Ten years ago this week, the Syrian Revolution began with peaceful pro-democracy protests. The first demonstrations broke out in the city of Deraa after local schoolchildren painted a mural depicting scenes and slogans from the recent revolutions in other Arab… Read moreTen years after: the Syrian Revolution betrayed
Within just five years, the Amazon rainforest could lose half the total forest cover that it lost in the first 20 years of this century, a recent study by the Amazon Network of Georeferenced Socio-Environmental Information (RAISG) has revealed. Deforestation rates are accelerating in nearly all of the nine Amazonian countries, but especially in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia—mostly due to road development, agricultural expansion and mining. (Photo via Mongabay)
Erik Prince, former CEO of the notorious private military company Blackwater, violated the UN arms embargo on Libya with a clandestine pipeline to a rebel warlord, according to a confidential report to the Security Council obtained by the New York Times. The report… Read moreLibya: Blackwater CEO trafficked arms to Russia-backed warlord
President Joe Biden’s pledge to rebuild the Iran nuclear deal is already deteriorating into a deadlock—a testament to the effectiveness of the Trump-era intrigues that sabotaged the agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). On Feb. 7,… Read moreCan Iran nuclear deal be salvaged?
The legislature of the oil-producing Canadian province of Alberta invoked the controversial Alberta Sovereignty Act in response to federal environmental policies. The provincial legislature passed a resolution resolving to "urge the Government to use all legal means necessary to oppose the implementation and enforcement of the Federal Initiative in Alberta." The initiative refered to is Canada's proposed Clean Energy Regulations, which the resolution says would have "an extreme chilling effect on investment" in Alberta's electricity energy sector. Premier Danielle Smith introduced the Sovereignty Act in November 2022, asserting that Albertans no longer wanted "Ottawa to…interfere in our constitutional areas of jurisdiction," and proclaiming a right to provincial non-compliance. (Photo of Alberta's shale oil fields by Kris Krug, via The Tyee)
Last month, the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem issued a report with the provocative title: This is Apartheid: A Regime of Jewish Supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It documents systematic discrimination against Palestinians in the spheres of land, citizenship, freedom… Read more‘Apartheid’ Israel: semantic implications
In Episode 62 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg grimly notes that, even with 400,000 Americans dead to COVID-19, the worst potentialities of the Trump presidency were not realized. Trump never (quite) established a dictatorship, and we didn’t (quite) go… Read morePodcast: for total de-Trumpification
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)
In Episode 61 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg warns that following Trump’s instrumented right-wing insurrection at the Capitol building, violence in the final lead-up to Inauguration Day could provide the expedient for execution of his long-planned coup d’etat—precisely as had… Read morePodcast: Stop the Coup! II
The US Department of State once again designated Cuba as a state that sponsors terrorism on Jan. 11. In 2015, the Obama administration removed Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, which currently includes North Korea, Iran and Syria…. Read moreUS returns Cuba to ‘state sponsors of terrorism’ list
In a victory for the Trump White House, Sudan has officially signed on to the so-called “Abraham Accords,” agreeing to peace and normalization of diplomatic ties with Israel. Justice Minister Nasredeen Abdulbari signed the document in the presence of US Treasury Secretary… Read moreSudan: ‘peace’ with Israel, war with Ethiopia?
The Iraqi judiciary issued an arrest warrant for US President Donald Trump on Jan. 7 for the killing of paramilitary commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis last January. Trump is charged under Article 406 of the Iraqi Penal Code, which carries the death… Read moreIraq issues arrest warrant for Trump
