Trump’s Israel-Palestine “peace” plan (sic), unveiled at the White House Jan. 29 in a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, has been anointed by the media with the very Trumpian epithet “Deal of the Century”—although he appears not to have… Read morePalestinians reject ‘Swindle of the Century’
Three Palestinian human rights groups, Al Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, filed a lawsuit with the International Criminal Court asking for an investigation into alleged crimes by Israel. The submission, accuses Israel of war crimes, genocide and incitement to genocide, in the context of the bombardment of the Gaza Strip. This submission follows mounting allegations of Israeli war crimes by international human rights groups, including the use of toxic white phosphorous on civilians and attacks on medical services. (Photo: Maan News Agency)
A comprehensive global report on uncontacted indigenous peoples published by UK-based Survival International estimates that the world still holds at least 196 "uncontacted" or isolated indigenous peoples living in 10 countries in South America, Southeast Asia and the Pacific region. Nine out of 10 of these groups face the threat of unwanted contact by extractive industries, including logging, mining, and oil and gas drilling. It's estimated that a quarter are threatened by agribusiness, with a third terrorized by criminal gangs. Intrusions by missionaries are a problem for one in six groups. After contact, indigenous groups are often decimated by illnesses, mainly influenza, for which they have little immunity. Survival International found that unless governments and private companies act to protect them, half of these groups could be wiped out within 10 years. (Photo: Brazil's indigenous agency, FUNAI, makes contact with the Awá people in 2014. Credit: FUNAI via Mongabay)
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Russia to pay 130 million euros ($143 million) in compensation to Georgia, almost 15 years after the war in the South Caucasus nation. The case concerns allegations by the Georgian government that actions by the Russian Federation during the 2008 conflict amounted to breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights, including ethnically targeted killings and arbitrary detention of civilians. The ECHR found that there is still a basis to make an award under the Convention, despite the fact that Russia has ceased its membership in the Council of Europe, and failed to cooperate with the proceedings. (Map: PLC)
The investigation by the Syrian transition government into the March violence against the Alawites in Latakia province has been submitted—but the full findings have not been made public, and it apparently exonerates the government of involvement. Meanwhile southern Suwayda province has seen a perhaps even deadlier eruption of violence—this time pitting Druze against Bedouin, with the role of the government similarly the source of much contestation (and fodder for Internet partisans). And a Damascus protest against the violence and for co-existence was attacked by goons. Amid all this, Israel is militarily intervening, the government looks to Turkey for military aid, and both the US and Russia still have forces on the ground—treating the country as a Great Power chessboard. In Episode 288 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg argues that the Syrian Revolution is poised on a razor's edge, ready to descend into ethno-sectarian war and authoritarianism unless political space can be kept open for the secular-democratic civil resistance that began the revolution 14 years ago. (Image: Banners read "Syrians must not shed Syrian blood" and "We reject Israeli aggression against Syria." Credit: The Syria Campaign via Facebook)
In Episode 158 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes that the Russian Socialist Movement has issued a call for solidarity actions with anti‑war activists in Russia on Jan. 19. This is the date when left activists Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova were gunned down by far-right militants in Moscow in 2009. Today, the Vladimir Putin regime is persecuting activists such as Alexandra Skochilenko—who faces a long prison term for producing public art on an anti-war theme. Instead of responding to this call for solidarity, the ANSWER Coalition and other exponents of the "tankie" pseudo-left have called a rally against aid to Ukraine, and implicitly in support of Putin and his war aims, for Jan. 14 in locations such as New York's Times Square—perversely, in the name of Martin Luther King. The Ukraine Socialist Solidarity Campaign repudiates this pseudo-anti-war rally, urging: "No exploitation of Dr. MLK Jr. to support war criminal Putin!" Debunking the Russian propaganda that portrays Putin's aggression as a defensive move against NATO encroachment, Weinberg demonstrates that the principles propounded by Dr. King in his courageous dissent from LBJ's criminal war in Vietnam now mandate that we direct our protests at Vladimir Putin. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: MLK at anti-war march in Chicago, March 25, 1967, under banner with quote from Vietnamese pacifist Thich Nhat Hanh. Via Portland Observer)
US conservation groups filed a lawsuit against President Donald Trump, asserting that the administration violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) by issuing an executive order reversing withdrawals of oil and gas leases. Trump signed the executive order immediately after his inauguration, overturning a decision by President Joe Biden to protect large areas of ocean from offshore drilling. During his first term as president, Trump tried to undo similar protections implemented by Obama. A federal court, however, invalidated his attempt, finding that the president does not have the power to undo a former president's OCSLA protections. (Photo: Berardo62 via Wikimedia Commons)
Dubbed "Sahelexit," the decision by Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger to leave the West African regional community known as ECOWAS is now official. The three members of the newly formed Alliance of Sahel States (AES)—sanctioned over coups that overturned their elected governments—are out. It leaves the 12 other countries in ECOWAS, one of Africa's most economically integrated blocs, rethinking the organization's relevance. Like ECOWAS, the new group will allow free movement between their respective territories—now derisively referred to as the "coup belt." But it is in the field of security cooperation that the AES states will be especially missed. Jihadist insurgents are on the march. So-called "Islamic State" forces have set up in northwest Nigeria, where they are known as Lakurawa. With neighboring Niger now pulling out of a regional Multilateral Joint Task Force, there are fears that countering the threat will be all the harder. (Photo via Sahara Reporters)
Amid jubilation following the overthrow of long-ruling dictator Bashar Assad, the only fighting in Syria is now between Arabs and Kurds—as the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) expels the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) from the town of Manbij. Ankara's design is clearly to expunge the Kurdish autonomous zone in the northeast region of Rojava. Yet there are also positive signs of an accommodation between the Rojava Kurds and the new revolutionary administration in Damascus. In Episode 255 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the new political landscape in Syria and tries to identify a way forward—past the threat of ethnic war and toward a multicultural democracy. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image: Rudaw)
The daughters of civil rights leader Malcolm X filed a civil action against the United States government, the City of New York, and the estates of various former federal agents for their alleged role in concealing, condoning and facilitating his assassination in 1965. The suit accuses agents, officials and informants for the US Department of Justice, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New York City Police Department of acting "individually, jointly, and in conspiracy, to proximately cause" the assassination of Malcolm X. The complaint further accuses the government and various agencies of purposely failing to intervene in the assassination and working to cover up their involvement. (Photo via Wikimedia Commons)
More than 500,000 are in need of emergency assistance in Haiti's southern peninsula, where a 7.2-magnitude earthquake has killed more than 2,100 people and injured more than 12,200. Aid and medical efforts are hampered by debris-strewn roads, rain from Tropical Storm Grace, a shortage of working hospitals, and gang violence. A hospital in Port-au-Prince was closed by a two-day shutdown to protest the kidnapping of two doctors. Violent gangs patrol many of the country's transport routes. The southern peninsula has yet to recover from Hurricane Matthew, which killed hundreds in 2016. Prime Minister Ariel Henry has promised to speed up aid efforts—more than 30,000 families are displaced, and there are fears of cholera due to lack of safe water, sanitation, and shelter. (Photo: Evens Mary/The New Humanitarian)
The first vice president of Afghanistan under the government just ousted from Kabul by the Taliban, Amrullah Saleh, has taken refuge in the Panjshir Valley north of the capital and declared himself the country's legitimate president. Defense Minister Bismillah Mohammadi has reportedly joined Saleh in the Panjshir Valley, as has Ahmad Massoud—son of the martyred resistance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Many ethnic Tajiks in the Afghan army are said to have arrived with their equipment, including armed vehicles and tanks, after withdrawing from the nearby frontlines. Ethnic Hazara families have reportedly walked 200 kilometers to reach the Valley, fearing persecution as the Taliban seize their homeland in Bamiyan province. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)
