CounterVortex

Syria

Syria: US troops clash with Assad regime forces

US troops clashed with an Assad regime unit in northeast Syria, an incident that illustrates the uneasy patchwork of power in the region. One regime soldier was reportedly killed and two wounded. Both Pentagon and Damascus accounts agreed the confrontation began when a joint convoy of US and Kurdish forces encountered a regime roadblock, but differed on which side fired first. The regime also claimed a US warplane fired on the roadblock, contrary to the Pentagon account. US-backed Kurdish forces have controlled much of the northeast since driving out the Islamic State last year. However, the regime, supported by Russia, also occupied part of the area as ISIS was defeated. (Photo: QalaatM via Twitter)

Mexico

Mexico creates justice commission for Yaqui people

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador signed a decree that sets up a Justice Commission for the Yaqui People, seeking to resolve problems of land, water, health, education and infrastructure faced by the indigenous group. The decree was signed during a visit by López Obrador to the Yaqui community of Vícam, in Sonora state. The decree seeks to redress a long history of oppression, massacres, slavery and land theft faced by the Yaqui. López Obrador said that the Yaqui are Mexico’s most persecuted indigenous group, stating, “All the original inhabitants suffered robbery, but no people suffered as much as the Yaqui.” The president also said that he had agreed to modify the route of the planned Guaymas-El Oro gas pipeline that was supposed to run through Yaqui territory. (Photo via Articulo 19)

The Andes

Students massacred in Colombian village

Eight young people at a social gathering were killed in Colombia’s southern Nariño department when unknown gunmen barged in and opened fire. The victims, between the ages of 17 and 25, were university students who had returned to the village of Samaniego due to the pandemic. They were enjoying a small party at a family farm on the edge of the village when the attack took place. One woman and one minor were among the dead. Nariño Gov. Jhon Rojas did not name any group as responsible for the attack, but noted presence in the area of ELN guerillas, “dissident” FARC factions that have remained in arms despite the peace accord, and right-wing paramilitaries. Rojas called on national authorities to “return tranquility to the region” by fulfilling terms of the 2016 peace accords, which President Ivan Duque has opposed. (Photo: Colombia Reports)

Southern Cone

Military Police evict land occupation in Brazil

Brazilian Military Police completed the eviction of a long-standing land occupation called Quilombo Campo Grande in Minas Gerais state, after a struggle of almost three days. Police brought in armored vehicles and fired tear-gas to clear the community from the land, before moving in to destroy homes and crops. Also demolished was the Eduardo Galeano Popular School, where children, youth and adults studied together. The Landless Rural Workers Movement (MST), whose followers established the squatter community on the abandoned lands of a bankrupt sugar mill 22 years ago, protested that the mass eviction leaves some 450 families homeless in the midst of a pandemic. (Photo: MST via Brasil de Fato)

Central America

Maya villagers attacked by gunmen in Guatemala

Q’eqchi Maya campesinos in Guatemala’s central Alta Verapaz department were attacked by a group of unknown gunmen who violently evicted them from their homes before setting them to the torch. At least 40 families lost their homes in the attack at the hamlet of Balbatzul, in Cobán municipality. President Alejandro Giammattei said National Civil Police troops have taken control of the hamlet, and the Fiscalía has opened an investigation. Some of the targetted homes were on occupied lands of a large farm, Finca Cubilguitz, which appears to have been at issue in the conflict. Local campesinos moved onto the lands last year, but leadership of the occupation has been contested between followers of the Committee for Campesino Unity (CUC) and ex-guerilla commander César Montes. (Photo: CUC)

Europe

Stuart Christie, Scottish anarchist icon, dead at 74

Stuart Christie, the legendary anarchist and anti-fascist militant most notorious for his 1964 assassination attempt on Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, died at his home in East Sussex, England. At 74, Scottish-born Christie was still an international icon of the anarchist movement, seen as a bridge between the era of “classical” anarchism in the early 20th century and the resurgent radicalism of the New Left that emerged in the 1960s. After serving three years in a Spanish prison, Christie founded Anarchist Black Cross, a support group for anarchist political prisoners worldwide which remains active today. He would later face charges for his supposed involvement in the Angry Brigade, an underground cell that carried out a series of bombings that caused property damage at several targets around London in the early 1970s, including the US and Spanish embassies. He was still maintaining an anarchist small press house, Christie Books, at the time of his death. (Image via Bella Caledonia)

The Andes

Colombia: indigenous journalist slain by army

An indigenous journalist was among two killed when army troops were called in to evict a land occupation in Colombia’s southern Cauca region. The lands of three haciendas had been under occupation for months by Nasa indigenous campesinos at El Guanábano, Corinto municipality, as part of a land reclamation campaign dubbed “Liberación de la Madre Tierra.” The National Police riot squad was first mobilized to clear them, burning their huts and destroying crops. When the occupiers fought back, the army was sent in, and troops opened fire. Abelardo Liz, who was covering the confrontation for Nación Nasa community radio station, was shot in the abdomen, and died while being rushed to the hospital in Corinto. (Photo via RSF)

Africa

Flooding, fighting threaten South Sudan ‘catastrophe’

President Salva Kiir declared a state of emergency in South Sudan’s central Jonglei and Pibor regions following flooding and communal violence. More than 200,000 people have been forced from their homes as water levels rose by 1.5 meters after heavy rains. The government has called on humanitarian agencies to provide immediate aid, but inter-communal unrest will complicate operations. The conflict between Lou Nuer and Murle ethnic militias has displaced 100,000 since the beginning of the year. They will miss the current planting season—deepening food insecurity. The Famine Early Warning System Network is anticipating an imminent “catastrophe” in Jonglei. (Photo: Elizabeth Stuart/UNHCR)

North Africa

Algeria: dissident journalist gets three years in prison

An Algerian court sentenced journalist Khaled Drareni to three years in prison for speaking out against the government. Drareni, who is well known in Algeria and has a twitter account of some 150,000 followers, reported widely for Casbah Tribune news website on the Hirak protest movement against the rule of President Abdelmadjid Tebboune. At trial, prosecutors used as evidence a Facebook post Drareni shared, calling for a general strike. The court found him guilty of “endangering national unity” and “inciting” unlawful gatherings. Drareni’s attorneys issued a statement declaring, “All he did was give information, in words and images. He did nothing more than his work as a journalist.” (Image: RSF)

New York City

Podcast: Verizon delenda est II

In Episode 55 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg exposes the hidden agenda behind Verizon’s abandonment of landline service. Far from being driven by public demand, the ubiquity of wireless has been instrumented by Verizon and imposed on the populace as a design to finally extinguish the public entitlement of telephone service. Verizon is the most recent inheritor of this public trust responsibility that goes back to the establishment of the New York Telephone Company as a state utility in 1896. But the trust responsibilities go with the old copper wires—once they are gone, Verizon no longer has legal obligations as a “carrier of last resort.” Weinberg calls for a public expropriation of Verizon, and making internet access as well as phone service a public entitlement. Those who are refusing to give up their landlines are, consciously or not, on the frontline of resistance to corporate rule—and the attendant digitization of all reality. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: IBEW)

Europe

Net silence as Belarus explodes into protest

Long-ruling strongman Alexander Lukashenko cut off internet across most of Belarus as the country explodes into angry protests in the wake of contested presidential elections. Riot police are unleashing harsh repression, using rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades and water hoses against demonstrators. One person has been reported killed and many more wounded, including several police officers. According to preliminary results, Lukashenko won an unlikely 80% of the vote, with the main opposition candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya taking only 10%. Tikhanovskaya was a surprise replacement for her husband Sergei, a popular blogger who was arrested after he attempted to launch his candidacy. She held large rallies in Minsk and other cities, riding a groundswell of discontent with Lukashenko. (Photo: Meduza)

The Andes

US court rules against Bolivian ex-prez in rights case

The US Court of Appeals of the Eleventh Circuit in Miami vacated a lower court judgment that had exonerated former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada and his defense minister Carlos Sánchez Berzaín of responsibility for the killing of protesters during the 2003 “Gas War.” The pair fled to exile in the United States after repression failed to put down the protests. In 2018, surviving relatives of eight killed in the repression brought suit against the two exiled leaders in a US district court under the Torture Victims Protection Act. The case, Mamani et. al v. Sánchez de Lozada, marked the first time a former head of state was brought to trial for human rights violations in a US court. The jury found the two liable under the TVPA and awarded plaintiffs $10 million in damages. But in an unusual move, Judge James I. Cohn set aside the jury verdict and entered its own judgment, holding the defendants not liable based on insufficient evidence. The Eleventh Circuit has now reversed Cohn’s ruling, and remanded the case to the district court. The lower court is instructed to weigh whether the jury verdict should be reinstated or if a new trial should be held. (Photo of plaintiffs Eloy and Etelvina Mamani, center, and legal team via Harvard Law Today)