CounterVortex

The Hong Kong Court of First Instance on Aug. 21 found activists Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, as well as the pair's now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance, guilty of a "subversion" offense under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law (NSL).

Within the span of one week, Romania was struck twice by drones originating from the conflict in Ukraine: first by an aerial drone in the city of Galați on May 29, and then by a maritime drone that exploded in the Port of Constanța on June 5. The Galați strike marked the first time a Russian drone caused physical injury to Romanian civilians in a densely populated area.

A Russian court sentenced politician Lev Shlosberg to 11 years and one month in a penal colony on charges of “discrediting” the Russian military and spreading “false information,” Amnesty International said Aug. 17. Marie Struthers, Amnesty’s Eastern Europe director, called the charges “blatant reprisals for exercising his right to freedom of expression to call for peace,” and demanded his immediate and unconditional release.

Following the attack on Manhattan's historic Central Synagogue, Jewish establishment voices are calling for stepped up surveillance and policing. But the threat, alas, is real.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) called on Thai authorities Aug. 17 to halt the deportation of ethnic Karen villagers from Thailand’s Phetchaburi province to Burma, citing grave risks to their safety if returned, and urging their immediate release from immigration detention. HRW reported that Thai security forces on Aug.

Colombia formally joined the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (A3C) on Aug. 12, a US-led regional initiative under the rubric of the so-called “Shield of the Americas.” US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that new far-right President Abelardo de la Espriella had authorized joint “counter-terrorism” operations, a move that opens the door to US-led strikes on Colombian territory, which Hegseth said has already been discussed.

Yemen is closer to all-out war than at any other point since the 2022 ceasefire, UN Special Envoy Hans Grundberg told the Security Council on Aug. 13 amid an upsurge of violence in and around the divided country. A Houthi attack on a cargo ship in the Bab el-Mandeb strait on Aug. 11 killed six people, while fresh clashes between Houthi and government forces erupted in the frontline city of Taiz the following day.

Lebanese firefighters, residents, and environmental groups have accused the Israeli militaryof deliberately lighting wildfires across the areas of southern Lebanon it occupies, with some labelling it “ecocide.” According to the reports, up to 40% of the land in areas close to the front line has been burned by Israeli drones, flares and munitions since June, with firefighters in some cases attacked as they attempted to respond.

The righties are apoplectic that Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey famously portrays a Black Helen—displaying their ignorance of the actual intercourse between Africa and the ancient Greek world. But apart from the cultural politics of the movie, the geopolitics of the Trojan War have all too much to say about the contemporary world crisis. Then, the Bosphorus and Dardanelles constituted the strategic chokepoints at issue, just as the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb do today.

A Damascus criminal court sentenced ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to death in absentia Aug. 11 after convicting him of murder, torture, arbitrary detention and crimes against humanity. This was the first judgment issued by Syria’s own courts against the head of a government that ruled the country for decades and put down a 2011 uprising with a wave of harsh repression, sparking a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.