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. The assailant spewing the "fake Jews" epithet indicates either that he has been indoctrinted by the Neturei Karta cult, which holds all Jews outside their micro-schism to be apostate, or the "Khazar thesis"—just barely laundered anti-Semitism, inevitably linked to ugly stereotyped images of evil Jews and wacky conspiracy theories. Cynical attempts to blame Mayor Mamdani for the attack are predictable. Alas, some figures on the political left really have traded in denialism about the reality that the attack was, in fact, an anti-Semitic attack. This is linked to a more general denialism on much of the "left" about the very existence of Jewish ethnicity. Efforts to weaponize anti-Semitism to silence pro-Palesitnian voices are to be opposed, but do not mean anti-Semitism doesn't exist—or change the reality that any legitimate anti-ZIonism must be committed to fighting anti-Semitism in the diaspora.

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.

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.

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. De la Espriella's granting of permission to US troops to operate within Colombia is likely unconstitutional—the transit and operation of foreign troops on Colombian soil requires Congressional approval. The agreement was formalized in Panama, where Hegseth spent two days meeting with the A3C's 19 partner members, deepening ties, and rallying opposition to the International Criminal Court, which he accused of launching a "lawless power grab" by potentially investigating US strikes in the region, a step it has not yet taken. (NACLA Update)

Yemen is closer to all-out war than at any other point since 2022, 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. The Houthis said a drone strike the day after that on Saudi Arabia's Jizan oil refinery, on the Red Sea just over the border from Yemen, was a response to Saudi violations of Yemeni airspace. (TNH)

Lebanese firefighters, residents, and environmental groups have accused the Israeli military of 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. (TNH)

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. And the Bosphorus & Dardanelles could suddenly become critically strategic if Turkey becomes embroiled in either the Middle East war or the Ukraine war—or both. Finally, the movie itself has become embroiled in a geopolitical dispute: Nolan shot his cinematic spectacle partly in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara—not, as the film credits say, "Morocco." This is another near-forgotten conflict that now shows signs of re-escalating—and may have been at issue in the recent deadly incident at the Spanish North African exclave of Ceuta, situated just within the strategic Strait of Gibraltar. The current world crisis could bring about a civilization collapse far more decisive and complete than the Bronze Age Collapse that followed the Trojan War.

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.