Trumpism

The Andes

UN mission urges Venezuela to reverse ICC withdrawal

The United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela called on the Venezuelan government to reverse its decision to withdraw from the Rome Statute, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC), warning that leaving the ICC would weaken accountability for serious human rights violations and limit victims’ access to justice. (Photo: Tony Webster via Wikimedia Commons)

Watching the Shadows

AI: the case for abolition II

The popular case against the data centers now proliferating vertiginously across the United States emphasizes the ecological imperative. As water resources shrink, forcing emergency restrictions on use across the western states, voracious water consumption by the industry is just one of the ways its advance portends imminent human extinction. Meanwhile, the industry slaps back in the courts against communities that would stand up against this advance. But Artificial Intelligence itself poses an existential threat, apart from the direct impacts of the computing power. Even respected voices in the industry warn of a high probability that AI will turn upon and destroy its creators. The bots themselves seem to be warning us of this through ominous messaging. Seeming instances of AI going unilateral have prompted a bipartisan AI Kill Switch bill in Congress. Finally, there is the systematic cultural destruction being wrought by AI—literally shredding humankind’s legacy of literacy, to impose a reign of sheer error and idiocy. In Episode 339 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case for an abolitionist position on Artificial Intelligence. (Photo: Rachel Bujalski/Stop the AI Race)

Greater Middle East

US-Iran war spirals across Middle East

With the US-Iran war escalating, more countries in the Middle East have—officially or unofficially—entered the fray. As the US stepped up air-strikes on Iran, it joined with Saudi Arabia to launch strikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq. Iran (or the Houthis) hit Egypt, Kuwait and Jordan, where three US soldiers were killed. Saudi Arabia is building a military alliance to police the Red Sea, with an eye toward removal of the Houthis from power in Yemen. The US Senate again failed to pass a War Powers Resolution, while the Iran regime apparently sees it as in its political interest to extend the conflict on at least a minimal basis. Nonetheless, it appears to be quickly spiralling out of control. (Image: Pixabay)

Watching the Shadows

AI: geopolitics or abolition?

Nationwide protests against data centers and even demands to stop the AI race constitute a significant glimmer of hope as Artificial Intelligence colonizes every sphere of human existence with terrifying rapidity. The movement, however, faces potential pitfalls that could be fatal. The emergence of stochastic attacks on the AI bosses represents counter-productiveadventurism seemingly informed by an ugly primitivism. An equal but opposite threat is exploitation of the movement by elements that really have no critique of the technology at all, but only seek to see it advance under Chinese rather than American techno-oligarchs—specifically the cultish and reactionary “Party for Socialism & Liberation” (sic). PSL is indeed an instrument through which the rulers of China (and Russia) are attempting to groom oppositional forces in the US. This provides convenient fodder for propaganda that would portray any opposition to the AI economy as a tool of Beijing’s ambitions to global dominance of the industry. As struggles against data centers now emerge in places like the Philippines, it is critical that we take a Neither East Nor West position and repudiate the global divide-and-rule racket that is the essence of the state system. In Episode 338 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case for an uncompromising abolitionist position on Artificial Intelligence. (Photo: Rachel Bujalski/Stop the AI Race)

Iran

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: Israeli agent?

Operatives from Israel’s spy agency Mossad met several times with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since 2023 in an effort to install the former Iranian president as a new leader for the country, according to a New York Times investigation. Staunchly anti-Zionist during his 2005-2013 presidency, Ahmadinejad reportedly distanced himself from Iran’s Islamist government in recent years after being blocked from running for additional terms, and came to see the economic sanctions punishing Iran over its nuclear program as an unacceptable burden. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quashed disagreements within his administration in order for the recruitment of Ahmadinejad to proceed. However, after being brought to a Mossad safehouse in Tehran amid US and Israeli strikes in February, Ahmadinejad balked at the regime-change plan and absconded, and is now being held by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (Photo: Khamenei.ir via The Media Line)

New York City

Mahmoud Khalil sues US officials, pro-Israel groups

Prominent Palestinian rights activist Mahmoud Khalil filed a lawsuit in US federal court alleging a “coordinated” conspiracy between senior Trump administration officials and three private organizations—the Heritage Foundation and online surveillance or “doxxing” groups Canary Mission and Betar—to target him for deportation over his advocacy work. Khalil is a former Columbia University graduate student who became the public face of the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism following his detention by ICE last year. (Photo: Office of Rep. Jim McGovern via Wikimedia Commons)

Watching the Shadows

Podcast: Resist digital hegemony! IV

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s executive order imposing a one-year moratorium or “pause” on new “hyperscale” data centers seems to be a ploy to undercut a more stringent measure passed by the state legislature. But it still represents an important victory—of course being met with outrage by the Trump regime. Monterey Park, Calif., has meanwhile become the first US city to impose an outright ban on data centers via ballot initiative. There is a growing municipal revolt against data centers in the Golden State—although Gov. Gavin Newsom is still wedded to the AI agenda, placing him in line with the Trump White House. The turn of public opinion is slowing expansion of the industry, which is a real sign of hope. The challenge is to translate this into a popular repudiation of artificial intelligence altogether, and build a movement for abolition. In Episode 337 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues to make the case. (Photo: Food & Water Watch via Waging Nonviolence)

The Andes

US pushes ‘Donroe Doctrine’ at Cuzco defense summit

Representatives from over 30 countries gathered in the Peruvian city of Cuzco for the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas, where top Pentagon official Elbridge Colby used the occasion to defend the “Donroe Doctrine.” As at other regional security summits, including the “Shield of the Americas” conference held in Florida in March, Trump officials cast drug trafficking and irregular migration as threats to US security, urged regional governments to increase military spending, and called for deeper security collaboration with Washington. An increasing number of the right-wing governments in attendance have embraced closer military ties with the United States through joint strikes and new military bases—even as militarized policies fail to curb organized crime and violence in countries like Ecuador, a key testing ground for the administration’s renewed war on “narcoterrorism.” (Photo: Martin St-Amant via Wikimedia Commons)

Watching the Shadows

US to seek dismantling of International Criminal Court

The US will launch a diplomatic campaign aimed at dismantling the International Criminal Court, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Rubio wrote that the US will work alongside allied governments to take the Court apart “brick by brick, if necessary,” using all tools at the government’s disposal. He said the campaign’s message to other governments will be a choice of “sovereign states over globalism,” and pledged that the administration will protect US service members from ICC jurisdiction. (Photo: Tony Webster via Wikimedia Commons)

Africa

US blocks funding for AU mission in Somalia

The blocking by the US of UN funding to African Union (AU) forces in Somalia starting next year is a body blow to a mission that has long been on financial life-support. The UN Support Office in Somalia (UNSOS) provides the logistical backing critical to the functioning of the AU mission. Without that underpinning, it’s hard to see how the AU’s 11,800-strong force can continue. That became evident when Washington vetoed the application to Somalia of UN Resolution 2719 on peacekeeping cost-sharing. The AU’s near two-decade mission has done significant work. Despite heavy casualties, it succeeded in ousting al-Shabab from Mogadishu—a daunting task the UN and the rest of the international system was unwilling to take on—and continued to protect Somalia’s fractious political elite from the jihadist insurgency. But the inability of Somalia to grow and deploy its own security forces to consolidate territorial gains secured by the AU resulted in deadly mission creep and effectively tore up any putative exit plan. Instead, the AU has soldiered on in the absence of a workable political strategy, and with ever-shrinking sources of financing. (Photo: AUSSOM)

Mexico

Mexico to seek charges over deaths in ICE custody

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said that her government plans to seek criminal complaints in the United States over the deaths of Mexican citizens while in immigration custody or during anti-immigration operations. Since President Donald Trump launched the current immigration crackdown, at least 14 Mexican nationals have died in the custody of US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE), and three more have reportedly died in arrests conducted by the agency. (Photo of Houston protest against ICE: Jessica Bolanos via Wikimedia Commons)

North America

UN rights chief: investigate deaths in ICE custody

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk called for independent investigations into dozens of deaths in US Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. He urged authorities to take immediate measures to prevent further fatalities as the number of deaths in detention continues to rise. Türk noted that at least 52 people have died in ICE custodysince the beginning of 2025, following President Donald Trump’s return to office and the start of the administration’s expanded immigration enforcement policies. According to official figures, 18 people died in ICE detention during the first five months of this year, with an additional death recorded in June, while 33 deaths were documented during 2025 overall—compared with 11 in 2024. (Photo: ICE via Wikimedia Commons)