Brazilian Military Police completed the eviction of a long-standing land occupation called Quilombo Campo Grande in Minas Gerais state on Aug. 14, after a struggle of almost three days. Police brought in armored vehicles and fired tear-gas to clear the community from the… Read moreMilitary Police evict land occupation in Brazil
Chile’s Mapuche indigenous people are holding emergency community meetings in their territory to discuss how to respond to a wave of racist attacks. The most serious incident occurred Aug. 1 in Curacautín, Araucanía region, where a group of Mapuche protesters… Read moreChile: Mapuche mobilize after racist mob attacks
Protesters and riot police clashed on the outskirts of the Chilean capital Santiago May 17, amid growing anger over food shortages during the lockdown imposed to halt the spread of COVID-19. Police deployed armored vehicles, water cannons and tear-gas to… Read moreProtests erupt in Santiago, São Paulo
For the first time since Chile was shut down by the COVID-19 pandemic a month ago, protesters on April 21 gathered in Santiago’s Plaza Italia—which had been renamed “Plaza Dignidad” during last year’s popular uprising. Demonstrators were opposing President Sebastián… Read moreChile: protest against ‘new normality’
The First Environmental Tribunal in the Chile's northern city of Antofagasta ruled in favor of indigenous communities that had brought suit against Sociedad Quimica y Minera (SQM), the world's second-largest miner of lithium. The court found SQM's compliance plan for water preservation submitted to Chile's Environment Superintendency (SMA) was "insufficient," citing the "particular fragility" of the lithium-rich but extremely arid salt-flats where the company hopes to expand operations, the Salar de Atacama. Under the ruling, SQM must submit a new compliance plan, pay multi-million fines to the SMA for being out of compliance, or suspend operations. "We must protect sensitive ecosystems even more when they constitute the ancestral habitat of our native peoples whom the State of Chile is obliged to protect," the court's chief justice, Mauricio Oviedo, said in a statement. The case was brought by the local Council of Atacameño Pueblos, representing the impacted indigenous communities of Peine and Camar. (Photo: First Environmental Tribunal of Antofagasta)
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 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)
Hundreds of Danish veterans and supporters staged a silent march from the historic Kastellet fortress to the US Embassy in Copenhagen as part of a "No Words" mobilization to protest recent US rhetoric that organizers said demeans Denmark's combat contributions alongside American forces. Organizers also linked the march to the status of Greenland, upholding the right of self-determination for the Danish island territory. Recent demands by President Donald Trump for US annexation of Greenland, and comments seeming to question the courage of Danish soldiers, have stirred a sense of betrayal for many in Denmark, particularly those who fought alongside US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Image: No Words)
The Kurdish-held border town of Kobani in northern Syria is under siege again, as it was by ISIS in 2014—but this time by forces of the Syrian central government, which has cut off water and power to the town in the dead of winter, with snow on the ground. Since the start of the year, the Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria have lost almost all of the territory they controlled to a new offensive by the central government. Kobani with Hasakah and Qamishli are the last besieged strongholds of the reduced Rojava autonomous zone. And both the US and Russia, which have backed the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against ISIS, now appear to be cutting them loose—effectively green-lighting the government offensive against them. US special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack has already warned that US support for the SDF is coming to an end. And in the midst of the offensive, Russia has withdrawn its forces from Qamishli, its principal military outpost in Rojava. This came just as Syrian interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa was on his second trip to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin—pointing to a quid-pro-quo in which Russia will be allowed to maintain its two major military bases in Syria, on the Mediterranean coast at Khmeimim and Tartous. (Photo: SOHR)
President Donald Trump warned that he may invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy troops in Minnesota to quell protests over the massive deployment of Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to the Twin Cities. The Insurrection Ac, originally enacted in 1792, allows the president to "call into Federal service such of the militia of the other States" in order to suppress insurrection or rebellion. The Insurrection Act has not been significantly updated in over 150 years, and the last time a US president invoked the Act was in 1992, when President George HW Bush received a request from then-California Governor Pete Wilson to help address riots in Los Angeles. Trump has broached invoking the Act before, and has since met with reversals in the courts over his efforts to mobilize National Guard troops under the executive's constitutional "authority to suppress rebellion." (Photo: Chad Davis via Wikimedia Commons)
The anarchist critique of Zohran Mamdani's election in the New York City mayoral race reminds us that "socialist faces in high places" do not bring fundamental change, and Gotham has seen mayors before elected on populist platforms only to capitulate to the permanent government dominated by the real estate industry once in office. However, the MAGA backlash to Mamdani's rise may help keep him true to his populist program, as it is the working people of New York who will have his back when Trump strikes back against the city—not the real estate barons. This crisis could provide the impetus for the needed rupture between progressive-run localities and a federal apparatus controlled by the illegitimate Trump regime—vindicating Murray Bookchin's theories of radical municipalism. (Photo: DSA)
