politics of cyberspace

East Asia

Hong Kong executive pushes new security law

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee announced the commencement of a four-week consultation period for a new local security law under Article 23 of the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution. Article 23 mandates that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) pass its own laws to prohibit crimes such as treason, secession, sedition and subversion against China’s Central People’s Government. Massive protests involving an estimated 500,000 participants halted the previous attempt to legislate Article 23 in 2003. The current push highlights the Hong Kong government’s efforts to address “soft resistance,” such as online activity that may jeopardize national security. (Photo: HKFP)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: for a meme moratorium

Meta has tweaked the Facebook algorithm to sideline links to news articles and boost “memes“—precisely the format most subject to the fabrications and distortions being aggressively peddled by both sides (yes) in the Gaza conflict. Such propaganda has already been implicated in genocide in Burma and Ethiopia. But even apart from such egregious abuses, memes are dumbing down discourse and entrenching groupthink and dogmatism—and are being pushed by Meta as part of its sinister corporate design to enclose the internet. In Episode 207 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg calls for a total moratorium on posting or sharing memes as a means of pressure on Meta to re-emphasize actual news articles, and deep-six the war propaganda. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image: Earth First! Newswire)

Southeast Asia

China seeks ceasefire in Burma border zone

China’s government announced that it has mediated a short-term ceasefire to the conflict between the Burmese junta and rebel armies of ethnic peoples in the northeastern region near the Chinese border. The conflict has been escalating since the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) launched Operation 1027 in Shan state in late October. The rebel armies have joined as a self-declared Three Brotherhood Alliance seeking control of Burma’s northeast. None of the parties to the conflict have commented on the supposed ceasefire. China, a major backer of the junta, continues to conduct live-fire military exercises on its side of the frontier. (Map: PCL)

Africa

Burkina Faso’s leading rights activist ‘disappeared’

Regional NGO alliance the People’s Coalition for the Sahel is demanding the immediate return alive of human rights defender Daouda Diallo, secretary general of Burkina Faso’s Collective Against Impunity & Stigmatization of Communities (CISC). The CISC announced that Diallo was abducted on a Ouagadougou street by at least four unidentified men in civilian clothes. Diallo’s CISC has been raising the alarm about ethnically targeted killings in Burkina Faso under the military regimes that have been in power since a January 2022 coup. It is believed Diallo may have been “requisitioned” by the armed forces to participate in the very counterinsurgency campaign that his group has been protesting. (Image: CISC via OHCR)

Palestine

Suit charges Biden administration with genocide complicity

Palestinian human rights organizations and others have sued President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd James Austin and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken for complicity in genocide and violating the duty to prevent genocide in relation to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. The Center for Constitutional Rights filed the case in US District Court in San Francisco on behalf of Defense for Children International-Palestine, Al-Haq and individual plaintiffs affected by the conflict, asserting violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention and the Genocide Convention Implementation Act. (Photo: The White House/Wikimedia Commons)

Palestine

Israel orders north Gaza evacuation —but to where?

One week after the unprecedented and bloody Hamas incursion, Israel has ordered 1.1 million people living in the north of the Gaza Strip to evacuate to the south of the enclave within 24 hours, ahead of an expected ground invasion. The UN is calling on Israel to rescind the evacuation order, with a spokesperson saying it is “impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences.” Since the Hamas incursion, which left some 1,300 dead, Israel has imposed a complete siege on Gaza, cutting off electricity and water, and blocking the entry of food and fuel. It has dropped more than 6,000bombs on the enclave, killing more than 1,500 people—a third of them children. The evacuation order has created fear and confusion, as north Gaza residents flee south with little idea of where they will find shelter or how their basic needs will be met. All the borders of the enclave are now closed to civilians trying to flee. (Photo: Maan News Agency)

Mexico

US leans on Mexico to increase deportations

Mexico will step up efforts to deport asylum-seekers and migrants to their countries of origin in order to “depressurize” northern cities bordering the United States, the country’s National Migration Institute announced following a meeting with US officials. Texas border cities such as El Paso and Eagle Pass are scrambling to find shelter space as thousands now cross the border on a daily basis, overwhelming reception capacity. But thousands more still wait in northern Mexico, trying to make appointments using a government cell phone application to enter the US and lodge asylum claims. (Map: PCL)

East Asia

Hong Kong steps up crackdown on Cantopop stars

Hong Kong District Court judge Ernest Lin Kam-hung handed down a judgment sentencing Tommy Yuen, a former Cantopop boy-band member, to 26 months imprisonment. Yuen was convicted of “acts with seditious intention” among other charges. Lin found that Yuen made seditious statements on Facebook and Instagram in 2021 disparaging police and officials. Lin asserted that Yuen had been advocating for Hong Kong independence and insulting Hong Kong’s government. Yuen was well known as a member of the Cantopop boy group E-kids, which was disbanded in 2006. He had been active in the 2019 anti-extradition protests, while Lin won a reputation for his harsh sentences handed down to protesters. (Photo: Yuen, outside West Kowloon Court in March 2021, standing to right of Alexandra “Grandma” Wong. Credit: Studio Incendo via Wikimedia Commons)

Greater Middle East

Egypt: iconic activist’s decade-long detention ends

An attorney representing imprisoned Egyptian political activist Ahmed Douma took to social media to announce the activist’s release, thanks to a presidential pardon. Douma had endured a decade of incarceration within Egyptian penitentiaries, and had five more years of his sentence to serve. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi apparently responded to repeated calls for his release by human rights organizations. A leading figure in the January 25 Revolution of 2011, Douma was convicted of violating a ban on protests in December 2013, following Sisi’s military coup. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Europe

Solitary confinement for Russian anti-war dissident

Imprisoned Russian anti-war activist Darya Polyudova has been placed in punitive solitary confinement after guards said they found a razor-blade in her belongings, which is considered a major violation at the penal colony in the North Caucasus region of Kabardino-Balkaria where she is incarcerated. Polyudova’s mother told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that her daughter said guards had planted the blade in her belongings to frame her, adding that the activist is starting a hunger strike to protest the move. Polyudova, affiliated with the Left Resistance dissident network, was sentenced to nine years in prison in December on “extremism” charges related to her nonviolent opposition to the Russian war in Ukraine. (Photo: Polyudova with sign calling for release of Ukrainians detained by Russia, including filmmaker Oleg Sentsov and Crimean anarchist Oleksandr Kolchenko. Via RFE/RL)

Southern Cone

Uruguay: water crisis sparks protests

With the return of El Niño, rising temperatures are leading to a surge of life-threatening weather patterns across the globe. In Latin America drought is affecting countries in unprecedented ways. In Uruguay, the lack of rain has emptied one of the capital’s main reservoirs, forcing the government to declare a state of emergency in Montevideo and to add salty water to public drinking water supplies—provoking protests from citizens angry over the significant decline of water quality. While the country faces its worst drought in the past 74 years, critics accuse the government of prioritizing water use by transnationals and agribusinesses over human consumption. News of a plan to build a Google data center that would require 3.8 million liters of water a day further infuriated Uruguayans. (Photo: ANRed)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: artificial intelligence and the abolition of humanity

In Episode 183 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues his rant on the dangers of artificial intelligence, this time focusing on the threat it poses to human evolution. The advent of Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain implant technology, now approved for human testing by the FDA, actually portends the ultimate abolition of humanity, and its replacement by a conditioned post-humanity stripped of all dignity and reason. But there are signs of human resistance to robot rule that we must fan the flames of before it is too late—such as the current strike by Vancouver dockworkers against their replacement by automation. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image: Earth First! Newswire)