narco wars

The Amazon

Cross-border crackdown on Amazon gold mining

Police and prosecutors from Brazil, Guyana, French Guiana and Suriname announced the arrest of nearly 200 individuals in a transnational operation to combat illegal gold mining in the Amazon. Backed by Interpol, the European Union, and Dutch police specializing in environmental crime, “Operation Guyana Shield” involved over 24,500 checks on people and vehicles across remote border areas. Officers seized large quantities of cash, unprocessed gold, and mercury, as well as firearms, drugs and mining equipment. Authorities said organized crime networks behind these operations are linked to a major Guyanese gold exporting firm. The operation signals a new enforcement posture, marked by cross-border collaboration to disrupt transnational networks that evade jurisdictional boundaries and exploit enforcement gaps across the Amazon border region. (Photo: IBAMA via Flickr)

Planet Watch

UN condemns ‘alarming’ global increase in executions

The UN Human Rights Office raised concern over a “sharp hike” in the number of executions globally in 2025. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said his office “monitored an alarming increase in the use of the capital punishment in 2025, especially for offences not meeting the ‘most serious crimes’ threshold required under international law, the continued execution of people convicted of crimes committed as children, as well as persistent secrecy around executions.” The increase primarily came from executions for drug-related offenses in a small number of retentionist states. These are countries that continue to retain capital punishment, as opposed to the growing number of abolitionist states. which do not employ the death penalty. (Photo: ICHRI)

Central America

Guatemala declares national emergency

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo declared a 30-day nationwide “state of siege” following a spree of gang violence that left nine police officers dead in the nation’s capital. The declaration was made unilaterally and currently awaits congressional approval. However, it will remain in place until a decision is reached. The recent killings are believed to be gang retaliation for state authorities retaking gang-controlled areas of three maximum-security prisons. The facilities had been taken over in a series of riots that saw over 40 guards taken hostage. The riots were reportedly a response to incarcerated gang members losing certain privileges in prison. (Image: Freestock via Flickr)

Syria

Multiple foreign powers still bombing Syria

The Pentagon said US and allied forces carried out a wave of air-strikes against ISIS targets across Syria, although accounts were unclear as to which other countries were involved or what casualties resulted. The raids came as part of Operation Hawkeye Strike, launched in response to the deadly ISIS attack on US and Syrian forces in Palmyra last month. The past week also saw joint British and French strikes on supposed ISIS targets near Palmyra. And Jordan carried out strikes supposedly targeting drug traffickers in Syrian territory. Turkey’s Defense Ministry meanwhile said it stands ready to help Syria’s interim government in its ongoing “counter-terrorism” operation against Kurdish fighters in Aleppo. (Image: Pixabay)

Watching the Shadows

‘Donroe Doctrine’ threatens hemisphere

As Nicolás Maduro appeared in federal court in New York, Trump made explicit military threats against Colombia, Mexico, Cuba and Greenland—prompting protests from those countries’ leaders. In defense of his bellicosity, Trump invoked the notion of Latin America as a US influence sphere that was articulated in his recent National Security Strategy, calling it the “Donroe Doctrine.” (Photo: US Navy via Latin America Reports)

The Andes

Trump announces plan to ‘run’ Venezuela

Trump announced that the US would “run” Venezuela, following a strike on the country that led to the capture and transfer to the US of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, First Lady Cilia Flores. In a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Trump emphasized the recent decline of Venezuela’s oil industry, stating that US oil companies would spend billions to repair the country’s infrastructure and bring in foreign exchange. Claiming to be acting in the interest of bringing “peace, liberty and justice for the great people of Venezuela,” he added that the US would be prepared to “stage a second and larger attack” if necessary. Maduro’s vice president Delcy Rodriguez, now sworn in as interim president, has offered no indication of acquiescence in Trump’s plans. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)

The Caribbean

China condemns US seizure of Venezuela-linked tankers

Chinese officials condemned the US seizure of oil tankers headed from Venezuelan ports, calling the acts a “serious violation of international law.” The protest came days after US troops boarded and seized the Panama-flagged tanker Centuries. According to the White House, while the ship was not on the US Treasury’s sanctioned vessel list, it carried state-owned oil as part of Venezuela’s “shadow fleet.” Reports have indicated that the Centuries was headed for China. Days earlier, the US seized the M/T Skipper, which the Justice Department claimed was “being used in an oil shipping network supporting Hizballah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force,” two US-designated “foreign terrorist organizations.” (Photo: VesselFinder)

Southern Cone

Chile’s turn to the hard right

The rising wave of far-right populism has arrived in Chile with the victory in the presidential race of José Antonio Kast, an ultra-conservative who campaigned on fighting crime and carrying out mass deportations. Emulating Donald Trump, Kast exploited a backlash against migrants—especially Venezuelans—and pledged to build a separation wall on the border with Peru. His victory marks the country’s sharpest shift to the right since the restoration of democracy after the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet 30 years ago—an era and figure that Kast has openly admired. (Image: Nicolas Raymond via Flickr)

Watching the Shadows

Trump Corollary: spheres of influence, white supremacy

Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy instates a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. Like the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, which was used to justify the “gunboat diplomacy” of that era, this new corollary openly calls for dividing the world into spheres of influence—with the Western Hemisphere assigned to the US. Russia is obviously pleased as punch over this, as it implicitly gives Moscow a free hand in Ukraine—and Putin will likely consider this an acceptable pay-off for his betrayal of Venezuela. However, China is less likely to surrender its massive investments and mega-projects in Latin America in exchange for a free hand to take over Taiwan. The document’s text on Europe is even more sinister, revealing a white supremacist agenda that looks not to Washington’s traditional allies to counter Russia, but to the continent’s Russian-backed far-right movements to counter Washington’s traditional allies. In Episode 308 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg exposes the NSS as a further step toward consolidation of a Fascist World Order. (Image: White House)

Central America

Post-electoral tension in Honduras

Honduras is on tenterhooks as the results of its presidential election have not yet been finalized, and Trump has threatened reprisals if his favored candidate fails to win. Since the voting, ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández—convicted in the US last year of drug trafficking and bribery—was pardoned by Trump and released from prison. Adding to the unease is the country’s deeply flawed vote-transmission system, which has crashed twice during the count. This has enabled politicians from across the spectrum—as well as Trump—to fuel the tension by raising allegations of fraud. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)

Watching the Shadows

US instates ‘Trump Corollary’ to Monroe Doctrine

President Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy puts the Western Hemisphere at the center of US foreign policy and revives the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, appending it with a “Trump Corollary.” The document presents the Americas as the main line of defense for the US homeland and links that doctrine directly to ongoing military operations against suspected drug traffickers in Caribbean and Pacific waters. It places the Hemisphere as the top regional priority, above Europe, the Middle East and Indo-Pacific, with an imperative of controlling migration, drug flows, and foreign influence before they can reach US territory. It also states that the US will block “non-Hemispheric competitors” from owning or controlling “strategically vital assets” in the Americas, including ports, energy facilities, and telecommunications networks. (Photo: USS Gerald R. Ford. Credit: US Navy via Wikimedia Commons)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Trump for War-is-Peace Prize III

Trump’s perverse ambition to win the Nobel Peace Prize was given a boost by his “winning” of the first “FIFA Peace Prize“—just as he is carrying out illegal deadly air-strikes in the Caribbean, and threatening Venezuela with war. “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth is denying claims that he gave orders to “kill them all” in the strikes, but Congress is preparing an investigation. Regardless of whether this order was given, the strikes are clearly illegal under the international laws of war. Nonetheless, the Pentagon has opened an investigation into Sen. Mark Kelly for his video calling for troops to refuse illegal orders. Trump—who pardoned soldiers convicted of war crimes in his first term—has called for Kelly to be hanged for sedition. In Episode 307 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to be flabbergasted by the Orwellian war-is-peace propaganda. (Image via Twitter)