Despite last week’s agreement by Saudi Arabia and Russia to end their price war, the oil market remains in free-fall amid the virtual shut-down of the world economy by the COVID-19 pandemic. The price of the main US oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate,… Read moreNegative oil prices slow tar sands production
In Episode 50 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes frightening advances toward a fascist world order amid the COVID-19 crisis. With police-state measures being imposed worldwide, Donald Trump is claiming “total” executive power and threatening to “adjourn” Congress. That he is doing… Read morePodcast: COVID-19 and impending bio-fascism II
Already depressed oil prices are now plummeting in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Global oil consumption is said to be in “free-fall,” and predicted to lead to the largest “annual contraction in history.” Bloomberg reports that oil traders fear that demand “may contract by… Read moreWill COVID-19 mean oil industry bailout?
The protest wave in Colombia was revived with a national mobilization Jan. 21, to be again met with repression from the security forces. Protest organizers explicitly rejected violence, but police and gangs of masked men sabotaged efforts by municipal authorities to maintain the… Read moreColombia: protests met with repression —again
Amnesty International named 87 Iranian security and Interior Ministry officials who it says should face criminal investigation for crimes against humanity committed during the 2022 crackdown on the Woman Life Freedom protests, and urged the UN Security Council to refer Iran's situation to the International Criminal Court. The 1,161-page report, titled "Architects of Atrocities," documents 377 fatalities among protesters and bystanders between September and December 2022, of whom 56 were children, along with widespread torture, rape, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary imprisonment. (Photo: Taymaz Valley, Ottawa, via Wikimedia Commons)
The United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela called on the Venezuelan government to reverse its decision to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC), warning that leaving the ICC would weaken accountability for serious human rights violations and limit victims' access to justice. (Photo: Tony Webster via Wikimedia Commons)
Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that authorities in the Philippines continue to conduct extrajudicial killings, with no accountability, as part of the government's anti-drug campaign. Ten years after then-President Rodrigo Duterte launched his brutal "war on drugs," serious human rights violations remain ongoing. According to HRW, the number of killings in the anti-drug campaign has reached 1,273 since Ferdinand Marcos Jr. became president in 2022. The report noted a decline in the number of extrajudicial killings compared to rates under Duterte's presidency, but found that illegal arrests have significantly increased. In 2025, Duterte was arrested under an International Criminal Court warrant for crimes against humanity related to his "war on drugs." The trial is scheduled for November. (Image: Grunge Love via Flickr)
As ICE agents open fire on protesters in Minneapolis, Portland and Los Angeles, Trump frames his military threats against Iran in terms of human rights and democracy—an atypical nod back to the neocons. Following mass deadly repression, the protests in Iran appear to have abated—for now. In Minnesota, both Trump and protesters are turning up the heat. Trump's blatant hypocrisy highlights the imperative of international solidarity. The challenge for stateside protesters is to repudiate the calumny that the Iran protests are CIA or Mossad astroturf, and recognize them as a genuine self-organized popular uprising. The challenge for Iranian protesters is repudiate Trump's bid to exploit them for his imperial ends, as well to reject the ambitions of the reactionary "crown prince" Reza Pahlavi to install himself as leader. In Episode 313 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg urges that explicit mutual support between the anti-authoritarian struggles in the US and Iran is what can move the historical process forward at this grim hour. (Photo: Chad Davis)
Syria's Interior Ministry announced the arrest of deposed regime brigadier Khardal Ahmad Dayyub, a former head of Air Force Intelligence in Daraa, for his involvement in systematic human rights violations committed against civilians. Dayyub is accused of running an "assassination committee" in Daraa, as well as involvement in the chemical attacks on Eastern Ghouta during his later service in the Damascus regional branch. He is also said to have had a key role in coordination with Hezbollah and Iranian forces in Syria that were introduced to back up the Bashar Assad dictatorship. (Photo: SANA)
A grand jury in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York indicted 10 current and former Mexican officials for importing large amounts of drugs into the United States, along with related offenses. The officials include the current governor of Sinaloa state, Rubén Rocha Moya, as well as a Sinaloa deputy attorney general, a former Sinaloa secretary of public security, a former deputy director of the Sinaloa State Police, and a federal senator. The indictment accuses the officials of ties to one faction of the Sinaloa Cartel, "Los Chapitos," run by the sons of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, who is serving a life prison term in the US. In a seeming reference to the fact that Rocha Moya and others of those indicted are from Mexico's ruling MORENA party, President Claudia Sheinbaum said: "[I]t it is evident that the objective of these charges by the Department of Justice is political… We will not allow any foreign government to…decide the future of the Mexican people." (Map: Google)
Syria's Internal Security Forces arrested Amjad Youssef, principal suspect in a massacre of civilians in the Tadamon neighborhood of Damascus in April 2013. Footage emerged in 2022 showing Syrian soldiers leading captives, bound and blindfolded, to a pit before shooting them. The video became one of the most direct pieces of visual evidence of extrajudicial killings by forces of the Bashar Assad dictatorship, which was finally overthrown in December 2024. The leaked footage was released as part of an investigative report prepared by researchers from the Institute for War, Holocaust & Genocide Studies (NIOD) at the University of Amsterdam. Apprehended in a rural area of Hama province following a manhunt, Youssef appeared in the footage, and is believed to have been a member of the notorious Branch 227 of the Assad-era Military Intelligence Directorate. Estimates by the Syrian Network for Human Rights indicate that the death toll in the Tadamon massacre may exceed 450 people. (Photo: SNHR)
International law scholars are warning that Trump may have committed war crimes in Iran, and that his ongoing threats to bomb civilian targets may constitute self-incrimination—by the same standards that US prosecutors used to gather evidence against Russia in Ukraine (before Trump suspended cooperation). Additionally, his exterminationist rhetoric may represent a step on the ladder of escalation toward genocide. In Episode 324 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case—political, legal and practical—for sending Trump to a prison cell at The Hague. (Photo: Tony Webster via Wikimedia Commons)
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