genocide

Africa

Suit against French bank over Sudan atrocities

Mere days before Congress is to certify the Electoral College votes, a movement has finally emerged to have Donald Trump disqualified from office under the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment. A "14th Now March" in Washington is raising the demand, and is being promoted by the podcast and vlog Lights On with Jessica Denson. Constitutional law scholars Evan Davis and David Schulte make the case in an editorial for The Hill, "Congress has the power to block Trump from taking office, but lawmakers must act now." Several elected officials have been barred from office under the Insurrection Clause since ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, but applying it to a former president who led an insurrection is the ultimate test of American democracy. In Episode 259 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg urges that this constitutional mechanism be used, and Trump's victory be nullified. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image via Free Speech for People)

Africa

Sudan charges al-Bashir with killing protesters

In the most significant escalation in Syria since a 2020 ceasefire instated under emergency conditions during the COVID pandemic, rebel forces in northwestern Idlib province launched a surprise offensive on the country's most populous city, Aleppo. The rebel advance is said to have penetrated the perimeter of the city, which had been held for years by rebel forces before it was retaken by the regime with the help of Russian air power in 2016. Russia has responded to the new offensive with fresh air-strikes on Idlib, which has been coming under intermittent Russian bombardment for years. At least 225 fatalities are reported in the new fighting, including some 25 civilians killed in Russian air-strikes. (Photo: Syrian Observer)

Greater Middle East

Podcast: genocide, propaganda and the Idlib offensive

The government of the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe imposed a territory-wide curfew after a strike by workers at the central power plant shut down the island's electricity supply. Amid ongoing complaints over salaries, workers at the Pointe Jarry facility entered the control room of the thermal plant and caused an emergency shutdown of the engines. After police secured the plant, the government requisitioned the employees needed to operate the power station through a prefectural decree. This ordered employees deemed essential to the operation of the station to return to work based on an "observed or foreseeable damage to good order, public health, tranquility and safety." (Map: PCL)

Greater Middle East

Syria: UN ‘betrayal’ of rebel zones feared

In Episode 88 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg revisits his predictions from 20 years ago and from a month ago about what the world would look like on the 20th anniversary of 9-11. The attack, and Dubya Bush's Global War on Terrorism, did not lead to a wave of new attacks within the US, as the jihad has proved more concerned with the struggle within Islam. But this has meant an invisible catastrophe for the Muslim world. The ongoing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen get at least some international media attention. There are many more nearly forgotten wars and genocides: the serial massacres in Pakistan, the insurgency in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, the Boko Haram war in Nigeria that is now spilling into Cameroon, the mounting massacres in the Sahel nations. Even the insurgency in Somalia, where the US has had a military footprint, wins little coverage—despite the fact that it is spilling into Kenya. The insurgency in Mozambique has now prompted an African-led multinational military intervention. The insurgency on the Philippine island of Mindanao has been met with air-strikes. All waged by entities claiming loyalty to either al-Qaeda or ISIS. The new imperial doctrine appears to be that this violence is acceptable as long as it is not visited upon the West. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: CounterVortex)

Greater Middle East

Formation of Rojava Armenian brigade announced

Four key members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, the group behind the city's annual Tiananmen Massacre vigil, were arrested in an early-morning raid on the June 4 Memorial Museum. The arrests came the morning after the activists publicly refused a police demand for information as part of a "national security" probe into the 32-year-old group. Police confirmed the arrests, saying the four are being held for failing to comply with Article 43 of the National Security Law, which compels cooperation with investigations. The police had requested information from the group in a letter in late August under provisions of Article 43. The force also alleged that the group had been working with foreign agents, a potential violation of the Beijing-imposed legislation. (Photo: Tam Ming Keung/United Social Press via HKFP)

Afghanistan

ICC rejects investigation of Afghanistan war crimes

Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi is usually wary of foreign military intervention. But the grim situation in Cabo Delgado seems to have forced his hand. Rwanda is deploying a 1,000-strong force to the insurgency-hit northern province. And troops from the Southern African Development Community regional bloc are also set to arrive. Reports suggest the Rwandans will set up around the Afungi peninsula, where a multi-billion dollar gas project is located. Their battlefield enemy—known locally as al-Shabab—is formidable and entrenched, as Mozambique's army and its mercenary allies know well. Lost in the military chatter is much mention of Cabo Delgado's worsening humanitarian crisis: More than 700,000 people have been uprooted, and close to a million are now facing severe hunger. (Map via Moscow Times)

Southeast Asia

Burma sentences Arakan leader to 20 years

A Burmese court sentenced prominent Rakhine ethnic leader Aye Maung to 20 years in prison for treason and defamation stemming from a January 2018 speech made one day before deadly riots broke out in Mrauk-U township. Maung, a member of parliament and former chairman of the Arakan National Party, was arrested along with writer Wai Hin Aung days after giving "inflammatory" speeches. Maung is said to have accused the ethnic Bamar-dominated ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) government of treating the ethnic Rakhine people (also known as the Arakan) like "slaves." Seven people were killed the evening after the speeches, when Rakhine protestors seized a government building and police opened fire. Maung’s lawyers are unsure if he will appeal at this time, as a new trial in the case could result in a death sentence. (Photo via Myanmar Times)

Greater Middle East

Assad to The Hague —hope at last?

Even amid growing media portrayals that Bashar Assad has won the war in Syria, the first real hope has emerged that the dictator will face war crimes charges before the International Criminal Court. A group of Syrian refugees who fled to Jordan after surviving torture and massacres submitted dossiers of evidence to the ICC in an attempt to prosecute Assad. Although Syria is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which establishes the court's jurisdiction, lawyers in London are citing recent precedent set by the ICC in extending jurisdiction for the crime of forcible population transfers across international borders. (Photo of Aleppo following regime bombardment: 7ee6an)

Africa

Hundreds dead in new DRC ethnic conflict

A new UN report details violent ethnic attacks in December, leading to hundreds of deaths in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A UN special investigative mission sent to the Yumbi territory, in the country's west, confirmed at least 535 deaths, including women and children—but found that the death toll may be even higher, as it was reported that bodies were thrown in the Congo River. The report also said some 19,000 people were displaced, many across the border into the neighboring Republic of Congo. (Photo: UNHCR via Africa Times)

Africa

Podcast: the struggle in Ambazonia

In Episode 27 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Eben Egbe and Amy Dalton of the Global Initiative to end the Cameroons Colonial Conflict (Gi3C), who discuss the independence struggle in Ambazonia—a territory that was illegally annexed by Cameroon following the end of colonial rule in 1960. The past year has seen a terrible increase in state terror in Ambazonia from the French-backed neo-colonial Cameroon authorities, with protesters fired upon by helicopter gunships, and finally villages burned by military forces, sending the residents fleeing into the bush. Some 400,000 people have been internally displaced, with a further 20,000 having crossed the border into Nigeria as refugees. Cameroon also receives military aid from the US, ostensibly for the fight against Boko Haram in the north of the country—but this same military is now being unleashed against the civilian populace in the unrelated conflict in Ambazonia in the south. The Gi3C has issued an urgent call for the UN Human Rights Council, which convenes for it's 40th annual meeting this week in Geneva, to send a fact-finding delegation to the region. Listen on SoundCloud , and support our podcast via Patreon. (Photo: Ambazonia representatives with flag, far right, at France meeting of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, via Bareta News)

Watching the Shadows

Amy Goodman plugs neo-Nazi symp as ‘expert’?

In an egregious and all too revealing faux pas, Amy Goodman appears to have put a mouthpiece of the German far right on Democracy Now as a "former UN expert" to discuss Venezuela. This is one Alfred de Zayas, who is given Goodman's typical sycophantic treatment—all softballs, no adversarial questions. We are treated to the accurate enough if not at all surprising line about how the US is attempting a coup with the complicity of the corporate media. Far more interesting than what he says is de Zayas himself. Not noted by Goodman is that he is on the board of the Desiderius-Erasmus-Stiftung, a Berlin-based foundation established last year as the intellectual and policy arm of Alternative für Deutschland, the far-right party that has tapped anti-immigrant sentiment to win an alarming 94 seats in Germany's Bundestag. He has won a neo-Nazi following with his unseemly theories of Aliied "genocide" against Germans in World War II. (Image via Democracy Now)

The Andes

Colombian state guilty in ‘false positives’ case

In an unprecedented ruling, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) found the Colombian state responsible for several extrajudicial executions carried out under the practice of "false positives"—random civilians claimed as guerillas killed in action. The six cases examined took place in the departments of Arauca, Santander and Casanare between 1992 and 1997. Although individual soldiers had been sentenced by the Colombian courts in some of these cases, the Costa Rica-based IACHR ordered the Colombian government to carry out further investigations and prosecutions, provide reparations to the families of the victims, and commit to a "public act of acknowledgement" of responsibility. (Photo: Contagio Radio)