His real objectives are to rebuild the Russian Empire, re-establish the Russian dictatorship, and exterminate Ukraine as a cultural and political entity. These are the open aims of Alexander Dugin, the intellectual mastermind of Putin’s revanchist imperial project, and the political heir of Ivan Ilyin, the 20th century theorist of “Russian Fascism.”

Continue ReadingUKRAINE: DEBUNKING RUSSIA’S WAR PROPAGANDA 
Kosovo-Serbs

RUSSIA’S STRATEGY TO DESTABILIZE THE BALKANS: IT’S WORKING

Putin’s aggression in Ukraine is emboldening Russia’s ally Serbia to press its claims on Kosovo, which declared its independence in 2008. As ethnic Serbs launch violent protests in Kosovo, Serbian officials are threatening to launch a campaign to “de-nazify” the Balkans. Meanwhile, leaders of the autonomous Bosnian Serb Republic have announced their intention to secede from Bosnia & Herzegovina. The wars in the states to emerge from the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s were an early harbinger of the current conflagration in Ukraine. Now, in a grim historical cycle, the war in Ukraine could re-ignite the wars in the Balkans. Nicholas Velazquez, in an analysis for Geopolitical Monitor, sees an intentional Moscow design to destabilize the region.

Continue ReadingRUSSIA’S STRATEGY TO DESTABILIZE THE BALKANS: IT’S WORKING 
mariupol ruins

RUSSIAN GENOCIDE OF THE UKRAINIAN NATION

Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine has sparked a strong international reaction, with most states referring to the actions of the Russian army as war crimes. A number of parliaments and heads of state have recognized that yet another international crime—genocide—is being committed by the occupation’s troops. Poland’s parliament, the Sejm, was the first to pass a resolution in March, strongly condemning “acts of genocide…committed on the territory of sovereign Ukraine by the Russian Federation armed forces, together with its allies, at the behest of military commanders being under the direct authority of President Vladimir Putin.” Since then, especially after the infamous Bucha massacre, other parliaments have joined Poland in condemning Russia’s actions as genocide, including those of Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Canada, Czechia and Ireland. However, the International Criminal Court investigation has been slow to examine charges of genocide, and any binding action by the UN against Russia is effectively blocked by its veto on the Security Council. The dilemma is explored by Ukrainian law student Nastya Moyseyenko in a commentary for Jurist.

Continue ReadingRUSSIAN GENOCIDE OF THE UKRAINIAN NATION 
Crimea protest

CRIMEA: LEGACY OF THE DEPORTATION

May 18 is commemorated as a memorial day for the victims of the genocide of the Crimean Tatar people. On that day in 1944, Joseph Stalin began a mass deportation of the entire population of Crimean Tatars who survived the German occupation of the peninsula. Over 200,000 Tatars, baselessly accused of collaborating with the Nazis, were packed in railroad cattle-cars and sent to remote locations in Central Asia and Siberia. Over 46 percent of the Crimean Tatar people perished during the first two years of the exile due to harsh conditions. Only in 1989 did the USSR condemn the deportation, after which the indigenous people of Crimea started returning to their homeland. The deportation was recognized as a genocide by Ukraine in 2015, and later by Latvia, Lithuania and Canada. In a commentary for Ukraine’s Euromaidan Press, Olena Makarenko notes that today, thousands of Crimean Tatars have been forced once again to leave the Crimean Peninsula due to the Russian occupation of 2014; hundreds of those who stayed are persecuted.

Continue ReadingCRIMEA: LEGACY OF THE DEPORTATION 
witches

APOLOGY TO THE ‘WITCHES’: WHY NOW?

Scotland and Catalonia have issued formal apologies for the burning of thousands of women as “witches” between the 15th and 18th centuries. An apology for a crime committed hundreds of years ago, with the victims and perpetrators alike both long dead, may seem like an empty exercise. However, the contemporary world still sees periodic frenzies of “witchcraft” hysteria, with women and the least powerful in society “tried” and lynched—especially in rural areas of Africa and Asia. Last year, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution sponsored by Cameroon calling for “Elimination of harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks.” New York area neo-pagan practitioner and commentator Carole Linda Gonzalez argues that, in this light, the new apologies are all too relevant.

Continue ReadingAPOLOGY TO THE ‘WITCHES’: WHY NOW? 
Kryuchki

ENVIRONMENTAL WAR CRIMES IN UKRAINE

The International Criminal Court has opened an investigation into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, finding that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe war crimes have been committed. Media attention has, quite rightly, focused on the plight of individuals caught up in the carnage—many of whom have died in terrible circumstances. However, in the background, there is another victim of the invasion: the environment. Bombardment of oil depots, the release of radiation at the Chernobyl nuclear site, the forest fires engulfing the Black Sea Biosphere Reserve—these may constitute environmental war crimes under the Rome Statute. However, the criteria are rigorous, and the perpetrators ever standing trial seems contingent on a political upheaval in Russia. In a commentary for Jurist, international law scholar Elliot Winter of Newcastle University in the UK examines the odds for prosecution of such crimes in the Ukraine conflict.

Continue ReadingENVIRONMENTAL WAR CRIMES IN UKRAINE 
mariupol

ECHOES OF SYRIA, AS PUTIN BOMBS HOSPITALS IN UKRAINE

Many Syrians are experiencing heart-wrenching flashbacks as they watch the mounting devastation in Ukraine, the millions of refugees fleeing—and the targeting of hospitals by Russian bombs, as so recently and repeatedly happened in their own country. Physicians for Human Rights have documented hundreds of attacks on healthcare facilities in Syria over 11 years of war, and no perpetrator has been held accountable for these crimes. Just a month into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the figure already stands at over 100. But with timely action by the UN and International Criminal Court, things can be different in Ukraine. In a commentary for The New Humanitarian, Dr Houssam al-Nahhas, a Syrian physician and a researcher at Physicians for Human Rights, urges: “Whether a hospital is bombed in Mariupol or Aleppo, in Sana’a or in Kunduz, those responsible must be held to account.”

Continue ReadingECHOES OF SYRIA, AS PUTIN BOMBS HOSPITALS IN UKRAINE